WAR & ADDICT
War
On my way to work I blast Korn on my phone and then goad the Pit bulls chained to a wall in my neighbour’s backyard. It gives me an enormous sense of well-being – that and the three cups of coffee before breakfast.
My music fights against the buzz of my moped and the growl of the traffic while I deliver pizza to inner city council estates where kids lurk with knives. Listening to an illegal deep house broadcast, I ignore calls from my friends as I speed around town, jump lights, ride on the pavement.
At dinner, I drift off as my wife chatters away inanely. I slip in an earbud and listen to Talk Radio. There is a particularly interesting discussion about commercial flights to Mars. I’m captivated and I immediately start saving for a ticket on my banking app.
In bed, the Echo Dot on the nightstand helps me relax while my wife sleepwalks into mirrors throughout the night. I don’t want to disturb her because I fear she will wake up and tell me her nightmares. Maybe her nightmares are about me, and I don’t know how I’d cope with that.
Tomorrow I will download some more heavy tunes – brain frying tunes.
I’ve heard they use death metal in war. It breaks the enemy’s spirit.
I’d be ok with war.
Addict
My dealer’s car idles gently outside my home, and the sound transports me to memories of midnight sessions with my friends – lost in thoughts of Eastern European escorts and beloved celebrity serial killers. Yet I know the Blue Dream skunk strain is slowly unpicking my mind.
In my local, empty pint glasses land crisply on the bar, one after the other. After seven drinks, I lie in a carpark parking space and rage at night sky about how you left me and our dog Pac-Man, three years ago.
I’m a miserable drunk, yet I know I could change and be the man you want me to be - in the future anyway. But for now, you’re just another problem piled upon all the rest, and until you forgive me, I will keep falling.
The drink makes me hungry. I binge eat Crispy Cremes then puke them up in a side street that smells of pastrami on rye. My hair is falling out in fine strands and I get dizzy spells.
On a train rampaging through the city, I snort lines off armrests, and spots of blood drip from my nose onto my button-down shirt.
I light a cigarette. I stub it out.
It’s morning and the sun has yet to make an appearance. Maybe it never will. One can only hope. I crash in a motel and pick up the bible.
After the initial disgust and alienation, I get into it and read it from cover to cover in three days. It speaks to me. Opens up new worlds. At last, an obsession worthy of my time.
by Tim Frank
Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Bourbon Penn, Eunoia Review, Maudlin House and elsewhere. He is the associate fiction editor for Able Muse Literary Journal.