Wednesday, January 13, 2010

P7: Pest or "Danny....

From O7: And he'd left the cold funeral the way he'd entered it - alone.

Danny ran his hand along the spine of the last book, keeping to his squat, hoping to escape notice. Hoping no one would need him, or realize that he was done.

....


"Hey Pest!"

He didn't need to look up. Marina. It must be Saturday.

Danny hated Saturdays. At the mall. In his life. Not only was it the day when, after a week of recycled-air anonymity at the mall, the crowds returned. It was the day, each week, when his friends and family remembered he was alive. Marina now meant a late-afternoon call from Mom.

"Hi Marina," he rolled his eyes and lowered his voice into a groan. Looking over the register, he gave Solange the thumbs up to confirm he could take his break. "Give me a minute, Mar."

In the breakroom, he re-tucked his shirt and adjusted his sweater, arranging and rearranging the cloth so it wouldn't cling so stubbornly to his fat. It defeated him, the greenish lighting in the mall's bowels. His pants, pinching tight at his waist, barely reached his shoes - none of this cute skinny jeans made it past the bulb of his belly anymore. He couldn't help envisioning his useless mouse of a penis, cowering in fat beneath his (shudder) pleated khakis. He's never realized that they were designed to hide the fat.

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