Untitled Composition 8

NB: Stray sketches presented from the artist's youth; like the child who wrote it, not completely formed. -- J

Untitled Composition 8

I had a real ****in' head ache.

And no coffee. Where were they with the coffee? How long had I sat? They missed a spot when cleaning the table and that surprised me. Wasn't a bad joint, not a dirty one. They needed to get the sticky off of this one table, and then everything could be... complete here. This one table was ruining it.

I am not a murderer. It wasn't because of lack of dedication or perseverance- I'd been sitting at this table all day waiting on a ****in' cup of coffee. I lacked gall, no other word for it but gall, like the kind the waitresses all have to wear those pink dresses and white frocks. This place tries to be conservative. Nothing is conservative anymore, nothing is traditional, and that makes this joint more of a theme park than a real restaurant.

If it were a restaurant to begin with, anyways- I heard those places serve coffee.

Without irritation I raised my hand to a waitress passing by, her blonde locks and timid form catching my attention. Two fingers up and pressed together like a tall man leaning on a shorter one; "Excuse-"

"Shut up, Henry," she says. Says it like it was real easy to say, like she said it for only my sake, like she was tired of saying it altogether.

"What the hell did you say to me?"

Two blue eyes stared at me frightfully, bunny's eyes peering out shyly from the depths of the rabbit hole, and her voice quivered"... How can I help you, sir?"

"That's not what you said just now!"

"I-I don't.. understand? All I said-"

"Yeah, all you said. I asked for a cup of black coffee somewhere around an hour ago, and I'm still waiting."

A series of bumbling, patronizing excuses tumbled out of elegant lips; the curves of her young form pressing against the disgusting censorship that was a conservative pink dress, and what‘s worse, a dress made not of something fine like silk but of coarse material scarcely fit for a hand towel. I should have liked to taken a picture of the disaster of her existing here and called it art nouveau. And, in keeping with the spirit of all things artful, I checked out her *** as she walked behind that white topped counter halfway across the room.

In the corner of my eye was a blur, and I was slapped in the face. Clenching my cheek, I turned my head back to see across the table a pink dress, sitting there, angry at me.

"You're an ******* and a pig, Henry." She raised the same hand, the left one, to her face and brushed away the wild brunette strands of hair- always brunette, never brown. Brunette, brunette, brunette.

"Yeah, what business is it of your's anymore, what I am?" Wishing she would have taken that ****in’ thing off. It left a mark, I could feel an imprint with my fingertips.

"Is that how you are, now? A tough guy?" Her voice was acquiring her bizarre tone of mournful anger, and her already frosted-blue eyes were forming ice crystals.

"Shut up. Where's my coffee?"

"Don't you talk to me like that, you son of a *****."

"Where's my ****in' coffee!" I slammed my hand down on the table, causing the silverware to jump up in a bizarre dance and my palm to sting.

The young waitress was halfway back on the return journey between my table and the coffee pot. She stopped dead in her tracks, right there between the counter and the white washed wall, wide eyed and staring at me, as if she were about to cry. There was an overabundance of silence.

I exhaled slowly, raising my hand upward and beckoning softly, "Its... Its ok. I'm sorry. I wasn't yelling at you."

Almost tearful, veiled in disbelief, she slowly moved toward me, warily setting the coffee down in front of me.

"Thank you," I said as my eyes travelled up the length of her exposed arm and to her chest, wrapped in that hideous dress, that hideous affront to all things beautiful.

And it was as though I heard a whisper.

"Hmm? Speak louder, please."

"...W-who are you... talking to, sir?"

I reiterated with measure and curtness, "I wasn't talking to you. It'll just be the coffee for now, thanks."

I waved her away and she left quietly, still carrying that mystified look on her face. I sipped from my cup, and sat it back down on the tabletop, accidentally knocking it into another coffee mug and spilling a bit upon the surface- not much, but I was going to wipe it up before it became a sticky mess anyways. Having no napkin on my side of the table, I reached across, but my hand was slapped.

Keep your hands to yourself.

"Just give me the napkin."

No.

"Stop being a *****. Give me the napkin or I'm going to-"

"Going to do what?" Her precise features became caustic and sharp, trying to slash me open from across the breadth of the tabletop, "He was bigger than you, I couldn't hardly handle it. Harder, too. Lasted longer-"

"-That's enough-"

"-More of a man. You didn't do a goddamn thing. You just turned away and left. Came here-"

"- Will you shut the hell up-"

"And the good part? Right when you walked in, I came- honest to goodness, harder than my life, I came."

I had a real ****in' headache and my elbow was sitting in stickiness surrounded by a myriad of mostly-full coffee cups. I spoke slowly, "Went for my pistol first. Kept on walking."

A man tapped me on the shoulder, my blond haired angel standing behind him near the counter. He was old, balding, and wearing square framed glasses that matched the sparse lines of his white collared shirt. His tie invaded my person space from where he stood, leaning over, "It might be time to go... I said, sir, are you ok?"

"Fantastic. Who the **** do I gotta sleep with to get a cup of coffee around here? I‘ve been waiting all ****in‘ day."

This was a nice read. couple of grammatical errors here and there but overall, I felt the torture of a guy squabbling with the voices in his head and the potential to go over the edge and do something unthinkable.

good imagination.

You really seem to have got into the warped mind of your troubled character here - his delusional behaviour and eliptical thought processes as well as the fall-out his monologue has caused. Intriguing stuff.

H

So decided to make this my first comment since i've been away for the last couple of weeks. and I was pleasantly surprised.
it was Interesting.
I liked it.
the conversation didn't at all seemed forced. It would be interesting to note if this guy actually had some insight into his condition or if he was totally taken in by his auditory hallucinations (would be awesome if he had tactile hallucinations as well haha).

anyways nice fluidity as far as mental health goes :P (just remember, sometimes these patients have what's known as 'derailment of thought' where their thought processes actually make no sense and they will 'derail' themselves from sentence to sentence - so in future you may want to make the conversation non-sensical to give it that bit of edge)

But, that's just being picky - nice work.

thanks for sharing

Loks

very gripping. i agree with delta that you can really feel the characters internal torture and his jumpy disposition.

This is good Jack. Too bad the @#$ aint allowed.