Chewing On Glass…

“This is my first time in the big city.” The clerk hands him his change with a blank stare. There is no contempt or concern that anything living or dead is standing in front of her at this moment. She stands motionless from the other side of the glass. “I mean I have always wanted to come to the city of course. It is just that I never really had the time, you know?” The man standing before her asks. “Cool,” she says in a dull sarcastic tone.

“Anything you think I should see today?” He asks excited to have someone to speak to. “Next customer please,” she waves him on and out of her sight. “Right, this is a business,” the man playfully jokes. “I hope you have,” he begins to say. “Buddy, pay for your shit and move the fuck on,” someone behind him in line interrupts. Still smiling he collects the small plastic bad that contains his purchase and exits the small convenience store. The overly priced bottled water and a snack for later in the day straining the cheap plastic.

Debating whether or not that would be considered a bodega? His thoughts wonder as he smiles at everyone he passes on the busy street. All the sad sunken faces walking the length of the street beside him. Pausing and stopping at the corner of street he looks on around him. The people move like robotic machines. Each one of them waiting their turn to move on, to forge ahead as though controlled by means out of their own control. How could they ever be so sad? He now wonders to himself.

The man looks at every little detail of the city. Taking it all in as he stares up to the heavens. His eyes following the cold steel and glass of the massive buildings that seem to scrap the sky all around him. The busy street filled with honking yellow taxis moving at a glaciers pace through the arteries of the big city. A coronary waiting to happen, but this is the city in all its glory.

The idyllic scenery washing over all of his senses. Nothing will take this day away from him he thinks to himself even as his eyes return back to the ground. The dark dingy sidewalk littered with trash as hundreds if not thousands of feet march on as if it was never there to begin with. He takes it all in never wanting to forget a thing about his day in the big city.

Through the crowd he spots an old-fashioned newspaper rack. I should get todays paper for my scrap book he thinks to himself. That would look really great with pictures of the city and the headline of the day. His mind racing at the possibilities. He steps out of the quickly moving crowd around him. A sea of people passes by as he fumbles with the change in his pocket. Juggling his recent purchases with one hand and the change with the other.

The quarter in his hand falls to the ground and he watches as its rolls its way towards the sea of people. He follows the quarter as it goes before falling on its side in the middle of all the trampling feet that surrounds him once again. He bends down to reach for it moving his hand just in time before a passerby’s foot replaces the same exact spot. Relieved that his hand wasn’t crushed he checks his hand and only to find he came up empty.

He watches as the quarter returns to motion before his eyes. Passing feet kicking it around the dingy sidewalk until it is gone and out of sight. “It’s only a quarter,” he thinks out loud on his way back to paper rack. The man digs deeper into his pocket as if to find something buried deep within. All he finds is a nickel, two quarters, and a dollar. A quarter short he joins the crowd once again and walks back towards the convenience store just down the block.

With the dollar still in his hand he enters the little store once again. The line in the store doesn’t seem to have gotten any shorter. I’m sure in a city like this it is busy like this all day long. Hour after hour, person after person until the lights turn out and the doors are locked. If that even happens at all he wonders. Walking up to the counter without a second thought. “Excuse me, I was wondering if,” he begins to say before she interrupts him.

“Get in line like everyone else,” she says in a dead tone. “Yeah, asshole what the fuck do you think this is?” Someone barks from the line. “I just need four quarters. I wasn’t trying to cut in line or anything,” he tries to explain to those around him. “We all need something dipshit that’s why we are here. Some fucking people,” another person protests in line.

Feeling guilty the man walks to the back of the snaking line to wait his turn. He tries to talk to those around him as he waits, but no one shows any interest in talk to him. No one wants anything to do with anything outside of their own little worlds let alone that have a stranger. Finally, he makes his way to the counter. “Hello again,” he says to the clerk to no fanfare.

“Can I get,” the man starts to ask once again with the dollar firmly in his hand. “Change for a dollar,” a voice next to him proclaims shoving their own dollar in front of the cashier. The clerk takes the dollar without question and hands the stranger back four quarters. “You need something or what?” The clerk asks him with wide annoyed eyes. The man stands there stunned by what he just witnessed.

“I don’t have all day man. What do you want?” The clerk asks growing more agitated. “I just, I need change for a dollar,” he says in a deflated tone. The clerk takes the dollar from his hand and gives him four quarters as well. “Next time you need to purchase something,” she snaps at him.

Confused the man wanders away from the counter and back out on to the street. There are just things that I don’t understand about this city. It’s my first time. I will get used to the people in time. Everyone is different everywhere you go. He assures himself on the way back to the paper rack. The man puts his quarters into the machine. One after the other until he hears the click of the old metal lock releasing.

Pulling the heavy metal door down by the handle with one hand and reaching in with the other. “Never take the top one,” he reminds himself out loud. Why this thought pops in his mind he may never know. Digging for the best paper amongst the few still left inside he reads today’s headline. “Things are looking up. Construction begins on the city’s newest high-rise,” he reads.

I bet that is something to see he thinks finding the copy he wants a few layers down. The cheap plastic handles of his previous purchase tears under the strain of its contents and fall to the ground. Without a thought the man lets go of the handle to try and save his things. In an instant, the heavy metal door slams back into to place. The man screams in agony as the heavy metal door locks in place.  

Falling to his knees under his own weight next to the machine. His trapped arm restrained awkwardly above his head as he processes everything happening to him.  No one stops. No one looks to see where the sound of weeping is coming from. They only keep walking past the man as if he was never there to begin with.

It takes him a moment to fight through the pain. Tears streaming down his face and his arm screaming back at him in pain. “Assess the situation,” he says to himself breathing heavy between the words. Already his shoulder begins to hurt from the awful angle in which he fell to his knees. Taking his free hand, he plants it on top of the machine. Slowly and carefully attempting to lift himself up off his knees.

Fighting through the pain he manages to get up from the ground. Bracing his weight against the machine he tries to move his trapped hand within the machine. He fights the urge to scream as his fingers move only slightly. Fearing he will only make things worse he abandons any thought of simply pulling his arm free. “Help,” he says in a low voice to the ever-passing people.

“Help,” he says louder, but no one even looks over at him. Desperate he tries to pull the handle once again, but it is firmly locked in place by rusting old bolts and pins. What remains of the white plastic bag flapping in soft breeze of passing cars. Determined to not give up or give in to his situation he stands up as straight as he can. Bracing and adjusting his beaten up and tired body to leverage himself the best he can.

With everything he has he pulls at the handle once again. “What the fuck,” he screams as the door tries to close even more. The door pressing tighter against his skin. The man pounds the top of the machine in frustration. “Can someone please help me?” His voice straining to the simple request. “Looks like you are in a tight spot,” someone in a nice business suit answers his plea for help.

 “Thank you so much for stopping. My arm is stuck and I think that it is broken or breaking. I don’t know,” the man pleads to the stranger. “Do you have any quarters?” He asks the stranger. “I don’t sadly,” the stranger shrugs. “How about you? You got any money?” The stranger asks with a smile. “I used all my spare change to open the door earlier,” the man tries to explain.

The stranger reaches for the man’s back pocket looking for his wallet. With his good arm the man swats at the stranger’s hand. “What are you doing?” He asks confused. The stranger dances around the man’s good arm, “Trying to help you asshole. You got money or not?” The stranger doesn’t wait for an answer as he kicks the man in the back of one of his knees.

Involuntarily the man falls to his knees all over again. His weight crashing down against his trapped arm. The stranger keeps kicking him as he slides further towards the pavement. In the ribs, in the back over and over. With each kick the man can feel the door closing tighter and tighter against his trapped arm. With one final swift kick the stranger slams the man’s body against the machine and his arm finally cracks in two unable to cope under the pressure.

The man’s screams grow louder as the stranger runs his hands up and down his body looking for anything of value. The man still tries to fight him off, but the pain is too much for him to bare anymore. He passes out from the shock of it all. The stranger finds his wallet and takes what little money the man had saved up for this special day before moving on with his own.

Hours, minutes go by before the man wakes up to the dripping sound of blood coming from the machine. Drop after drop landing on the pavement next to him. The sounds of the city have grown quieter all around him as the sun has disappeared behind the tall buildings. He awakens with nothing more than his underwear and his arm still very much stuck in the machine.

Broken and beaten he fights to find the strength to do anything at all.  Two random people approach the machine and one of them starts putting quarters into the machine. “Things are looking up?” He mocks as he reads the headline out loud looking through the glass and past the man’s dangling arm. “Things are looking up my ass,” the other jokes.

“The homeless problem in this city is getting out of control,” one of them says disgusted. “I mean look at this,” he says point at the man on the ground. “Tell me about it,” the other huffs. “It’s mid-day fuck face. Why not get a fucking job like the rest of us?” One of them demands to know. The man tries to say something, but nothing comes out. As the last quarter goes into the machine it finally releases his arm from its tight grasp.

The stranger pulls open the door and the man’s broken and bloody arm falls out of the machine. It lands with a soft thud against the man’s bare chest. The stranger grabs all of the papers in the machine out of frustration. “Fucking ruined,” he exclaims. “Your fucking blood is all over every one of these papers,” he shouts at him in anger. The stranger tosses the bloody stack of papers onto the man before kicking him in the stomach.

“Way to fucking go you worthless bum.” His friend spits on the man before they walk off. The man lays there naked on the dirty ground clutching the bloody papers with his good arm, “Thank you.”

And there are people who want to argue that there is no god?…

This story and many others can be found in Broken Thoughts Vol. 1: Between Me and You… I’ll be the first to admit that this story is very different for me… Deeper in meaning and not very heavy on the horror… I will also admit that writing this story was a turning point for my writing in general…

Looking back is always hard… For me because I have written so many things since this story… I feel cringe about the whole thing… I feel cringe talking about myself or anything I have done in general… Hard to believe I know… that a man that hides behind a mask is shy and hates himself…

Don’t let my lack of self confidence sway you from commenting… I truly want to know what you think… I may be shy about it… but I am proud of this story… For myself my favorite part is how I was able to link the whole thing to an over arching commentary about life… That was the real turning point in my writing I spoke about a second ago… Up to this point… mostly I wrote little flashes of things… Tiny self-contained stories that didn’t need to go real far…

This story to me bridges the gap from then to what I write now… Something I very much needed to work on when I first set out on this journey… Tiny self-contained stories are wonderful and I still write them when I can or the idea dictates… but pushing myself to say something more than the obvious… was a pretty major goal for me… and helped me write bigger and better stories… Including this one…

As far as the subject matter… I have a warped sense about the idea of being homeless… it wasn’t discussed in this story… and was something I had to work through to better understand how to write this story… That’s a mouth full… Long story short I know a few people personally… Who have chosen openly to be homeless for their own reasons… This story isn’t about them because I feel no empathy for them… not anymore at least…

Not when there are actual people out there trying their best only to get the shit kicked out of them… Which in this instance is the main character… the man… He is naive and full of false claims that we all look out for each other… shocker we really don’t… His journey starts with the worker and the people in line proving that point… He tolerates it because what other choice do we have?…

He gets that we are all out here living our lives and some people are just rude… uncaring… but that is only a small percentage of the population… heavy shrug… so he goes on about his day… until he comes across something he wants… something that should be easily obtainable… a simple paper… News is something I slipped in about how it guides our understanding of the world around us… Comes back into play at the end…

The headline… Things Are Looking Up… breeds the idea that life is good and conveys the notion I needed later… Of course everything goes to shit… this is a story by me after all… the machine breaks… symbolizing the idea that not everything works as it should… that despite our best efforts all it takes is one small thing to fuck us all… health… broken arm… lack of money… no more quarters/ not the right kind of credit for whatever… The machine does a lot of heavy lifting…

Horrific as it is that the machine breaks and fucks up his arm… It is the people around him that are truly terrifying… The everyday people walking by… Granted I will listen to all arguments that we shouldn’t and can’t help every single person we pass by… And agree because we are all trying to live our lives out here after all… It doesn’t make us any less of a monster in our own right conclusions…

Good news though he doesn’t die… gets pretty wrecked but he is hanging in there… he still has a chance and really that is all any of really have… Down but not out… What comes to his rescue?… A businessman… the government for my purposes… and the government is willing to help… that’s what they are there for after all… but it is going to cost you… Even better despite the cost your burden isn’t going to actually be lifted…

Why didn’t I go with a police officer?… You may be asking… Because I wanted a man that could easily be confused for a politician to really hammer home my point… The absence of police officers was also intentional… So the politician offers to help and doesn’t do shit… Back on his knees once again… the man spirals out… pencil in addiction… pencil in an absence of time for his whole life to disappear while he isn’t looking…

Finally someone stops by the machine… one of us finally stops by… One of us hard working individuals that is just trying to enjoy some of the sweet sweet precious down time we worked so hard to obtain… but by now the man is beaten… robbed… broken by all definitions of what we would call a man of the people… This broken man is not only taking up our space… but look at him… look at how gross he is… there is no place for him in our society looking like that… being like that… the city should really do something about people like that…

We’ve come full circle… there was plenty of time for us to have done something before the man sunk that low… there was plenty of time to get the help that he needed… More importantly the headline comes back into play… Things Are Looking Up… said by the media… Looking up my ass… said by the stranger actually standing on the street… Media says one thing and our perception says another… So which one is true?…

I don’t know but it’s been said… It is better to be alive than it is to be dead… Is it though?… Is life fair?… Are we fair?… Should we have helped that man?… Maybe he got what he deserved trying to live out here like the rest of us… And we wonder why we are so paranoid to even try…

Hopefully you enjoyed it… If not I’m not sure why you’ve gotten this far in my pointless self deprecation and commentary… More stories of all kinds can be found in Vol. 1 of my Broken Thoughts book series…

Hope all is well…