Friday, June 6, 2008

Some days, he pondered murder in an almost scholastic sense. The logistics of it. How, if he leapt across the counter at his dead-end job in his dead-end life and dead-ended someone else permanently, he could get away with it. He was not the type to act out of passion; he would never kill someone without weeks, no, months of planning. And yet he wondered, with ten witnesses and a security camera, how he would escape.

It wasn't so much malice as it was distaste. Irritation. The sound of voice after voice clamoring for service, the look of people desperate for service and heedless of the line. Every "uuuummmm..." and "uhhhhhh..." as they stared at the menu added a new dimension of cruelty to their imaginary deaths.

Some days it was more visceral. He didn't consider body disposal, evidence disposal, any kind of disposal except the tossing aside of one suburban bastard's life with a spray of blood and the wet mulching of gore between his fingers. I could kill you with this espresso machine, he thought one day, the image unbidden. It bothered him that the subsequent thought as just, but I'd have to blind you with hot coffee first.

All this behind the bland, fixed smile of retail, and he would have worried if he hadn't heard his coworkers saying the same things.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'll go to Seattle's Best, instead.

LJ said...

sounds like the new job is going quite well!