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Well, as you may have noticed the “Daily” of the Daily Travesty has been shattered.  Yesterday, I did not make a post, as my internet went out.  Thus, to make it up to you and to express my grief, I wrote a short story about, well, grief.  I hope it shows just how terrible I feel through black humor and false sincerity, and the poetry will return tomorrow.

 

With a disheartening plop, a jewelry store receipt lodged itself onto the side of a gum-plastered dumpster.

“Just my luck,” muttered Sidney. “I can’t even throw away a receipt correctly.”

Sidney stewed on these thoughts as he walked the three blocks to Marek’s Pawn Shop, his hand still clutching the ring in his pocket. The guards in front of the Christian Science Reading Room gave him sympathetic nods as he passed. A few children ran in front of him chasing after a runaway soccer ball. Sidney picked one of them up and threw him over a fence.

Why should he care? He had bigger problems. Besides, soccer was a dumb sport anyway.

The ringer of the bell fell onto the floor with an unpleasantly familiar plop, followed by a cheery, yet out of place, tinkle of metal on cement. A stray crow, somehow trapped in the musty shop, took it upon itself to loot what was left of the dismal bell, loosing a bored squawk as it did.

“That’s the third bell this week! Damn Chinese, steal our jobs and don’t even give a decent product.”

That was Marek, cheerful as ever. Today though, Sidney could empathize with the scrawny ex-marine, even going so far as too ignore his smell until the end of the coming transaction.

Sidney dropped the ring unceremoniously onto the glass counter.

“Damn them Chinese, eh?”

“Yeah, can’t even give a robotic crow the standards to only steal the shiny knockers.”

As Marek spat on the ceiling, as he had the unusual tendency of doing, Sidney managed a bitter laugh.

“So, fifty for the ring?” Marek asked.

“I can’t believe you’d even ask that. I’ll go no less than four hundred!”

“Two fifty, and only because I understand what you’ve been through.”

“I can get five hundred from the store I bought it at easy. I’m offering it for four because I like you.”

“You like me? No wonder she left you. You got no brains.”

“That was rude on too many levels to count.”

“Hey, you’re lucky to be rid of her. Bitch.”

“Amen.”

Sidney sighed and turned to the door, slowly walking towards it as he did, signifying the beginning of the bargaining ritual he and Marek knew so well.

“Okay man, two hundred.”

“One eighty, and you can be assured on my continuing support of this establishment.”

Marek shook his head and gave a giggle of morbid laughter, spitting out a tooth as he did.

“You got a deal.”

“Squawk!”

“I didn’t know crows ate teeth,” Sidney said quietly.  “Or diamond rings, for that matter.”

 

Sidney left the shop, shivered his way to the slimy ATM at 44th and Main, withdrew his $400, and returned to Marek’s once again.

“Still got the .38?” he asked.

“Sure thing. It’s four hundred, like we said.”

“Here you are.”

“Well, nice knowing you Sid.”

“Ditto.”

As Sidney rounded the back of the Pawn Shop and kicked the receipt from it’s gum-ridden spot on the dumpster’s side, he gave Mary one last thought.

“Sorry to have disappointed you.”

Then he put his last purchase to his head and pulled the trigger.

It was a pity that Sidney hadn’t the brains nor the luck to have bought a bullet. As he sat, the reality of his dismal existence setting in, a bruised child carrying a soccer ball spat on him as he walked by. A small crow devoured the sticky receipt at his feet before flying away.  As it flew above Sidney’s head, a bolt of lightning struck the bird, and it died for a man who was destined to live a long, long life.  Tears finally broke the walls that Sidney has spent his life building.

Somewhere overhead, a spider died of boredom.