#not a single thought. just emptiness. just static. brain was fried to a crisp and has ceased to function

[ashtcnirwin]

how badly did work drain me today?

well, when i was in the shower just now, i was scrubbing off some ink on my left arm from when i hastily jotted down a bunch of vitals there mid-shift, and when i was done with that, i moved onto the ink on my right arm

to attempt to scrub off my tattoo

took me a good five seconds to realise why it wouldn't budge

[morenasangre]

Seven Words: 1

1.

Seven words.

He stared out the window, eyes watering as the muted vibration of the engine thrummed through white knuckles. They shouldn’t be there. But they were. Pale letters glowing through the plastic covering, flickering agreeably with their neighbors as the backlight wavered in the urban darkness.

Seven words.

He breathed, acrid exhaust and redolent over-fried grease filling the stale air. He gulped it down like a drowning victim fighting for survival, tasting its mundanity, its normalcy. This had to be a hallucination, a glitch in reality, like in that old movie he’d loved so much as a kid. It wasn’t really happening. Too much caffeine, too many meetings at work, too many late nights…

“Sir?” The nasal voice saturated with the hum of low-grade electronic transmission blared out of the speaker beside him, demanding, questioning with the relentless weariness of a minimum wage worker on the night shift. “Does that complete your order?”

“Yes.” The answer was automatic, programmed by years of habit. Fingers tightened against the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the text. He blinked. It was still there. Between the Double Stack and the Large Fry. Seven words. Not something to be ordered. Or maybe it was. Maybe that was his insight, his –

“Please pull around to the first window.”

He was sweating, irrational panic and unfamiliar uncertainty warring across his skin, the friction of their conflict summoning moisture that stained his armpits and made his logo-embroidered polo stick to his back in clammy solidarity. It was happening again. Why did it happen when he was alone, when there was no one else to confirm what everything said couldn’t be real, to give him the affirmation that he wasn’t mad, that it was really there, irrational, meaningless, and impossibly real?

“Sir? Please pull forward.”

“Um,” he licked dry lips, tongue feeling like a horror-movie prop pulled by some out of frame cable, a scarlet bit of flesh wiping a moist oral finger across chapstick-slick skin. “Seven words? I, uh, see that on the menu.”

There was silence, the faint crackle of static somewhere behind the speaker, pulsing in time with its lights. On the other side of the building, a traffic light changed, red tinting the sodium shine of headlights and the relentless glow of bright-bulbed advertising with a bloody aura. He shifted against the seat, damp fabric pulling at his skin with the movement, solidity of the car seat holding him in engineered comfort. With the sound of grinding thunder, the Employees Only door slammed open, feet crunched across gravel, and he braced, a thrill of excitement and fear bound together into a double helix of adrenaline tumbling down his spine in mutating energy. Someone was coming, and no matter what happened, at least he would know. Finally, someone would tell him why it was following him, what it meant.

Behind the sign, a shape moved, cap pulled down over its face, a wild ponytail of curling hair exploding like a shadow sketch of cartoon static beneath its restraint. He braced, sweaty palms rubbing against synthetic fabric of his slacks. A flame leapt into being for a moment, primitive flutter of heat impossibly real in the fluorescent and exhaust soaked twilight of urban midnight; dusky freckles and dull eyes caught in illumination for a single breath before they faded to the sullen cinders of a burning tobacco, hunching away to lean against a wall, lost in the despair of dead ends and spent paychecks.

“Please pull forward.” The voice was different, older, filled with the hubris of middle management and attainable aspiration. It locked onto the system of cells shaped by years of habit and training, by knowing how to climb the ladder, by annual reviews and artificial smiles. Without thought, his mouth curved into the expected pleasant expression, fingers curving at ten and two, and his foot pressed against the pedal, easing around the curved pavement, away from the sign and the words. Please. Pull. Forward. It was what you did.

The glass was open when he rolled up beside it, silver frame shining dully under a thousand impatient fingerprints and uncounted weary scratches. Chemical coolness washed out on the cold fluorescent light, shouldering its way across the gap between window and window, grease and despair pushing their way into his car, dulling his senses with the familiarity of the way things worked in the world. He looked up, eyes stinging as he squinted up at the saint of convenience, set in the alcove of casual contact. Pale skin and receding hairline, woven button-down soft from repeated washings, worn topped with a tie that shimmered with a faint coating of oil, the shimmering silver of metallic colored plastic that declared his name and title, all framed in the blazing glow of late night hours warranting fluorescent brilliance that clung to the daylight with the demented certainty that if the sunlight could be mimicked, productivity could rise, corpselike, and shuffle in its glow.

“So?” The man leaned forward, light from the window turning sparse, ginger hair into a copper corona. “Do you know them?”

“Know them?” His palms slid against the faux leather of the wheel, vinyl stitching slipping slick through his grip.

“You asked about –“

“Seven words?”  His mouth felt as though it were filled with cotton, shaping obscenity, obscurity.  Was he supposed to say it, talk about it? Something in him had always imagined clandestine discussions, gothic arches sailing overhead, robed figures whispering within the confines of arcane symbols. Not this. Not here. Not grease soaked air-conditioned fluorescent conversation across the open concrete.

“Do you know them?”

“I – uh.” He swallowed, sour spittle burning his throat like acid as his brain scrambled for words.  There was no formula for this, no pattern of set interaction, no procedure in any manual he had studied. “It said it on the sign. The menu, so I –“

“Ah.” The figure at the window seemed to shrink, as though a shadow had passed through the light of the city itself, darkened fingers brushing for half a blink over the flickering lights as if reminding them of what the night was supposed to be. The nondescript face beneath the fading hair settled back into lines of longsuffering indifference and the shoulders slumped, surrendering to a force heavier than gravity. The moment passed, his eyes adjusted, and there was nothing there, just a night manager wishing he were somewhere, anywhere else where he could have an identity marked by something more than a company issued tie. “Your order will be ready in a moment.”

“But I – what about…” the window gaped beside the car, empty, glowing with the blazing after image of what might have been, and he slumped back against the water resistant synthetic flex of the car seat, something in his chest longing to leap from the vehicle, abandoning appropriate behavior to run back to the menu. Had it been there? Had any of it happened?

A lank-haired figure extended a paper bag from the aperture above him, skin blue-white with the unhealthy pallor of the prison of commerce.  “Thank you.” No smile, just eyes that gazed into something beyond the car and the twilight street, “Have a good night.”

With a shiver that defied the summer heat, he took the bag, setting it on the empty seat beside him before he pulled away. He didn’t look back. Didn’t park and go inside to see the manager. Didn’t ask. That wasn’t what you did. The opportunity was gone. One moment, and maybe it hadn’t even happened. He was tired. That had to be it.

Seven words. He had been so close. Maybe if he had said – No. That was crazy. Crazy people didn’t climb corporate ladders or have families. Fingers dug into the bag, retrieving a crisp fried comfort. Crazy people weren’t part of the system. Drive, just drive. Seven words. Crazy.  Never happened. Not to him, not again…

He knew better.