What is it that keeps us yearning in a world unattached to our whims? What's the essence of the fuel driving us mindlessly into oblivion? All the years spent pointlessly searching this wretched blue globe for meaning. We're hoping to create meaning from star dust. The left over parts of gaseous material burning for billions of years, then collapsing on itself, ultimately shooting its ejaculate into the void and impregnating it. And then some how gestating the bastard human race along the way. Why...
"Can I help you with anything sugar?" Francis was walking on sunshine as usual. "One more of these," Timmy mumbled.
She always does that. Always when I'm on the brink of solving it all. She takes a hammer and smashes it all to pieces. At least she is a giver and polite. Nothing much to look at but polite. Thin as a pole with legs like a spiders. Where were we... Ah fuck it.
Jimmy sipped he cheap black coffee until a small brown lake was all that remained at the bottom. Now, as always, he discretely poured it onto the floor.
For the Gods
The scent of coffee and pancakes clung to Timmy at all times. People around him found themselves relaxed with the comfort only a breakfast and the promise of a full stomach can bring. After all, these were hard times for many folks. If you had a full stomach before noon the rest of the day couldn't really be that bad.
Before I'm snuffed out. Before deaths big black hand pulls me into my grave I need a standing ovation. I need the bright lights, their warmth and applause cascading over my face. I need the smiling faces and handshakes. No it needs to be deeper. I need love to enter my skull like a bullet to the brain making it burst from the inside out.
Timmy Two bits was two blocks from where he started but no closer to his destination. Wherever he wandered he appeared lost. It wasn't the way he looked; it was his pace. A mix of wall street banker and a spider missing a leg or two from a chance encounter with a cruel child. His once pine green eyes turned nearly black, never expressed much of anything. The long nights, dirty deeds and tens of thousands of cigarettes had stained his teeth beyond repair. The only thing remarkable about him was his ability with numbers. He was a mathematical Olympian. This is what kept him alive and made him valuable.
356 more steps. I can't wait for flying cars. I'm tired of this walking business. How far have I walked? Have I walked enough to make it to the Orient? Do China girls really look like dolls? I could use a new doll in my life. One with long black hair, slender hands and small feet.
Timmy wasn't what you'd call a ladies man. His small oval face, short stature and fast walking pace just gave off the wrong aura. He also preferred thin women at a time when thin was not in. After a few rounds of the newly illicit liquid his catchphrase would always come out, "The thinner is the winner!"
"Again..." Timmy mumbled under his breath.
They always just fucking leave their boots for everyone to smell and trip over. Give me some order! Give me some organisation, some control! This is shoe anarchy! They aren't even lined up straight! Even the shoes are against me. 39 pairs today. Mrs. Baker must be back at Gunther's place. They knock boots like rabbits in the springtime. Well maybe it's the horizontal mambo since their shoes are outside.
Shoes always lined the hallways of his apartment building. Their dirty soles and stinky innards were best left outside of the jail cell sized rooms some folks called apartments. His door was exactly 736 steps from the entrance of the diner. Timmy made sure to count them every time.
One day soon they'll all love me. I'll move out of this hell hole and into a villa on the Pacific. I'll invest and make millions. Al Capone will come to me for investment strategies. I'll drive fast cars. No, I'll be driven in fast cars by chauffeurs whose names will all be `speedy.` I'll be a made man. Just another few days.
The door creaked open. Timmy took a quick look around to make sure no surprises were waiting for him. He slipped a key back into his pocket. His key matched every key in the entire building. The owner thought it was good business tact to be able to sneak into their rooms and take things that wouldn't be missed. Quick creaking noises made their way across the room to the curtains. With a suuden swish they were closed leaving the apartment dark. He reached under his bed and pulled out a book with a false cover by the name of Cloud Nine. Inside was a few thousand dollars he had discretely tucked away. Below his feet dozens of books held up his bed. They were a safer stash than a bank and who the hell would steal old books? Timmy took a few moments each day to consider how clever he was.
Maybe I'll start my new life tomorrow. Just get a new car and drive. I can learn Spanish along the way. I can find my chauffeur 'Speedy Gonzales' on the streets of old Mexico and a new senorita in the sands along the ocean. Dos Cervezas por favor.
Timmy did his patented dos cervezas shuffle on top of his bed when he heard a jiggle coming from his door handle.
"Mob Racketeer Found Dead in Slums"
Most people thought it was the mob who snuffed him, a few considered the police, no one considered his inept landlord who had found him while sneaking into his room.
"Poor Timmy," Patrick the landlord slowly hobbled to the diner to tell Francis, practicing what he'd say along the way. He arrived at 7 AM. The usual time for Timmy to get his coffee. He looked around in the empty diner but didn't see Francis. "Hey Bob!," he shouted in the direction of the kitchen, "Four eyed Frannie around?" A portly man with a thick Irish accent (though he'd never once been outside of the city) poked his head out into the diner. "No sir. She flat out quit yesterday! Rode off in a new Packard! She was cryin' and saying something bout her daddy dying and left her some money. Good for her."
A red Packard sped through the deserts of Nevada. The driver didn't know what the future held. She only knew the present was unexplored territory; the world waited only for her now. In the backseat pages of books never to be read fluttered.
