Short Story: Why Not

He coughed, cleared his throat, and moved on.

The clerk at the counter looked smug. "You're limited to two boxes of Sudafed," he said, "We can't let you buy that many."

The man was tempted to begin making meth, solely because they had started regulation.

He had a bad view of the world.

He walked back to the car.

When he got home, he unloaded the groceries, two brown bags. The produce would have poked out the top like in old movies, but he didn't buy produce. He only had one mouth to feed.

The television in the living room was covered in dust, the remote hidden in a drawer. His nephews would storm the desk and capture the remote, only to be befuddled by its lack of batteries. He didn't buy batteries. He hated them.

The oven was spotless. He liked food. He was not unique in this sense.

He shut the door carefully behind him, doubly checking the locks. He was always worried he would fall asleep without locking the door. He crawled out of bed in the early night to check. It haunted him.

In morning, the coffee pot would beep and start its usual hissing and groaning. He always made four cups. Always.

The Raisin Bran box would get empty fairly often.

He would often shave before he went to sleep, to save time in the morning. Sleep was like a free time withdrawal unit. He'd always say, "It's quite okay, to get less before day."

Sometimes it would be 3 a.m. and the mirror would be fogged by his breath. He had a dry-erase marker on the bathroom counter and he would write on the mirror, carefully. It rarely made sense. It often rhymed.

He was handsome. His clothes were neatly hung in the closet; shirts always without wrinkles. His bed wasn't big enough for two people.

It was shoved in the corner. Around the feet were books, magazines, a box of tissues, legal pads, eraser debris. He sketched a lot. He liked making comics. He never showed them to anyone.

In a file cabinet on the wall were his writings. They were numerous. Some were terrible. Some were great. He never showed them to anyone.

His computer sat on a large, wooden desk. Its keyboard was well worn.

Some speakers on the floor. They were big. They played things that he liked. He was not unique in that regard.

He was smart. He had degrees. He made a lot of money. He lived alone.

He thought too much.
He wrote too much.
He prayed too much.

He believed in luck for a while.

He had a couple pictures in his desk, of smiling faces. Beautiful, smiling faces. They only existed in two dimensions. They only existed in two dimensions.

He would walk to work sometimes--it was only a few blocks. He would see happy people. He liked to watch their ignorance.

The checks got bigger every year. The writing on the mirror got longer, nastier, messier. It began to disturb.

He walked to the park one day. Looked around at the sky.

He sat down and wondered, "Why?"

He smiled.

Nearing the end

Christmas break is almost here, and I am only unsettled.

I don't want to go back home.

I like my microcosm; I like my little room full of junk and my bicycle outside latched to a steel ring; and, I like my neat routine and schedule, my to-do list taped to the back of my desk in red ink; I like my stack of textbooks on the floor; my folding of laundry while music plays in the background and I sing along, poorly.

I like breakfast with friends. Lunch with friends. Dinner with friends. Sitting in dorm rooms, awkwardly. The bad weather. The walks to class. The skateboarding late at night; the late at night bike rides. The tunnel to the rec. Basketball at the rec. Programming lectures and falling asleep. Chemistry lectures and falling asleep. Calculus lectures and waking up, if only to be alarmed, and falling asleep again.

My hand hurting from taking so many notes. My eyes red from days spent coding or writing lab reports on the computer. Six empty cans of soda around the room, a coffee pot that is on more than off.

I will miss these things.

Life is seemingly measured out in chunks of meaning; we work for a while, and then we are dunked into a bowl of nothing--we are wasted by this; we are pieces of filet mignon being submerged in mild salsa. We can exist at another level, but every few months, we are kicked out, told to go home--and I go back to a world I no longer feel I can be productive in.

Maybe it will be better, maybe what I've learned this semester will change how I see things back home. Back in Belton. Maybe my new skills will open new doors back home, or at least break some more windows. I don't know.

That's the main thing right now.

If I leave here, I don't know.

There is comfort in knowing, if we recognize we are inherently scared of the unknown. By leaving for Christmas, I am leaving my comfort zone here at the university; I am heading deep into a world that I no longer feel I can be productive in.

In any case, my goal is to make Christmas break as healthy as possible--it's imperative that it is actually a break. In this sense, I would like to not work.

But what do I do for a month?

That is a preposterously long time.

I'm not saying I don't want the break; I do. I'm just scared that I'm going to lose a month, and that's time I'm never going to get back.

Is it bad to be 19 and worried about losing a month of my life?

I know that in a month I can do a lot; I can learn a lot; I can make a difference.

Is it bad that I value my time?

I'm not really sure.

But I do know that Christmas break is at least an opportunity to relax--whether I use it to do so or not.

Hmm.