Tag: life

Interruption

He came across a disaster. Dead ants were spread everywhere. Most were smashed into small, curled bodies. Some were obliterated. Ant parts were everywhere.

He couldn’t imagine what’d happened. Down on his hands and knees, he ignored the traffic in the street beside him and mourned their losses, watching as the bodies were collected and carried away. After the final body was gone, he went to rise when he saw the ants come out and face him. All were still for several moments. When he felt an appropriate amount of time had passed, he bowed his head and said, “I’m sorry.”

The ants retreated to resume their lives, and he went on his way.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Had beers with friends the other night. I hadn’t seen one of them for a few weeks as he’d been traveling to visit family. I asked him how they were, and he said, “Well, they’ve seen better days.” His sister’s caregiver said the doctors thought his sister would go into hospice soon.

Then, as we spoke, “She hadn’t really seen better days. She spent most of her life taking care of her parents.” She’d lived in their house, serving as their caretaker. When they died, about ten years ago, she thought she could finally start living. By then she was sixty and had a chronic disease. Now, five years later, she was going into hospice, even though she was ten years younger than him. All of it terribly upset her.

I thought about it a lot the last few days. She’d never married, never seen better days. She’d a boyfriend for a long time but she was taking care of her parents and didn’t think it would be fair to him so they stayed as semi-serious companions. Then he was killed in a motorcycle accident.

As I walked around, thinking about her situation, I kept humming “Better Days (And the Bottom Drops Out)” by Citizen King (1999). I’ve done this song before, but it’s been over a year, and I think it fits the days. Most of us have seen better days.

Then the bottom dropped out.

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Maybe

Maybe she’s sick or blind,

so, she don’t look this way, or,

maybe she’s afraid or worried,

so, she don’t look this way.

Maybe she’s unfriendly, stuck-up, or conceited,

cuz she don’t look this way,

or too insecure,

because she don’t look this way.

Could be that she’s dead,

’cause she don’t look this way

or maybe I’m invisible,

because she don’t look this way,

or I’m old, sick, or dying,

because she won’t look this way.

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Looking Forward

Digging into his pocket, Chasm pulled everything out, dropped it on the counter, and took in the lifetender. Her neck and arms were lean and bare. Alabaster skin and sculpted coal black hair accented her blue eyebrows, green eyes,  red pearl earrings, and brown lips.

Leaning forward, the lifetender watched Chasm’s discs take on green, gold, and silver. Her name holo said she was Kymeri and she was not available.

“You got something,” Kymeri said. Her long, flashing red fingernails raked the discs into order as their denominations came up. “Thousand dollar goldisc, a D, silver century, a wide array of greendiscs.” Her fingernails flashing gold, she tapped the individual discs. Each spoke its value. When she’d tapped the last greendisc, she clicked her fingernails together. Changing to green, her nail said, “Seventeen hundred sixty-seven dollars.”

Just short of a day’s pay, a reflection of the six hours Chasm had worked. “What can I get for that?”

“Night room, joy doll, two squares, dozen drinks, new clothes.”

“What would that leave me?”

“Depends on particulars.”

“Of course. There a budget package?”

Shaking her head, Kymeri said in a low voice, “You don’t want a budget. Get a deluxe, at least. You can afford it. Budget drinks are well liquor or piss beer with compiled food, and the clothes are plastic.”

“Can I budget and then upgrade the drinks to IPA? I don’t need many, maybe three bigs.”

Her fingernails flashing green, the lifetender said, “Okay, a budget room is a bed with a pop out commode, access to the ionizer, private sink, standing space and one chair.”

“Bedding?”

“Included. Joy doll?”

“No. Trade in for the clothes?”

The lifetender shrugged with a dispassionate scan over his black plastic-encased torso. “Your stuff isn’t much. Probably a ten.”

The negotiations were continued. When it was done, Chasm had spent eleven hundred. It scared him to spend so much.

He was ported into his pod. Soft white lights came on. No windows, one large monitor, doublewide bed, chair, sink, port token switch for the ionizer, and popout commode, as promised.

Squirming into the chair, Chasm guzzled his first IPA. Decent stuff, but most importantly, cold. Tension sloughed out of his shoulders. It’d been a good day. He’d found work and was promised more. He was off the street, had a clothing credit, two meals paid for, along with the IPA and water, and still had almost five hundred in discs.

Life was good. Kicking off his shoes, Chasm unfolded his laptop from his hip pocket and plugged it in to play some games.

For the first time in at least a year, he was looking forward to tomorrow.

 

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Awkward

He considered it a sign of his life that this shit happened.

First, he’d outlived his friends and family. Said good-bye to all of them. By the time some died, they’d noticed that his hair remained shiny and full, wrinkles didn’t mar his skin, and that he remained energetic and athletic as a twenty-year-old. “Good genes,” he always said, even to his parents and siblings. “Why didn’t we get those genes?” they wanted to know. “Good question,” he replied.

Now, they were alive again, not because of his good genes, but because he’d awakened back in time. “Impossible,” he told himself.

But there they were. He wondered if he’d have to say good-bye to them again, or would they finally watch him pass away.

Either way, it could be awkward.

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