big time cat fancier

15.8.07

(3) I Am The Protagonist

I keep a toothbrush in my pocket and press my thumb against the bristles. It is a kind of sweet, secret release, like cracking knuckles. I was walking up and down the dalmatian scum floors of Safeway, matching my breathing with my footsteps because I was bored and tired of working and set on Them paying me for doing nothing. There was a girl swimming in my head. She had shifting features, in my head, not in real life, because I was sleepy and the backs of my heels burned. Someone mumbled like a ghost in a echo tube that customer something-or-other needed something blah blah on grumble grumble 3 thanks. I walked, shuffled out of the aisle and started walking faster and faster, almost running, hoping that maybe they would see me freaking out and send me home because I was moving so fast no one could talk to me. I was moving so fast, I went backwards in time. There is me as a baby. Here are the dinosaurs. I helped a woman take her groceries outside. She kept apologizing, "Normally I don't ever need help out, but I thought since it was such a nice day." I pictured what it would be like to kill my co-workers with machetes. Then I felt really gross, like a really terrible human being with super low self-esteem. A picture of cut up orange tangerines circled on top of a blue shifting background, played in my head, and I hummed a Spoon song low in my throat, so customers didn't I was talking to myself. It kept getting later. I was still working. My hands were dry and cracked and hurt and looked like pictures of deserts cut like hands. A woman with a dark dress looked down at a bag of beef jerky and said quietly to her friend with ugly braids, "I don't why I just don't kill myself." The store felt stale and I thought about saying something nice, but I just went back to work.

3 comments:

  1. have a good day at work!!!

    :) i love where the logic seems unique to the narrator, like "hoping that maybe they would see me freaking out and send me home because I was moving so fast no one could talk to me"

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  2. #1) are these kinda half fiction half non

    #2) the color scheme of your blog makes me want to give myself herpes

    and

    #3) maybe that's because i'm so tired because i worked 25 hours in the past 2 days. i spilled a gallon of jet fuel on myself today. i took a bath in jet fuel.

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  3. to jess:

    thank you! i really like this story and I'm glad you do too.

    to bryan:

    1)is that a question?

    2) you already have herpes and i like it. if want me to change it you have to obtain 4 other signatures that also want me to change it.

    3) i am tired too. today i broke a bunch of shit and a lot of stuff exploded. it was awful and gross.
    i bathed in lemon and blood grapefruit organic italian sodas.

    ReplyDelete