Short Story 8

The man’s chin seemed to disappear when he looked anywhere but up.  He chewed with his mouth open ebbing anyone that watched him devour his food.  How anyone would make eating a salad such a spectacle was at one pint beyond me.  Not anymore, not after this debauchery . It made him sick, damn glutton.  The juice from a cherry tomato spilled from his mouth as he chomped and spoke at the same time.  “It could be anyone, anyone of us.  Look around you Simon.” He surveyed the outside patio of the “Speak Easy” restaurant making a grandiose gesture waving his arm in a 180 degree angel as he pointed everyone out.  “We can’t trust the government to do what is right here.  Hell we can’t trust each other.  Would you turn one of your family in if you found him to be turning pink?”  The question was obviously rhetorical but he desperately wanted the pigly man to shut up.  Maybe then he would wipe his mouth.  He opened his mouth to speak and was cut off during the middle of a “I…” “No, no don’t answer that I don’t want to know.”  Simion left his mouth open as he watched the pig man eat and go on saying the same thing a thousand different ways.   His mouth was mesmerizing on every (?).  It was the same hold the mystical archeus sirens held driving sailors to their doom.  So too was the pig man’s hole of filth.  He would have kept looking at the black hole if not for the commotion a few feet to his left.  A waiter was quickly trying to dab a fellow patron’s shirt attempting to mop up the glass of water just spilt.  “I am so sorry.  God I am so sorry,” the waiter repeated himself over and over, his face red with either quilt or embarrassment.  Probably the later.  The patron was unsuccessful trying to (?) the waiter and simultaneously stop him from touching him.  “Really it is ok.  No, you don’t have to do that.  Seriously I can manage.” The patron seemed anything but ok.  In fact he was becoming rather frantic.  When the waiter made one more attempt this time to wipe the liquid from the man’s face, he saw why. 

                The white linen clothe the gentle waiter used was splotched with some tan substance.  It was only by chance he saw it.  He realized without any alarm it was make up.  He momentarily flashed back in time to what seemed like now another reality, a dream world.  He could see his wife’s sensuous bare back and he could still remember how soft and smooth it was to touch.  She was smiling at him in the mirror, watching him watch her in the mirror.  She had a towlette in her hand she used to gently wipe the makeup he swore truthfully she did not need from her face.  It looked just like that.  Shouts broke him from his nostalgic trance. The man in questions face went from frantic to outright terror.  “Please!  No, it’s not my fault.”  The man fell from his chair his supplicate hands stretched outward.  He shifted on his knees to and fro begging them all.  He did not notice the pig man draw his gun. The pig man barely winked out of existence until the first shots rang out.  The kneeling man’s eyes clenched shut and the thud the bullet made was somehow louder to him than the gun shot.  The pink splotch where the makeup rubbed off seemed to stand out like some lecherous sore.  Tears sprang freely from the pink men’s eyes and there was something else on his face.  Relief?  The pig man proceeded to empty his weapon of bullets into the man’s body.  He was not a great shot, but he did not miss either.  Looking up at the (?) pigman he was struck by the man’s profile.  The wind seemed to have begun to howl as soon as the gun appeared.  His jacket full of wind much like a sail, everything fell victim to the wind.  As cups, plates, napkins and tablecloths were blown up and away at the winds convenience.  Even the pig man swayed with the wind.  The pig man turned to glare at him, his hair perfect. 

Within what seemed minutes, seconds, momenta a clean-up crew had appeared.  The vehicle appeared seemingly out of nowhere looking very much like an ambulance.  Flashing lights and all, but the color was all wrong.  It was sharp metallic silver. So sharp in fact, so overpowering.  He had seen this all before.  This was not his first cleansing as they called it.  Yet, this one was … different.  It was, wrong.  Like the taste you get after brushing your teeth every night for years until that one day you don’t.  That taste, so wrong, so there.  You cannot do anything else until you brush until you get rid of that taste.  Such was the feeling.  Watching everyone else go back to eating.  Back to their meaningless discussions.  As if nothing happened, and verily to them nothing happened.    Like the trash can that was full when you left for work only to return to find it empty.  You did not question why or where.  You knew or at one point you did.  Once you knew it became unimportant.  So he sat and somewhere distantly he was aware of the sordid pig man with his impermeable hair talking to him. 

 

The words being said were important and more than likely (?).  Words being said to fill up the silence.  Silence was outlawed, not truly, nothing was spoken out loud.  It was outlawed all he same.  Silence gave room for though and thought in society of sheep would be quite dangerous. Yet Simion was breaking tradition and allowing his silence to lead to just that.  He was at present in a state of metamorphosis.  His mind was a giant puzzle; each thought a piece that fit perfectly.  With each piece he wanted to cry.  How had he missed it all along?  It was all broken, so utterly devoid of any substance.