Short Short Series #1

Larry

by Brent Warren III

He woke up depressed.  He needed to get out of bed, but he had no desire.  He hit the snooze button and stared at the ceiling until the alarm rang again.  “Alright, damn it!” he said, hitting the clock.

He pulled himself up, and swung his legs out of the bed.  Slouching over his beer belly, he dragged his hands through his thinning white hair and then sighed.  He stood and walked to his bathroom.  After taking his daily shit, he stood before the mirror.

           His jowls, he noticed, had started to sag more.  The bags under his eyes had grown noticeably darker and pronounced as he slept less and less each year.  “This fucking blows,” he said to himself.  He scratched his ass and then went back to his bedroom.

           He grabbed a clean white polo from his chest drawer and then put on the pants he’d worn the last three days.  He cinched the belt tight and buckled it, letting the excess end flop loose because the leather loop and fallen off long ago.  He didn’t care.  And then, just because he liked them, he put on his red suspenders.  He’d been told by his coworker, a young girl who spent most of her time perusing fashion magazines, that he shouldn’t wear the suspenders because they accentuated his beer belly. “It’s unattractive,” she said.

           “Fuck you,” he replied.

           Dressed, he ate his dry toast and drank his reheated coffee from the day before.  He read a tattered copy of Bukowski, one of many he’d borrowed from the bookstore.  That was the only real perk of working there as far as he was concerned.

           He finished his breakfast, cleaned the dishes, and then left for work.

Sitting in his old 98’ Oldsmobile in the bookstore parking lot, he stared at the front door, watching his young coworker dance to the tune from her little, white earbuds.  He sighed.

           What’s the point, he thought.  A seventy-year-old man still working as a clerk in a bookstore.  What a fucking joke, he thought.

           He started the car, hesitated, and said, “Fuck it!”

           He pulled out of the parking lot, turned left, and drove to the nearest bar.