7EZKool thought about poisoning the scruffy gray dog. But then he imagined watching it writhe and foam and flop in the mud of the monsoon and pictured himself chewing the poison, swallowing it, feeling it boil in his belly and decided not yet. He only had poison for one.
7EZKool made sure all the glass pictures fell and cracked before leaving his grandmother’s retirement home that morning when the city sprayed malathion to kill the billions of mosquitos that had infested the flood waters. The one photo of his younger brother he smashed with his elbow.
7EZKool watched a mother of two accidentally drop $40 on her way into the grocery store. He followed her at a distance selecting hickory smoked beef jerky and three sixteen-ounce Monster drinks. When he got to the checkout 7EZKool paid with her $40, popped the top and sipped, listening to the woman sob over the cans of baby formula she could no longer afford.
7EZKool pried open the locked-up plywood doors of the abandoned skating rink, slipped inside and plopped himself in the center of the buckled wooden floor to finish off the last of the Monsters and jerky. When his bladder whined, he stood and pissed in a circle leaving a dust-cleaned ring which he jumped on his way to spend the last of the $40 on some molly.
7EZKool stretched out on the gravel roof of the repair station where his father had hung himself in the block-and-tackle engine-lift chains, marveling at the stars and the satellites and content that he still had two more ecstasy pills in the baggie in his pocket.
7EZKool cursed himself that he hadn’t brought another Monster and decided to climb down the ladder and drink from the outdoor faucet that always leaked giving weeds as tall as his waist a chance to thrive. In his delirium, 7EZKool misjudged his momentum as he swung his leg around to touch a rung. The ladder tilted sideways, scraping the wall. 7EZKool, gripping the aluminum frame, slid with it. He landed face up, his back plunging down onto the spike of a broken steel signpost.
7EZKool thought about the grey dog, the $40 woman and the last heart-shaped pill he still had in his pocket which he knew someone would find and take it. This person, 7EZKool thought, was welcome to it. He decided that he’d rather smoke weed, eat beef jerky and hang with Rolly and Smudge rather than get all heavy with molly, staring at the universe and thinking about his dad swinging from the clinking chains in the building beside him.
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Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
I think you may have edited this a bit since you first published? I read it but didn’t have a chance to comment. Don’t laugh at me, but when I read how he left before they sprayed for the mosquitos, I thought 7EZKool was a mosquito himself inflicting these things, and imagined this little bastard flying around sipping a Monster drink. I agree with Phil though–make him a real asshole. You’re a nihilist, right? Come on, shock me, turn my stomach!
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Yeah, after PH’s harassment, I tweaked it a bit.
I’ll have to write another, more despicable piece, someday. Generally, these things are pinched out under strain and lay there like the turds they are, stinking, and slowly desiccating. Future literary coprolites.
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I enjoyed how careless this was. I totally got the sense of him not having any regard for anything. No emotions. Just living.
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Yeah, that’s the ticket. Thanks for reading.
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7EZKool is a case of careless and thoughtless, where thoughtless doesn’t mean without thought. Make him an asshole with short, harsh observations.
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Good bit. Not my COT stylistically. Now that you’re writing again you might consider one thing you could stop doing that would immediately make your stuff less stiff, and that’s cut the bullshit leading words. I say to you thereby, accidentally, et al. Understand what I’m saying here? Thereby and the following sentence are redundant. Example Jim stood up. Stood says up. Use all that word power to make your people more interesting. What kind of beef jerky? Maybe he splurged for prime steak cuts with the free money. Aloof and cool are one thing, but what’s his take on the irresponsible mom? Why’s he in the Old Folks Home? Poison the (descriptive) gray dog. What sound did the chains make with dangling dad? All those are two or three worders that replace the fluff and make a painting out of a sketch. Style is a personal bag. Just think about rhythm, and as Vonnegut said, be 7EZKool kind to your readers.
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Thereby was a debate. I agree, drop the fluff words.
This piece was just me freewheeling. I wanted to create someone mildly despicable who one wouldn’t care if they turned up dead. That was the whole of it.
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Of course. Probably replace those fluff words with 6 or 7 good ones and he’s more despicable. As it is, he’s vanilla teenage wasteland. “No emotion in the author, no emotion in the reader.” You learn to employ that with brevity and you’re off to the races. “Thereby” shouldn’t even have rated a discussion. Misjudged the rung, the ladder did its thing, thunk.
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And in the spirit of writerly evolution, and in the same vein as the mud-children exercise, I’ll re-apply myself to this one, gleaning and codifying the nuances you’ve pointed. out.
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You know how much I love your writing and this piece, particularly the lyrical rhythm, was no exception!
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There’s another Tuesday Haiku from last week, wondering what you thought of that. I know you must be swamped, and your loss and all.
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Yes, I had read it and liked it but got sidetracked before I could comment. I thought it was outstanding–so vivid. Mother’s Wolfbane stew, and that whole stanza–so ominous in so few words!
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It’s not complete until Suzanne has passed judgement.
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Well, if you ever feel like submitting poetry, you know who to call. I would have taken that one in a heartbeat!
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I’m very happy to hear about your progress and being published! I knew you were great…others will soon find out!
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It’s just a wee bit of story for Suzanne and her new site. I wouldn’t call it “published”. Regardless, she was kind enough to think them worthy.
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Link? I don’t know Suzanne. Thanks.
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Darkwinterlit
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Just found it. Will explore. Lemme know when yours goes up. Thanks!
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Hi A. Mole,
All of us want to think that we are getting better at writing. Even the great ones beat their heads against the wall trying to get out the right words, the right characters and sometimes they came other times not. What we have with this story is a clear marking, for me anyway, of you getting better at what you do. You seem to be developing your own style. Congratulations. If you like it then the words will come more easily. Like I just wrote, my style is easy now, like bacon on a plate. Bacon. A meat for all the good and bad times, night or day it doesn’t matter. Good luck. Duke
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Thanks, Duke.
Sometimes I have to squeeze. Other times I just open the gate. They come out sharp like moon dust, but the words have started to flow more consistently of late.
I’ve got a few stories I wrote recently that will get published in Suzanne’s DarkWinterLit short fiction site. They’re still immature feeling, like I haven’t yet grown into my big-boy pants. Pieces like this one, though, let me test my beard for shaving length.
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