back to the heartland (3/5)
back to the heartland
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(three)
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xxi. louisiana
Kris is drowning, drowning.
He has the dream over and over again until he refuses to take a shower for three days because he’s afraid his lungs will fill with water from the showerhead. Adam just gives him an exasperated look and then buys him an aerosol deodorizer and makes him swear to drench his clothes in it.
“This has to stop,” Adam says a week later when Kris wakes up at four in the morning covered in a cool sweat. “You’re making yourself sick”
“It’ll pass,” Kris insists, tears pricking the back of his eyes. “Just…give it time.”
“We’ve been giving it time. You’re sick, Kris.”
Kris doesn’t answer, just shoves the down pillow over his head.
“You’re not going to drown, okay? I’m here as long as you need me. I’ll be your fucking life vest. Just…stop flailing, all right? It only makes you sink faster.”
Kris nods. He doesn’t even pretend to try and sleep for the next few days.
(That’s the thing about looking up from under, after the levees break and the water overwhelms the city. Nothing is as it seems.)
---
xxii. utah
There’s some unspoken custom in Idol land that, when possible, you should appear reasonably friendly with other former contestants. It’s not something Adam has spent a great deal of time thinking about in the last few years; most former Idol contestants don’t run in the same circles he does, and, even when they do, most aren’t bold enough to approach him at all.
So when Adam and Kris very literally run into a flustered looking David Archuleta near the doors of a shopping mall outside Salt Lake, Adam forces himself to smile as his shopping bags go flying all over the dirty ground.
“Oh my gosh,” David exclaims, picking up the strewn bags. “I’m so sorry you guys.”
“No harm done,” Adam assures, grasping the handles the Macy’s bags. “Good to see you again, David.”
David flushes as he hands Adam the last plastic tote. “You too. What brings you to Utah?”
“Time and travels,” he discloses slyly. “And the Tabernacle, of course.”
They chat for awhile as they walk across the oversized parking lot, David discussing his latest plans for touring (“not too much outside of California these days,” he confesses) and participating in a regional production of The Music Man (“I think I’m a terrible actor, but at least I get to stay in Utah and do what I love,” he adds with a weak smile.)
“Are you two in town for very long?” David asks hopefully as they reach Adam and Kris’s car.
“Undecided,” Kris replies as he fishes for the keys in his pockets.
“You should stay for a bit,” David suggests with an excited look on his face. “You two can bunk down at my apartment for a few days.”
“We don’t want to impose…”
“Please. I insist. I’m all alone right now, and sometimes…sometimes it’s nice to be around people who have been where I’ve been.”
Adam studies David’s face. “I always thought you didn’t like me,” he blurts out. “The whole Mormon thing… I can’t be too popular with your whole crew, David.”
David thinks for a moment, and then looks up. “You used to scare me,” he says. “A lot.”
“And now?” Adam pushes, a glimmer in his eye.
David turns faintly pink. “You inspire me.”
---
xxiii. arizona
Kris never gets around to telling Adam about San Antonio.
To be fair, Adam doesn’t ask, but Kris knows that, even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to muster up the truth. Not the Real Truth, anyway. Perhaps a Fake One, but Adam deserves better than that. Better than knowing that there are nights Kris doesn’t remember at all from his time in Texas. There are bits and pieces here and there, flashes of dark lights or the scent of perfume or the feel of skin under his hand, but nothing more. It should worry him more than it does.
When Adam got back from Vegas, they discussed a trip to the Grand Canyon. Adam’s never been and Kris was keen on the idea two months ago. But Kris eventually passed, because he feared he was going to throw himself from the highest cliff into the dark waters below.
---
xxiv. iowa
“Do you think David is…?”
“What?”
“You know.”
“A good singer?”
“No.”
“Secretly Jewish?”
“No!”
“Working as an operative for the FBI?”
“You know what I mean!”
“Yes, I do, but I want you to say it.”
“Is he…like you?”
“Probably not a whole lot like me. Though he could probably rock the eyeliner. Kid is a looker.”
“I hate you. So much.”
“At least say it like you mean it.”
“But if he…is. He clearly loves God. He wants a family.”
“The problem is that people think it’s all mutually exclusive. It’s not.”
“I know that. But he can’t have all that here. He’ll have to go to…like, Massachusetts. Or…Iowa.”
“I think he knows that too.”
“But he loves it here. His whole family is from here.”
“The question will be whether he loves someone more than Utah.”
“Do you think he can?”
“For the right person, anything is possible.”
“Right.”
“He’ll be okay. He’s a good kid.”
“He’s not really a kid anymore.”
Adam laughs softly. The sound echoes across David’s apartment. “No. No, I guess not.”
---
xxv. indiana
The day before they leave Utah, Adam and Kris put on expensive Italian suits and silk ties and watch David sing the hell out of ‘Till There Was You and Seventy-Six Trombones.
“That’s the problem with those Mormon kids,” Adam whispers as David takes his bow center stage and chastely kisses the hand of his costar. He and Kris stand as the audience takes to its feet as the house lights flicker on. “They never take credit when credit is clearly due.”
Afterward, they stand out in the lobby, sipping on sparkling water and clutching a congratulatory bouquet of flowers (“it’s rude to not bring any,” Adam had pressed,) watching as the rest of the theatre-goers trickle out slowly, waving to one another as they disappear into the cold night air.
“Are you sure he said he’d meet us out here?” Kris glances at his watch. “It’s been forty-five minutes.”
“Beauty takes time. Though,” Adam checks his own watch. “Not this much time.” He jerks his head in the direction of the stage doors and beckons Kris.
“Is Mr. Archuleta still around?” Adam asks a female usher. “We’re friends and he told us he’d meet us outside.”
“He’s still upstairs. Second door on the left, Mr. Lambert.”
“Can we…?”
She smiles. “Code to the hallway is 1435. Can’t be too careful these days. Just knock once you’re outside his door. Mr. Archuleta gets a bit flustered if you don’t.”
Adam and Kris thank the woman, and walk up the flight of stars to the hall. Adam enters the code, and they see David’s room on the other side. There door is wide open.
“Hey, there’s the star…” Adam starts, until he notices that David is patently NOT alone, and, quite frankly, too preoccupied to even take note of their presence
Adam pushes Kris up against the wall outside the room, slapping a hand over his mouth before he can even make a surprised squeak.
“Was that Cook?” Kris hisses from under Adam’s grip a second later, straining to look around into the dimly lit dressing room. “David Cook?”
Adam snickers under his breath. For the first time, he’s truly impressed with little David Archuleta.
---
xxvi. minnesota
“I’ve never been to Minnesota.”
Kris shrugs. “Why would you need to go?”
Adam shrugs back, and pulls down the window. They drive in silence until the sun slips behind the horizon.
The dreams haven’t stopped, and Kris pretends that’s why he and Adam can barely speak to one another anymore.
--
xxvii. new york
The city is cold and dreary during winter, and Kris wants nothing more than to bundle up in a parka, turn on the heater, and sleep through the whole of the winter holidays.
But Adam has different ideas. He drags him around Washington Heights and Central Park and the NYU campus where he’s accepted a part-time lecturing gig next year at the Tisch School. They take sexy-face pictures outside Central Park and Kris blushes when he sees prostitutes waving him down near Times Square and Adam laughs until his stomach hurts when Kris slips and falls when they go ice skating downtown on Christmas Day.
They spend New Year’s Eve in a ritzy hotel room, Adam draped over a large sofa and Kris on the king-sized bed. A bottle of champagne makes it way between them for the better part of the night. At some point Adam suggests that they take to the streets with the thousands of other crazy city folk, but Kris vetoes the idea with a load groan.
“At least turn on the TV,” Adam quips at 11:57 PM. “We can make fun of Ryan’s new moustache and that blonde stick he’s been dating.”
They watch as the glittering ball falls back towards earth and the world outside erupts into an off-key version of Auld Lang Syne. Adam starts humming along quietly, tipping back the rest of the champagne with gusto.
“New Year’s Resolutions?” Kris inquires.
“Lose twenty pounds. Quit drinking. Sing my face off naked on national television.”
“Naked?”
“At least with the illusion of nudity,” Adam clarifies. “Nothing that would make my mother blush.”
“Nothing makes your mother blush. Not anymore, at least.”
“Point taken.” Adam shifts to a sitting position. “But really, I’m not the person to ask about Resolutions. What about you, sailor? Want to finally get rid of that ridiculous beard you keep trying to grow?”
Kris laughs, and then is quiet. “I…I want to stop drowning.”
He looks away, and before he can even breathe in, Adam is at his side, his arms wrapped around his body. He inhales him slowly, the glitter and the humanity and that indescribable thing that is entirely Adam, and doesntcantWONT let go.
“Let me teach you how to swim.”
And in a split second, everything changes again. Kris doesn’t realize what’s happening for a moment, and that rattles him. But then his hands are on Adam’s neck and his fingers flitting under the hem of Adam’s shirt and then the kiss is over too quick for him to really decide if he was ready or not.
“Cold?” Adam whispers a few moments later, as they listen to the crowd in the street dissipate slowly.
Kris doesn’t answer, just sighs and snuggles deeper into the warmth of Adam’s shirt and falls asleep.
---
xviii. new jersey
Adam is many things, but an idiot is not one of them
They sit on the front stoop of some Italian diner in Newark, watching the January rains fall off the roof into muddy puddles on the ground. Adam is pressing buttons on his phone frantically looking for the nearest car repair shop (“I didn’t realize a transmission could just FALL out like that,” Adam had said with a bewildered look on his face,) when Kris stands up and starts to hail a taxi.
“Dude, we’re less than a half-mile from the mechanic’s.”
“I need to go home.”
Adam stops pressing the buttons on his phone and looks up. “It’s a little early, isn’t it? It’s not even 4:00 o’clock.”
He catches the Kris’s eye, and just like that, Adam is back at square one.
---
xvix. virginia
Adam doesn’t want to go back to Los Angeles, so he visits Neil instead. He ends up on a pier a few miles south of Norfolk, clutching at his umbrellas and watching the dark storm clouds drift across the horizon as his brother jabbers on about his new job.
“Still don’t have a clue why you moved here,” Adam announces loudly as a cool wind bites at his neck. “I liked your place in the city more. Better views and less rain.”
“Just because you hate trees and fresh air, sir, doesn’t mean we can all breathe in as many petrochemicals as you can.”
“Still though. That loft was fantastic. And wasn’t it rent controlled too?”
“A little sacrifice for my future.”
“Future?”
Neil shifts uncomfortably. “I’m getting married.”
Adam nearly drops his umbrella. “You’re kidding.”
“You met her before, I think. Cynthia.”
“The tall blonde one?”
“The short brunette.”
Adam snorts. “The Bible thumper?”
“The non-denominational Christian.”
“The Bible thumper then.”
Neil laughs and starts walking towards his car. “She’s a really nice girl. She’s a kindergarten teacher in Arlington. And Mom loves her.”
“I thought she dumped you a year ago.”
“She did.”
“And she just…changed her mind? Just like that?”
“Not quite. There were lots of flowers sent, songs written, and basic ‘I fucked up royally, please forgive me’ sort of items that made their way in her general direction.”
“You always were a suck up.”
Neil rolls his eyes. “Of the two of us, who is getting married, and who keeps getting their heart handed back to them on a gurney?”
Adam frowns and looks out across the pier. He watches as the surf pounds into the brown sand and imagines drowning.
---
xxx. idaho
Kris buys a house within a week of leaving Adam.
He’s feeling reckless and impulsive, and picks an old plantation home on the outskirts of Little Rock that his real estate agent warns is completely overpriced and is, perhaps, haunted by a family of ghosts (or so says the mandatory disclosure papers that Kris refuses to read.) Nevertheless, he signs the quitclaim deed and moves himself and his few possessions in the next day.
This evening he sits on the hardwood floor and eats scalloped potatoes with a pair of wooden chopsticks. He’s not really hungry, hasn’t been for a week, but his mother keeps calling, asking if he’s eating enough and he feels guilty every time his stomach rumbles in protest.
He’s taken to staring at his cell phone, waiting for a flickering California area code, some connection back to what he once had, but it just never comes. He’s staring at the blank screen, when, in a fit, he throws the carton of potatoes as hard as he can across the room. The potatoes stick all over the walls and the ceiling, but all he can think about is how he hasn’t been able to breathe since he left New Jersey.
How many chances does one guy get, anyway?
Two minutes later, his Louisville Slugger connects with the first window, the glass shattering instantly under the wood. The pieces slam to the ground, covering the floor like ice. He swings again, over and over, until the front of the house is open, the cool night air creeping in and settling the glass particles.
He still can’t breathe.
The police don’t show up. He lives too far way for anyone to have heard him. He likes it that way. The anonymity of it all.
He sleeps on the floor tonight, the scent of cheddar cheese and silicon dioxide shards heavy around him.
---
End (three)
Notes: A big thanks to everyone who has stuck by this piece. To call a spade a spade, it probably should have been stopped after the first installment, but at this point I’m feeling stubborn and indignant, and will thus try my best to finish it up.
Comments always appreciated :)
read: ( one)( two)
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(three)
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xxi. louisiana
Kris is drowning, drowning.
He has the dream over and over again until he refuses to take a shower for three days because he’s afraid his lungs will fill with water from the showerhead. Adam just gives him an exasperated look and then buys him an aerosol deodorizer and makes him swear to drench his clothes in it.
“This has to stop,” Adam says a week later when Kris wakes up at four in the morning covered in a cool sweat. “You’re making yourself sick”
“It’ll pass,” Kris insists, tears pricking the back of his eyes. “Just…give it time.”
“We’ve been giving it time. You’re sick, Kris.”
Kris doesn’t answer, just shoves the down pillow over his head.
“You’re not going to drown, okay? I’m here as long as you need me. I’ll be your fucking life vest. Just…stop flailing, all right? It only makes you sink faster.”
Kris nods. He doesn’t even pretend to try and sleep for the next few days.
(That’s the thing about looking up from under, after the levees break and the water overwhelms the city. Nothing is as it seems.)
---
xxii. utah
There’s some unspoken custom in Idol land that, when possible, you should appear reasonably friendly with other former contestants. It’s not something Adam has spent a great deal of time thinking about in the last few years; most former Idol contestants don’t run in the same circles he does, and, even when they do, most aren’t bold enough to approach him at all.
So when Adam and Kris very literally run into a flustered looking David Archuleta near the doors of a shopping mall outside Salt Lake, Adam forces himself to smile as his shopping bags go flying all over the dirty ground.
“Oh my gosh,” David exclaims, picking up the strewn bags. “I’m so sorry you guys.”
“No harm done,” Adam assures, grasping the handles the Macy’s bags. “Good to see you again, David.”
David flushes as he hands Adam the last plastic tote. “You too. What brings you to Utah?”
“Time and travels,” he discloses slyly. “And the Tabernacle, of course.”
They chat for awhile as they walk across the oversized parking lot, David discussing his latest plans for touring (“not too much outside of California these days,” he confesses) and participating in a regional production of The Music Man (“I think I’m a terrible actor, but at least I get to stay in Utah and do what I love,” he adds with a weak smile.)
“Are you two in town for very long?” David asks hopefully as they reach Adam and Kris’s car.
“Undecided,” Kris replies as he fishes for the keys in his pockets.
“You should stay for a bit,” David suggests with an excited look on his face. “You two can bunk down at my apartment for a few days.”
“We don’t want to impose…”
“Please. I insist. I’m all alone right now, and sometimes…sometimes it’s nice to be around people who have been where I’ve been.”
Adam studies David’s face. “I always thought you didn’t like me,” he blurts out. “The whole Mormon thing… I can’t be too popular with your whole crew, David.”
David thinks for a moment, and then looks up. “You used to scare me,” he says. “A lot.”
“And now?” Adam pushes, a glimmer in his eye.
David turns faintly pink. “You inspire me.”
---
xxiii. arizona
Kris never gets around to telling Adam about San Antonio.
To be fair, Adam doesn’t ask, but Kris knows that, even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to muster up the truth. Not the Real Truth, anyway. Perhaps a Fake One, but Adam deserves better than that. Better than knowing that there are nights Kris doesn’t remember at all from his time in Texas. There are bits and pieces here and there, flashes of dark lights or the scent of perfume or the feel of skin under his hand, but nothing more. It should worry him more than it does.
When Adam got back from Vegas, they discussed a trip to the Grand Canyon. Adam’s never been and Kris was keen on the idea two months ago. But Kris eventually passed, because he feared he was going to throw himself from the highest cliff into the dark waters below.
---
xxiv. iowa
“Do you think David is…?”
“What?”
“You know.”
“A good singer?”
“No.”
“Secretly Jewish?”
“No!”
“Working as an operative for the FBI?”
“You know what I mean!”
“Yes, I do, but I want you to say it.”
“Is he…like you?”
“Probably not a whole lot like me. Though he could probably rock the eyeliner. Kid is a looker.”
“I hate you. So much.”
“At least say it like you mean it.”
“But if he…is. He clearly loves God. He wants a family.”
“The problem is that people think it’s all mutually exclusive. It’s not.”
“I know that. But he can’t have all that here. He’ll have to go to…like, Massachusetts. Or…Iowa.”
“I think he knows that too.”
“But he loves it here. His whole family is from here.”
“The question will be whether he loves someone more than Utah.”
“Do you think he can?”
“For the right person, anything is possible.”
“Right.”
“He’ll be okay. He’s a good kid.”
“He’s not really a kid anymore.”
Adam laughs softly. The sound echoes across David’s apartment. “No. No, I guess not.”
---
xxv. indiana
The day before they leave Utah, Adam and Kris put on expensive Italian suits and silk ties and watch David sing the hell out of ‘Till There Was You and Seventy-Six Trombones.
“That’s the problem with those Mormon kids,” Adam whispers as David takes his bow center stage and chastely kisses the hand of his costar. He and Kris stand as the audience takes to its feet as the house lights flicker on. “They never take credit when credit is clearly due.”
Afterward, they stand out in the lobby, sipping on sparkling water and clutching a congratulatory bouquet of flowers (“it’s rude to not bring any,” Adam had pressed,) watching as the rest of the theatre-goers trickle out slowly, waving to one another as they disappear into the cold night air.
“Are you sure he said he’d meet us out here?” Kris glances at his watch. “It’s been forty-five minutes.”
“Beauty takes time. Though,” Adam checks his own watch. “Not this much time.” He jerks his head in the direction of the stage doors and beckons Kris.
“Is Mr. Archuleta still around?” Adam asks a female usher. “We’re friends and he told us he’d meet us outside.”
“He’s still upstairs. Second door on the left, Mr. Lambert.”
“Can we…?”
She smiles. “Code to the hallway is 1435. Can’t be too careful these days. Just knock once you’re outside his door. Mr. Archuleta gets a bit flustered if you don’t.”
Adam and Kris thank the woman, and walk up the flight of stars to the hall. Adam enters the code, and they see David’s room on the other side. There door is wide open.
“Hey, there’s the star…” Adam starts, until he notices that David is patently NOT alone, and, quite frankly, too preoccupied to even take note of their presence
Adam pushes Kris up against the wall outside the room, slapping a hand over his mouth before he can even make a surprised squeak.
“Was that Cook?” Kris hisses from under Adam’s grip a second later, straining to look around into the dimly lit dressing room. “David Cook?”
Adam snickers under his breath. For the first time, he’s truly impressed with little David Archuleta.
---
xxvi. minnesota
“I’ve never been to Minnesota.”
Kris shrugs. “Why would you need to go?”
Adam shrugs back, and pulls down the window. They drive in silence until the sun slips behind the horizon.
The dreams haven’t stopped, and Kris pretends that’s why he and Adam can barely speak to one another anymore.
--
xxvii. new york
The city is cold and dreary during winter, and Kris wants nothing more than to bundle up in a parka, turn on the heater, and sleep through the whole of the winter holidays.
But Adam has different ideas. He drags him around Washington Heights and Central Park and the NYU campus where he’s accepted a part-time lecturing gig next year at the Tisch School. They take sexy-face pictures outside Central Park and Kris blushes when he sees prostitutes waving him down near Times Square and Adam laughs until his stomach hurts when Kris slips and falls when they go ice skating downtown on Christmas Day.
They spend New Year’s Eve in a ritzy hotel room, Adam draped over a large sofa and Kris on the king-sized bed. A bottle of champagne makes it way between them for the better part of the night. At some point Adam suggests that they take to the streets with the thousands of other crazy city folk, but Kris vetoes the idea with a load groan.
“At least turn on the TV,” Adam quips at 11:57 PM. “We can make fun of Ryan’s new moustache and that blonde stick he’s been dating.”
They watch as the glittering ball falls back towards earth and the world outside erupts into an off-key version of Auld Lang Syne. Adam starts humming along quietly, tipping back the rest of the champagne with gusto.
“New Year’s Resolutions?” Kris inquires.
“Lose twenty pounds. Quit drinking. Sing my face off naked on national television.”
“Naked?”
“At least with the illusion of nudity,” Adam clarifies. “Nothing that would make my mother blush.”
“Nothing makes your mother blush. Not anymore, at least.”
“Point taken.” Adam shifts to a sitting position. “But really, I’m not the person to ask about Resolutions. What about you, sailor? Want to finally get rid of that ridiculous beard you keep trying to grow?”
Kris laughs, and then is quiet. “I…I want to stop drowning.”
He looks away, and before he can even breathe in, Adam is at his side, his arms wrapped around his body. He inhales him slowly, the glitter and the humanity and that indescribable thing that is entirely Adam, and doesntcantWONT let go.
“Let me teach you how to swim.”
And in a split second, everything changes again. Kris doesn’t realize what’s happening for a moment, and that rattles him. But then his hands are on Adam’s neck and his fingers flitting under the hem of Adam’s shirt and then the kiss is over too quick for him to really decide if he was ready or not.
“Cold?” Adam whispers a few moments later, as they listen to the crowd in the street dissipate slowly.
Kris doesn’t answer, just sighs and snuggles deeper into the warmth of Adam’s shirt and falls asleep.
---
xviii. new jersey
Adam is many things, but an idiot is not one of them
They sit on the front stoop of some Italian diner in Newark, watching the January rains fall off the roof into muddy puddles on the ground. Adam is pressing buttons on his phone frantically looking for the nearest car repair shop (“I didn’t realize a transmission could just FALL out like that,” Adam had said with a bewildered look on his face,) when Kris stands up and starts to hail a taxi.
“Dude, we’re less than a half-mile from the mechanic’s.”
“I need to go home.”
Adam stops pressing the buttons on his phone and looks up. “It’s a little early, isn’t it? It’s not even 4:00 o’clock.”
He catches the Kris’s eye, and just like that, Adam is back at square one.
---
xvix. virginia
Adam doesn’t want to go back to Los Angeles, so he visits Neil instead. He ends up on a pier a few miles south of Norfolk, clutching at his umbrellas and watching the dark storm clouds drift across the horizon as his brother jabbers on about his new job.
“Still don’t have a clue why you moved here,” Adam announces loudly as a cool wind bites at his neck. “I liked your place in the city more. Better views and less rain.”
“Just because you hate trees and fresh air, sir, doesn’t mean we can all breathe in as many petrochemicals as you can.”
“Still though. That loft was fantastic. And wasn’t it rent controlled too?”
“A little sacrifice for my future.”
“Future?”
Neil shifts uncomfortably. “I’m getting married.”
Adam nearly drops his umbrella. “You’re kidding.”
“You met her before, I think. Cynthia.”
“The tall blonde one?”
“The short brunette.”
Adam snorts. “The Bible thumper?”
“The non-denominational Christian.”
“The Bible thumper then.”
Neil laughs and starts walking towards his car. “She’s a really nice girl. She’s a kindergarten teacher in Arlington. And Mom loves her.”
“I thought she dumped you a year ago.”
“She did.”
“And she just…changed her mind? Just like that?”
“Not quite. There were lots of flowers sent, songs written, and basic ‘I fucked up royally, please forgive me’ sort of items that made their way in her general direction.”
“You always were a suck up.”
Neil rolls his eyes. “Of the two of us, who is getting married, and who keeps getting their heart handed back to them on a gurney?”
Adam frowns and looks out across the pier. He watches as the surf pounds into the brown sand and imagines drowning.
---
xxx. idaho
Kris buys a house within a week of leaving Adam.
He’s feeling reckless and impulsive, and picks an old plantation home on the outskirts of Little Rock that his real estate agent warns is completely overpriced and is, perhaps, haunted by a family of ghosts (or so says the mandatory disclosure papers that Kris refuses to read.) Nevertheless, he signs the quitclaim deed and moves himself and his few possessions in the next day.
This evening he sits on the hardwood floor and eats scalloped potatoes with a pair of wooden chopsticks. He’s not really hungry, hasn’t been for a week, but his mother keeps calling, asking if he’s eating enough and he feels guilty every time his stomach rumbles in protest.
He’s taken to staring at his cell phone, waiting for a flickering California area code, some connection back to what he once had, but it just never comes. He’s staring at the blank screen, when, in a fit, he throws the carton of potatoes as hard as he can across the room. The potatoes stick all over the walls and the ceiling, but all he can think about is how he hasn’t been able to breathe since he left New Jersey.
How many chances does one guy get, anyway?
Two minutes later, his Louisville Slugger connects with the first window, the glass shattering instantly under the wood. The pieces slam to the ground, covering the floor like ice. He swings again, over and over, until the front of the house is open, the cool night air creeping in and settling the glass particles.
He still can’t breathe.
The police don’t show up. He lives too far way for anyone to have heard him. He likes it that way. The anonymity of it all.
He sleeps on the floor tonight, the scent of cheddar cheese and silicon dioxide shards heavy around him.
---
End (three)
Notes: A big thanks to everyone who has stuck by this piece. To call a spade a spade, it probably should have been stopped after the first installment, but at this point I’m feeling stubborn and indignant, and will thus try my best to finish it up.
Comments always appreciated :)
read: ( one)( two)