BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEEEEEEP.
He presses his palms to his eyes, rubbing hard then dragging his hands down his face, stretching the skin and exposing the underside of his eyeballs. God he was tired, could he get through another day? Why was he in this situation? He didn’t remember making the deal in the first place, a terrible deal, it amounted to indentured servitude. Why would he ever make such a deal? Tiredness made it hard to think, clouding his mind. Maybe his parents had signed him up? He recalled them labouring away through his childhood, with just a bit more sleep he could think clearly. Digging his elbows into the bed behind him, he pushed himself upright and swiped at the alarm, silencing its infernal whining. Who would agree to sell five of every seven days of their life? It made no sense but here he was again getting out of bed to do just that. It would be easier for all if they could just remove these days of life he was squandering and implant them directly into the rich, extending their lives while shortening his, it amounted to the same thing. Work sighed and got out of bed.
Instalment Thirty Seven
Have you ever thought about what attacks your hearts?
Not smoking, drinking nor eating fatty foods, not sitting on the couch. Not cholesterol clogging up your precious plumbing. Those are excuses, things you tell each other to keep calm and carry on, because living with the truth kills you.
I am what attacks your hearts.
The shocks of life, the scares, the near misses, the passing of loved ones, all make the heart grow weak over time. Forming fine, fine cracks like aged china or porcelain, fissures in the pump you call heart. I tiptoe around you every day, finding these weakness like water across rock, a war of attrition and corrosion.
Once a crack gives, I find my way in.
Memory does not live in the brain but in the heart and old hearts are full of forgotten ghosts. This is why I rarely attack the young. The ghosts of every heartbreak you have ever known. The ones you remember and the ones you don’t the big and the small, your first love and the moment you realised people lied. All stored in you.
Your ancestors knew me as Losian.
I am Loss and I am what kills you.
Not smoking, drinking nor eating fatty foods, not sitting on the couch. Not cholesterol clogging up your precious plumbing. Those are excuses, things you tell each other to keep calm and carry on, because living with the truth kills you.
I am what attacks your hearts.
The shocks of life, the scares, the near misses, the passing of loved ones, all make the heart grow weak over time. Forming fine, fine cracks like aged china or porcelain, fissures in the pump you call heart. I tiptoe around you every day, finding these weakness like water across rock, a war of attrition and corrosion.
Once a crack gives, I find my way in.
Memory does not live in the brain but in the heart and old hearts are full of forgotten ghosts. This is why I rarely attack the young. The ghosts of every heartbreak you have ever known. The ones you remember and the ones you don’t the big and the small, your first love and the moment you realised people lied. All stored in you.
Your ancestors knew me as Losian.
I am Loss and I am what kills you.
Instalment Thirty Six
People didn’t know what they’d be losing when this placed closed, Nostalgia sighed. It wasn’t a video store, it was a video library. You didn’t come here to buy, you came to borrow, to learn. Movies belong on shelves, not only can you browse at your leisure, you are literally forced to browse, there’s no other way to find what you want, what you don’t want or what you don’t know you do want.
He had started the place way back when, split the store between VHS and Betamax, Beta faded but VHS survived, laserdiscs came and went and now the place was full of DVDs. But it wasn’t the form the movies took that he loved. Buying a movie for ten bucks at the gas station? Streaming them at home? You don’t know what movies you’re missing anymore! Until you’ve desperately stalked those isles on a Saturday night, turning to someone to exasperatedly hiss “Well have you seen this?!” you wont know the thrill of discovery, of finding a film you never knew you didn’t know about.
He would miss it.
They would miss it.
You never really know until you know, he mused, and then it’s too late.
He had started the place way back when, split the store between VHS and Betamax, Beta faded but VHS survived, laserdiscs came and went and now the place was full of DVDs. But it wasn’t the form the movies took that he loved. Buying a movie for ten bucks at the gas station? Streaming them at home? You don’t know what movies you’re missing anymore! Until you’ve desperately stalked those isles on a Saturday night, turning to someone to exasperatedly hiss “Well have you seen this?!” you wont know the thrill of discovery, of finding a film you never knew you didn’t know about.
He would miss it.
They would miss it.
You never really know until you know, he mused, and then it’s too late.
Instalment Thirty Five
“Always have to be right? Always have to be right?” Persnickety exclaimed, rising from her chair and smoothing out the wrinkles from her skirt as she did so. “I don’t always have to be right. You are making it sound as if me being right is a requirement. That I deliberately bend the facts, that I distort the truth to become right out of necessity. That being right is something I have to have, a need, an addiction, a truth tablet I must pop once a day. That is just not true. I don’t have to be right, I don’t happen to be right. Simply put – I am right. There were facts involved and I knew them. You did not know them and now you offhandedly imply that I am at fault, that I have a character flaw because I know what I say, when I say it. It isn’t even so much that I am always right, it is that I am never wrong. It is called being smart. Next time please just say, There goes Persnickety, she is constantly correct, she doesn’t have to be correct, she just is.”
And with that Persnickety triumphantly exited the job interview.
And with that Persnickety triumphantly exited the job interview.
Instalment Thirty Four
We called all her boyfriends 'Rings' because she wrapped each one of them around her little finger, just to prove she could. But this new guy she was seeing, he was cut from a different cloth, we could tell from her reports of their very first dinner.
“It was a date which will live in infamy,” she exploded at brunch the next day, “He made me split the bill and after that he didn’t even try to sleep with me!”
Of course she went back for more.
She tried the old ‘three-calls-from-him' to 'one-call-from-her' power grab but he paid it no mind.
Then, when in place of an engagement ring presented on bended knee, he pretended to punch her with a custom set of brass knuckles in her size, we all thought it was curtains for him. Not only did she accept his proposal, she proudly sported the unorthodox sign of betrothal everyday saying, “He calls me his li’l slugger.”
“But you wont really be taking his name will you?” we asked, “You always said you would be Ms Andry forever.”
“Forget boring Ms Andry,” she said, “From now on we will be as one, I will be Ms Ogyny.”
“It was a date which will live in infamy,” she exploded at brunch the next day, “He made me split the bill and after that he didn’t even try to sleep with me!”
Of course she went back for more.
She tried the old ‘three-calls-from-him' to 'one-call-from-her' power grab but he paid it no mind.
Then, when in place of an engagement ring presented on bended knee, he pretended to punch her with a custom set of brass knuckles in her size, we all thought it was curtains for him. Not only did she accept his proposal, she proudly sported the unorthodox sign of betrothal everyday saying, “He calls me his li’l slugger.”
“But you wont really be taking his name will you?” we asked, “You always said you would be Ms Andry forever.”
“Forget boring Ms Andry,” she said, “From now on we will be as one, I will be Ms Ogyny.”
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