Merely Insignificant

            There’s nothing I can do or say on a regular basis. Every word, every soul I surpass, it all turns up somewhere later as a diseased old, lecherous man. He’s wasting away on his front porch, subject to the amount of food he’s got in his stomach, which is none. He’s got nothing these days, watching the finches quarrel over scraps of bread thrown their way, watching the four-year-old down the street repeatedly tangle herself amidst her plastic gilded jump-rope. He spots the hot dog vendors and couldn’t give a damn anymore. Sitting, waiting for the scythe to show itself sooner or later, he knows he’s got time enough to judge one last game of hopscotch. He thinks to himself, “if only I hadn’t been drawn to such negative people, if only I wasn’t, myself, such a negative person at the start. Maybe I should have taken up a sport, maybe a hobby to spill and let flow my creative input into, if only there were any within me to begin with, where did everything I once had go?”

            He began to cry, not in a harsh manner, not really in any manner whatsoever. Just tear, subsequently another tear, and another, slowly, cautiously, without resistance or hesitation. A small pool appeared before his feet, a few inches in diameter, his loafers becoming soaked with the droplets, the soles of the shoes soused. The pool stretched itself outward, found itself bleaching the sidewalk of the chalk that was freshly drawn. The pool was indifferent to what it destroyed; it just wanted to swallow everything and all at once. There was an implosion inside of the man; he wanted nothing to do with anything he’d seen that day. He couldn’t wait any longer. Any longer, any longer. Without giving anyone a chance to react to sudden movement, the man viciously stood and reached for his throwing knives which were fastened to his waist, with one in hand he aimed it at the nearest child’s shoulder, he glared for a second, hard. Then he heard the panicked cry for attention, for release, followed by the moans of an undeserved pain. He hadn’t had training; he wondered how he had managed to successfully render that boy a new neck ornament. With the boy now writhing in pain, now on the concrete, doused in blood and tears, the man saunters over to him, several yards away, he crouches down to where his lips meet the boy’s neck. If there were anyone else around he’d be in a bind, but the little girl was enthralled, she wasn’t going anyplace anytime soon. The knife was still ground between his shoulder and his neck, the noises had stopped, the seizing has ceased, there was hardly movement aside from the boy’s eyes, which were filled to the cusp with fear and with a yearning for attention, and attention unlike the sort he would shortly be given.