《Abradamus》 Eager Debris of liquor and gum barbed the sidewalk. A winking little Irishman and a broad-shouldered bear were spoiled patrons, drawn across isles of glass. I had to arrive nowhere and would do it with clean shoes. Somewhere, the myth of a walkable city was still idealized, dreamed of through travel-mags. Don¡¯t they know you can walk anywhere? Cautiously, strident. It¡¯s the stink that flips your gut; stomachable cities should be the envy of our designs. We bleed so much for their prestige and precision and personality, professionalism. I¡¯ve run out of P¡¯s. Olive green lobby. Knees bobbed and clicked and waited, a man spoke to his phone. He sounded angry, but the slow to smoulder type; the type that doesn¡¯t really matter till it absolutely does. I had some height on him. I didn¡¯t dodge eye contact and he didn¡¯t give any. No one else in the room considered whether or not I could kick his ass. The front desk startled me out of the black-and-blue fantasies. Down the hall, third on the right. She would be running late, but only by a little. I never did mind. It wasn¡¯t sloth, it was a dozen dedications affirmed from behind one desk by the same cramped, cackling keys. Theirs was a laughter I could hear without envy. It was for me, after all. ¡°Hello,¡± I said, hardly louder than the creak of the door. ¡°Good morning,¡± she answered. ¡°I¡¯ll just need one minute, I¡¯m sort of playing catch-up right now. How are you? Have a seat. There was a heap of traffic on the way in, by the bridge. I hope you didn¡¯t come in that way.¡± I had bussed in, an hour and a half early. ¡°Oh, no. I didn¡¯t see that. Luckily.¡± I didn¡¯t care. ¡°Yup, a real mess.¡± She slid a binder down into her desk and straightened her glasses, then leaned back in her chair. A chin dipped and a grin rode it. ¡°So¡­ here we are. Eager?¡± ¡°Always,¡± I joked. She would pretend to not know the real answer. ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s been a long week.¡± ¡°Then let¡¯s start with Sunday.¡± ¡°Yeah, well, Sunday was good, I think. Lemme see, I took a long walk. It was windy. My earbuds kept disconnecting, so I sort of got fed up and just marched home. Then¡­ there was some chicken in the fridge, so I made a little sandwich. With mayo. Cheese.¡± ¡°Did you eat dinner with your dad?¡± This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°My dad - oh, no. No, he wasn¡¯t there.¡± ¡°Empty house?¡± ¡°Uh, no. No, there were some people downstairs. My sister, some of her friends.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t want to eat with them?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t think about it.¡± ¡°But sometimes¡­¡± ¡°Sometimes it¡¯s good to remind myself, yeah. Yeah, I dunno. I also kinda felt like my breath was a punch full of nicotine, so I figured I¡¯d give them their space. Wasn¡¯t a full relapse, or anything. Just felt like I had to breathe easy, y¡¯know?¡± ¡°Was that also a part of your walk?¡± The words lingered, like injustice, then a repercussion of silence buried us both. She knew the answer. She was just tickling her cards, giggling at the falsity of a stalemate. I was able to look into her eyes, then. Brown, bright. They had a way of wrapping contempt in colour and regifting you the most banal of regrets. ¡°Guessing you wanna hear about Monday, next?¡± ¡°If you¡¯re comfortable sharing.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll try not to break down about it.¡± ¡°We can talk about something else, if you¡¯d like?¡± ¡°Right, like the traffic by the bridge.¡± ¡°You¡¯re upset with me.¡± ¡°You know I don¡¯t like this part. Building up to what we wanna say. You, softly goading me and me pretending I¡¯m content in taking things slow. We¡¯ve done this enough now, haven¡¯t we? Monday sucked. I slept most of Tuesday. Don¡¯t really remember Wednesday or Thursday, and over the weekend I lifted some weights and hurt my arm so I stopped lifting weights and - I don¡¯t know, slept, probably. Now we¡¯re all caught up.¡± ¡°What would you like to talk about?¡± Square one. Her affections and clemencies were cardboard. I had glimpsed silver through the glass once, beside strangers. It¡¯s laughable when you can hold a receipt in your hands, guaranteeing compassion, but the fingers still shiver around it. Barren on green leather. This wasn¡¯t embrace, but who ever believed nickels and dimes from the gas station register could buy the buzz of another''s soul? She could tell I was getting bored, or impatient, or something uglier. I sensed she wanted to leave too. ¡°Admit it,¡± I said. ¡°Admit what?¡± ¡°I¡¯m the one you least look forward to.¡± Comet One sweet suck and mountain air was humping its way through my nervous system. It was erotic, a passion of momentum. I tasted pine and felt a forest in my belly. An eighth tug was one too many, then flame touched the cedars and the elm and the arbutus tree. Foliage of cognizance, up in smoke. By the ninth, I liked the company. My guts were always sour; ash couldn¡¯t topple me. What a blessing some had and it begged disbelief: to never be sick until you caught a cold. I shook my head through the smog of indulgence, failed to fathom it so scowled instead. Break was up. Phosphorescent whites screamed by the bell of entry. Bubble letters popped, sizzling neon, mascots like curt and jumpy onomatopeias were in instant revelry. The shelves wanted to ensnare but let me fall alone. I think I would rather work at the grey waste of rubble that an inferno could turn it all into. It¡¯d probably survive though. You can¡¯t discard your own damnation. You wait by the counter for a saviour. And you face the lighters. And you fill the chocolate box. A younger fella walked in, at a stride, like he had quick business elsewhere or something to be proud and protective of in the parking lot. Cute brown jacket, sized right. Jeans, dark; could¡¯ve been work-pants. I nodded and he waved with half his fist. ¡°Slow night?¡± he asked, while he swooped an energy supplement from beside the cash and propped it between us. ¡°If it was fast I¡¯d be smiling.¡± It sounded ruder than I was hoping. Speedy service would rend the offence. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. ¡°Yeah, I hear that, brother.¡± He scraped brown strands from over his eye; swayed in his hustle. ¡°Cold out there, too.¡± ¡°Good day to have a car, I bet.¡± ¡°Might be snow next week, I heard.¡± ¡°Wouldn¡¯t mind that. Couple inches is probably enough to call in. That¡¯ll be $4.75.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the weirdest thing.¡± His eyes wobbled with something dreamy, deluded. In a second, he was distant, younger. ¡°I keep waiting for something to get in the way. A comet¡­ or a terrible storm. Something to reach down and break the road, y¡¯know? Or freeze it over.¡± He looked down at the debit machine turned towards him. Far back in his skull, he remembered I was providing a service. A quaint smirk took him and he tapped his card. ¡°No use waiting for someone to stop us, right?¡± He knuckled the counter and threw out a nod, then was backward and away. With him went my smile and composure, and that tiny high of a recent tug, and the caffeine potion near the register. Like a mystic of the borough, out he went to sling prophecy and pump carbon dioxide into the stars. Mystics don¡¯t often steal pepperoni sticks from the counter display though, and I can¡¯t imagine the fogs of tomorrow obscure their sight when their cards decline. Wasn¡¯t my money he made off with, anyhow. Orange tore through the aisles. Headlights dragged over the window. I blinked funny but didn¡¯t look away. I was thinking of home, of watching movies and laughing the liquor from my lungs. It was 9:51. There was still time in the night for snow. I peered, squinted, tried to see it in the shadows of concrete: the crevasse from which the storm would crawl. Knock There is no nightmare like anticipation. I was awake early to answer, but it never rang. Circling, rehearsing idiot, it never rang. A skip in my heart held the sunrise. By lunch, I was starving. Dripped umbrage all over my bowl of macaroni. I¡¯ve been under the sea before. Colourless, but it¡¯s unseen, and so very unexciting. Waves of popcorn ceiling and the ebbs are incandescent fictions, fake blues, pretend scarlets. LED dreams, slaughtered by the whirl of a fan. Floating, somehow downward, either ear clogged, unsure whether you want your eyes squeezed shut or so wide open those little red branches pop up. Emails, texts, software updates, deadlines. All my terror comes with a beep and a bright prompt. I can always click away. That¡¯s an insulting fear; the dismissable type. Meagre enough that you¡¯re torn between premature surrenders in the win that''s too easy to try for, or victories you forget, spirits exhausted, prides on a tighter metric. There¡¯s a car parked on my street. I think of derelict drives or distressing passengers or firebombs. Something desperately significant in an idle faculty, something exceptional about being stationary. There¡¯s nothing. There¡¯s a soreness in my back, then the television¡¯s on. I throw on a random episode of a show I¡¯ve seen four times over. If I give chaos an avenue wider than an inch, I have issues with digestion. Surrounded by crickets. An avoidable, unbearable fucking chatter. Like rain you never get to gawk at or be refreshed by. Rain, without thunder, that you just hear on the roof, but it¡¯s too gentle to bother peeling back the curtains to look. Books beside me are future obligations, efforts stacked and impatient. Not stories. Not wonders and thrill. Lighters in a tray are little shames, little pricks that bleed jealousy for more cathartic pasts. Shampoo bottle from last Christmas, an unopened failing in self-respect. In modesty. There¡¯s an old energy drink near me, on the table. It¡¯s sealed shut but I¡¯m sure it¡¯s started to smell. I feel like fumes engulf me, satiated only by the couch and the mattress. Killed utterly in comfort only absolute. Fumes crooked and inclement, foul weather greedily shrouding the spaces I fill. I imagine an unpleasant stink, mundane enough that none bother to address it. No one wants grime under their nails. They want rejuvenation. I¡¯m certain I make people feel old. Like a peddler of forbearance, turning keen tongues to customers of the same dread. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. There¡¯s a man that keeps coming by the house and he is a beggar. I don¡¯t know how he does it with his big grin and his emotive gesturing, constantly mitigating threats to his impression. He dances in endless theatre, unpaid. But you can see the tears in the coat grow and the divots under the eye darken. You can see exasperation and violent need when the chairs start to empty and the doors squeak abandonment. You can see the dancer twitch. He sells lawn services or something. I never even think if I want my lawn cut or if it¡¯s within the budget, I just see concord and its tiny tribulations stretched out in the palm of his hand, always consecutive, always intruding. Fingers gripping for an ally. That type of friendship demands either performance or honesty, and shaved grass isn¡¯t a sensible tradeoff for either. There¡¯s a knock at the door. I stay perfectly still. Ores I hate the way sunlight looks on concrete. There¡¯s goddamn dunes of asphalt between me and fun things. Trick yourself into a soldier¡¯s diligence just to reach the bus stop, then you see the driver nod and the payment register without issue and a woman move her bag to make room for you and there¡¯s nothing to justify the finger you had down your throat or your jig of angst by the front door. There¡¯s a gallon of coffee crumbling my guts. I should have investments in stocks by now probably, whatever that entails. I don¡¯t loathe the bus. I come from a house of shut doors. Quiet hallways. The secluded cave-ways of respected privacies. I look out the window, at lagged graphics of dead trees, a b-roll of resigned skies, and remember I¡¯m motherless. You see the abstract whirl of vivid lights, feel the patient verve stack in neighbour seats, and you think of her. Think of dancing, an eye¡¯s starved embrace, of hands clasped together and playful fingers wanting more. An explosion of unabashed intimacy. Eventually, you get where you¡¯re going and you get there absolutely alone. Feeling hungry, but I¡¯d rather sleep, and sooner vomit. There¡¯s about three more centuries of this, then the rumoured something better. I¡¯m no patron to that suspense. Living half your life in fantasies doesn¡¯t mean you buy into dreams. You just see them, dwell a little, drink some: water if the morning¡¯s kind and sobering and ready to be accomplished, brown liquor if you don¡¯t want to learn how well you¡¯d handle it. They don¡¯t know the threat their encounters pose. If they did, they¡¯d play their music louder and feel too ashamed to shimmy. No one even nods their heads. Like we¡¯re all of us blasting brown noise, swirling and chafing, picking idly at the guilty minutes until our destination finds us. There¡¯s nowhere I desire that a steel case can ship me. Stolen story; please report. Parking lot. Lobby. Office. Eventually home again, where in the smog of carpets and hoodies and marijuana I¡¯ll guess which driver, passenger, clerk, or patient might¡¯ve been my best friend, my lover, my future, had they any benefit to garner from it and me any spirit to flourish for them. Hunched, moping past ores, sighing at the glittering shallows, guessing at gold and silver and even brass, that could too be beloved, but the pick scrapes and splinters and I¡¯ll eat my cereal with blisters on my palm, stinging the spoon-hand. There¡¯s no space for sex in my pillow-fort. Laundry My walk is warm, holding a certain musical surge to it; a satyr in the winterlands, until I see kids turn the corner, and suddenly I reek of cigarettes. Hideous posture. I¡¯m a scarecrow to the dog-walkers, the snow-shovelers, a gust that rolls windows up. There¡¯s never a word of protest and maybe I misinterpret that. You might cut parts of your body so that they¡¯re never touched again. Lust comes up aching, then bloody. This is a mire but there¡¯s cities sitting crime-ridden, so we need to cherish the smell of compost and engine exhaust. First gas stations were detestable, now I suck up the viler oils. Dabble in syringes, you¡¯re demented, but I have so fewer friends than last year. There are more important people who surrender their encouragement, and there¡¯s grief in it. Somehow it¡¯s selfish to stop returning their texts. They don¡¯t know they just got their name crossed off the conscription list. Bullet¡¯ hiss might¡¯ve been more commendable. I¡¯m tongue-tied and headed home again. The runaway¡¯s ride, so familiar there¡¯s a slash of placebo in my achilles. Visage of a cat coats a lamppost, missing. Dated far back enough I¡¯ve no doubt it¡¯s adorable white hide is gouged and splattered roadside. Only two tore the number. They flicked away the guilt and recycled the slip. Snows again. Something¡¯s so primitive about jumping your chin to the sleet. You grapple just out from under the graphite and brick, breathe unbridled harvest. Jolly reaper, joined to the colds of ancestry, sensing a last, ensuring rhythm. Maybe it¡¯s just different, new for a second, and that spares us. I let it sprinkle my hair, my cheek, my brow, bat it from my eye, then the experience is wrinkled and misses the closet. Laundry, needing renewal. Colder, wilder. They knew the same momentum and wore the same surname. Somehow, it¡¯s different. Somehow, I¡¯m wise in my boredoms. They didn¡¯t have television and microwaves to leave to. Snow¡¯s prettier when the window frames it, anyhow. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Then the starways flick, the switch clapped and imploded. An astral inversion spellbinds black snow sideways, glosses their spitters with its prudent oblivion. Rallying caliginosity, shrieking. Damning us. A hateful exchange of starways happens overhead. Cabals of snickering suns, boiling, bartering, pretzelling far away. Devoted to upend our spurning of the manslaughter¡¯s and the murder¡¯s and the suicide¡¯s spotless nebula. A lightless absolution, there and obsidian then nothing. I lean to my side and shoot snot out my nose, onto the iced-over sidewalk. My nose gets runny when it¡¯s cold. There¡¯s a sudden panic in my belly of illness. Every time I¡¯m unwell, life¡¯s pushed back a little further. The sky¡¯s dusty blue and my nostrils are dry. Blackbird ¡°I didn¡¯t even know you were still in school.¡± ¡°What, you thought I¡¯d drop out?¡± ¡°No, opposite, actually. Kinda. Thought you¡¯d be in with the four years-flat team.¡± ¡°Yeah, well¡­ late on registration once, it all gets bogged down. Feels like.¡± I reach for a smoke. Not from any real urge, just to buy myself a tug¡¯s extra second between remarks. Dwell over my words without revealing to her that I¡¯m looming, unsure of myself, uneasy beside her. I left them at home. Empty pocket feels like that reluctant step from the hospital bed into the pit, only to realize there¡¯s a fall of many miles and flame springs up. Then you cling to infirmity. She speaks first: Tombstone tumbling to catch or bonk me over the head in collapse. ¡°Hm, tell me about it. I thought I¡¯d be running around downtown with a degree like two years ago. But here I am. Pretty sure I still have a second-year class in my timetable, too.¡± ¡°Once we have it, that¡¯s it.¡± I zipped up my jacket. Breeze was picking up and the bus was still out of sight. ¡°I gotta imagine the hustle feels pretty stupid, at that point.¡± Looking forward, to the spinning dimensions of the stagnant cubicle, your own square. Bevelling your eye¡¯s edge, stunting the rebel soul¡¯s razor on grainy carpeting, vacuumed morning then afternoon. ¡°I don¡¯t think we have anywhere else to be right now, really.¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s a good way of looking at it, actually.¡± We both wanted to put our earbuds back in. I liked to believe she was also flattered, that I suspended the drums and the guitars and the screamers. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she began. ¡°I always sorta decided different ages were for different things, you know? Kinda ordered my expectations around that. Like 20 I¡¯d be fully academic, 25 I¡¯d be professional¡­ It¡¯s weird. I feel pretty adult, but like I don¡¯t know anything.¡± There was a scratch in her throat, like the static of a wire. Recording for the right frequency, an accolade in happenstance. In her mind, in her circles, this little chat between other things could well be an immortalization of my own youth. As if words unrehearsed could ever mean an impact. I didn¡¯t want continued contact, maybe just for her to vouch for me if my name came up. That wasn¡¯t her responsibility. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°After high school, I saw a prodigy in the mirror.¡± The bus appeared, a block away. ¡°Nothing like higher education to make you feel like a fucking idiot.¡± ¡°Are you happy with your program, at least?¡± ¡°Eh¡­¡± Are ghosts good conversationalists? Wouldn¡¯t know until I was haunted. ¡°It¡¯s not bad. How ¡®bout you?¡± ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s cool. I mean, I love theatre, so if it was up to me I would¡¯ve done acting, but I¡¯m learning useful things.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s it up to?¡± ¡°Oh, you know what I mean¡­ Like if I didn¡¯t need to afford rent, and groceries and shit.¡± ¡°Yeah, I hear that. I would¡¯ve flipped a coin and picked an art, probably.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t really pick it, though, right? It¡¯s just kinda¡­ like, it¡¯s there.¡± She chucked her cornerstore poetry at my feet and I stumbled. There¡¯s never a clear reason for the lie, you¡¯re just false and in bed you regret it. Sooner or later, you shift onto your other side and forget. The bus arrives. She gets on and I nod goodbye. ¡°Well, good luck with it,¡± I tell her. She just nods and smiles. There¡¯s no second act and I sense it. Maybe we write to fabricate the plotlines we¡¯re beneath. I watch my bus leave without me and decide to head home. It¡¯s her territory. There¡¯s an obtrusion in my jacket and I realize I had my smokes all along, then like a jittery pup let out its cage for kibble, I start clawing at one. It bends in the extraction and suddenly there¡¯s hate in my heart, right under that enlivened little lung pain. I kicked a fence and no doubt looked stupid doing it. Somehow, my music came back louder. As a child, loitering around the kitchen was forbidden, coming along for grocery shopping, obnoxious. Tapping the hip, thrusting up art to be beheld and stuck to the fridge was burden, spurned for later and later survived illness and graduation and death. Early on, I memorized the jingle the bottle makes when it kisses the glass. You type long, loudly, against sleep to drown the noise of the crying upstairs. My room was dark and my bed never fit, cold feet stepping into school-shoes. The greatest treat was tap-water; could gorge and not feel wasteful. Learn to accept what you won''t get by the time you shut the screen down, plug in, and charge. I still don¡¯t clean my screen. They might see the glamour, the shine, and name me ungrateful. I¡¯m grateful for nothing, and the cigarette tastes sweet. A blackbird sits the fence. It hears my veiled coughing and smirks, then the feathers turn to wiser wildlife. This is the background of a morbid documentary; a side-story we never hear and rather wouldn¡¯t guess at. She was wrong and right: you can be an adult and not know a damn thing. Blasts There¡¯s vague imagery of a sore stomach, sipping apple juice at kindergarten; your sickness¡¯ unsuspecting genesis. Skip your breakfast, what do you expect? And I''m so very tall now. Think of singers, of performance that¡¯s gorgeous, that would rile your envies did it not seize and gouge that aspirant tissue of the soul just to bear witness, to be a part of the silver-tongued spectacle, to rave with the millions and join your arms to the uptake, to screech in a party¡¯s praise, dropping acid at the amusement park. The homeless artistry, the groupie roulette, the romance of a blending feature. My performance hurts the neck, bends the spine. The room¡¯s quiet before and after, and in drift from the keyboard you suspend your illusions, waitlist whatever purpose your frantic tapping grasped at. You share and pocket some congratulations, but you taste in their eye that they couldn¡¯t give less of a fuck. Only one dances in the writer¡¯s chair, and it¡¯s an awkward adjusting from thigh through to hip. You want to clutch that handsome otherwise, get it under your nails, profess to all through ink that it¡¯s yours and it¡¯s experienced. We¡¯re lined up for a concert. Aggression. Unrelenting rhythm. Gathering itself, and we¡¯ll be spent thereafter on bars. Baggy clothes because they¡¯d need a pat-down and they¡¯d never be able to justify it, then we¡¯re in and we¡¯re waddling and searching out a spot. Crowd¡¯s amassing and eating even the outskirts. Revelry¡¯s gobbling us up. Eventually the chin¡¯s throbbing, we¡¯re digging for the front. It¡¯s ecstasy¡¯s oil painting, it¡¯s a kiss under wavering club-lights. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Our sodomy, self-justifying somewhere through the vapours, through the forgetting, and we call it dance. You live in the causeways of ¡°probably¡± and then there¡¯s certainty, gritty and screaming. In the brush of bodies, the mob-love, it¡¯s blurry and blinding and it¡¯s all painfully clear. And maybe you belong, but we all go home eventually. ¡°You know this song?¡± he shouts, over the hiss of a chorus'' betweens, hearing the screech I meet to every syllable. ¡°I love this fucking song!¡± ¡°I¡¯d listen to this every goddamn day on my way to work!¡± ¡°Cheers you up?¡± ¡°No! Distracts me!¡± The crowd shuffles. He¡¯s wedged away from me. ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re jumping, isn¡¯t it!¡± There¡¯s a joke in there somewhere. I can already hear the front door shut, the lock click, the quiet returned. And these are strangers, and this is memory, and the dance leaves knots in my ankles. We¡¯re all envious of the rockstar. People thrash to their stories, shut their eyes and picture a place in them. When we¡¯re gone, the equipment¡¯s packed away and the litter¡¯s picked up, and you¡¯d almost believe we were never there at all. Never happy. Never alive. We¡¯re not together, we¡¯re waving at an intersection and all the roads wind up in their own special nowhere. Suppose you¡¯re a runner no matter what shoes you wear. But the radio¡¯s there, at your hip or in your ear or on the dash, and it blasts.