a little taste of heaven (389 hits)
Category: NoneRating: -0.33 on 7 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <Art> (View user info) at 2008-06-12 20:12:02 EDT
My mind roamed vacuously as my feet drove my impatient stomach.
The night was pitch dark as the concrete road, and only as loud as the trump of my feet, rhythmically beating closer and closer towards my destination.
Upon arrival I affirmed my hunger to a perfume of freshly cut grass and pungent gasoline, which has been somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine since childhood.
I opened the door to a burning shower of light, my optic nerves pleading for dilation. I quickly ordered my sandwich and hurriedly made my selections.
There was no line as I approached the counter. An elderly man working the register had scanned me; I promptly did the same.
His glasses were unusually thick and inordinately yellow, similar to a pair of construction goggles. They sat on and around his drooping face.
Questions raced through my mind but never crossed the finish line to my lips.
"That'll be $11.51".
I pulled a ten, a five, and three ones from my pocket. Quickly and robotically I put back the five and rested the remaining thirteen dollars on the table.
With hesitation in my wandering mind, I slid the money across the table, still holding on to one of the dollars, as the brief mechanical exchange gave my wilted mind the ultimate reluctance to either remove my hand from the table, or release the last dollar bill from my enervated grasp.
The man slowly and hesitantly took the ten and remaining two dollars, and placed forty one cents in my hand.
At this point I slid the remaining dollar in my pocket and floated upon the wafting aroma of oven-roasted turkey. As I exchanged my ticket, I looked upon the thirty-something female who made my sandwich.
"Thank you", I said.
The woman looked directly at me and through me. If she were close enough the symmetry would have induced an infinite reflection. The woman's eyes grew somber, and dampened with tears.
My heart went out to her, but my feet went out the door, and yet my mind, a candy striped bouncing ball craving digression and diversion, found a way to lock these ideas where they can never be seen, heard, or weighed.
The outside air was thick and moist; I decided not to fill up, knowing I had a feast wrapped hastily in paper and plastic.
I looked out in to the tar black sky and down at the pitch dark concrete as they coalesced in to something I now felt divided from.
I walked across the street, as a faint but distant whistling sharpened my ears. The sound grew deeper, and soon opened itself to the rest of my body.
My fingertips pulsated with warm blood flow, and my gut boomed from the deepening reverberations. A sudden and violent tremor jolted me off my feet.
The tar black street seethed in to my skin, as the Earth cracked and split like splintered wood; out spouted miles upon miles of once pressurized magma.
The molten lava hurled volcanic rock in to the bleeding crimson sky, where the velocity cratered the throbbing Earth.
A shadowy figure materialized, rising slowly from the steaming maw.
The birth of the end was thrust upon the hopeful and hopeless alike, all cradled within the same terminal cesspool.
Those who still had bodies to call their own were impotently drawn to their knees, as Mother Nature was in the throes of its final delivery; a gift to the universe, with the end of the world.
User Reviews
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-06-13 12:14:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Holy fuck. This is the defintion of "prose gone wrong". Seriously, it shouldn't take you an entire paragraph to describe a simple exchange of money.
Submitted by corn_nugget (user info) at 2008-06-13 11:14:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Someone just got a thesaurus.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-06-13 02:50:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Poor.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2008-06-12 23:19:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"Have you a fireman uniform?" asked Rusty.
"No, I'm afraid I haven't," said the man.
"Oh," said Rusty, disappointed. Then he kicked the man in the balls to show him what he thought of child molesters.
Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2008-06-12 22:05:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm not sure a mind can roam vacuously.
Submitted by Dimebenda (user info) at 2008-06-12 21:27:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Too bad microsoft word doesn't have a continuity checker for my typos. It actually was 49 cents.
Submitted by X54 (user info) at 2008-06-12 20:32:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
They shortchanged you by eight cents.