Driving down the Dan Ryan at about 60 mph. Peripheral catches a smashed animal. We’re going to fast to figure out what it was, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a dog. Doesn’t matter what it was thou, because what it is now is a hunk of blood soak fur, a few feet away from the body were wads of reddish meat. Maybe what his head used to be. ‘Roadkill.’ My dad huffs from under his salt and pepper beard that’s more salt than pepper these days. He’s been growing that beard every since mom passed away, she would of hated it. At her funeral in June, he was a wreck, the red wine stuck to his beard like paint on thin stalks hay. For most of it he wasn’t even in the church, either in the bathroom or on the chapel steps. Looking like a universe that lost its sun. He only came in when I read the eulogy and when the choir sung.
In the back seat there is a printer we are returning to Staples. It has a photo scanner, wireless capabilities, a monitor on the machine that helps edit pictures, and I’m sure tons of other bells and whistle that, unfortunately are piece of shit computer cant operate properly. Trying to install any new hardware to our computer is like giving a blind man a rubix cube, futile and borderline insulting. Mom never did mind thou, as long as the internet wasn’t too slow, as long as see could play her favorite CDs, as long as she could play bejeweled. I miss her so much its gross, I know my dad does too. Although these last few months he’s been alright. In fact, save for the funeral and New Years Blow out where he slipped down the last 4 steps to our rec room, he handles her not being with us very well. Better than I’ve handled some breakups.
We get to the Staples and I carry the box, as we walk to the automatic doors he asks me did I think we should try to find a new printer, I tell him no and that we can keep using the library, after all with the influx of library closings, it would be nice to support ours, even if it is with 2 dollars in change a week so that I can print bad short stories and receipt from my budding online shopping addiction. ‘Welcome to Staples.’ A girl with a named tag label Maria greets us. Shes enthusiastic, she beckons us in like I imagine they would do in Narnia. Except Staples is not Narnia, we are not saving the land from a tyrannical ice witch, we are returning a faulty printer, she needs to calm the fuck down.
NOTE: My mom is not dead. She's probably watching TV. I wanted to tap into a foreign feeling. And in the words of a man much wiser than I; 'Sympathy is easily converted into fellatio'.
And yes, that is a picture of me and my mother.
:3
