Third day out, the oddest feeling overtook me. A hybrid of nostalgia and deja-vu, this fuzzy childhood sense-memory of melancholy bliss. I wanted to cry. Was it just the desert? Sand in my eyes? Dehydration? No matter. I unwrapped my fingers from the buzzard's neck; the gangly fucker was dead all right. I sank my teeth into its gullet and drank deep the freshets of hot, life-giving blood.
What was that damned, damned feeling, I wondered, crawling west for the fuck of it, my shirt hanging off my sunburnt back in one-panel-cartoon shreds. Some kind of sepia-toned lost innocence that had to be a fiction; my childhood was as anxious and overrated as the next guy's. But that wasn't really the point. The point was, I suddenly realized under that sadistic asshole-shaped sun, that I'd been subconsciously nurturing this delusional emotion all my life, hording it, and for what? Whom, more like. For some as-yet-unmet girl. I'd recognize something in her that'd unlock that happiness. Our shared suburban weltanschauung would be the twin keys to launch the ICBM of our boundless joy.
"You homo," I chided myself. Here I was, lambing it from a half-million in calls on the most vicious shark in Vegas, and I was still heavy-leveraged on the biggest sucker bet of them all.
***
The nauseating dryness had closed up my throat when I reached a truck stop that evening. I opened the glass door with my head, crawled across the cool tiles and pulled myself up on a stool at the lunch counter.
"What'll it be," the waitress asked without batting an eye at my condition.
My tongue was too swollen to work. I snatched the pen out of her orange beehive and grabbed a napkin.
User Feedback:(+ Add Comment) 3/8/2006 1:59:47 AM - Master Bates (): (no comment) 2/2/2006 2:32:17 PM - scoop: Say, why isn't this one in Acme's "Most Bestest" or "Highest Rankest" or whatever it is is at the bottom and has five shorts in it? It's got all fives? Disney, how have you screwed up this time? 11/8/2004 11:17:46 PM - Will Disney: I fit in! 11/8/2004 10:22:27 PM - Mr. Pony: Well played, Will! 11/8/2004 9:43:40 PM - Will Disney (): (no comment) 11/8/2004 6:29:08 PM - Mr. Joshua: Snow: I believe one whets (i.e. sharpens) one's beak, but wets (i.e. moisturizes) one's whistle. 11/8/2004 5:29:10 PM - From Author: it's sort of like the feeling robert plant gets when he looks to the west. 11/8/2004 5:26:12 PM - Jon Matza: Author: was the narrator's "childhood sense-memory of melancholy bliss" anything like the end of A.I. (Haley Joel Osment at last getting to spend a blissful hour with his virtual mommy?) 11/8/2004 3:31:30 PM - The Rid (): You know, I thought this short might be overwritten. But it's so goddamn good, who cares? I read it four times. You homo. 11/8/2004 1:37:18 PM - Ewan Snow: asshole-shaped sun 11/8/2004 12:59:29 PM - Streifenbeuteldachs (): The weltanschauung line was tops. 11/8/2004 12:30:10 PM - Mr. Pony: I would submit that science was already there and your feelings and notions come pre-ruined out of the box. I think this has something to do with Original Sin. 11/8/2004 12:02:20 PM - scoop: Why do you have to ruin everything with science, Pony? Like that time you said it's silly to wish upon a star because the light from those stars takes a billion years to travel to earth, and many of the stars stopped burning long ago. Or that time you explained to me that my erection was just blood engorging my penis and that it had nothing to do with my feelings for you. 11/8/2004 11:52:41 AM - Mr. Pony: You know that coffee's net effect is also dehydration, right? 11/8/2004 11:36:06 AM - Ewan Snow (): Despite TREE's vote, I'll give this a 5. Incidentally, I was quite thirsty this morning when I got to work and whetted my whistle with a piping hot cup of black coffee. Ahhhhhhhh. (One "whets", rather than "wets", ones whistle, doesn't one? Or not?) 11/8/2004 11:34:15 AM - scoop (): You know what's nice after a crawl racked with post-consumerist self-reflection across a scorching desert baking in an unforgiving sun? A cigar. 11/8/2004 11:32:16 AM - Mr. Pony (): And five stars, why not. 11/8/2004 11:31:47 AM - Mr. Pony: I liked it for totally different reasons! (But is our intrepid narrator aware that the high salinity of the blood only served to dehydrate him further??) 11/8/2004 10:05:10 AM - TREE (): HOLY F***. This is sickening and demented. I never thought the word freshets would realy fit anywhere 11/8/2004 9:56:46 AM - Will Disney: I think I'll wait to see what other people do and then bandwagon it. 11/8/2004 9:29:17 AM - Ewan Snow: Pretty classy short. Am considering vote of 4 or 5.
