I'm back from the open road
Road tripping is a blast. Stop when you want, where you want. Pie and coffee in small Midwestern towns where people itch to know your business.
Just driving around? Like a vacation?
Yes.
No interstates, just a few miles spent on four-lane highways. Mostly two-lane blacktop, hills, straightaways.
Anyway, it was an eye-opener. Not really the road trip with no specific destination I've always talked about, but a sweeping loop to visit family and friends over a long birthday weekend (and I didn't pay for a single drink, bonus).
The experience brought up some short fiction ideas.
This isn't one of them. It was scribbled in a notebook before I left.
Hunger
There’s no sense denying what you’ve become.
What you are.
There’s a breeze and it’s strong enough to move scraps of garbage across the concrete. He feels it, makes a move to touch his head with hands stuffed into latex gloves, wrapped in baseball batting gloves. Everything is in place, as it should be. The watch cap is acrylic, and has been scrubbed. No sense in leaving fibers around.
Hairs, that’s far worse.
So he shaves his entire body before going out to hunt. It’s become part of the ritual, like the tight Lycra undergarments.
They’re expense, way too expense to burn in the apartment’s incinerator, but that’s what’ll happen.
Soon enough.
This makes the third day in a row she’s stopped for coffee at the same time, at the same place.
Way too easy, he thinks.
But he likes how she seems so happy, vibrant.
Just driving around? Like a vacation?
Yes.
No interstates, just a few miles spent on four-lane highways. Mostly two-lane blacktop, hills, straightaways.
Anyway, it was an eye-opener. Not really the road trip with no specific destination I've always talked about, but a sweeping loop to visit family and friends over a long birthday weekend (and I didn't pay for a single drink, bonus).
The experience brought up some short fiction ideas.
This isn't one of them. It was scribbled in a notebook before I left.
Hunger
There’s no sense denying what you’ve become.
What you are.
There’s a breeze and it’s strong enough to move scraps of garbage across the concrete. He feels it, makes a move to touch his head with hands stuffed into latex gloves, wrapped in baseball batting gloves. Everything is in place, as it should be. The watch cap is acrylic, and has been scrubbed. No sense in leaving fibers around.
Hairs, that’s far worse.
So he shaves his entire body before going out to hunt. It’s become part of the ritual, like the tight Lycra undergarments.
They’re expense, way too expense to burn in the apartment’s incinerator, but that’s what’ll happen.
Soon enough.
This makes the third day in a row she’s stopped for coffee at the same time, at the same place.
Way too easy, he thinks.
But he likes how she seems so happy, vibrant.
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