Sinta the Sharker

It just isn’t working. Like before, like the other times.

The whole process had seemed so easy when Sinta was younger, exploring alone in the comfort of privacy. The parts were made for each other, what could be more simple?

Maybe if he changes their position.

Thick forearms, bearing small scars where the fishing hooks have snagged flesh, roll her onto her back. Sinta hopes that gravity will aid him this time. But it is not gravity or strength that Sinta lacks.

Aboard his trawler, he feels assured. Sharks are terrible predators, but Sinta does not fear them. He knows sharks better than they know themselves.

He knows how to call them by flinging chum into his wake. He knows how to hold the snare pole so the beast catches its own jawbone. He knows where to apply the heated knife to remove its fins without touching the bone, and he knows how to hoist a finless shark off the deck and back into the forgetting sea.

What Sinta does not know is how to control an organ which does not seem to be a part of himself.

In the dark bedroom the flesh underneath his hands looks like the pale blue of a fish’s underbelly. A cold, quiet part of his brain conjures images of his hands and the knife, the slick animal struggling under his sure grip.

And his body continues the mechanical, pointless motions without success.

Tom the Temp Worker

A stack of envelopes on his left, an empty tub on his right. Left hand goes to the stack. With his thumb he flips the opened side to his right hand. Like a squirming earthworm his index finger finds the opening and with the thumb pries open the package, pinching its contents out.

As he stacks their folded innards neatly he tosses the envelopes to a bin at his feet, paper chaff showing on his dark slacks like snow on the wet pavement outside his window. His fingers turn blue from ink and dirt.

10:30. Break time. 15 minutes.

Watching the blind, blinding snow through the window. Coffee is free and awful. It scalds his throat and sits testily in his empty stomach. Fox Business News drones in concert with The Price Is Right on the opposite wall, both turned low.

Tom can’t help but feel like he’s underwater.

Radwa the Rumba Player

When the Leader entered, the whole room was like iron filings and a magnet. There was a sound like the wind just before a cat pounces.

Radwa rested his bow on his harp delicately. He took deep breaths, waiting for his cue, letting the aromatics of the prelude begin to warm. The bass player set to plucking with his right hand, the one missing a pinkie.

The Leader took a seat at a circular table and his entourage of co-conspirators and thugs filled the other seats like bullets in a revolver.

Kafa began working on the drums, and the beat rippled the water in the pitchers set atop each table.

But no one had touched their glasses. They were waiting for the Leader.

Gregor the Garbageman

Sometimes they are very heavy, filled with wet leaves or lumber. Gregor has a permanent crick in his shoulder where he rests the cans. Walking to the truck, his head throbs and dirty sweat beads out onto his brow.

Meanwhile the driver Martin slurps the pale brown drops pooled in the lid of his coffee cup, held in one hand while his other manipulates an oversize steering wheel. He takes several gos at a tight alley turn and then, signaling to his partner in the side mirror, shifts into Park and waits for Gregor to hop off and haul the garbage over to the truck.

Gregor listens to the throb in his head and thinks how winter is the most savage season. Children injuring themselves playing on ice. Their parents making themselves sick on strong liquor.

Just before dawn there is a terrifying stillness and while looking at all the city's alleyways and empty bus stops Gregor imagines cold blue fingers curling, tightening their grip.

Pierre the Perfume Tester

Pierre has a nosebridge like the hump of a camel. His nostrils, attractive cylinders which give the organ an aquatic aesthetic, would look large on any other face. On his they only accentuate the massiveness of the rest of the nose.

He sits on a high-backed, velvet-cushioned chair without armrests. It is a small room, and the chair is the only piece of furniture. A yellow paisley pattern covers the walls and there are no windows. He is dressed sharply and his chest swells slightly as he breathes.

A door is opened and the scientist pushes a simple steel cart laden with rows of corked test tubes. The tubes contain liquids in a variety of shades, mostly amber.

He pulls a notepad from the pocket of his lab coat and hands it to the well-dressed man, who has his own pen.

Silently, the scientist lifts one of the vials and, uncorking it, hands it to Pierre. Pierre draws the object to his heroic nose and sniffs it, just once.

He takes a moment to scribble some thoughts on the notepad, then sniffs the potion again.

He holds his breath almost a full minute, wearing the expression of someone starting to remember something. Then, exhaling, he writes some more. He returns the test tube to the scientist, who sets it aside and begins to uncork another.

“Passion,” says Pierre suddenly, “is the perfume of life.”

Fernando the Fry Cook

Fernando sticks two fingers into the slit he’s made with the serrated knife and scoops out the pink meat in clumps which stick to his fingers.

“What? This is good meat here. You can taste, see---it won’t hurt you...” he sucks a grape-sized piece of raw pork sausage onto his broad lips, and with a lick of his tongue like a coral eel zipping out of its hole and then quickly back in, the morsel disappears.

“Listen, if you’re gonna stand there with your Little-Miss-Shits-Roses attitude, I’d just as soon you get lost. I’ve got to brown these sausage crumbles and stick them in the freezer before I can clock out. 6:30 a.m., people want their eggs & sausage.”

Dollops of the gristly meat sizzle madly when Fernando drops them into the warmed oil. As he pushes them around the griddle they transform into sweaty, grayish-brown clumps.

“Ya see, I believe people should be at peace with their food, their bodies, their bodily functions, yaknowhatImean? Like this pig I’m cookin’ here, he’s not so different from me. When he was alive, he ate and shat and slept just like I do. And then somebody killed him, and all his shitting and eating days were over.”

As Fernando orates he makes chopping motions with his spatula, as if he were holding an extension of the knife that bled the animal, the cleaver that butchered it, the grinder that sausaged it.

“Now I just ate some of this pig. Later I’m going to shit him out. Rinse, lather, repeat...and then eventually I die. After that they can throw me in the pig trough for all I care. Ha!”

Sealing the last of the crumbles in its Tupperware, Fernando pulls a hairy forearm across his sweaty forehead.

“There’s one thing I’ll tell ya. Whatever ya do, you gotta be at peace with yourself.”

The Atomic Man Pt. 7

Regaining consciousness only a few seconds later Charlie found himself slumped in his seat, car drifting on momentum down a darkened residential street. His lips and nose ached where they had hit the steering wheel. He braked and the slight change in velocity made his head spin.

For three shaky breaths he thought of nothing as the world stopped squirming in front of his eyes. The truck was nowhere in sight. Through his windshield he could see that the hood of his poor Tercel had crumpled like wet paper.

He pulled to the curb and parked. Then he realized where he was: the 1600 block of First Street, by Bethany's place. He checked himself out in the rearview: not too bad, just a thin trickle of blood from his nose.

Reaching in the glove compartment, he tore off a corner of a partially used Taco Bell napkin and stuffed it into his nostril. It didn't hurt at all, which he chalked up to a lingering drunk. Actually now that he thought about it, he wasn't angry any more either---he felt kinda good. Better than good. He felt warm, like the summer sun emerging from behind a raincloud. His luck was definitely turning around. For sure.

He saw a shadow moving behind the curtains in the window of the house he had parked in front of. "Sure I'm crazy," he hummed as he stepped out of the car and walked towards the door.

"Hey there Bethany."

With big curious doe eyes Charlie's old classmate regarded him from inside her carpeted foyer. She wore an oversize Cleveland Browns T-shirt and denim shorts. Charlie remembers her from high school as a shy girl with pimples and a flat chest; they were neighbors and usually walked home together. He could remember one dark November night when she had been late at school meeting with Debate Team, and she had pretended to be angry at her mom for making him escort her home, but then had laughed at some joke he made and in that moment Charlie realized he had a crush.

"Hi Charlie." Oh wow, thought Charlie, she has grown up. It was the voice of a woman, a wiser woman who was wary of childhood friends showing up unannounced late in the night. No more acne either. Now if only that Browns shirt weren't so loose...

"Are you alright?"

"Oh this? Don't worry, it's just the dry air. What're you up to?" He silently congratulated himself on his quickly improvised explanation.

The pretty doe eyes studied him for a long moment. "Making Hamburger Helper. You hungry?"

Charlie stepped inside and was careful to shut the screen door behind him.