Fred Aiken Writing

The kitchen feels naked. A cold draft wiggles through the room. Francis stared at the void within his refrigerator. There is plenty and nothing. Plenty of nothing. Half-empty to nearly-entirely-empty condiment bottles. An opened, though pretty full liter of grapefruit soda. Baking soda. A jar of organic pickles that his sister gifted to him 2 Xmas’s ago because she had been working at a health food store and took home all the expired food and gift it to friends and family for birthdays and holidays. There was also a substance in the fridge that Francis could not identify if pressed. 

In summation, Francis had nothing to eat. 

He did, however, have a loaf of bread in his pantry that only had a fleck of aspergillus that he could have easily removed and eaten around. At least, he had done so in the past with varying degrees of success. Which is to say that Francis had never died from eating slightly moldy bread.

But Francis was in a pampering mood. He dressed appropriately for what the weatherman—or was it a weather person? he could never keep up—said the weather would be like, and headed to the Quick Trip down the street from  his home. The gas station convenience store chain did not have the best culinary selections in the world, but they had plenty of guilty-pleasure foods that Francis enjoyed for a myriad of circumstances.

If he was feeling down on a given day, then he would buy one of those jalapeno hotdogs that rolled downhill under a heat lamp while collecting grease and sodium from all the previous hotdogs that had taken the same path, time immemorial. 

Francis collected a few assortment of polyethylene delights that he could easily carry with him to the cashier counter and then back home.  While the Quick Trip cashier scanned the items, Francis noticed a figure in the corner of his periphery standing in front of the beer section. The figure appeared to be an elderly woman in her mid-to-late 70’s, though maybe slightly older; Francis was never any good at guessing people’s age, especially those of the fairer sex. But this elderly lady stood completely still. A statue in front of the Coors Light neon sign.

The cashier noticed Francis looking at the lady in the beer section of the store, and asked, “Do you know her?”

“No.”

“I was about to say, because she’s been standing there for nearly 4 hours straight, barely moved a muscle, and we’re not entirely sure what to do about her.” 

“Have you tried talking to her?”

“Of course. She doesn’t respond. She just stands there, a bit catatonic. I figure we might just have to call the paramedics to come check her out, or something.”

Francis approaches the elderly woman in front of the beer section of the gas station. He tried to strike up a conversation with her, but it was slow going. As the cashier said, she hovered catatonically. So Francis opened the beer fridge door and grabbed a random 6 pack of beer. He hadn’t drank in nearly 4 years, and he was never much of a beer connoisseur. He claimed that it all tasted the same. Though he hoped that he had chosen a fairly inexpensive beer brand.

“Would you like to join me?” Francis asked the elderly woman while motioning to the beer he had just picked out.

She grabbed his free hand without saying a word, and the two walked out of the Quick Trip and into the stale, foggy dusk without knowing who or what they were. Thoughts disappeared.