On the Edge of the Big One

Kelli's word for H5l5n5: Simon, singer, open, lot, wicked, jungle, carve, slimmer, junk, awkwardly.

The singer carves the notes in the air, and for a moment, as the words curl around him like smoke, forgets he's never made it. The waitress, who thinks her life would have been different had she been slimmer, opens a bottle of champagne she will never be able to afford. The guy everybody knows as Simon, even though his name is Pete, or Pat, nobody really knows or cares, is looking for his past at the bottom of his beer. All that lot flocked to the jungle hoping to rid their despair; but all they found was junk, as they failed to dare. They're not wicked, just tainted: along the way, someone forgot to care, as they awkwardly fell, in a hell they unknowingly shared.

Kind of inspired by Billy Joel's "Piano Man". Wasn't listening to it, just came to my mind as I wrote the first line.

The Big Sleep

Kelli's words for H5l5n5: spinach, lump, ring, wrath, simple, juggernaut, pumpkin, gibberish, found, flan.

She pours a glass of wine to wash the man right out of her head. It shines like the gold of her ring, as a sweet, thick, syrupy nectar would; only it's bitter and dry, like her thoughts. Now, every time he smiles at her, it's as if he had spinach on his teeth. That fucking smile. The spinach had always been there, she just refused to see it. There are so many things she refused to see. She's wondering how many things in her life are tainted with invisible spinach. It's not that she found something out that changed everything. She can't point out the exact moment when her eyes opened. Did it happen gradually? Is it the same process that people who find God go through? So many questions running through her head, and she can't be bothered waiting for her brain to suggest some answers. She doesn't give a fuck about the answers. They would only be shape-shifting gibberish anyway. She remembers catching herself having hateful thoughts about him over the years. Like that time they went to an Italian restaurant and he ordered panna cotta. That suits him, she had thought. Flan. A flaccid, gormless lump of flan, that's what he is. And since then, every time he'd been above her, his sweat dripping on her bored face, she'd thought of the plate of shaky panna cotta.

She enjoyed the wrath for a while. The wrath she was directing at herself for being with him. At least it was an emotion. A simple, raw emotion. But being a juggernaut to herself didn't lead her anywhere. Like a dog running to bite its own tail, she ran out of energy

and dropped into inertia.

If only she could have been like a pumpkin plant, able to fertilize herself. Poor child, she thought as she swallowed the pills.