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Posts published in “Writing”

The Morning After

 

When I woke I stepped out on the balcony and walked over some broken glass and looked over the edge to see Betty face down in the pool, bloated and pale, still wearing her party hat and I lit my cigarette and went back into the house.  Eric was still asleep at the foot of the bed.  My bathrobe smelled like smoke and had that unmistakable tangy hint of vomit.  Luckily enough, my sense of smell was so destroyed by the Columbian whirlwind last night that my house could be on fire and I’d never smell it.  I carefully stepped over Eric who, upon closer inspection, might not have been breathing, and opened the bathroom door.  I found a fresh beer in the sink with some toothpaste spit on the side which I washed off.  I opened the beer; the lukewarm flat piss lit up the pleasure sensors in my brain like flares at the scene of a horrible rainy accident.  I shut off the light to the bathroom as I exited, forgetting why I went in there to begin with.  

Sal’s Diner

 

Sal, convinced that everyone was out to get him, sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee from the waitress who was shaped like an orange with another orange on top of it wearing a blue apron.  He noticed that her skin was covered in decades of black heads caused by the flaring grease fire roaring behind her since the 60s.  She brought him the coffee and it was too hot; he knew she was trying to burn his mouth with the scalding hot liquid.  He asked her for those little pre-packaged cones of half-and-half with their tips flattened.  She pointed toward the little metal pitcher of cream, but he demanded the flattened little cones.  She rolled her eyes and took her time bringing them over.  She asked him if he was going to order anything, but he wasn’t sure yet so she would just have to come back in a little while.  He just wanted to drink his coffee and be left alone.  

The Ferret

 

The Ferret—he insisted on being called The Ferret, having eschewed the name his mother gave him except when at work or within his professional life that fucking bitch—dug through the garbage can in the Union Square McDonalds looking for Monopoly pieces on discarded fry cartons and soda cups and big mac wrappers to complete his collection and win the money car trip thing that was the grand prize.  In his pocket he had three of the four railroads, a Baltic thing, some Pennsylvanias, maybe a Lightworks and a Broadway.  The piece he really needed was Park Place, but the chances of that happening were slim at best.  He knew that.  He’d accepted it.  Yet his dream burned brighter than ever before.