Committed
by Richard Thomas

I keep falling down.

Grey clouds fight the dark sky. The worn treads of my sore feet pound the sidewalk, every gum wrapper and empty beer can screaming for rain. Get inside, you idiot, they yell. Shut up. One more voice I don’t need.

Stupid fucking shoes, these goddamn ragged old boots. The laces come untied no matter how many times I loop them around my ankles. Denim is no match for concrete. And neither is flesh. Red sticky patches leak from my knees to match the ones on my knuckles.

Sweat peppers my forehead, and the stench under my leather jacket is getting rank, even for me. I reek of rotten cheese left out in the sun, a whiff of roadkill flattened to a stain.

But I finished that goddamn God of War, I’ll tell you that much. Fucking Playstation. Nobody can tell me that I don’t finish things, that I’m a total loser. She spit on me, for Christ’s sake. Then I back-handed her across the room. That shut her up. Eventually, for good.

The weight in my back pocket tugs at my jeans, one more fucking irritation. At least it warmed up. Snow flurries last week. Then cool breezes and dodgy sun today. What the fuck. I forget my jacket, and freeze. I wear layers and sweat my ass off.

At the end of the day it wasn’t so much that I hated my boss, David Fucking Hernandez, as I just needed to smack his head with the broad side of the shovel. Another voice quieted. Thank God. The list is getting smaller. No more gravel and tar for me, no sir. No more backbreaking, mind numbing work.

I shift the gun to my inside jacket pocket. It is almost as annoying, but at least when I did a facial, my pants wouldn’t pool around my ankles. I pull the last Budweiser out of my outside pocket and twist off the cap, the metal clinking to the sidewalk at my feet like angry tin tear drops. 24 beers, 23 gone. Another accomplishment. It had seemed insurmountable last night, but here I am, on top again. Finished. Two cigarettes left, I know that much.

“Hey buddy, no open containers,” the guy outside Kinko’s says, his little blue nametag shouting Ray, I’m a fag, I’m a doormat, I don’t eat pussy, and I smoke Marlboro Lights, come make a copy, be my friend.

“Fuck off asshole, and mind your own business,” I say, slow-ing down to eyeball him, gulping down the rest of the red label that had been my only friend last night. I cock back my arm and fling it at his head, sailing it high and wide, shattering off the brick wall.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles as he hunches over. “I’m calling the cops, fuckwad.”

“Do that, my friend, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

He scuttles back inside, glancing over his shoulder. It doesn’t matter. He can call the fucking cops. It’ll be too late. Heather. David. And one last stop at the post office. Up ahead I can see the stream of ants going in and out of the doors. In this way, out that. Packages here, stamps over there. Bladdity blah, and bippity bip. No more. It wasn’t enough having a conversation with Gary, the postman. They just replaced him. And the mail keeps coming, all of it, keeps on coming. It never stops. Well I say enough.

I stop to check the cylinder. Six. Five for them and one for me. No more credit cards bills, no more red lined utility notices, no more catalogs of porn, no more church bulletins, no more anything. I grab the door and hold it open for a smiling blonde in tight jeans, the little whore. She was somebody’s daughter, true, but she was also somebody’s blowjob queen, somebody’s incompetent waitress. No ice I said, Dijon mustard I asked, sugar for my motherfucking iced tea, please, I asked. No, she was no ray of sunshine.

In I go.