Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Flash fiction: Remember to Shut Up





I was shopping for I don't know what, at Burlington, when someone crowded my space in the shoe aisle. He was talking to himself and maybe God about crepuscularity. I had to cut in on the conversation if it was one. In case it was one. There would be greater chance God would hear my side of ontolology. I'm entitled to an opinion, especially when a person with really bad skin is too close to me, reaching across me to pick at cut rate shoes in garish colors and patterns.

Crepuscularity, in deed. He had bags in his ear lobes from wearing unclean grommets. I don't care if his ears rot completely off. I'm not doling a cent towards his reconstructive surgery. I doubt he will either. These people don't live very long outside a modern institution. The man was like canned ravioli, pustules all over, and he was in my space, wiggling like a spirochete. A flourescent tube overhead was going out like Ethel Merman on Broadway, except it was the last while that tube would trade juice for artificial, unwholesome, unflattering light. The man was all crepuscularity, and no soul. I got nothing for having interloped. I said, "you are one tenebrating ass motherfucker."

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