Saturday, November 22, 2014

Fiktion Korner


"Pride and All Its Use"

I was trying to do this thing right. That's how Ed said I should. But it was like a dog trying to tune a guitar. The thing just wasn't coming off the way I'd planned.

It didn't help that I really wanted no part of the rules of reality. I wanted to feel fulfilled at all times. Or maybe that wasn't the problem at all. Regardless, I was lost and forlorn. Aw hell, I thought. Circumstances ain't the worst, but they ain't the best either. Just that day I'd broke my own phone at work out of frustration or boredom, or. It was something. But I had to make the damn thing work for the rest of my shift, so there was no satisfaction in it for me. Just a tree falling in a forest with no one aroudn to hear it.

And much as I would have liked to just walk out, I coulnd't bring myself to do so. Coward, I thought. Only a coward can't see hisself to a living that suits him. Well, what would I like? A job with my hands, I supposed. But I didn't want to sell nothin, and I didn't want to lie to no one. And that's about the only thing it seems people get paid for these days.

And so I sat. Sipped my coffee, gone cold and making onerous yawps my belly. And when that phone rang, I picked the earpiece up in one hand and the mouthpiece in the other and laid my self down.

-Snap E. Tom, 1966. Originally featured in Songs of Tom: Shorts Stories 1963-1967 (Kastanet Publishing, 1967).

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