WHAT'S UP, DOC?

@deadrattle

Maybe Danny can remember what his father’s face looks like. Before and after when not even teeth remained. Instead there was the scorched earth. There are teeth now, teeth and flesh in better shape than they should be after a few decades. ‘Betcha missed me.’

@deadrattle

     Not for the first time, he’s caught her crying. Wendy thinks sometimes about all the times she’s thought she was alone with her hands over her face and her eyes red and full, and whether Danny had been standing in the doorway or hearing something muffled through the wall. But he’s caught her outright now, and that’s no mistake. She wipes under her eyes with the heel of her hand and thinks about her mother saying that if you pull the skin under your eyes too much you’ll get wrinkles. People get wrinkles. 

     “Hi, doc,” she says and gives him a wet little smile. For a moment she wants to say something about this, the state she’s in, maybe lie that she’d had a headache or stubbed her toe, or just tell him sometimes people cry for no reason and it doesn’t mean they’re sad. She settles on something else. “You hungry?”

    ‘ uh huh,’ he answers flat as possible, making it very plain he’s decided to stumble in here out of concern for wendy and not his stomach. shaking as he is, it’s a ruse that never had much hope of being bought. worry is eating him inside and out, no mistaking. it’s an itchy feeling, like the rash he had on his arm last summer, and it woke danny from his nap in the shape of the word DIVORCE. mommy usually cries when she’s thinking about DIVORCE, and the taunting red letters are still dancing before his eyes as he blearily crosses the room to stand a good deal closer to her.

@badcruiser​.

   static, he hears static. not the hush of a radio in-between frequencies either, the caustic kind that comes from an angry television set. like the little bits of people’s lives that float in and out of his ear, the epicenter is in someone else’s head. someone else who shines? hard to say. maybe it’s just a somebody who’s plain good at being well guarded. 

@fraudest.

@deadrattle

     “Well, this is sufficiently morose.” She doesn’t sound all that upset by it, and in fact looks quite pleased with herself, legs swinging like she’s sitting on a bench at a county fair and deciding which place to visit first with her fistful of tokens. “And you come here every day of your own free will, is that right?”

@bunburie.

@isolationtender.

the on/off's humming neon has enough reach to cast an unflattering light on dan’s face, hollowing out the bags under his eyes, even as he stands a road away on the opposite sidewalk. he wonders what drinks are on tap, what sort of music is playing, what kind of girls are inside- what kind of boys. it’s stupid really, that curiosity should be the thing to drag him inside, not the veteran impulse to throw back a few shots.