Kitchen. Knife. Darkness. Rustle. Subtle sarcasm. Outrage. Curse.
Voodoo. Prayer. Fingers. Bandage.
Bleakness. A cut here. A cut there. Blood and more blood. Constant stream. Scream. Searing flesh. A thump in the darkness. A whistle in the great beyond.
But the moments gone.
Try again.
Are you interested in buying?
Not in the slightest, I said.
Then why are you here?
I thought you could answer that for me.
The man sitting in the car shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He looks over his shoulder, then back at me. You’re not a cop, are you?
I don’t respond. Instead I light a cigarette, but don’t smoke it.
Hey, I’m leaving if you don’t confirm or deny your status in relation to local PD.
…
I’ll shoot you.
I forget to respond. The man shoots me. It stings. But when I regain consciousness, I remember everything.
You know how close the words ‘anesthetic’ is to ‘aesthetic’. I get them confused all the time. Thank god for auto-correct, amiright.
Yeah, so what?
It means…that beauty was originally an alternative pain killer.
The two men watch as an asteroid heads toward the Earth. It looks like a moving sun getting closer and closer. Their eyes are attached to the asteroid and nothing else. Soft, pale speckles move across their field of vision.
One of the men moves a couple of feet to his right to get another angle on the asteroid. His eyes don’t leave the flames biting through the sky.
I imagine it’s a beauty not to feel pain.
Fred Aiken Writing 