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Edited on Tue Oct-21-08 12:46 PM by DarkTirade
This was kind of hard to write. It's a bit personal. Kind of a snapshop of me in the slumpiest part of the slump I was in for a few years. It would be a little longer, but we were supposed to limit it to three pages.
... and I'm at a point where if I write any more, it'll spill over to page 5. :)
Some adult content, but I tried to keep it as clean as possible. No pun intended.
And it's s'posed to be written in past tense, so if I accidentally slipped into present tense and I didn't notice it and correct it, please lemme know. Or if you notice any grammatical or spelling mistakes. I gotta turn this in in about 4 hours. :) I've checked it over numerous times, but I still might have missed something.
A Single Grain
I wanted to take a shower, but that would have to wait. My rumbling stomach took precedence right then.
Sore muscles slowed me down, but the kitchen was small and it didn’t take long to get from one end to the other. I flipped the TV on to distract myself while I worked.
It had been another long night. The sun would probably be in my eyes halfway through dinner. What kind of moron builds an apartment with big windows that face directly into the Florida sunrise, but doesn’t bother to set up a decent air conditioning unit or shades? I knew that in a few hours I’d wake up covered in sweat as if I’d never showered before I went to bed.
The ground beef crackled and popped in the microwave. I could have cooked it on the stove, but I just didn’t have the energy. A shower. That would hit the spot. Too bad I didn’t have time until after dinner. Good thing nobody else is awake at this ungodly hour. They’d probably be able to smell me even over the smells emanating from the kitchen.
The smells sifted through my brain, triggering old memories. Cheese, sauce, meat… my mind drifted back to my previous job. The pizza place. And her.
I kept hearing about the new girl. For several days everyone kept telling me about her. She was my ‘type’, I was told. But for some reason we never ended up working together. It wasn’t until they’d scheduled an employee meeting that we finally met.
And I’ll be damned if I can remember a single word that was said in that meeting. I doubt she could either. I think they pulled out a TV and showed a training video, but don’t quote me on that. Our eyes locked from across the room and all there was right then were another set of eyes. I didn’t even notice that she had fantastic breasts until much later. All I saw was her face. Love at first sight? Or just young people in lust? Only time would tell. I suspected love, since I hadn’t noticed her breasts right away.
Back in the real world, I opened the microwave, stirred the half-cooked food inside, and then closed the door to let it continue on its merry way. Heavy labor really gives you an appetite. On nights like these I’ll usually end up eating more than I should. Or rather, more than I can afford. I’m not too worried about calories these days. As I watched the dish rotate in the microwave, my mind wandered around in circles again.
Our first day together. That was something. Apparently she’d been told as many stories about me as I had about her in the few days she’d worked there before we met. So she’d figured out just how to strike up a conversation.
“Man, my fingers are sore. I was up practicing guitar aaaaall night.”
After the first time I saw her play, I highly doubted that she’d spent any more than ten minutes at a time practicing. And hearing it… oh god, it was horrific. But at the time I didn’t know that. It was a good conversation starter. She may have had no sense of pitch or rhythm or anything of the sort… but she’d managed to start a conversation with me. The first day we worked side by side was a series of discoveries. She liked the same kinds of things I liked. She was interested in the same kinds of things that I was. The next day, I walked into the store and kissed her on the lips. Less than a week later I found myself in her bed, with nothing but her skin covering mine, her curvy figure in my arms, and those large breasts pressed up against my chest. But most importantly, those eyes looking into mine.
I had to wash a measuring cup to use it. It was hard for my roommate and I to do the dishes. He’s awake during the day, I’m awake at night. Neither of us wants to clatter around in the kitchen and wake the other. Or maybe that’s just an excuse, and we really are slobs.
“You know I’m not going to do your dishes anymore. It was just this once.”
“You didn’t have to do them this time, love.” I held her from behind and kissed her cheek.
“Yes… yes I did.”
Was that the first snowflake in the rolling snowball that our relationship became? It just might have been. Friction always happens. Nobody’s completely perfect for each other, right?
It wasn’t too long until something had gone wrong. She couldn’t stay here. She had to move in with her mother a few states away. We tried to keep up our relationship. Phone calls. Email. Letters. But after a while, our communications started to lose substance. Clichés replaced our conversations. Love. Want. Need. These words seemed to be all that went between each other. It seemed all we could talk about was what we’d finally do when we were back together. Finally I found the time to visit. I made the twelve hour drive in less than ten. We finally had a chance to be together, to do things with each other. We went to a rock concert. The headliner was barely a better musician than she was, but I didn’t care. I was with her.
When a rather flat-chested girl climbed up on her boyfriend’s shoulders and started flashing the crowd, she said to me, over the din, “They deserve more.”
I grinned, knowing exactly what she meant. I picked her up, and she showed off her large breasts for all to see. Cameras flashed in unison with her. That beautiful body that only I was allowed to touch was there for all to see. The only phrase I could use to describe the few hours after that concert are “Like bunny rabbits.”
It was heaven, but it was short-lived. I thought it would be better when she came back home. And it was, for a little while.
“Damn it, I’m tired of having to wake my boyfriend up just to have lunch with him!”
I wanted to say, “And I’m tired of being woken up just to spend money that I don’t have just so you don’t have to eat lunch alone.”, but I thought better of it.
Instead, I said, “I’m sorry, but you know what my schedule is like. I need this job. I need the insurance.”
“I told you they’re hiring at the club. You’d get more hours and you’d be awake during the day.” She seemed to expect that I’d jump at the proposition. Was it because it was her idea, or was it because she honestly thought it would be better for me?
I could let myself be taken out of my reverie by the TV in the background, but the volume is too low to hear from here. Don’t want to wake up the roommate.
Instead, I found myself looking down at myself. My hands were clean, I washed them before touching food. But my arms were still coated with dust, dirt and ink. All rubbed off from boxes and labels. Who knows how many I’d handled in that one night? Thousands at least. Probably tens of thousands. Each one seems to have left a single particle of dust, grain of dirt, or smudge of ink.
“Do you know why I stopped coming over?”
“I just thought you were busy.”
“I’m tired of the mess! I can’t handle it! Clean your damn room! Do your damn dishes!”
It’s time to mix in the pasta and water. This isn’t the healthiest meal, but it’s cheap and it will give me the strength to go back to work the next day.
“Boy I could use a shower about now.” I thought to myself. “Maybe each drop of water will wash away each grain of dirt, and I’ll be completely clean and new.”
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