Monthly Archives: August 2013

2013/08/29

A Double Indemnity

By dsholloway

This is a/the brief story of K’s brief love affair with an expensive watch.

K bought a watch once that was way too expensive. But he just had to have it.

He took very good care of it. But one day he was careless and scratched it. Maybe he hit it on something or something. K was upset for a long time over that scratch. But scratches are like this: the first one is always awful but they get easier with time. They become a record of occurrences–a temporal journey or some such.

So eventually he would scratch the shit out of it doing something impractical and end up caring all the more for his watch. And when it would break down, he would rush to get it fixed (it’s expensive to fix an expensive watch). Because that’s love.

But one day his watch betrayed him. When he wasn’t looking it vanished. (Yes, just like that.) He was sad and didn’t understand.

So he shrugged his shoulders and went to the mall to buy a new one. That’s when he realized that his watch must have also stolen his wallet.

How would he ever tell time again?

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2013/08/25

Gestures of Genuflection

By dsholloway

She was black and white while the rest of the world was color. He met her because he wanted to take a picture of her because she was interesting looking. So he walked up to her and said, I’m putting two dollars in your can and then I’m taking your picture because you’re interesting looking. She hadn’t been looking at him but after that she was, he noticed. He took her picture. He could have sworn she smiled a little.

He went back the next day to where she had been the previous day and there she was, in black and white. He put money in her can again and she looked at him again. Whatever it is people say with glances and looks, they said those things, he thought. He didn’t take her picture. Rather, he introduced himself and made small talk. She said nothing but probably smiled a little again. She didn’t look away. He ran out of things to tell her so excused himself. Until tomorrow.

He wondered later if she would continue to look at him if he didn’t put money in her can.

He was not rich so didn’t want to fall in love.

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2013/08/24

Actually a Craving for Inertia

By dsholloway

He didn’t like to fly. Not because he was afraid he was going to fall from the sky or whatever. He just had this thing about being in the air for extended periods of time. And after years of dealing with it, he went to a therapist to get some pills so he wouldn’t have to deal with it. Don’t take more than two and don’t drink while you’re on them the therapist warned.

So he did the reasonable thing before boarding his flight the other day to some place irrelevant to this story: he took ten and thought of Sylvia Plath as he swallowed three shots of Vodka. Good thing, too, because his plane hit a menacing storm cell and lots of bad stuff happened to all the people inside. But he didn’t notice. He was dreaming.

The bad stuff eventually stopped happening and the plane landed wherever it was going. He was still dreaming. Somebody tried to wake him but he was still dreaming. A discussion. Then some other person tried more vigorously than the first to wake him but he was still dreaming. Another discussion. Somebody then frantically called somebody because he was still dreaming.

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