#I Gotta stop using the same shitty program bro | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

camilliar · 7 years ago

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fic? post???

@stultiloquentia said I liked fics about the decline of man so here’s some crazy shit I’ve been writing for @tomato-greens where they’re all teenage runaways, maybe I’ll “finish” this “story” one day? pg13, eventual zimbits but not in this part, ~3k, I’d say “enjoy” but

Eric hadn’t begun to fathom just how large Jack was—how tall, how broad—until Jack reared up and bellowed in his face, “This isn’t a game!”

“I wasn’t playing.” Eric tried to straighten up, but he was only five feet.

“Either get with the program or go home!”

And, well, that sure hurt—Jack must have known Eric couldn’t go home, right? Wasn’t that the whole point? What else did Jack think they were doing out here? There wasn’t any home, not really, except this one, here and now.

Also, until Jack yelled, Eric wasn’t sure he knew English. Eric had only ever heard him speak in French before. So that was a revelation.

“What’d you do?” Shitty asked, as they were waiting to steal into the gas station bathroom on Moreland—the Shell, not the Chevron. Less foot traffic at this one. Fewer passersby.

“Nothing,” Eric swore, starting to waggle. He really had to go now. “I gave him a plant, is all.”

“A plant?”

“Yeah, you know, a little plant. A Christmas cactus.”

“A what?”

“Christmas cactus,” said Eric. “They’re pretty when they bloom. My mama used to have one—used to, she probably still does, oh boy, I can’t wait to get into the bathroom—what do you think is taking him so long in there?”

“I bet we don’t want to know,” said Shitty.

“Well, you’re probably right, I suppose—I was thinking I could water the cactus here, or Jack would—you know, if he took it from me—”

“She.”

“—if he took it from me, we could walk over here with it and just get it a little water, nice clean water like from the tap—don’t make that face at me, mister! I’ve been holding it all night.”

“You coulda got me up, you know.”

“Nah,” said Eric. “Nah, and destroy your beauty rest?”

“Nothing pretty about me,” said Shitty, and he grinned to show off his pointy canines. It made him look feral. Eric agreed he didn’t look pretty, though he was sure better-kempt than the rest of them. To that point, when the door flung open and Eric rushed inside, Shitty filed in after and, kindly, took a moment to lock the door. He had his dopp kid until his arm; it was his most prized thing. It looked about a thousand years old, like something from a fairy tale. Shitty put it on the edge of the sink and began removing little cannister, old film containers and pill bottles. Being brazen, sometimes Shitty would sneak into the bathroom of a nice restaurant and fill them with lotion, or soap. Sometimes he’d do it in a Target, just pumping shaving gel into an old film cannister. Why not steal the whole bottle? Eric had asked him once. It was something about that not being right, some code. He had a razor blade and he was shaving with it, carefully skirting his mustache. He was impeccably well-groomed for a bum, Eric thought.

One day maybe I’ll be able to grow a beard and then I’ll be impeccably well-groomed, Eric thought. He was only 14; maybe he’d be tall one day.

Or maybe he’d never find out. Was this temporary? He’d only been in Atlanta for two weeks. Had it only been two weeks? Don’t think about it, he reminded himself. Do your business. Don’t look.

He was still doing his business, his semi-hard cock in hand, when Shitty stuck an old Mortin bottle under his nose. Eric had never gone to high school, but he knew that smell; some of his daddy’s team used to smoke after practice, when they thought Coach had taken Eric home for supper.

“No thank you,” he said, shocked, clumsily stuffing his prick back into his pants, still wet at the tip. He would fret about that all day.

II.

Eric was confident that if he has access to his kitchen, he could make Jack feel better. The one time he’d seen Jack smile—really smile—was when Shitty’d brought him a Happy Meal with chicken nuggets and an apple pie for dessert.

“You know,” Eric had said, trying to be all casual-like, “McDonald’s pies aren’t very good.”

Jack had looked up; having shoved most of the thing into his mouth, his cheeks were bulging.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is,” Eric had continued, “I can make an apple pie that’s a lot better.”

Having a mouth full of food hadn’t stopped Jack from trying to say, “Well, what good does that do us? Where do you think you’re gonna bake one?” Of course, with all that pie in his mouth, not to mention the weird accent, Eric hadn’t managed to make out what Jack had said exactly. But, that was the gist of it, Eric was certain.

“You don’t have to try to make her like you,” Shitty explained. They were walking down Moreland; Larissa had reported that, on the way into town with her mother, she had noticed that someone had left a big box of stuff on the curb up on Briarcliff. Eric had never been to the other side of Ponce, and he was nervous-excited. “Just rich people over there,” Shitty had explained, “real bougie fucks.” Eric didn’t know what bougies were, but they were going to check it out.

“You think there’s any kitchen stuff in that box?” Eric asked. Waiting to cross Freedom Parkway took an eternity.

“Oh, yeah.” Shitty rubbed his hands together, like he’d realized this was a great idea. “That’d be good, if it’s vintage we could try to sell it at Highland Antiques, get some cash. Or is that one of those antiques malls where you have to rent a booth?” He began to stroke his chin. “I wonder.”

The light changed, and Eric scurried across in Shitty’s wake. “Nah, I mean like, we could hold onto it, use it to cook something.”

“Like over a fire,” Shitty agreed, “real old-timey hobo-like shit. Make some beans.”

“I was just thinking since Jack liked that that awful pie from McDonald’s, maybe he’d like my award-winning apple pie, which is much better.”

Again, at North, they had to stop and wait for traffic.

“You can cook a pie over a fire?”

Eric had begun to notice that Shitty was more difficult to deal with right after he’d smoked some pot, which was just about always.

“You cook a pie in the oven.”

“I doubt there’s gonna be an oven at the end of someone’s driveway,” Shitty said. “When rich people get a new oven, the Best Buy or whatever hauls the old one away.”

“Well,” Eric said, consoling himself. “Maybe there’s a pie plate. I shoulda brought mine. That was pretty darn stupid of me, huh?”

Shitty put a hand to Eric’s back, as if to usher him across North Avenue. “Listen, kiddo. It’s nice of you to want to do something sweet for Jack and all, but you gotta let her live with her choices. Junkies get a little junk-sick sometimes, you know?” As they got to the other side of the street, he paused. After a moment, he added, “Let’s go to the Borders sometime and steal you a copy of Naked Lunch.”

“Naked what?” Eric asked. He was only able to half-focus on Shitty’s explanation, too busy hoping beyond hope he’d find something pretty in that box on Moreland to bring home—such as it was home—for Jack.

When they got there, to Eric’s disappointment, the box had already been picked up by the garbagemen.

“Fuckin’ DeKalb County,” Shitty mused. “Fuckin’ yuppie assholes.”

Eric had no clue what he was talking about, none whatsoever.

III.

Borders didn’t have a copy of Naked Lunch, or anything else by the author. “Fuckin’ capitalism,” Shitty complained. “This whole place is full of garbage, not books. Who needs any of this?” He picked up something on a display of mostly stationery, a plastic deer figurine in pink glitter. Eric thought, well, the store is full of mostly books? He did like that sparkly deer. He wished Shitty would steal it for him, but Shitty had a twisted code about stealing things Eric might actually like. “Come on, we’d better go to Whole Foods, see if there’s free tortilla chip samples.”

But at the door of the Whole Foods, a staff member stacking handbaskets looked at them funny and said, “Excuse me.”

Shitty paid him little heed, just said, “Hey, bro,” entered anyway.

Eric had never been in a Whole Foods before. It was dark, not bright like a Publix. And not for lack of light—there were overhead lights. It was just yellow, washed-out, dingy. It didn’t feel clean like a Publix; it felt less clean than Kroger.

“Oh, good,” Shitty said, dragging Eric by the arm. “Guacamole.”

It wasn’t guacamole, though, it was pineapple salsa.

“Bullshit,” sad Shitty, “total bullshit. But, here, eat this anyway.” He had somehow managed to pile it only about four chips at once. “Beat off the scurvy.”

“You think there’s anything here Jack would like?”

Through a mouth of tortilla chips, Shitty said, “There’s nothing anywhere Jack would like, because Jack only likes two things: narcotics, and feeling sorry for herself.”

Eric wasn’t sure he liked what these chips tasted like; they shimmered under the yellow lights with a glean of oil, like they’d come out of a deep-fryer. Sometimes at UGA games Eric’s father would take him to his buddies’ various tailgates, and some of those guys had deep fryers, and, well, Eric knew what flour tortillas in corn oil tasted like. He preferred Tostitos, with their dry, clean starch—but he realized, now that he was eating, that he’d been hungry all morning, truly hungry. He’d been hungry for so long that he forgot he was hungry until he had some food.

“See, the thing with Jack is,” Shitty started to explain, but the same employee who’d been stacking baskets approached them.

“How’re you boys doing?” he asked.

Shitty had tortilla chip crumbs in his mustache. “Thanks for asking, bro, we’re fine. When does the guac come out?”

Eric wasn’t sure he liked where this was going.

Shitty’s question wasn’t answered.

IV.

It was easy to lose track of time, Eric figured, when day after day was the same and you had nowhere to go and nothing to do. It felt wrong when he thought of it: he had things to do, didn’t he? Wasn’t he supposed to be looking for a place to stay? But Eric was no closer to affording an apartment than he had been upon arrival in Atlanta, and some kind of gravity, or lack of inertia, kept him spinning in circles. The highlight of his week became Larissa’s trip into the city on Saturday mornings; she would take a walk in the park with Shitty while her mother did errands. Sometimes, out of pity, Mrs. Larissa’s Mother gave Eric a few dollars.

“Don’t blow it all in one place,” Shitty chided. He was about to head off with Larissa toward Inman Park. What would they do there, and where would they go when the weather got too cold to spend it outside? Eric thought for a few minutes about other places Shitty and Larissa could walk to, but then Eric realized Shitty’s walks in the park were the least of his worries.

When Jack woke up that afternoon he wasn’t in such a bad mood, so Eric felt like it was safe to ask him: “What do we do when it gets cold out?”

Jack blinked his eyes open, slowly at first and then all at once, like the question caught him off-guard. “I don’t know what you’ll do,” he said, “but I’m staying here.”

“In Atlanta?”

“Right here.”

The thought was so disturbing that Eric wandered down the street until he remembered he had three dollars in his pocket. He was a block down from the Zesto, and found himself walking toward it until he was pressed up against the window, looking in, reading the menu over the counter. A sundae was a bit over three dollars. Feeling determined, Eric began to inspect the sidewalk and then the parking lot, hoping to find anything: a nickel, a dime, a quarter. Anything would help.

A pair of ladies holding hands were walking down McLendon toward the corner, on the other side of the street. Feeling bold, and determined, he jogged toward them.

“Hi, ma’am,” he said. “Ma’ams.” Suddenly, Eric was grateful for how long it took the light to change before a person could get to the other side of Moreland. “How’s your day?”

One of them was wearing aviator sunglasses and a poofy skirt that sat high up on her waist. She was big-chested and had on a patterned V-neck T-shirt. She let go of the other woman’s hand and said, “Okay.”

“I was just wondering—” now Eric felt solidly deranged “—if you would be so kind, do you have a couple cents on you? A sundae at the Zesto is three-twenty-nine, and my friend Larissa only gave me three bucks, so I was hoping—”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence before he got a dollar along with the question, “Aren’t you too young to be panhandling?” But, mercifully, they didn’t wait for Eric to answer.

On one hand, if Eric sauntered back leisurely, the sundae would begin to melt; on the other, if he ran, truly hustled, he might spill it. He tried to split the difference, and spent the walk daydreaming of all the things he’d buy for Jack one day, if he would only afford it: a beautiful old razor like his grandfather had owned; a Kindle, so Jack could read all the books he wanted without having to fret about going to the store; new yellow sneakers, fresh as they were vivid as they were hideous.

“What’s that?” Jack asked warily, when he saw Eric approach with something in hand.

“Just a sundae, from Zesto.” Eric paused. “I thought we could split it?”

“I don’t want to share a spoon.”

“I got two spoons.” Eric squatted, careful not to rest his weight on Jack’s blankets. “You like hot fudge, right?”

Jack only grunted.

“These nice ladies gave me a dollar,” Eric explained, removing the lid from the sundae. “You know, I had to really screw up my courage to ask them, but it wasn’t too hard once I put my mind to it. They seemed real friendly, but they asked what I was doing panhandling, said I was too young to be doing that. I don’t think I’m too young, do you? I think I’m just about the right age for things, I mean, we all gotta learn to put ourselves out there at some point, I guess.” He sighed, digging his spoon into the melting soft serve. “I’m still worried about what to do when it gets real cold out.”

Jack, who had already been eating the ice cream, had white on his lips. He licked them, slowly. “I used to worry about it too,” he said, before helping himself to another spoonful.

“What made you stop?”

Jack swallowed his ice cream. “Heroin.”

Eric had nothing to say to that, so he kept eating, perhaps a little too quickly, given how thoroughly he wanted to savor things. Then again, the sundae was melting, so.

Suddenly, Eric was deeply, depressingly aware of how rare this moment was: Jack was being honest, and he didn’t seem sick, and he didn’t seem angry. Eric was midway through helping himself to another bite of ice cream when he got a bizarre urge not to feed himself but to offer his spoon to Jack instead.

And Jack accepted, which was weirder.

It made something in Eric start to burn, start to fill his chest with—god, some emotion, some strong tug from his throat to the pit of his stomach.

Eric cleared his throat, to get Jack’s attention. “Listen, Jack, can I ask you something?”

Jack looked up. “I guess,” he said. “For the ice cream.”

“Why—” It was hard for Eric to get it out. “Why does Shitty call you ‘she’?”

Their nice moment was over.

“He shouldn’t,” Jack said, drawing his arm up, to shield his face. “Does he? He shouldn’t.”

“Well, I was just wondering—”

“Stop wondering.”

“But—”

Now Eric felt awful stupid.

“Never call me that. She doesn’t exist. You’ll never get to meet her, so don’t ask.” Jack put his face in his hands.

“But who’s ‘she’?”

“She’s nobody, so shutup.”

Eric was good at that—shutting up. He merely put a hand at Jack’s back, felt him trembling. “You want some more ice cream?”

Jack looked up, pushed himself to his feet. The plastic spoon from Zesto clattered to the pavement. “I gotta—” He found something, dug it out of his blankets. “I need the bathroom, don’t follow me.”

It had been months now, so Eric knew Jack needed the bathroom the way his mother needed her alone time: to do something she really ought not to have been doing, that was, behind closed doors. Eric had seen Jack crush pills in his fist and rub them into his gums, that night he’d probably thought Eric was sleeping and couldn’t see it.

In the plastic bowl their sundae was a puddle of white streaked with brown. Eric might have gotten a C+ in eighth-grade English, but he knew symbolism when he saw it.

#fic post

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