By Adam Rothstein
 
Published by Brute Press
 

http://www.brutepress.com

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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I can’t help but lie on my stomach on the carpet.

I dig my chin into the floor in a way that makes my jaw hurt. Rolling to the side, trying a different position to rest the muscle that is getting sore—none of it helps. It is too late, and any way I lie, stomach down as I must, the weight of my head rests on some part of my mandible, and makes my teeth burn. 

The carpet smells of chemicals. I wonder if the chemicals make the carpet more flammable or less flammable. I wonder if the small particles of chemicals evaporating from the carpet and entering my nostrils—which they must be doing, because after all this is of what the sense of smell consists—are bad for me in some way, or if they are not. Perhaps if I was standing in the room, smelling the scent of the carpet’s chemicals mixed in with the rest of the odors—the smell of soap, industrial laundry detergent fragrance, odors of the linens themselves, aromas of the substance they use to cover the fact that somebody has been smoking in this non-smoking room, of the smelly drapes with their chemical taste similar to the carpet and yet different, the olfactory saturation of the cleanser in the bathroom, and the smell of the shower curtain, because it is treated with a coating to prevent the growth of mildew as indicated on the tag hanging from the seam just above the evenly-spaced grommets which the suspending rings pass through–perhaps as part of that melange the fragments of the chemical are not bad for me. But here, lying on the floor, taking more parts per million than the chemists have safely allotted me into my thin nasal membranes as I deliberately inhale this smell, perhaps the chemicals are entering me, and will have some negative effect. The carpet is brown with purple flowers, but shades are barely different enough to tell. 

I sit up, and brush off my jacket, taking it off while still sitting, and throw it over the back of the wooden chair at the desk. There are two chairs in the room, and this is one of them. The other chair is a large arm chair, in the only suitable place in the room, which is in the corner between the bed and the wall with the window. The chair looks comfortable enough, and I might have sat in it, except for the fact that the bed is in the way of passage to the chair, and in the attempt to go around it I would run into the short glass and bronze cube-shaped table. There is, technically, enough room to walk, but one must do it sideways, sliding one foot awkwardly before the other, as if one was sneaking through the room. Because of this table, one might as well lie on the bed rather than even worry about the chair. You can leave your shoes on when you lie on the bed, because the bedspread is what it is. I had chosen to lie on the floor. 

I stand up now and take off my shoes, but leave on my socks. My feet feel dry and cramped, and I desperately wanted to wash them, but I do not take off my socks, because I know from experience that the carpet would make my feet even drier. Perhaps it is the chemicals, or maybe it is simply the lack of humidity. All these motels are air-conditioned to hell and back, and even in the summer months like these the only moisture around such a place is running in rivulets down the parking lot as it drips in liquid condensation from each window unit, burring away with their dented fan blades.  I also loosen the knot of my tie, pulling it down my chest until the loose end comes whipping through the knot, and then through my collar, and onto the floor.  I do not mean to drop it, and so I pick it back up, untie the remains of the knot, and put the tie on the desk.  There is nothing on the desk that would make it a desk.  There is a single serving coffee pot, looking shrunken and stained.  There is a cable TV channel menu, with twenty-seven channels listed.  There is a ball-point pen, but it is of course a promotional item from the motel, and is not the sort of pen anyone would ever keep on a desk.  Perhaps in a pocket, a drawer, or on the floor of a car, but not on a desk.

I look through the desk, hoping to find a plastic binder listing the addresses of local chain restaurants, but there is not one.  There is a drawer on the night-stand next to the bed, and I look through it, but there is only the bible.  I take it out and put it on top of the clock radio, for no reason really, except to make one surface in the room look as if it is different than every other motel room I have ever stayed in over the course of my life. I think about unpacking my single suitcase, which is standing up in front of the small closet, across from the alcove of the bathroom.  There is a mirror on the door of the closet, and it is reflecting back my suitcase’s reflection, making it appear as if there are two cases.  But only one of them actually has dimensions, because it is protruding into the space of the room, while the other only exists within the mirror, appearing to take up space but actually part of the decoration, like the picture frame above the bed that is embedded into the wall, so it cannot be removed.  I feel that this is similar to the bible in the drawer, and for this reason I am glad I had removed it, looking at it now on top of the clock radio, as if someone had placed it there just for a moment, in the act of getting up to do something but with every intention of returning.  But I put it there, and there is only me.  

I walk with small steps, to make the trip take more time, into the bathroom, where I flick on the florescent light with a loud smack of the plastic switch, and look into the mirror on the right.  There are several packages of soap on the edge of the sink, and four towels hanging on a metal rack between the mirror and the shower, which is on my left.  I turn on the water, and bend my head to basin, and splash water on my face, and take a small sip.  It tastes flat and full of minerals, like it came right out of the river.  I can’t remember the name of the river.  For a minute I can’t remember what state I am in, but then suddenly I remember, and I feel foolish for letting something like this happen.

Walking back into the room, I bring a towel with me.  There are three more towels, so I imagine one might as well be in this room.  Putting it on the desk, I sit down on the edge of the bed.  I am having trouble deciding what to do now.  I stand up again, and pull the bed spread back, letting it fall to the floor at the foot of the bed.  I always take these off the bed in motels, because they do not wash the bedspread.  I don’t bother to wonder about the smell of the bed spread, because I don’t care to think about what might be held within the fibers. I lay back on the bed, making a mound of the four pillows.  I put my hands behind my head, and try to imagine myself going out to eat somewhere soon, or finding a bar.  I think about turning on the TV, but I do not know where the remote is, and before I can think about finding it, I am asleep.

When I wake up the room is almost entirely dark, except for orange light coming in through the curtains from the parking lot.  I look at the clock, but the bible had fallen over the numbers.  I pushed it aside, and the time says that all the restaurants in the town are no doubt closed.  I get up, and I feel lightheaded, as if I just slept in an uncomfortable position, even though I was lying down flat.  I cross over to the window, and pull the heavy curtains closed to block the orange light, but now it is completely dark, and I stumble to the bathroom, accidentally kicking my suitcase, before I snap on the light and blind myself.  I turn on the water, and drink some of the strange taste to wash the dried saliva out of my mouth.  Opening one of the soaps, I wash my face and hands, and then using a lot of water to rinse, I dry myself on another one of the towels, which I leave sprawled on the edge of the sink.  Entering back into the room I turn on the overhead light.  Everything is the same.  I put on my shoes so that I can leave the room.

The room card I put into the pocket of the jacket, which I wear over my shirt without putting the tie back on.  It is probably still humid and warm outside, but it is cold in the motel.  I don’t know exactly where I am going.  The key to the car is in the coat pocket, but I don’t feel like driving.  First I will walk around the motel, and then I will go to the car.

The hallway has the same carpet as the rooms, and the smell is a bit stronger here, because the space is narrow.  I do not remember if the direction I am heading is towards the end of the motel on which my car is parked.  I believe the hallways form a loop, down one side of the L-shaped building, downstairs, and back again, so if I am heading the wrong way and end up in the lobby, it will be no matter to turn around and head back.
Indeed, I discover I am heading the wrong way, but decide to descend to the lobby to see what it looks like at night.  When I checked in it was empty, except for the girl working at the desk.  She had said she would be there all night if I needed anything, but I was not sure what exactly they could provide that was not in the room already, considering the numerous soaps, and four towels, and four pillows.  There was a continental breakfast in the morning, but other than that, it was nothing more than a motel.  I walk into the lobby, and hear the television by the couch, still on the same news channel it was tuned to before.  The girl behind the counter is not there.  I look at the tourist material by the desk to see if anything mentioned any restaurants, but it did not.  I turn to head back down the wing towards the car, when I hear the voice.

“Oh hey!”

There is a woman lying on the couch, who had raised her head to look at me over the back.  Her feet are up on the opposite arm. Her accent is from somewhere without a coast.

“Hello.”

“Say, you don’t happen to have any orange juice, do you?”

“Orange juice?”

She holds up a small bottle of vodka.  The bottle is plastic.  She smiles.

“Normally I try and drink something more fancy, but tonight the conditions are what they are.”

She sat up and smiled.  She is wearing a brown pant-suit, which looks as if she has owned it for several years.  The jacket is off, and the blouse wasn’t much more than a woman’s fitted dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  As she sits up, she rolls over a bit, and awkwardly almost slips off the couch.  She does not appear to be the most agile sort, grinning embarrassed through large teeth.  She brushes her short, thin hair out of her eyes.

“I’m Lauren. Hi there!”

“Jeffrey.”

“Normally I’m more of a light beer or a white wine girl, but the grocery store was closed, and the liquor store was just about to, and it was all I could do to convince the man to sell me this.”
“So now you need orange juice.”

“I can’t do much with vodka without orange juice.”

She smiled again, standing up and somewhat brushing herself off with one hand.

“I think there’s juice in the vending machine upstairs at the other end of the wing.  I saw it when I came in.”

“Really? Oh thank goodness!  I needed a drink but I wasn’t going to be able to drink this otherwise!  Mind showing me where it is?”

I nod, and start heading out.  She comes over, the bottle and jacket in one hand, her purse and a pair of heels in her other hand.

“Hey, she put out the danishes for breakfast tomorrow already.  Want one?”

Lauren runs over to the table against the wall, and points at the plastic-wrapped pastries lined up there.  She looks over them, pulling out a couple of packages.  I walk over too, out of politeness.  She puts three in her purse.

“You aren’t gonna take one?”

I smile, and pick up a package with a red fruit on the front, and put it in my pocket.

“These are so gross, but it’s a motel, so what are you going to do, right?”

We walk down the hallway next to each other.  To my surprise, Lauren doesn’t say anything.  She might be looking at me, but I don’t look towards her to find out. I keep smelling the smell of the carpet.  It is strange, the silence.

We reach the stairs at the end of the wing, and start climbing the stairs. Lauren is in front of me.  She is wider than most, and I can’t help watching her.  She is not quite overweight; I would not say that. She has a wide waist, leading into thick legs.  Her attire covers it well, giving her a professional appearance, though perhaps nothing can help the act of going up stairs. The air is audible, coming out of her mouth by the time we reach the top.

“Whew!” she says, as if completing a hike.

A few paces into the hall, we come to the whirring machine.  Lauren is biting her lip in concentration while she digs in her purse for change.  She sets the shoes on the ground while she does so. Underneath the legs of her suit, she’s wearing stockings. On the seam of the toe, a ball of lint is stuck. It matches the color of the carpet.

“You wouldn’t have fifteen cents, would you? I’m just short of buying two.”

I give her the change, and she slips the handful of coins into the glowing red machine, and presses the button so the bottles chug out of the bottom.  She bends over to look inside as she retrieves them, and hands them to me one by one, and then bends to pick up her shoes.

“Thank god! If they had been out, I don’t know what I would have done!”

I stand holding the bottles, a bit unsure of what will happen next.

“So, where’s your room at?”

“Oh, just down the hall.”

“Mine’s at the other end.  Want to share a drink? The least I can offer you for helping find the juice.”

A drink does sound appealing, despite the circumstances.  I’m not sure where I will find any dinner.  And this way, it isn’t necessary to figure out how to hand her the juice.

We walk down the hallway, Lauren humming some unrecognizable tune.  I put both bottles in one hand as I reach for my key.  Sliding it down into the lock takes two tries before it works correctly.  I push the door inward, and Lauren follows me.  I have left on the lights, so the room is bright when we enter from the muted light of the hall.

“Looks just like mine!  Oh, you weren’t sleeping, were you?” She points at the rumbled bed coverings.  I reassure her. She puts her purse on the bed, her shoes on the floor, and her jacket on the desk.  Between all the things now on the desk, the surface is almost full.

I get the two glasses from the bathroom, of which there are only and always two, even though there are four towels.  Lauren sits on the edge of the bed, with her feet on the bed spread, on the floor.  Putting the glasses on the small table, first she pours a small amount of liquor into each, and then opening a bottle of orange juice, tops them off.  She reaches forward none too flexibly, and sets the bottles on the edge of the desk, a long arm’s reach away. She hands one drink to me and sips the other.

“Whew!” It sounds just like it did when she was climbing the stairs.  ”Did I need that!”

It is odd to be standing while she is sitting, so I pull out the desk chair and turn it around to face her, and sit, even though we are now only about two feet apart from each other.  She looks into my face and smiles.  Now I can smell her. Lauren smells like a very strong and floral perfume, which was most certainly applied recently enough to still have a scent, though certain diminished.  I can also smell dryer sheets, of a standard fragrance.  The shirt she is wearing looks quite white, and perhaps it is fresh from the laundry. The harsh light of the room penetrates the cloth, revealing her large white bra, the straps covering near half of her shoulders.  Lauren looks as if she prefers comfort over looks, though her clothes are respectable enough.  She takes another sip of her drink, leaving a slight glint of liquid on her upper lip, which she wipes with a finger.

“Were you reading the bible?” she asks.  In looking around the room, she is noticing the things I have seen already many times since first entering this motel room. She puts her drink on the floor and flops back on the bed, reaching up above her to the night stand and picking up the book.  Then she sits back up, holding it, closed.

“No.”

“I’ve never seen one of these outside of the drawer before.  They’re always there though!”  She laughed, tipping her head back as she does, only a bit, to let her mouth open slightly.  Her eyes grin at me, and then she put the book to the side of her, and picked up her drink again.

“I’ve seen a far amount of motel rooms, too!  It’s my job, you know.”

I guess, out loud. “What sort of salesperson are you?”

Lauren takes a bit sip of her drink, and smiles again, tipping her extended finger at me with her glass hand.  ”Oh now, it’s not so obvious that I’m in sales, is it? Oh now, I don’t want to look like a salesperson!”

She makes an exaggerated pouting face, pushing her lips together over her laughing teeth, and putting both hands on her wide hips, still holding the glass.  Then, with a half-gesture of brushing away, something invisible, she leans forward for the bottles on the desk to make herself another drink.  Her head passes next to my lap as she reaches, and I can smell her even stronger.  I sense a bit of sweat, underneath the perfume.  As she leans back, and begins swapping the bottles and glasses back and forth from her hands to the floor, I can smell the synthetic odor of the carpet again.

“So funny that you could tell,” she continues. “I feel so at home in motels, now—though maybe that’s what you noticed.”  She hands me a refilled drink, which she had not asked if I wanted.

“I actually sell to motels, which is the funny thing.  I’m in the hospitality industry, myself.  I stay in the motel chains I’m selling to.  I think this gives me a better idea of their needs, and I can pitch the sale better.  I can sample their current choices, and plus, I’m part of their need for product!”

She crossed her hands in front of her, as if waiting to see what I thought.

“So you sell things to motels?”

“Pretty much everything!” she says quickly, as if pleased that I’d asked.  ”From the art on the walls, to the laundry soap.”

“All the linens, the furniture, and even the food?”

“Well, if there is a restaurant attached to the location, they normally order their own stuff, just like any other restaurant.  And the facilities maintenance is another story, of course.  We provide everything that forms the guest’s experience—the decor, the flavors, and the service items.  We sell hospitality items, but we are really the core of the hospitality itself.”

I had never met anyone in this industry before.  It’s not really interesting to me exactly, but it’s something new.

“So what did you sell in this room?”

She takes a quick drink, and then looks around the room, business-like, as if making check lists and reviewing product lines in her head, the attitude moving to her head and shoulders, gaining a more formal uprightness.
“Well, let me see: yes, these linens are the Egyptian Economy line, that’s ours. And these glasses go with the bathroom fixtures, which are Super American.  We do the soaps, and the window draperies.  The continental breakfast is our standard provision, they’re a new customer for that.  I’ve been trying to sell them on new in-room coffee services and irons, which, as I’m sure you can see, need to be replaced.  They could use some new furniture too, but between you and me,” she leaned closer and raised one hand next to her mouth, “I think they are doing another round of cutbacks.”

“How about the bibles?”

She smiles, and takes a sip of her drink. “No, silly! We don’t do the bibles!  That’s the Gideons. Religion isn’t part of the hospitality.  Saving souls is a whole different industry.”

She laughed with the head tipping motion again.

“So what do you think of my motel-room screwdriver?  Not bad for what’s at hand, eh?”  She laughs again.  I politely take a sip, not opposed to the beverage, which is very sweet from the vending machine juice, which combined oddly with the bitterness of the cheap vodka.  I’m not particularly fond of vodka.

“So, tell me: if you could change one thing about this motel room, what would it be? I’m speaking from a professional interest, of course.”

“Oh, nothing I guess.  Except I guess the carpet has a certain smell to it.”

“A smell? Like somebody spilled something on it?”

“No, like a chemical smell.  Like maybe something from its manufacture, or from what they clean it with, or something.”

“Really?  I can’t smell anything.”

“Well, I only smelled it when I was close to it.  Down on the ground.  With my luggage, I mean. Down on the ground I could smell it.”

She takes a drink, and reaches forward to set her drink on the desk. She gets down on the floor, awkwardly on her knees, and bends close to the carpet on her hands, smelling.  Her large rear end sticks up the air, as if she’s oblivious to how it looks.

“I don’t smell anything. Just, carpet I guess.”

She keeps investigating.

“Wait, is it like a sweet smell?  But I only smell it right here.  Come down here and tell me if this is it.”

I don’t want to smell the carpet again, but she is not looking at me, making it difficult to resist her request with the look on my face.  I stand, slide the chair back under the desk, and leaving my drink on the desk as well, kneel down to the floor, facing Lauren.

I can’t smell what she is talking about, but I can smell the chemicals again.  They make my throat dry, mixing with the taste of the vodka.

“Come down here and tell me where you can smell it.”

I stretch my legs out behind me, tangling them under the small glass table.  I’m now lying on my stomach in the small space, in front of the strangely bent and inverted Lauren.  The  industrial texture of the odor rises in me.  I lift my head and look at her. With a serious expression on her face she is burying her nose in the rug.

“Are you sure it is the rug? I think I can smell this bed spread.  Is this it?”

She reaches out in the cramped space between the bed, the desk, and myself and pulls up a corner of the cloth on the floor, holding it in front of her face.

“This does smell funny.  Is this it?” She thrusts it towards me.

I recoil away from it. “No, that’s not it.”

“What’s wrong with the bed spread? Why won’t you smell it?”

“It was the rug, not that.”

“Smell the bed spread.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Oh come on, do it!” she crawls forward on her knees towards me, laughing at my discomfort.  I try to stand, but in the small distance she manages to make it to me first, pushing the thick cloth into my face.  I try not to inhale, as she covers my head with it, but I am unable to prevent it, and I smell it now, of dust and spilled food of uncertain origin dropped from unknown mouths over an inestimable period of time, and I cough into it reflexively, feeling the moisture of my vodka-tinged breath coming back to hit me in my closed eyelids, and I reach up to remove the darkened hood but Lauren is batting at my hands and laughing, not hitting them hard but confusing me with the quick slaps of her palms against the back of my hands. Should I panic? Is the right thing to do to get rid of this uncomfortably disgusting chemical blanket covering me? Or could this be all a joke, because she knows the hospitality industry, and she would not put such an unwashed thing over a man she does not know? Maybe it is all rumor about them not washing the bed spreads, and of course she would know all the legends about the industry and the true from the false, even though I don’t know. Perhaps none of it exists. The smell of this dusty blanket, the chemicals in the carpet, in the bottoms of the glasses, leaching up out of the drain in the tub, coming into me, making me feel the way that I do.

I try to stand, to get some more room to move, to get away from her hands and remove the bed spread, but my feet tangle in the cloth and instead of standing up I fall sideways onto my back, onto the carpet, with the bed spread covering me.  She is still laughing, but she is pulling the blanket back and is standing over me, looking at me upside down and laughing.

“I’m sorry! You just had such a funny face I couldn’t resist!” She is still laughing, putting a hand on her hip and tilting back her head.  I am not sure what my face looks like, but I stay lying on my back, smiling, perhaps, because she is laughing, and this is what seems best.  Thankfully, the bed spread is no longer on me.

“I feel bad!  Sorry, Jeffery!  I didn’t mean to make you fall over.  Here—I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I have all these free samples from our line of products. Not just the economy stuff they stock here, but some good stuff.  Here, look.”

She bents over to the floor and picks up her purse.  She climbs onto the bed, sitting on her knees, and digging through the bag.

“Come on up here.”

I don’t want to be on the floor anymore, so I sit on the edge of the bed.

“Let me make it up to you with a gift. Here’s a good one.  It’s a body massage lotion.”

“Thanks.”

“Come up here and take off your shirt.”

I look at her, but wish I hadn’t, because she is looking back at me.

“I said, take off your shirt.”

I undo the buttons, and pull it out from my waist band.  My arms pull out of the sleeves.

“That one too.  Then lie on your stomach.”

I take off the undershirt as well, and lie down on the side of the bed.  She rips off the bit of clear plastic encircling the lid of a small bottle, and unscrews the cap, putting it on the night stand.  Turning toward me on her knees, she squeezes the bottle into her hand, with a small liquid plop sound.  I am smelling the sheets against my face, but I can also smell a new fragrance entering the air, mixing with her perfume. It smells like lavender, or some other sort of herb or plant.  I can hear the lotion on the palms of her hands, but I cannot see it, because now she is holding them over my back.  She touches me and it is very cold for an instant, but then quickly grows warmer.  She presses hard, rubbing the cream into my skin, first back and forth across my back, and then up to my shoulders, and then down towards my backside.  After a minute, the lotion is absorbed, so I hear her squeeze more from the bottle onto her hand.  It is not so cold this time, because her hands have warmed.  She presses her fingertips into me, moving in circles all around my back.  I can feel her fingernails, uniformly longer than her fingers, tracing small lines and furrows in the lotion, but never scratching, always followed by the soft pads of her fingers.  She rubs, and squeezes, and presses, and after she does this for fifteen minutes I almost forget where I am.

She pulls her hands back, and clasps them together on her knees.  I look up at her, and she smiles a wide smile.

“Jeffrey, I’m going to tell you to do something.  You’re going to do it and not ask questions about it, now or afterward. Okay, honey?”

I do not say anything.

“Take off all your clothes and get in the bed, with the sheet over you.”

I sit up, and undo my belt buckle, and slide my pants down to the end of the bed.  While I’m doing this, she brings the bottle of vodka and the orange juice over to the night stand from the desk.  I lie back down and pull the sheet over my body. The sheet is warm because I’ve been lying on it, but it still feels cool in the air conditioning, its starchy whiteness against my skin.  I feel tingles in my body, and in my penis, as it rubs against the sheet.  Lauren goes to the bathroom and comes back with one of the four white towels. She drops it, and stands next to the bed, putting her purse on the bed next to me, still smiling.

“If fact honey, it’s probably best if you don’t say anything at all from now on. If you don’t mind.  But I don’t think you will.”

She unbuttons her shirt, and tosses it to the floor.  She takes off her bra, and her large breasts fall free, onto her belly.  She undoes her pants, and slides them down, and then the panty hose as well.  Stepping out of these, she is wearing a small pair of cheap white cotton underwear.  Climbing up on the bed, she brings the vodka bottle in her hand.  She climbs onto me, with one thigh on either side, and sits on my legs, on top of the sheet.  Taking a quick drink of vodka, she winces, and smiles, and caps the bottle, laying it next to her leg.

Now she looks in her purse, and brings out another bottle of lotion, but of a large size, not like one would find in a motel.  She unscrews the cap, and turns the bottle upside down, over my chest.  As she squeezes, a thick stream of white cream pours out, onto the sheet. This lotion smells like mint, strongly like mint, overpowering every other smell in the room. It gathers in a pile, almost like a coil of rope, before slowly spreading outward.  After a few seconds, I can feel it seeping into the fabric, and reaching the skin of my stomach.

She has emptied more than half of the bottle before she stops. She reaches forward, and begins kneading the substance into my body, through the sheet.  The cloth quickly becomes saturated, and I feel it oozing through, first to my body and then the bottom sheet below me, as she spreads the lotion all around.  She rubs it all the way up to my neck, out past my arms, and downward to my waist.  I cannot tell if she is trying to rub it on me, or on the bed.  She rubs it down, around my penis, gripping it through the cloth.  I am getting hard in the oily bed.  She stops and squeezes out more lotion, the rest of the bottle, onto my belly, and rubs this in as well.  The sheets are an oily, minty, transparent mess.  She pauses, and wipes her hands off on my hair.

Again she digs into her purse, and pulls out the three danishes she took from the breakfast bar downstairs.  The plastic wrap crinkles and pops, in her greasy fingers. She puts two of them down on either side of my penis, and tucks the corner of the third into the elastic of her underwear.

“These are the worst breakfast amenities we sell.  They’re pretty much all jelly and butter, you know.  I don’t like them, but I have to eat them for every breakfast I’m staying with a customer.  For appearances.  Part of being a salesperson, I guess.  But it sure makes it hard keep off those extra pounds!”

She laughs, and gives her stomach a pat, hanging over the pastry in her waistband.  She reaches forward, and picks up one of the danishes.  The wrapping has a picture of a blueberry on it.  She tears open the covering, and throws it behind her on the bed.  Lauren is breathing faster now, her shoulders moving up and down slightly.  She puts the food in her hand, with the jelly side up, and places it against her nipple.  Slowly, she rubs it around, crumbs falling onto the sheet and me.  After a minute it is smashed into crust and smeared jelly, on her hand and her body.  She reaches for the second, a strawberry, and opens it, throwing the wrapper, and smearing it on the other half of her body.  I can smell fruit and sugar amongst the mint.

Now she leans backward, pulling her legs up so that her feet are flat on either side of me, breathing and grunting quietly with the effort.  She bends to the side, and picks up the towel from the floor, squishing the danish remnants on her breasts and belly between the folds of her flesh that develop when she moves.  Now she pulls down the sheet, and wipes off the lotion that has seeped through onto my penis.  The towel feels large, rough, and dry against my oily skin. Sitting back between my legs, feet forward, she pulls the last pastry out of her underwear, which has somehow managed to remain there while she moves.  She unwraps it.  The plastic has an image of a plum.

With two jelly covered fingers, she pulls her underwear to the side, staining the cloth with the color.  Using her thumb to hold the thin cloth, she spreads her vagina.  I can smell her.  I smell Lauren, and the jelly, and the mint, and the carpet.  

Folding the pastry in half with one hand, she pushes it halfway into herself, closing her eyes.  She lets go of the danish, and it stays just where she’s placed it.  With eyes still closed she reaches forward and grasps my penis with her jellied fingers, and using the tip of it, pushes the rest of the pastry inside her, with me following it.  She leans forward, settling herself onto me, and pushes both of her stained hands into my mouth.  I lick them.

“Honey, you’re going to eat all three of these danishes before the night is over.”

She reaches forward and grabs the orange juice off of the night stand, and pours it down her body, soaking us both, and she begins to move.

I wake up the next morning, and smell jelly and orange, and butter and soap, and vodka and linens, and towels, and water, and mint, and more smells of other fragrances I can’t name, and I smell Lauren, all over my face and chest and hands, and the pillow I am clutching to my face.  I try to move and I can’t, wrapped in oily, twisted, knotted sheets, stained yellow and red, purple and cream.  I free my legs, and stickily get my feet to the floor.  The carpet feels like soggy bread beneath my feet, and it is freezing in the room.

Blankets are all over the floor, as are pools of water, and all the towels.  My tie is on the desk in a pool of dark liquid, and I try to find something to dry it off with, but everything is sodden and stained.  My suitcase is still closed by the closet door, but I am covered with the mess of the room, and don’t want to open it.

Lauren, and her clothes and purse, are gone.  I look at the clock, and try to figure out what time it is, but it is also gone.  Where it stood on the night stand, the bible is sitting, open to a page in the middle.  Light streams around the shut curtains.  I feel the weight of dried, sticky liquid in the hair of my body, dragging it down, pulling slightly on all my pores.

Suddenly, I jump in the air in surprise, as there is a knocking at the door.  

“Housekeeping!” a woman’s voice says.

By Adam Rothstein
 
Published by Brute Press
 

http://www.brutepress.com

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Read/Download this story in PDF format here.

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I could not tell you what he was thinking when he reached to pull the pear from the tree branch. He stood and reached upward with a certain slowness, suggesting to me that there was something on this man’s mind keeping him from moving through the particular task with typical deft finger work innate to our species. He was not picking fruit, but picking this particular pear, and I’m think of the word for it, but I cannot find it in the mazes of my mind. He stood still with feet planted in the sparse grass beneath the tree while a little sunlight filtered through, holding the pear in his fingers, rubbing the pads slowly over the bruised and blemished skin of a typical piece of produce from a suburban fruit tree growing in a man’s front yard. He must have been studying this fruit, but I believe he was no connoisseur of such growing things; rather, his reflection was of something else weighing heavily on his mind, metaphorically dragging him down, you understand, like the laden boughs of the pear tree bending low towards the sweet rotting flesh surrounding on the grass and sidewalk, late summer as it was.
It was held before him in hand at face height, much as I hold him before you now, spinning it round in the fingers, showing it off to himself. But for this man, this fellow with loose, white skin suiting flopping in the space between his fingers, he was considering something I imagine to be particular, and certainly something unrelated. He couldn’t have ignored the fruit, and its earthen smell, and the bounce of the tree limb as it rebounded from the release of the tension as he plucked the pear, and the sweet alcoholic rot on the ground around him, and the hot air, and his summer suit, and his neighbors around in the yards, and his nakedness under his clothes, but all the same, there was something unspoken and unavoidable in his life.
Just then, a small girl child with a tricycle rode along the sidewalk steering her front wheel through the squished pears, swarming with ants and with flies and with bees, and she stopped by the man, looking up at him. I am not sure, but I would be willing to say that he did not see her at all. He kept looking at the piece of fruit as he brought it close to his face, closer and closer to his cheek. His eyes locked on it, finally, it and only it, and as the flesh touched his clean-shaven face he bore down hard upon the small yellow lump, squishing mashed, sweet, fruit all over his face, quite ripe as it certainly was. And the juice ran down his neck and darkened the white collar of his shirt and the white label of his suit, and his elbow pivoted as he smashed the pear all over the one side of his face, closing his eyes now, pushing back against it.

He had brought the bag and showed it to her guiltily from behind his back. She brightened and smiled, pulling him into the house and closing the door. He asked her if she wanted to right now, and she screamed yes of course with the excitement of a school girl, and she ran into the bedroom, with him chasing after. She had removed her shirt and bra already by the time he entered, and threw herself back upon the bed wearing only her skirt. He opened the bag and poured the plums over her, bouncing and cascading down onto her legs and chest and neck, and she laughed as she held up her arms because even though they were small plums, they still hurt a little when they impacted her body.
The shirt and his pants still covering his body were coming off, when I assume her more reasonable thoughts overcame her excitement for a moment, and she pulled the comforter and blanket off the bed, raising it like a tarp to roll the plums onto the white sheet covering the mattress. The bed was now naked and he was naked and so was she, their bare flesh remarkably similar in coloring for a trio in this day and age, and she lay back down while he held two pieces of fruit in his hands and pushed them together, only instead of rebounding as they did off of her they combined, and the clear juice flowed out like water with only a slight tint of redness, falling onto her breasts and her hips and her thighs and neck. She gasped at the sensation, and he took her into his eyes, no doubt glad he had paid extra money for the fruit even though they were out of season and shipped at cost from a warmer location with more annual precipitation. He bent over her, and began to kiss and lick the sweet liquid from her skin, while she encouraged him in all sorts of ways, which I do not really know about, but of course which I can readily imagine, as well you might.
I think it was probably another twenty or thirty minutes later, when the mashed fruit was everywhere, on their skin, in their mouths, and also on other orifices specific to sexual pleasure, when he finally entered her, amid torn purple skin, and warmed, soft, sweet pulp, and of course, running drips of juice staining through the sheets to the mattress. Around three pits in her mouth she was sucking greedily, and between his kisses and all the other noises, she giggled and said to him that she was so glad that he had brought the plums, it was even better than she had imagined. And she said she had suggested this strange fantasy to her last lover, and he had called her strange. The lover above her now laughed out loud and from his mouth loudly dripped a few drops of juice onto her forehead. What was the matter with him, he asked. Well, he’s gone and missing out on all these delicious plums now, he said. I’m willing to believe he continued his motions forcefully, with a renewed interest in making it the best she had ever had before, to try as hard as he could to effect this, if he was able to manage it.

It was cloudy and it had not begun to rain yet, but the desire of the clouds to do so was reflected in most people’s moods. They were walking down the street, a few blocks from the main drag with the shops, and I could tell at some distance what sort of kids they were. The tight and ill-fitting clothes, the shape of the hair and the colors as well, the bright, shiny sneakers bought from a mall or a mail-order catalog showed them to be the resident representatives of the current black-clad counter-culture, and they walked befitting their station of course, all over the sidewalk and into the street, naturally in a number no less than five, which is enough to make them a menace to certain sorts of people. I suppose this is the key to the ideas of such a fashion as that they observed.
There was a way of walking among them that sent them oscillating forward and backward in waves, never walking in pairs or in threes, but always galloping ahead and then falling back, changing order like spinning ropes and gears, and revolving wheels. Their laughter was loud and they swung their bags around them, plastic sacks filled with heavy, dense collections of something, pulling them outward as they spun around, twisting up to their fingers and back down again, smacking into the backs and the legs of each other. The bags held peaches, not very ripe, which I saw when one of the older male members reached into one of the girl’s sacks, and pulled out a peach, and bit into it hard, the unripened crunch visible in his black-clad and thin shoulders.
As they approached a construction site vacant for the day, and because the fruit was clearly not ripe enough for his impatient distaste, he launched it up over his head, sending it up high, high into the dark clouds lowering over us all. Some of the others noticed and watched, but others were too distracted by their own doings, continuing to talk and to chatter and to move all around the sidewalk on their way to wherever they were going with such fruit, or perhaps, I suppose, on their way from wherever from they were came. The fruit arced high, and then came down inside the construction site’s chain link fence, getting further and further away from them as it fell, until it contacted with something deep inside the unfinished building which was not visible to anyone. There was a defiant crash of broken glass or other light masonry, and they all recognized the sound and the guy who had thrown it took off running. They all followed, yelling and cursing and laughing and swinging their sacks full of peaches around them. I don’t know why they were running because nobody of any authority was around. I assume all the bags were all full of peaches, because all of them looked the same.

The man walked in the broadest of strides, taking up a good half of the width of the sidewalk with the alternating march of his giant feet. The feet were shod in white leather loafers, polished and cleaned to a brilliance, reflecting light to the surface of the curb as each landed flat to the cement. I imagined them to be the solid base of his fashion, leading upwards from this foundation to the pale yellow slacks, each hemmed immaculately and just barely skimming the tops of the shoes. Though he was a large man, the trousers fit very well, held just below the rim of his stomach with a narrow brown belt. His shirt was a seasonal patterned affair, blossoming with blooms in yellows and greens, but just shadowed ever so slightly by his white sport coat allowed to hang open in the seasonable warmth of the late morning. Above the layers of broad collars there was a neatly trimmed beard, the shade of which was almost perfectly matched to the belt, I would say. On his wide head was a white trilby, with a yellow and green striped band, as wide as the day. Certainly a way of dressing few practice today, though I would say the man was overwhelmingly normal despite his appearance.
He made a great show of checking his watch a number of times as he made his way along the sidewalk through the center of town, heading to an appointment or at least carefully managing his free and unassigned but no less valuable time in the constrained space of a weekday. But I guessed he had managed it well, because in sighting an unoccupied bench he stopped to partake of its respite, seating himself directly in the middle, leaning back, first widening the gap of his jacket’s lapels around him, then tipping back his hat, next removing a thin cigar from his coat pocket and wetting the end with his wide, red tongue and lighting it, taking a puff or two, and smiling to himself, confirming its quality in his own mind. Time and schedules and the observance of clocks are a strange thing to a great many people, which I don’t conceit to understand. Then, he reached into the outer pocket of his jacket and removed a small, flat package.
The outside was cellophane and he unraveled it, and the next layer was waxed paper, which he unfolded using the tips of his fingers, though his digits were wide and flat like short tongs. Underneath he dexterously parted a sheet of paper towel and revealed four neat slices of pineapple, each cut from the entire fruit, but cored and skinned carefully. Holding the cigar in the far hand out to the side, he used two fingers of the other to loop a slice of pineapple, and then he leaned over the wrappings resting on the bench to his and gobbled it down quickly as if racing against the time it would require to drip juice down his chin and onto his fancy clothes. His massive mouth made little work of these succulent bits of fruit, and before two minutes had passed, if I were to estimate the time, he had consumed the lot. He picked up the paper towel and reversed it to the dry side, wiped the corners of his mouth. Replacing it, he folded up the whole excessively sanitary package, and set it next to him. He took another two slow puffs of the cigar, savoring the sweetness and the bitterness of the tobacco smoke. Then, with a tiny glance of his eye towards the leavings, which he hid from obviousness to have an alibi of forgetfulness if anyone mentioned the trash, though of course none would, he left the wrappings sitting just where it was, and continued down the sidewalk in his large, all-encompassing manner, checking his watch once again, and enjoying more puffs on the cigar.

A little girl on a red tricycle with red hair and red overalls rode down the sidewalk with her handlebars swinging back and forth with the effort of her pedaling, because this is how a small tricycle moves with the pedals attached to the front wheel. The sidewalk was wide and bare, though the concrete rose and fell where the tree roots grew underneath it over the years. She was big enough now to get over the stones herself with some effort, and her parents allowed her to ride as far on the sidewalk as she wanted as long as she stayed out of the street.
She stopped near the far corner of the block where the sidewalk ceased to be, and reached around to the basket on the rear of her seat. There was as small box made of clear plastic, and inside there were ten bright red strawberries given to her by her mother earlier that afternoon. She had loaded them onto her tricycle, thinking it would be fun to play as if she were riding off on a picnic, even if she could only go as far as the corner. I only call it playing, because I’m not sure how a child would really describe it. Somehow, it seems to me that she would think of it more as if she were really going on a picnic, though she would naturally be aware she was only riding to the corner with some strawberries in her basket. She opened the box and fished out a berry, and put it in her mouth, enjoying the nubby skin of the fruit as much as the sweet juice bursting out when she cut it in half between her tiny teeth.
She came to this corner because across the street there were men working on a tree. They had begun early in the day with ladders and handsaws of various sizes, and they had climbed to the top and started removing branches as if they were undressing it. They cut off all the small branches and put them in a shredder. Then they used loud roaring chainsaws to take the biggest branches, and these they also put in the shredder. They were almost done now, and all the branches had been put in the shredder, and only the tiniest twigs that had broken off in the process remained on the ground. As the little girl ate her strawberries she wondered what they would do with the trunk, standing naked in the blue spring sky. Maybe they would chop it down with an ax, like lumberjacks. Maybe they would leave it alone. Maybe they would pull it down with a rope like on TV. She put the box back in her basket and dismounting, turned her tricycle around with her arms, dragging the handlebars slowly in a circle, because the sidewalk was too narrow to turn around without a flat driveway free of parked cars. She rode back down toward her own house. The strawberries were gone except for a little bit of juice around her lips, which as I know very well, always gets on children’s faces when they eat fruit, as if the inside of the mouth extended out to the lips.

Open-faced Mushroom Blastocyst – A Novella

by Adam Rothstein

Fungus is a delicious food, but it makes a confusing way of life.  We’re lucky most eschatology is written in books, rather than in the heated course of the blood vessels in our stomachs.

Available in These Editions:

Paperback Version 2.0

This edition of version 2.0 is printed on #20 bond, with an #80 cover stock, and stapled flat, 8.5″ X 5.5″. It totals 61 pages.

OFMB is an experiment in “version” publishing–the idea is that the work is finished, but leaves open the possibility of change in future editions, hopefully with the support and remarks of readers.  You are being invited to enjoy the text, and pass on any comments or criticism you might have, to improve the text and presentation in the future.

Because we are asking your help in this process, we are taking the step of offering the current version, 2.0, for free.  All you need do in return is provide a little bit of feedback to the author about your experience reading the book.  And, throw us a buck for shipping. Sound good?

$1 (practically nothing.)

Digital PDF Format

If perhaps providing feedback sounds like a lot of work in exchange for getting something for nothing, there are also PDF copies available digitally for download here. Available under Creative Commons license, as usual.

By Adam Rothstein

Published by Brute Press

http://www.brutepress.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Read/download the story in PDF format here

Read/download the story in ODF format here

It had better hurt, or else what’s the point?

I wanted to turn around right there, dash back up the stairs, grab her in my arms and tell her everything: the world was a corpse and we were the last living cells; there was nothing left to say in any language; the only thing real in the universe was our mutual orgasms. But of course, I didn’t. First of all, that’s ridiculous; second of all, I didn’t need to because she already knew. Third: I had just agreed to go out and get some beer. I kept going down the stairs. The elevator was out again, but I could have walked twenty flights rather than ten.

It hadn’t even been that hard to suggest that we stop at my place later on to listen to some records. I’d mentioned it some other time before, and she never sounded against it, but now she actually wanted to go. And she was the one who said we should leave, get out of that place with the fake conversation and go do something-what did she say, more real? But it wasn’t even real, us leaving; from the moment we started talking both of us had already left. She grabbed her leather jacket, grabbed my torn sleeve, and we were out into the night. I’m glad I didn’t have to say anything, because I couldn’t have. The hottest girl-well, forget that-the most amazing girl coming to my place to hang out. And that’s where she is now, though I can hardly believe it, waiting for me why I go get beer, of all things. And not just to hang out, but talk, and sit next to each other, and she keeps looking into my eyes like she doesn’t even know what it is that her eyes could do to me. And then she said that-’it had better…’-just so casually. My god, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, if only it could be this moment.

I sound like I’m a teenager: all flustered and nervous, imaging out lives together. We haven’t even slept together yet. Haven’t kissed either, I don’t think we’ve even touched skin to skin. With someone like her it’s the whole thing, the first kiss and the sex, right away, in the beginning, up front. That way it’s got to be intense real quick, or it evaporates and may as well never happened. You know? She’s way too cool for foreplay-not that she wouldn’t be interested in… well, you know, all that good stuff about exploring a new body. I just mean that she doesn’t fuck around-and by that I mean that the fucking is the foreplay-if the sex isn’t good, you better believe that she’s not going all the way.

I think she’s going to…. She’s going to give me the chance anyway. Kind of an audition. I’ll show her a good time, I think. I know I’m not God’s gift to women or anything, but I think I can give her a few pleasant surprises. She knows a good deal, I’m sure, I can tell she’s got a number of tricks herself. But I could handle it, real cool, you know? Come on slow, and then surprise her. I know how to move a woman-I’m no amateur. But if she’s not impressed… God, that would be such a disaster. I’ve only got one chance to screw it up with her. Am I nervous? Fuck, how old am I? Still, it feels kind of sweet though, like back in the old days. The mutual nervousness like static in the room, the two of us leaning our heads close together, the glance in the eye and then the quick glance away, and then, before you know it… you’re smelling her hair and she’s biting your neck… I can feel it in my throat; that’s where excitement happens to the body. Arousal, that’s something else; excitement, that’s the opposite of choking…

What kind of beer should I get? Did she say? No… no, I know what she drinks. Six pack? Case? A full case-it will get consumed anyway. Maybe she’ll hang out all night and we can drink, mess around and go at it, and then drink more, and repeat-make a night of it, so to speak. A first date? Kind of, I guess. We don’t even have to sleep together as long as she stays-as long as she likes my company. As long as she finds it worth letting me know that she likes my company. Who dates anymore? Only those with such steady, ritualistic steps that this kind of excitement must scare the shit out of ‘em, just to think it. This is… better? Yeah, this is… well, to tell the truth, this is fucking awesome.

It had better hurt, or else what’s the point?

Of course none of the prudes would find that line as damned attractive as I do. They would think it was scary? Pathological even? Risky, certainly.

I skipped down the front steps of the building, and across the crushed concrete gravel into the road. No traffic out at this time of night. Only a five blocks to the store; parking lot, deserted parking lot, crushed bus shelter, loading dock, apartment, office, store. A hot night, we were both sweating already sitting in my room. She approved of the room-I could tell by the way she made herself at home in front of my bookcase, sitting in the middle of my bed. It probably goes without saying, if she was going to enter the building at all-the building is filled with broken glass, rubble, the usual. Ten flights up, and there she is right now, sitting on my bed, looking at my stuff, judging me-and still there!

I half-wondered if maybe she’d go; if I’d get back to the room and she’d be gone. Like it was fantasy or dream-a stupid romance I have already thought up a few hundred times hanging out with her friends or her with mine. It was that juvenile kind of fantasy; if she knew, it wouldn’t matter what kind of shit I talked; she wouldn’t even speak to me, let alone hang out. Some things you just can’t say out loud, otherwise, you might as well not even speak. That’s the sort of stuttering you avoid with foreplay. This kind of foreplay, that is, the no-bullshit kind-it had better; or else-then there’s nothing to say before hand. You can say anything you want while its happening. Unless she had the same fantasy, maybe. Maybe that’s why she’s here. Maybe. Regardless, things are cool for now anyway; we’re just going to drink beer. And maybe listen to records. Mostly just drink beer.

I can tell it will be good. The sex, I mean. Of course I don’t want to get ahead of myself here-if it happens, then it will totally be good. I don’t know that it will happen. But I know it will be good. The way she looks at me with those eyes, no fear in there. No desire to draw it out, no need to spread it out along the surface, fighting the meniscus as it tries to bead back up; there’s plenty, and its just as viscous as it is fluid. That human oil, you know-you can feel it. Coating the skin, welling up in the hollow places. Oily, coating, soaking into the grain. What the hell am I talking about?

I tripped over some of the slag in the road, and the rubble clattered against itself. A little too excited I guess, a little bit of beer already. I stopped and listened, all of sudden aware of my surroundings and nervous about real things. I heard nothing. The block was pretty deserted. There was just the hot night, pulsing its slow, steady strobe. Off on the other side of the river, I heard deep rumblings, but nowhere near. I kept going.

But it’s in the way that she sits-the way she sat on my bed, casually looking through records, as if it was both the most and least important thing in the world. No, not just that. It was the way that her feet tapped back and forth in her shoes: worn shoes that looked like her feet hurt constantly, yet tapping. No, it was in those hips. I’m a sucker for that, for a woman’s hips. Mainly for hers: amazing, among these amazing women. Hers were divine; the muscles and bone were the angelic batteries of the body, a sexual manifold engineered by the muses of corporeal existence, élan fluxed transcendent through its smooth couplings. When she walked, they spun and whirred, the most efficient transmission, and when they whirred, they… oh god, how I’ve thought about that for days and nights…

Beer was bought from the man who peeked out at me from the shattered, shuttered store, regardless of the fact that I’ve lived there and bought from him for over a year. Maybe it was the different brand of beer that startled him. Or maybe it was just that this was the way that it was.

No, what she said, said it best, and in how she said it. It had better hurt. Or what’s the point? She’s not a masochist, not a fatalist. Just that it had better. Seriously. She was in my room while I was getting beer, and yet we-she-could so easily discuss sex with such a flippant regard to the typical morals and current tastes. And she brought it up; with those eyes, she brought up not only the words, but the idea. I mean, of course we both knew that we were both down for it-and not just it; not your typical, drunken mashing of bodies, but something with a little bit more creativity, and a little more care. I was getting beer and she was in my room-it wasn’t about the possibility of sex so much as the potential. We were not only going to do this thing but we were going to really rock it, reinvent it, and ruin it for everyone else afterward. Whatever they did, we would have already done it better. We were going to destroy the possibility of sensuality for all time. We were going to come down that mountain and declare sex dead. Pain and pleasure were going to become meaningless when we were through with it.

And the truth was, it certainly had better hurt, shouldn’t it? Otherwise, what the fuck else was there? A little bit of tenderness? Tenderness is such a small wound. You flick at it gently, uncontrolled, unconscious-but it wasn’t anything that would grab your attention. It was there, and then it past; then it was just another as it was before. But real, acute pain-and soreness-throbbing, swelling, the flow of blood into the purple hemorrhage of a bruise-this was something that divided days. It concentrated, it focused, it gathered and redistributed. So it had better hurt, if we were going to do it. That was what she thought; it was what she said. She didn’t have to say that it was going to be us; we were the only one’s there. She and I had already generalized the situation. So yeah, any sex, ever, anywhere, anyone: it had better hurt or there was no point.

And it would, I knew it would. And afterwards, we’d lay there exhausted and in pain. Our bodies twisted out of joint, harsh red and blue patches and scratches rubbed into our flesh, smells penetrated and saturated wet with all kinds, throbbing swollenness begging now and needing more, and blood, just a bit in drops-delicious thick liquid heated with beating hearts and the watery, homebrewed beer, folds of muscle coiled around itself and others, nails in hair and teeth on skin. And afterwards, after this pain, perhaps there would be enough left to make us find each other again, in a week or two. Or maybe only a day. Enough time to ache and let bruises come to the surface, browning yellow for each other’s touch again… a feeling real enough to repeat.

I thought about it, just like this, as I wound through the shadows around the bus shelter, now only two ­­blocks away from the stairs to the room. I was so lost in my sexual thoughts that I didn’t hear the rotor blades, muffled thuds as they were in the thick humid air. I was imagining what would be the best part-the first time, or the second. Would it be downhill, or uphill? Was there a way to compare? Why was I thinking about this so much rather than paying attention? What was the point?

It came in low, with its lights off. Whether it was just passing, or whether this was a specific target, no one would ever say. I did what came naturally, a second nature to those of us who still manage to live here. I crouched low behind a crushed barrier in the shadows, the horrible sick cloud of fear washing over, stifling my hope that maybe they wouldn’t see me. I was small and dark, and they were fast and above; but that, after all, was all the difference. Either they would just pass, or the world would end… it would all be obvious soon. I stopped thinking about her for only ten seconds, but it was enough.

I looked up through my arms covering my head, and the punching, throbbing machine swooped lower in its arc, heading parallel to the street. The blades swung so fast you couldn’t see them in the dark; only the spinning transmission axle was visible: a throbbing manifold that allowed the beast to soar above the rubble around it. There hadn’t been any aerial activity around here for a month, and I had almost forgotten what it was really like. I could barely see them, the pilots, through their clear windshield. They weren’t looking at me. I could plainly see their insignia, stenciled on the black metal. Then I saw it: small and round and black, reflecting a bit in the few lights that still shown up from the block. The helicopter released, and it fell. They moved in the same direction for a second, and then the machine pulled up and away to the side fast, while it continued to fall. It dropped fast, like a bird, heading right for its nest. When it hit, the explosion blasted out from the rear of the apartment building-the side that held my bathroom window. The entire roof was thrown up into the air, disintegrated, and the mass was exchanged for flame. The walls, those steps, the familiar slag I had walked through too many times to count blew up, pulverized. I could feel the crushed dust on my face: little stinging pieces, sharp enough to bring tears reflexively. The smoke went up and out in two twin horns to either side-the bricks and steel falling in upon itself as it collapsed. I didn’t even remember getting knocked backward; I just watched from the ground, on my back, looking between my feet at the rubble, as the flames rose up in front of me, smoke spreading over the entire block and broken glass raining.

Two thin drips of blood ran down my neck, spurting gently from either ear.