Made.
i.
The wife he left behind is better off, he thinks, clipping another coupon from the newspaper. His cereal is getting soggy. Bank statements and overdue notices are scattered across the table. The coupons he's gathering are accumulating into a small pile.
Realizing it will soon be mid-afternoon, he rises from the dining room table and takes a few steps to the living room, beside his trophies: the featureless faces of men cast in bronze and gold strike poses atop marble pillars. their faces all positioned toward the center of the room, he stands among them a giant. he could feel proud about the tiny men patiently glaring at him, but he just doesn't. Not today.
He lays on the floor beside his trophies and flips through the want ads, looking for a better job. He makes a note to himself to later highlight the promising jobs. He continues to lay on the floor and eventually falls asleep in his quiet room. He hadn't won anything in fifteen years. Soon he will wake up.
ii.
He shared the bathroom with the neighbors living on his floor.
The toilet bowl was pock-marked with feces. He urinates and studies wall paper patterns, he looks above, to the light fixture, missing its veneer.
A centipede lay in wait upon the sink basin. He unrolls a long swath of toilet paper and catches the bug by surprise. You fucker, he thinks, squishing it's skeletal frame. He peeks once, to make sure the centipede is dead. Its guts are soaking into the balled up tissue. He watches that crumpled mess of a life go down the toilet, washes his hands, and walks back to his apartment.
iii.
He found a souvenir shop downtown in between shifts. Handmade wooden shelves were stocked with plaques and trophies. Blank plaques, ready for engraving, and trophies of all kinds. He paced through the store, amiable, innocent, in awe. Every trophy was ornamented with a miniature hero: healthy looking men poised to bowl another strike, the little leaguer up to bat, tense and ready. Sprinters, the quarterback just before his hail mary, long distance runners - he thought their tiny bodies looked like gods.
He purchased a trophy and a plaque. The store clerk asked if he'd like the plaque made engraved. He thought for a moment, and told the clerk what he'd like engraved. The clerk said the plaque would be ready the following day for pick up.
He went back to the store after work the next afternoon and got his plaque. He held the plaque in his hand. He touched the engraved letters with his fingertips. He was content, so he bought another trophy. The day after that, he would return, this time asking how much the long-distance trophy was. He'd been trying to save up.
posted by that_robot @ 4:07 PM
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