You Wanna Piece of Me??

Ow, ow, ow.
There is a pain coming from my lower back that feels like a chunk of my skin was cut out. oh wait.. it was. Yesterday. A small brown spot with a slight ring around it was decided to be a possible menace and was extracted and sent away to be examined. Just for being different, how do you like that? that's life though. You aren't hurting anyone, just looking a little different, unique, but you scare people with your new ideas and your color and so they get rid of you. Just like that. Cut you out and send you away.

wow, did I really just turn my mole-removal into a political comment? Only me. That was completely tongue and cheek in case you didn't get that. I'm not completely sure what tongue and cheek is. Or if it is tongue in cheek. Or if there should be some dashes in the phrase. Hmm..

Let's move on. But before we do, I'd like to quickly remind you that my back hurts. Ok, now then. (that doesn't really make sense.. now? then? which is it?) Anyway, here there. ok.

Let me ask you something. Do you worry about anyone? I mean in particular. Do you have a friend or relative or maybe your grocer that you just think if anyone is gonna do X (X=get addicted to hard drugs, go postal, turn into a hermit, ask you out, etc.) it's gonna be this person? It's funny how some people just make you a little nervous.. There's just something a little off. And you make sure and stand back a few feet further than you normally would.

I'm not sure why I brought this up, seems like that should have been setting up a good story like, "well let me tell you about Larry..."

Well. Let me tell you about Larry.

Oh Larry. Most of the time everything was fine. I brought my groceries to the counter and paid for them with dollars and small talk. But some days he had this twitch. He didn't seem to really see me or remember all of the other times our lives intersected based on our mutual need to feed our families. "How are the children?" reverted to, "paper or plastic, ma'am?" and familiar eyes were slightly glazed over and very much distant. On these days I didn't press him. I returned his "ma'am" with "sir" and silently reprimanded myself as I walked through the lazy automatic door for hoping that his wife would give him a good lay tonight.

Larry had an accidental mullet made up of greying frizz. The mess sat atop his pointed head and fell into his eyes. He swept it behind his ears with a dainty motion that contrasted his tall burly figure. On the days he twitched, it stayed in his face. He was like an over-grown fairy with a beer-belly. He appeared as if he was forged inside of a funnel. He was a collage of magazine clippings. His petite features were found in a mascara ad on page 8 and pasted onto the body of the lumberjack selling weed-eater on page 26. He spoke in complete sentences which accounted for the pause before each one. "Come in from the wind and allow me to ask, how does this chilly evening find you?" Bantor was sport and he contrived wit that would astound, were it in rhythm, but instead confused after the silence that stood as it was birthed in his head. On days that he twitched, you could actually see the labor reflected in his face. Occasionally it was a still-birth. Whatever was brewing visibly vanished and he would look down at me in the lingering silence, asking "what are you waiting for?" Against all my reasoning, he scared me on the twitching days. As I stopped in front of and then walked through the antique automatic doors, I reprimanded my melodramatic self for picturing him slamming his fist on the scanner and grabbing the next customer by the shirt collar. I glanced back just to make sure. Of course, he was just scanning and twitching. One of these days, I told myself. I visited the Apple Mart as often as possible just to make sure i'd be there when he lost it.

I wish that I could continue this story now with a "one day, I really needed some milk. Little did I know this would be the last twitching day.." or maybe "One day, as I neared the little store, my eyes focused on flashing lights and caution tape.." Unfortunately, though, the story ends here with "one day I walked in and he was gone." Just like that. I never found out what happened. Sure, I have my theories. What do you think happened to Larry?