Paul had finally reached an age where he could peg his mood to the seasons. It had been the majority of his 34 years of life that he'd cycle through the depression of winter; the rebirth of spring; the sheer force of pure energy in the summer; followed by the slow, cold dread that autumn brought on; all of which until just this year he'd weathered as if they were random loops through an unpredictable pattern of moodswing. It wasn't until this past September, when the light shifted overnight and a sharp chill penetrated the air that he realized that familiar feeling was coming back again. The dread, a sweet, sorrowful sadness, inexplicable and huge, that started to drift down over him like a blanket of thick fog.
posted by morphitologist at
1:14 PM
3 Comments:
He smoked what had to have been his 6th cigarette and it wasn't even noon. He called in sick to work and spent the morning eating Honey Nut Cheerios out of the box, watching reruns of last year's Project Runway on Bravo. He hadn't brushed his teeth in over 3 weeks. He'd let all his hair grow out - nose, ear, back. He stopped washing his clothes or returning phone calls.
And just when things seemed like they couldn't get any darker, a knock at the front door. More like the sound of someone trying to hammer a 6 inch spike through the wood.
"Henry?" a slightly nasal, scratchy female voice called out from the other side.
It was Gina, his ex-wife.
By
Anonymous, at 8:32 PM
Now, Gina, it must be said, had always been something of a ball-buster. But while Henry had mellowed from rock 'n' roll rebel to smooth urban loser with some semblance of grace (he thought), Gina had not only kept, but sharpened, her edge. It was this edge that had sliced their relationship in two over three years ago, but she absolutely delighted in treating him as if they were best girlfriends, just to drive the blade in a little deeper; and for an added twist, she was always borrowing money from him, on top of the alimony and child support he already gave her out of his less than grand middle management music industry salary. His dreams had been carefully tucked away, but it seemed that his nightmares were here to stay.
He thought about all this as he froze, hoping to play not-home so that she would go away, but she continued beating out that dreadful, resounding rap on his door as if her knuckles were made of steel.
"I know you're in there, Henry," she yelled through the door, though her normal voice had always sounded like a yell to Henry, anyway. "I can smell you!" Then that high-pitched cackle of hers, the one she added to the end of virtually every utterance just to point out how she was clued in to the fact that life was all a big joke. Henry hated that laugh. He had always hated that laugh.
"I'm not going to let you in, Gina," he said, surprised by the firmness of his tone. "I'm not receiving today. Next time, call before you come, and we'll set up a time."
His cell phone rang.
"Okay, very funny, Gina. I know that's you."
No answer from the other side of the door. The silent treatment--another of her specialties. He peeked through the peephole to gauge her mood, but saw no mane of curly dark hair or ruddy cheeks through the scope.
"Gina?" He called out.
His cell phone stopped ringing. He opened the door and looked both ways down the hall: no sign of her. He didn't know whether to feel relieved or worried, but a little of both would do for now. Gina was a big girl. She could take care of herself. Henry, for now, was free to continue his slow, ineluctable, inexplicable disintegration without interruption. But as he sat down with another box of cereal to snack through the late afternoon hours of snoozy redesign shows on the Style network, he couldn't stop thinking about Gina's sudden disappearance.
By
rob, at 3:22 PM
He settled back down on the beaten couch, scratching his crotch, digging his dirty hand deep into the Lucky Charms box wedged between his legs. He checked his cell phone, scanning the caller ID. It wasn't Gina who called, but worse: Myra.
Myra was the speed whore from Fresno with the false teeth and known for her killer gummy blowjobs. They'd hooked up once about a month ago, after a night of tequila shots and snorting lines of chopped up Vicodin off the tas tank of his Kawasaki 650 street bike. She sucked him off at least 5 times before dawn, and by the time she went home the next morning his dick was chaffed and raw. It was only about 3 days later that he found she'd left him with a special present: He found a tiny crab crawling in his pubic hair. Fucking Myra.
Flicking through the channels brought him to a newscast about a fire down in a warehouse on Monte Vista and 16th. He turned up the volume. He leaned forward, spilling the box of Lucky Charms all over the greasy shag carpet. He didn't care.
That was the warehouse where Gina worked. She always bitched about her boss, some wannabe Polish mafia type with dubious business practices. The last time she was over, she kept ranting about how she was gonna burn the motherfucking place down, how she was gonna make him pay for the way he treated her.
The warehouse was now a blackened, smoldering mess. The newsman on the scene was saying something about a meth lab found on the property. Something else about a couple million in cash found in a vault in a back room. And finally, he mentioned a dead body - that of a heavyset, middle aged man who's remains were being examined for identification.
His cell phone started ringing again. He looked at the caller ID. This time, it was Gina and he knew exactly what she was going to ask of him.
By
morphitologist, at 5:20 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home