II.
By the time Sebastian’s decrepit car pulled into the cracked driveway, the sun had already disappeared in the Western sky, leaving an orange haze on the horizon. It was at this time of day that Sebastian’s eyes always played tricks on him; there was just enough light for the form of objects to show, but little else, their details smudged by the oncoming darkness.
Stepping out of his car, Sebastian slid the lock on his door to the secure position and shut it behind him. He opened his back door and, one by one, pulled out the bags of groceries (his aunt had jokingly referred to them as his “rations”) and slid his arms through the plastic handles, making it possible for him to carry multiple bags on one arm. With his other hand, he grabbed his tattered backpack and shouldered it. Locking that door as well, he trudged away from his vehicle and towards the back gate.
It was the dramatic climax of the last days of summer but the air was still remarkably humid and warm. The Midwest was always like this; Sebastian once remarked that the name of the state he resided in was unimportant. The whole Midwest might as well be wiped clean of state borderlines and made into one massive hunk of bullshit. Going from one state to another, little difference could ever be noted. Grey cities, endless corn and bean fields and the same people, their eyes blank and hands dirty from consumption and worship, as in the next state and the next one and the next one: all characteristics he had come to know and loathe. “Familiarity is the last refuge of the modest and chaste individual,” he sighed. He would have to write that one down, it seemed like a keeper.
Archive for May 2012
the accidental and sudden (parte deux).
the accidental and sudden (parte un).
I.
Whenever Sebastian drove around the streets of his old hometown, he realized how bad living on the south side of any city could effect one's driving. He slid past stop signs with little hesitation, rolled up on curbs often to avoid having to stop on a narrow street and let another vehicle pass. All concept of a police presence, that wasn't far too worried about rapes and murders to pay mind to speeding, vanished. Almost always, he tried to take the alleys as much as possible, to avoid seeing the ugly, downtrodden faces of the people he was so used to avoiding.
But here, in these streets, the people, while still bloated by fast food diets and bespeckled with graying clothing and hair, seemed less guilty. Or maybe just unaffected. Their ways seemed backwards, but comfortable for them. And who was he to take that away yet, while the concept could still retain a hint of its virginity?
For example, there was a corner he has passed nearly every damn time he was behind the wheel. It sat on the square, parallel to the city’s off-white, Roman-bastardization excuse for a courthouse. Nothing special gleamed about the corner aside from the sole wooden bench that sat outside of whatever business resided there (Sebastian never looked, he was in the midst of his teenage years when he would pass it, what purpose did it serve him to find out?). To continue the normality of the bench, from sunrise to sunset, a man sat and watched the cars pass with hollow eyes and mouth slightly agape. He was the most common of the Baby Boomer fossils that littered middle America: reeking of grease and social retardation, his fat hanging over his red sweat pants and poking it’s nasty head out from under the hood of his green, stained tee-shirt (displaying enough slogans to wonder if he was possibly sponsored by whatever beer company it may have been. Paid to sit on a bench and die, for the whole world to see). His existence was nothing spectacular, meaningful or even noticeable. In fact, it would seem to Sebastian that his existence wasn’t so much its own “thing” but rather a branch off of the bench’s existence. Could his hometown be host to what he so affectionately heard Jeremy refer to (cynicism awash in his words) as a “being-of-itself?”
Jeremy had been so drunk for several days. When the alcohol had run out (the whiskey bottles set upside down on their necks, for the remainder to drip out like a puddle on the table, all the beer cans rounded up and those that hadn’t been fully vanquished quickly chugged, cigarette butts be damned), Jeremy had begun eating all of the diphenhydramine in the house. Whether it was to assist in sleeping away sobriety or simply for the excuse of getting fucked up, Sebastian didn’t know. Instead, he adoringly sat on the loveseat near Jeremy’s couch (where he slept, when he did) and listened to the ramblings the strung out mysterion had to offer.
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Whenever Sebastian drove around the streets of his old hometown, he realized how bad living on the south side of any city could effect one's driving. He slid past stop signs with little hesitation, rolled up on curbs often to avoid having to stop on a narrow street and let another vehicle pass. All concept of a police presence, that wasn't far too worried about rapes and murders to pay mind to speeding, vanished. Almost always, he tried to take the alleys as much as possible, to avoid seeing the ugly, downtrodden faces of the people he was so used to avoiding.
But here, in these streets, the people, while still bloated by fast food diets and bespeckled with graying clothing and hair, seemed less guilty. Or maybe just unaffected. Their ways seemed backwards, but comfortable for them. And who was he to take that away yet, while the concept could still retain a hint of its virginity?
For example, there was a corner he has passed nearly every damn time he was behind the wheel. It sat on the square, parallel to the city’s off-white, Roman-bastardization excuse for a courthouse. Nothing special gleamed about the corner aside from the sole wooden bench that sat outside of whatever business resided there (Sebastian never looked, he was in the midst of his teenage years when he would pass it, what purpose did it serve him to find out?). To continue the normality of the bench, from sunrise to sunset, a man sat and watched the cars pass with hollow eyes and mouth slightly agape. He was the most common of the Baby Boomer fossils that littered middle America: reeking of grease and social retardation, his fat hanging over his red sweat pants and poking it’s nasty head out from under the hood of his green, stained tee-shirt (displaying enough slogans to wonder if he was possibly sponsored by whatever beer company it may have been. Paid to sit on a bench and die, for the whole world to see). His existence was nothing spectacular, meaningful or even noticeable. In fact, it would seem to Sebastian that his existence wasn’t so much its own “thing” but rather a branch off of the bench’s existence. Could his hometown be host to what he so affectionately heard Jeremy refer to (cynicism awash in his words) as a “being-of-itself?”
Jeremy had been so drunk for several days. When the alcohol had run out (the whiskey bottles set upside down on their necks, for the remainder to drip out like a puddle on the table, all the beer cans rounded up and those that hadn’t been fully vanquished quickly chugged, cigarette butts be damned), Jeremy had begun eating all of the diphenhydramine in the house. Whether it was to assist in sleeping away sobriety or simply for the excuse of getting fucked up, Sebastian didn’t know. Instead, he adoringly sat on the loveseat near Jeremy’s couch (where he slept, when he did) and listened to the ramblings the strung out mysterion had to offer.