Absence

Even though I have no job now (until the middle of next month anyway) I have certainly been keeping ymself busy. My schedule has definitely changed as well. instead of getting my day started at 4:30 as normal, I get up around 7:00, sit around reading or playing video games while I drink my coffee and smoke my cigarettes, start doing inside work around 10 or 11 then start working outside around noon for the rest of the day. I like it. And I don't miss my old job either. Everyone there is worthless, including the almighty boss lady. Fuck her.

F Pt. VIII

"Jobin has arrived," I say in a raised, melodious voice.

He gets out of the truck and looks over at me from the driver's side door. "Do you have a charger for an iPhone?"

"No, sorry. All I have is this crappy BlackBerry."

"Shit."

I light up the cigarette that sits between my lips, the slightest amount of smoke covering my eyeball, stinging it just enough to where I need to blink it out. Jobin closes his truck door and walks up the concrete path towards the front porch. He approaches with open arms and a smile, "What's up buddy? Been a while."

I walk over and give him a big hug. Jobin, one of the only men left in this world that has any sort of trust from me. He is one of the few people that will confront you with an issue rather than keep it bottled up, just letting that anger fizz inside, building up over something that was never true in the first place. He would share his cot if you had to sleep on rocks.

We spend the next few minutes catching up while I smoke. When I finish the butt we head inside and I grab him a beer. I am already five tallboys deep and there are only three beers left so I grab another one as well and tell Jobin he can have the last two in there.

My sister comes into the kitchen and acts all goofy. Certainly not because she has a crush on Jobin or anything but the fact of the matter is, ever since she had started smoking pot she has turned into a much more outgoing person than she used to be. Back in the day it was so damn hard just to get her to act even slightly normal around anyone but her friends, and even then she was incredibly awkward. She started smoking in college, realized what she had been missing this whole time (on top of the fact that she is now fun to be around) and is still doing great in classes! Here is the rundown of myself smoking weed and going into college:

Tried weed in middle school. Not my style.

Tried again my sophomore year of high school. I don't think I even got high.

Started smoking my senior year of high school. Everyday during lunch, head out and get baked.

College, one year after graduating. Tried cocaine and ecstasy for the first time. Amazing experiences.

Getting deeper and deeper into the drug scene. Doing blow pretty much everyday, sometimes before and during work just to stay awake. Selling it now with my girlfriend. She is even worse then me, doing ecstasy every morning on the way to work. She was smoking hot and we had some crazy sex in awesome places.

Dropped out of college. My girlfriend and I are split and she is off fucking our drug dealer. I try to sell a pound of reefer to this thug-ass mothafucka (me being the obvious middle man. It was a fucked situation to begin with). When we leave from the site where the deal went down, I get a call from our drug dealer (yes, the fucker that is fucking my whore of an ex-girlfriend) and apparently the thug handed the money over, but the money was a bunch of strips of brown paper bag wrapped in duct tape. We had been punked by a thick, black, gold grille-wearing bitch. I can see him laughing out loud, walking down the street with a free pound of grass he scored off a couple of punk, white dudes. I drive around that night, looking for him to run over with my car. I had driven home and grabbed my samurai sword just in case I had to finish him off after running him over a few times. No luck. I contact my fairly large friend, buy a few grams of coke and walk around the neighborhood where we were pretty sure he hailed from. We would do a round through the streets, stop at my car and load our noses, then do it all over again. Eventually we gave up and headed to my place to do the rest of the snow.

The word was that members of the Russian mob were going to be after me if I didn't pay off the pound. I scrounged the money together, how is a different story, and handed it over. This is the moment where I decided, maybe I should get the fuck out of here.

________________________________________

It's good to be alive.

Wish Me Luck!

Going into Seattle in a few minutes here to talk with my future boss. He is going to try and integrate me into the caretaking process as soon as possible. I'm not sure if I've let you all in to what I will be doing, but if you don't know, I will tell you once I secure the position. Audios!

Friday Pt. VII

Damn I love that first cup of coffee in the morning. Still have the same routine in the morning even though I am jobless, just starts two hours later. It is quiet nice and it's too bad that I'm not more established as a writer otherwise I could have just done this full time. Pipe dreams, you gotta love 'em.

Friday Pt. VII

I pull out another beer from the fridge and slowly pour it into the tilted glass, making sure the beer is able to make it to the rim without a thick head. Dinner is ready and I stand behind by the table and wait for mom, her fiancee and sis to make their plates. I've never been the one to rush to be the first in the food line. There is usually always food leftover, so what's the rush? My mother and her fiancee head to the living room couches to watch TV while eating and Nico and I sit at the small, cafe style table in the kitchen. We laugh and talk about board games we played and crazy antics we got ourselves into whilst stuffing our faces with the tacos that were made for the evening. I show her a little game I recently got, called Nest, involving tiles with insects on them. I have only been beaten at this game twice and both those times I was trying to help the opponent make good decisions (which obviously worked). After we finish up eating I talk her into playing Nest with me. We set it up on the coffee table in the living room and I go over the rules with her.

Nest involves strategy. She beat me the first game. I beat her the second and she beat me again. Mind you, Nico is very smart. Book smart. No common sense. I decide to stop playing while I'm ahead... well, not as far behind anyway.

All four of use sit around the television and watch a movie. Personally, I can't stand get-togethers that involve watching the TV. What is the point of being together if we are just going to sit and stare mindlessly at a screen? Oh sure, there are the people that laugh and have a good time while watching, but I hate that shit! If I am watching a movie let's say, I want to be focused and in it. I do not dig on being talked to while I am trying to get inside the characters and plot. Back to reality, the movie we are watching is funny and everyone is smiling so I let it be. I notice my anxiety is pretty high.

"When is Jobin supposed to get here?", my mother asks.

"Should be anytime."

My mother's fiancee begins to get up out of the recliner. He has to wake up at 3:00AM for work. "I think it's about that time. There is some rope and a huge tarp in the garage for you guys to take if it starts to rain. I'm hittin' the sack."


"Thank you so much. I'll bring it back just the way it is."

I get up and walk through the screen door to the front porch to light up a smoke. A red pickup truck drives up and parks in front of my mother's house. Jobin has arrived.

Fp. VI

Going to give another Flash Fiction Challenge at TerribleMinds another try. Due by next Friday (the 13th) so I've got some time. You should all head over there and try it out as well! This challenge's subject is "a modernized fairy tale".


Friday Pt. VI


I have always tended to say things that I know my mother doesn't find amusing whatsoever. There was always that yearning to piss her off growing up. Mind you, she was far too protective of me, and yes yes, I am sure everyone out there is saying, "Of course he thinks that, he was a child for Christs' sake, what the hell did he know? Or even know now?!" Well, I have allowed my self to grow up slightly and I still believe to this day that I was grounded far too often for the things that I was doing. And the sad part was, those things that I had been getting grounded for practically every weekend, almost never happened outside of our home. Our house that I grew up in was built in the 30's on a 5 acre plot of land. Step off the front porch and I had a small forest to my left, a huge field to my right and a creek behind the house itself. I truly loved it out there. But I had to, since I was stuck there about 80% of my childhood. Just an insight, my mother was just a tad unbalanced, later realizing the error of not seeking help sooner than later. In fact, didn't seek help until after my parents had divorced and she was the lowest I had ever seen her. Bipolar disorder, something my dad saw coming a long time ago, but whenever he tried to bring it up to her she would get so angry, denying the fact, blaming her sadness on the fact that he works all the time to feed his family. I've brought up the fact that I was stuck in the house way too often, how she could have loosened up her talons on my back and just let me fucking fly sometimes, but I can tell it makes her sad. I don't bring that up anymore.

And when I finally did get out from under her watch, I move to Seattle and start selling cocaine and ecstasy, supplying the crowds and my own self. Did I miss something here? Could it have been that she kept me from doing these things early on, or did I do them because I was so sheltered growing up? I am still trying to figure that one out.


Now that we have gotten past the point of her talking about how sickly I look, we can finally have a normal conversation. I tell her about my current job status while sipping on my glass of Pabst, stepping outside every now and then to have a cigarette, more often now than then. Chain smoking is a lovely habit while drinking. Beer is practically nothing without nicotine. In fact, I wish I had a huge bowl of grass right about now. Haven't smoked the stuff in two weeks, trying to clean myself up for a future position on a private yacht.


Nico, my sister, comes down stairs. Long brown hair and a super lanky body like mine. Tent poles for legs and equipped with two skinny, gorilla arms. She is excited to see me nowadays, which is a massive relief. Tormenting her was my forte growing up, her hate of me fueling her desire to move on. Let me give you a taste of what I did to her that I still can't believe I did:


Somehow coax Nico into a large dog kennel cage.

Drop stinging nettle leaves from above all over her.

Let her out as she yells in itchy, stingy pain.

God damn that's fucked up.

Thank God she started smoking weed because we probably never would have grown close. I very much like our relationship these days and Nico, I am sorry for what I had done to you in the past. Young assholes do stupid things and I wish you would have just punched me in the damn face. Now that I think of it, you did clock me in the jaw once, but that was an accident.

Just Listen & Fp. V

Listening to some Miles Davis on vinyl.

Friday pt. V


This time at the hub I don't run into anyone I know, which is pretty unusual. I get into my car and take a right out of the parking lot, a right at the stop sign, a left at the next intersection, around the corner and into my mother's driveway. I grab the bag of tallboys and open the car door. I almost forget the fun, little "board game" I brought to show my sis so I bend over my seat and grab it from the back.


I walk in through the front door and am greeted by a large black lab/sheep dog mix, by the name of Duke, his face in a constant wink, his right eye sown shut due to a tumor in his eyeball a number of years ago. Duke. We didn't even know he was going to lose an eye! How fitting. The other dog slowly walks towards me with a smile on her face. She is pretty much the same type of a dog, maybe a little more sheep dog than lab, and is extremely smart and adorable. Her name is Panda. I roll around on the floor with them for a few minutes while saying hi to my mother, her fiancee and my sister, though I can't roll around with them too long for I have a six pack burning a hole in my brown paper bag. I get up to put the bag in the fridge while pulling a can out for myself. "Do you have any beer glasses," I ask. I don't dig on drinking out of cans these days, glasses really letting the flavors come out. I open the cupboard and find a row of glasses, the perfect size to pour about 3/4 of a tallboy in and have that little bit extra in the can to top off your glass after a few swigs.


My mother comments on how skinny/unhealthy I look. Honestly, I don't really know what she is talking about. This is definitely the lightest and skinniest I have ever been, but I look at it like a good thing. I used to have extremely wide hips and a huge ass, like a fucking bowling pin.  Now I have wide hips and no ass (it's like a very soft jello, being able to mold it with your hands, but it will just fall right back into place, hanging from my lower back). I'm not conceited by any means, but that image of  a bowling pin has haunted me ever since I realized girls gave me boners. With the job I currently undertake, washing and waxing yachts, it is vigorous work and I have been shedding the pounds because I have been working hard, that simple. I make a joke towards her about how I am back into cocaine and it has really helped me with my weight issues. I can tell she doesn't want to laugh at that, but she knows I am just playing around, so she forces a minute snicker.

I'm Still Alive! & Fp.IV

First day of my new life. It's too bad though. I mean, I certainly have another job in the works, had one for a month and a half or so, but I didn't want it to end like this. Every since my boss found out about my job offer from one of her biggest clients (because I am awesome), she got really butt hurt and I could tell that I was walking on thin ice. I was over that shit anyway, but like I said before, I didn't want it to end like that. I had planned on giving her at least two weeks notice, if not more. I am loyal, so I wanted to give her as much time as possible. Well, flooding the shop was that kicker, the tipping point. Say goodbye.

Fuck her. On to the next segment of Friday, pt. IV.


My first stop in Rainier is always the Chevron. The Chevron is one of two gas stations, the other being a Shell just around the bend on the "West side of town". They are both owned by the same person. Chevron is the hub of all activity in Rainier, all the residents stopping at this pump station for their corn dogs, pizza pockets, chew, cigarettes, energy drinks, candy, beer and of course, gas. A friend of mine tried to shoot this other kid we knew in the face in the parking lot. The gun misfired and he walked away. Later on that night the kid that was going to get shot was on the news talking about how much of a punk the shooter was. They are both small time drug dealers that are yearning for that life of thuggery and danger. The cops eventually just watched the security cameras to find out the exact identification of the shooter and he was caught and sent to jail for a few months. But that tells you something about this Chevron. The hub of Rainier.

I walk into the "Quick Stop" and grab a six pack of Pabst tallboys and a pack of Camel Filter 99s, the usual. Every other year you might see a new face working here, but for the most part, I am 26 and the same few people have been working here since I was in middle school. The larger woman at the counter is sweet. She always recognizes me (slightly) whenever I come in, which I like since I only come in maybe once a year. The small girl at the counter is a girlfriend of a past friend of mine, another small time drug dealer, but unlike some of the others living in Rainier that yearn, this kid already had, so he is taking it easy for a reason. Hailing from Long Beach, California, his mom is a raging alcoholic and his brother was a junkie (though he has cleaned himself up and is doing very well for himself). I'm not sure what brought them to Rainier. I could probably take a guess though. The plump gentleman with the graying mustache at the pumps, he has probably been working here the longest. But he also has a dark history, mostly rumors, but who really knows. Obviously no one is going to go up and ask about it. A sore subject maybe? As long as he doesn't diddle little kids anymore.

I put the pack of smokes in my pocket and wrap my arms around the brown bag containing my tallboys. I push through the double doors and notice a group of kids chilling out on the curb to my left. I look over and get several sets of eyes staring me down. I snicker and turn to my right. I remember always giving the stink eye to people we didn't know back in the day. But nowadays I remember to roll my sleeves up to show my full-sleeve tattoo work, because kids here in Rainier are scared of foreign and not too many of them have any ink quiet yet. Once they see the sleeve, the 36 hours of work right in front of their fucking faces, they look down at their soda pop and wrap their lips around the straw, acting as if they were just stretching their eyeballs.