#re-sentment

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. Side tangent, but my god is PowerDirector one of the worst, most unstable pieces of software I ever had the misfortune of using. At least it isn't Adobe.

Part 71 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

As I climbed the stairs of the men’s home, I was accosted by a cloud of vapor.

“Hey, dude.” Dad greeted me and immediately took another puff.

“Hey.” I set my backpack on the floor and grabbed a folding chair.

“Doesn’t that smell just like Fruity Pebbles?”

I sniffed the air, thick with vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol. “Actually… yeah. It does.”

“Right?” He smirked. “But look at the bottle.”

He held it up so I could read it. The glass bottle, full of viscous yellow liquid, was labeled ‘Froot by the Loop’.

“It doesn’t taste like Froot Loops at all, does it?”

I shook my head. “No, no way.”

He set the bottle down. “I’m going to have to put that in my review. I’m really starting to build a following. Have you seen? I have a hundred subs now.”

“That’s crazy,” I replied, not particularly impressed. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before.

“And I made a new intro in PowerDirector.”

He hit the space bar on his dinky laptop and tilted the screen so the colors wouldn’t look as washed out. The words, ‘The Vapist’ floated up onto the screen atop a backdrop of the harbor before fading out. It was the same as last time I saw it, yet almost came off as charming.

I golf-clapped.

“Thanks. I spent a couple hours on it. Stupid thing kept crashing. Chase has been bugging me about getting these reviews out, but I gotta up my production quality first.”

“Chase?”

“The vape juice guy. He sends me review samples, so I owe him some kind of feedback. Right?”

Somehow, my father was downright agreeable today and it threw me off. Usually, the world owed him everything, but now all of a sudden he was acting like a normal member of a functional society. Downright uncanny. I unzipped the middle pocket of my backpack and pulled out a plastic-wrapped burrito.

“Oh, nice! Score!” He reached out for it, but stopped short. “Is this for me?”

“Uh…” I felt my eye twitch. I placed it gingerly in his hand. “Yeah…”

He ripped open the cellophane and took a big bite, but stopped chewing after a few moments. “It’s cold.”

I was dead silent. Was this the moment he’d start berating me again?

He looked at the package, then at me. “Do you think I can microwave it in this? We’re out of paper towels.”

I looked at a stack of napkins on his desk.

“Oh, good idea.” He took a napkin, used it to swaddle the naked burrito, and walked toward the kitchen.

What the fuck is going on?

“If you’re asking me -” Celeste popped in. “And I think you are - I’m pretty sure you’ve come across some rose-tinting. There are two schools of thought on this, and Tracey was headmaster of both of them. One is that it’s a coping mechanism from your brain to make it easier to follow your timeline, and the other is that it’s some sort of pollution of the timestream. Either way, I’m pretty sure this is good news. It won’t be so bad, see?”

I nodded, creaking my teeth on my dry lower lip. Dad came back with his burrito.

“So, you got any dinner plans tonight?” Dad even swallowed before speaking. “It’s been a while since we got takeout from Mr. Zhan’s. Egg foo yung and Step Brothers would hit the spot.”

I gritted my teeth. “No, sorry, I’m having dinner at home today. Probably steak again. And I won’t be going back out afterwards. Plus… I have to do my homework.”

That last part was a lie, to really push the envelope. He knew as well as I did that I always finished my homework in class. Dad would have called me out before, even if a given day was a legitimate exception.

“Oh…” He took a final bite and tossed the napkin in the garbage. “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Well, then. I guess he’s really gone. I fished around in my backpack and pulled out two green bananas. “Here’s something for later.”

“Sweet. Green ones are my favorite.” He took them and placed them on the desk, then stood up to hug me on my way out.

Walking home was disorienting. This wasn’t the past I remembered anymore. It wasn’t even the past I remembered remembering. In what way could this path possibly lead back to the future Celeste came from?

I cut through the big abandoned lot to give me more time to wander. The gravelly dirt crunched under my feet as I slowly perused the area. There used to be a plant nursery here, but now it was just a fenced-in area with an abandoned shed in it. Nobody was around, really, though I felt li I was being watched. I stopped. The wind blew through the trees of the mini-golf course next door, but I could hear voices in the other direction.

“Is he gone?” A voice whispered.

Brown eyes peaked over the peeling windowsill and darted back down. “No. I think he noticed us. Shhh.”

I debated whether or not to walk over and interrupt whatever it was they were doing in there, but I had a good feeling about who I’d find. I flipped a mental coin and it came up heads.

I peered inside, careful to avoid the spider web at the top right corner of the window. Two shadowy figures hid behind a turned-over wheelbarrow. I smirked.

“How you doin’, Ocean?”

Penned 2025.11.18