The Atomic Man Part 5: The Third Egg

He cracks the third egg rudely on the side of the pan, noticing a small flake of shell fall in, promising an unappetizing moment later on. Charlie isn't worried about moments, only the ruling hunger in the pit of his stomach. He grows more impatient for the eggs to cook, turning up the flame.

The condom is held between two fingers as the rest are busy unclasping her bra. He can feel the ribs in her back with the sensitive parts of his wrists and it's slightly unnerving. He feels he's playing an instrument. It doesn't want him. It's only performing a function.

He starts to resent her, this mysterious woman who turns off the lights and who is such a quick draw on the prophylactics. She's just---he can't remember her name. Becky? Katie?

Probably not her real name anyway. Probably a fake name she uses on the weekends when she's looking for a fuck. A fake name for a fake woman.

The unopened condom is crushed under her chill bony back as she falls receptively onto the bed with sheets too dark to see but probably filthy.

The eggs sit dry and overcooked in the hot skillet. Turning off the heat, Charlie scrapes the turgid lump onto a not-entirely-clean plastic plate. A brown and grey remainder sticks to the pan like moss.

"Fuck it," he thinks as he puts the pan under the faucet, filling it with water to let it soak and be cleaned tomorrow, or the day after.

Plate in one hand and coffee in the other, he returns to the sweat-damp sofa where his day began to shovel down breakfast in front of the Saturday morning cartoons. Finished, he scratches his scrotum through the flap in his boxers, stupefied.

"Christ, I needed that."

The Atomic Man Pt. 4: The Second Egg

Searching for the light switch, they find it and reveal the drab severity of their furtively adopted surroundings. She tells him to turn it off.

Just like that. It's not a request. No endearing "dear" or "babe" attached to the end, because he wasn't any of these things to her. He was the tall guy in a striped shirt who outside the bar in between sets had offered her a cigarette, making a flat joke about British slang, calling it a "fag." She had seemed sweet to him then, laughing softly.

She pushes a condom into his hand, not even asking if he'd brought his own. He thinks then that she must be used to situations such as this. The etiquette of strangers meeting in strange rooms. He wonders whether she's into it as much as he is, whether she's putting on a well-rehearsed show whose intermission they had just reached.

Two yellows sit in a viscous pool of translucent liquid which has begun to congeal around the edges. Charlie's stomach churns but anyway he thinks maybe that's hunger and decides to pluck another egg from the carton, thinking "Christ, I need it."

The Atomic Man Pt. 3: The First Egg

A familiar rotten taste in his throat and an uncomfortable humidity in his crotch tells Charlie immediately upon waking that he has slept in his clothes. The fierce midday sun glowers at him through his living room window where he is sprawled on the couch. Rising, he attends to his first drugs of the day. A tall glass of water, cigarettes, coffee's on the brew. Stronger coffee than the last time because each time he makes it these days he decides to put more grounds in, thinking, "Christ, do I need it."

The first egg feels soft and malleable, like muddy water in his palm. The tips of his fingers caress its shell as he moves it between his thumb and index finger, and cracks it against the lip of the skillet.

The neon lights revealing chipping plaster on the walls of a motel that charges by the hour, a consignment for hormonal burdens. Passions in faded rouge and teal walk drunkenly down a dingy hallway. The lights in their room are off and they stay that way as the door shuts.