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Crackwhore Drabbles from 2009
Last year of archiving drabbles.
He looked up the deserted road and watched as the oil slicks glistened in the summer heat. She’d be back, of course she would. She wouldn’t really desert him on the side of the highway, 100s of miles away from home and miles from even the last dusty gas station.
They had gotten in their car looking for adventure hadn’t they? This was certainly a story they’d be telling their grandchildren.
”Dear, remember that time you left me on the side of the road?”
“Snookums, you remember why I left you on the side of the road?”
“Yes darling, I might, or might not have implied, or thinly veiled that our relationship was perhaps sucking my soul out of my chest. My bad.”
“Fuck off.”
“Not in front of the children!”
Jesus! He couldn’t even have a rational conversation with her in his mind. That had to be a sign huh? At least a sign he should start walking.
It was an hour later that he began to reason this was for the best. They really weren’t good together, weren’t good for each other, how many reminders did he need?
An hour after that, right about the time he saw, as if a mirage hovering hazy in the distance, the first intersection he’d seen that had a gas station planted on it that the car returned.
She pulled up beside him, the debris from the road swirling and pelting him. He squinted at her as she rolled down the window with an apologetic smile.
“Should we try again?”
He studied her, looked at the oasis in the distance, then back to her before shrugging and walking around to the passenger’s side door, promising to keep himself and his tongue in line until he was back to civilizations.
* * *
She’d heard about this before. Medical students who become hypochondriacs who think they have everything they’ve happened to read that day. Psychologists who think they hear voices in between sessions. Heck, even car mechanics hear phantom dings in their own cars. These little warning signs that you don’t know are there until you’ve learned to look for them; then they are all you hear, all that consumes your every thought.
The first time, she was a novice and so didn’t know what to look for. The second time, she only need to puke that first morning before she knew what was wrong with her. By the fourth, she felt it the moment the seed that would grow and devour her strength, consume her life and eat away at her reasoning and good sense meet her egg. Yes, she had become a specialist in this phenomenon, in this disorder.
Now she’s just one more lunatic on the soccer field, making cookies for the bake sales and herding sleepovers; one more mechanic at the side lines with the band-aids, up to midnight on the science projects and listening to broken-hearted, first love’s lost.
Yes, she’d heard about this before. She just had never heard if there was a cure.
* * *
The hands shook as they grasped the glass, the ice tinkling against the side and the amber liquid inside sloshing precariously.
“Goddamned good for nothing,” he mumbles under his breath, putting the glass down and wiping his damp and gnarled hand against his rumpled trousers. No one listens. No one cares. He’s just a face at the bar, a warm body in the corner.
They listen when he has his relief check cashed, then he’s fuckin’ Aristotle and Casanova rolled into one. The second night, he’s a little less relevant. The night after that, he gets rolled by thugs as he staggers back to his house and wakes up with a black eye, no money and no recollection of the night before. He goes back the next night; he can’t not go.
Everyone buys him a drink and he’s grateful, never knowing, or even caring that these are the same thugs and they're buying the drinks with the money they had taken from him. It doesn’t matter because they continue to buy him drinks.
It was a bargain really; he got his drinks and he got his little bit of companionship. All he really wanted.
* * *
Robin pulled over at the car at the top of the pass and got out of the car. The mountain air was crisp, even in the glaring sun of the summer day. There was a wind rustling the mountains of pine around her and her hair floated around her in wisps.
She sat on the top of the car, the engine rumbling under her and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. She looked over her shoulder at the long, windy, often times dangerous uphill climb she had just accomplished and sighed. Going back home had been a bad idea. She knew that now. Truth was, she had known going.
There were reasons she avoided answering the phone. Mostly it was because of her mother. She’d yet to get a call that didn’t revolve around how her mother needed her, how she needed help…need…need…need that was all the phone was for, that and guilt about how she never came and visited.
A shriek rang from above and she craned her head to see the eagle soar above, as if the wind carried it and it was powerless to stop it, to dictate for itself where it would wind up. She closed her eyes and imagined the wind carrying her away too. For a moment, a fleeting yet glorious moment she did feel as if she was floating on the wind.
A strong, chilled wind woke her from her imaginings and she opened her eyes and looked down at the splendor that lay spread out in the valley below her. She got up and got in the car again, thinking about how the road down to her life and all that she could do, not what she had done was right there before her.
* * *
It used to seem that it was limitless, never ending and always there for the taking: time. He never thought about it, who did? People who counted it, horded it, but certainly not those who lived every minute of it to its fullest.
He always thought he’d be one of those sudden deaths: gunshot wound, stabbing, drug induced cardiac arrest. How he had managed to survive his youth without any of those things coming to fruitarian was a mystery that would, at least for him and his numbered days, remain a mystery.
He wiped his sweat soaked brow as if it would clear the melancholy thoughts that resides through the skin and bone and traveled from synapses to synapses, causing his heart to beat faster and bringing the doctors in with syringes and harsh stares. He didn’t mean to think these things, to spike his blood pressure, it was just when he was alone that it crept up on him. He hated to be alone.
Yes, he understood the irony of that. He understood the cost of his needing constant companionship, no matter how unsavory. He also understood the irony of being the last to survive their little circle of degenerates, the Life of the Party Brigade meant…no irony was not wasted on him. The one that made sure that everyone was taking care of, ever need was satisfied was left alone, withering away in a quiet, isolated corner of a bustling hospital.
Irony was his only companion anymore.
* * *
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. They would go to the birthplace of this experiment known as “America” and in so doing, reconnecting with the things that had made the experiment of “Us” seem like a good idea.
But the sojourn to the Plymouth Rock was disappointing at best, but Beth would not be discouraged by small pebbles that were supposed to be representative of a large piece of history. After all, she thought, looking down at her wedding ring, sometimes large rocks were disappointing as well.
That was the beginning.
There next stop was another horrible idea in a long list of horrible ideas that constituted this entire relationship. What made her think that going to the place where witches were burned would be a good idea? Might as well have gone to Little Big Horn on their way to Uncle Tom’s Cabin! But they walked through the cemetery and tentatively laughed that life could be worse.
It was the House of Seven Gables that was the final nail. They had been so relieved when they had arrived. It was a reprieve from atrocities and thoughts of burning flesh. Literature was something they thought they would be safe around. They both enjoyed a good book, very rarely the same good book, but that didn’t matter. It was safe history, and that’s what they’re own personal history needed. Yes the rooms were small, suffocating small, and yes, the ceilings felt like they were closing in on you, squeezing the life out of you, but it was the secret passage ways, the tiny, stone-cold, never ending, rickety and claustrophobic stairs that just climbed and climbed getting smaller and smaller that was the metaphor that finally had them both reeling.
Of course, it didn’t help when the small child, at the top of the stairs, leaned over and sprayed the entire assembly with vomit. That was just an unnecessary red herring is what that was.
He looked up the deserted road and watched as the oil slicks glistened in the summer heat. She’d be back, of course she would. She wouldn’t really desert him on the side of the highway, 100s of miles away from home and miles from even the last dusty gas station.
They had gotten in their car looking for adventure hadn’t they? This was certainly a story they’d be telling their grandchildren.
”Dear, remember that time you left me on the side of the road?”
“Snookums, you remember why I left you on the side of the road?”
“Yes darling, I might, or might not have implied, or thinly veiled that our relationship was perhaps sucking my soul out of my chest. My bad.”
“Fuck off.”
“Not in front of the children!”
Jesus! He couldn’t even have a rational conversation with her in his mind. That had to be a sign huh? At least a sign he should start walking.
It was an hour later that he began to reason this was for the best. They really weren’t good together, weren’t good for each other, how many reminders did he need?
An hour after that, right about the time he saw, as if a mirage hovering hazy in the distance, the first intersection he’d seen that had a gas station planted on it that the car returned.
She pulled up beside him, the debris from the road swirling and pelting him. He squinted at her as she rolled down the window with an apologetic smile.
“Should we try again?”
He studied her, looked at the oasis in the distance, then back to her before shrugging and walking around to the passenger’s side door, promising to keep himself and his tongue in line until he was back to civilizations.
She’d heard about this before. Medical students who become hypochondriacs who think they have everything they’ve happened to read that day. Psychologists who think they hear voices in between sessions. Heck, even car mechanics hear phantom dings in their own cars. These little warning signs that you don’t know are there until you’ve learned to look for them; then they are all you hear, all that consumes your every thought.
The first time, she was a novice and so didn’t know what to look for. The second time, she only need to puke that first morning before she knew what was wrong with her. By the fourth, she felt it the moment the seed that would grow and devour her strength, consume her life and eat away at her reasoning and good sense meet her egg. Yes, she had become a specialist in this phenomenon, in this disorder.
Now she’s just one more lunatic on the soccer field, making cookies for the bake sales and herding sleepovers; one more mechanic at the side lines with the band-aids, up to midnight on the science projects and listening to broken-hearted, first love’s lost.
Yes, she’d heard about this before. She just had never heard if there was a cure.
The hands shook as they grasped the glass, the ice tinkling against the side and the amber liquid inside sloshing precariously.
“Goddamned good for nothing,” he mumbles under his breath, putting the glass down and wiping his damp and gnarled hand against his rumpled trousers. No one listens. No one cares. He’s just a face at the bar, a warm body in the corner.
They listen when he has his relief check cashed, then he’s fuckin’ Aristotle and Casanova rolled into one. The second night, he’s a little less relevant. The night after that, he gets rolled by thugs as he staggers back to his house and wakes up with a black eye, no money and no recollection of the night before. He goes back the next night; he can’t not go.
Everyone buys him a drink and he’s grateful, never knowing, or even caring that these are the same thugs and they're buying the drinks with the money they had taken from him. It doesn’t matter because they continue to buy him drinks.
It was a bargain really; he got his drinks and he got his little bit of companionship. All he really wanted.
Robin pulled over at the car at the top of the pass and got out of the car. The mountain air was crisp, even in the glaring sun of the summer day. There was a wind rustling the mountains of pine around her and her hair floated around her in wisps.
She sat on the top of the car, the engine rumbling under her and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. She looked over her shoulder at the long, windy, often times dangerous uphill climb she had just accomplished and sighed. Going back home had been a bad idea. She knew that now. Truth was, she had known going.
There were reasons she avoided answering the phone. Mostly it was because of her mother. She’d yet to get a call that didn’t revolve around how her mother needed her, how she needed help…need…need…need that was all the phone was for, that and guilt about how she never came and visited.
A shriek rang from above and she craned her head to see the eagle soar above, as if the wind carried it and it was powerless to stop it, to dictate for itself where it would wind up. She closed her eyes and imagined the wind carrying her away too. For a moment, a fleeting yet glorious moment she did feel as if she was floating on the wind.
A strong, chilled wind woke her from her imaginings and she opened her eyes and looked down at the splendor that lay spread out in the valley below her. She got up and got in the car again, thinking about how the road down to her life and all that she could do, not what she had done was right there before her.
It used to seem that it was limitless, never ending and always there for the taking: time. He never thought about it, who did? People who counted it, horded it, but certainly not those who lived every minute of it to its fullest.
He always thought he’d be one of those sudden deaths: gunshot wound, stabbing, drug induced cardiac arrest. How he had managed to survive his youth without any of those things coming to fruitarian was a mystery that would, at least for him and his numbered days, remain a mystery.
He wiped his sweat soaked brow as if it would clear the melancholy thoughts that resides through the skin and bone and traveled from synapses to synapses, causing his heart to beat faster and bringing the doctors in with syringes and harsh stares. He didn’t mean to think these things, to spike his blood pressure, it was just when he was alone that it crept up on him. He hated to be alone.
Yes, he understood the irony of that. He understood the cost of his needing constant companionship, no matter how unsavory. He also understood the irony of being the last to survive their little circle of degenerates, the Life of the Party Brigade meant…no irony was not wasted on him. The one that made sure that everyone was taking care of, ever need was satisfied was left alone, withering away in a quiet, isolated corner of a bustling hospital.
Irony was his only companion anymore.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. They would go to the birthplace of this experiment known as “America” and in so doing, reconnecting with the things that had made the experiment of “Us” seem like a good idea.
But the sojourn to the Plymouth Rock was disappointing at best, but Beth would not be discouraged by small pebbles that were supposed to be representative of a large piece of history. After all, she thought, looking down at her wedding ring, sometimes large rocks were disappointing as well.
That was the beginning.
There next stop was another horrible idea in a long list of horrible ideas that constituted this entire relationship. What made her think that going to the place where witches were burned would be a good idea? Might as well have gone to Little Big Horn on their way to Uncle Tom’s Cabin! But they walked through the cemetery and tentatively laughed that life could be worse.
It was the House of Seven Gables that was the final nail. They had been so relieved when they had arrived. It was a reprieve from atrocities and thoughts of burning flesh. Literature was something they thought they would be safe around. They both enjoyed a good book, very rarely the same good book, but that didn’t matter. It was safe history, and that’s what they’re own personal history needed. Yes the rooms were small, suffocating small, and yes, the ceilings felt like they were closing in on you, squeezing the life out of you, but it was the secret passage ways, the tiny, stone-cold, never ending, rickety and claustrophobic stairs that just climbed and climbed getting smaller and smaller that was the metaphor that finally had them both reeling.
Of course, it didn’t help when the small child, at the top of the stairs, leaned over and sprayed the entire assembly with vomit. That was just an unnecessary red herring is what that was.