Masochuticon #8.
10 stories for mobiles
by Anne.
2:23 pm: It starts to rain and the girl standing beside me has a shrill voice. I immediately dislike her. I imagine grabbing her umbrella and running away with it.
5:28 pm: He pays the cashier and smiles. They will see each other again the day the man dies. Only the cashier will remember.
7:39 pm: She turns on the radio. ’...inevitably lead to the failure of our best-laid plans. After that, we have no hope.’ She thinks the story needs a better soundtrack.
9:56 pm: They close the car doors and rest their eyes. The neon light hums too loudly, flickers too violently.
11:12 am: ‘Get him the fuck away from me!’ screams the crazy street girl. ‘He’s trying to buy me!’ Everyone looks. A cop car pulls up curbside and the girl bolts.
9:30 am: They’re looking at me expectantly, I assume they want me to say something, I tell them that once I had a fungus growing in my intestines. They seem disappointed.
3:20 pm: She’s checking herself out in the storefront glass. Can anyone see it? Does anyone want to see it? She touches it, she feels it. ‘Thank god,’ she thinks. She’s still there.
4:16 pm: The guy sitting beside me on the bus is reading a pamphlet on urban contagions, on diseases of the city, on pigeons and squirrels and the homeless. He seems too calm and I distrust him. I get off the bus.
7:23 pm: I look out my window and there is no one on the streets. For a second I forget where they are. It’s not quite time yet.
10:04 am: He’s selling Jamaican patties, the good ones, and I can tell the girl likes him. It’s so awkward I want to cry. Instead, they laugh. She spits some of the patty on his shirt.
By Anne, 5 April, 2006; direct link.
