From: duck@pembvax1.pembroke.edu
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: 1 - Afterwards: The Problems with the World
Date: 30 Jul 92 09:36:24 GMT
Organization: Pembroke State University

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Afterwards: The problems with the world.                               Part One
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(c) 1992 by Craig Taylor aka duck@128.109.79.1 / duck@pembvax1.pembroke.edu
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  I never knew what trouble this cursed magic I somehow am able to do would get
me.  At times now, I wish I had never even discovered, noticed this ability. I
keep telling myself that what happened is not my fault, that I was led into it.
I know that's true - yet the guilt does not let go. All those people.... 

  Lemme start at the start:

  I had just ran out to the Winn Dixie up the street to get some sandwhich
fixin's for the next day and pick up a paper so I can cheat myself out of
enjoying the 6:00 news.  Of course, like I always do I grab a cart, even though
I didn't think I'd need it - force of habit I guess.  I always make my usual
rounds through-out the whole store - choosing sliced unsmoked turkey breast and
some onion roles.  I almost picked up some maynoise but remembered I had some
back at the apartment.
  Damm! - I still cringe inside when I tell this story -- I wish that it had
never happened. 

  No, I'm alright - lemme continue.

  Anyway, I got to the counter - where they always have all these magazines
telling all this impossible stuff - seems that they found Elvis was writing for
those magazines the whole time... The lady ahead of me was one of these people
that you wonder how she's gonna squeeze in between the exit doors but always
manages. I sorta laughed to myself as I saw a ton of diet food being run
through by the clerk. I wiped that smile off my face when she found a way to
turn to the check-counter. 

  People - other people always laugh at people they find themselves at an
advantage with, yet they are the ones also being laughed at times. They say
that the origin of all jokes is to releive tension over an uneasy situation. I
think it is, yet if we only knew why we were uneasy when we laughed. I think
the same thing involves hatred. The origin of all of that is uneasiness.
Mayhaps why we have so many dammned russian jokes. With all of the soviet
union's they had pointed at us, and with all of ours pointed at them I cann see
a reason for them to be uneasy, to hate, to make jokes, to try to relieve
tension... 

  The fat lady waddled off and I moved my cart with it's meager holdings ahead
and the clerk glanced at me wondering why I only had 3 items in a cart designed
to hold usually p'haps 20 or 30. I shrugged, while she rang up the items and
pulled the cart through. It had that little annoying voice which rang the price
as she pulled it through. 
  Heh! - At the time I was seriously considering asking her when she got off
but once she hit the total button that thought disappeared completely as I
reached into my back pocket. Seven-twenty the display said, the last zero
flickering - hesitant on whether to give up and die. Aaargh, I thought - it
should only be about four-eighty-two or so... 
  And then it happened. I still wish it had never taken place. I'm not sure
what freak of nature I am. I know I am somehow, but I'm not sure what caused it
to happen just then - to let me discover it once I was twenty-six. Mayhaps it's
just as well.....

  Maybe the state of the world just needs one big huge joke to relieve all of
the tension that has built up.  I think that's what I did, except I released
hatred, I released poison. People payed for what I released, for what I
thought, for what I did. At times I think back and wonder about that fat lady
-- how did she have to grow up being ridiculed? - how did she cope? Why can't
the world cope the same way? Why does it have to have it's hatred focused? it's
reactions directed? Heh! - The U.N. which supposadly governs the world - a
laugh, it's simply a false face for the actions other countries actually feel.
It's been one like that for the US for years. That's another one of the reasons
the shit happened.

  The numbers on the total display changed to 4.82 - I blinked - What the hell?
- Remembered my hand reaching on the only five I had with me and handed it over
to her quickly hoping to avoid embaressment. She looked at the total and
hesitated and then rang up the change, thinking for sure she had seen a change.
She had, I knew that but my thoughts reverted back to their thinking previously
and I asked her what time she got off. 
  She told me.
  
  I climbed back into my car, slightly un-nerved by the 4.82 but filled with a
sort of eargerness for 10 o'clock when she would get off - alright, I'll admit
I had been sorta dry on the run lately - that's why I had asked her -- felt
like my luck had been up at that time.
  There's this stop light at McLintock and Haggart that always catches me at
the red light every damm time I drove through it. I pulled to a stop behind
another car thinking I wish this thing would change. Sure enough it did.
  Hey! - My luck is running good tonight and my thoughts drifted back to the
clerk with the name-tag of "Ashley" that had waited on me - Maybe I'd get lu -
Anyway lemme continue....

  I got back, thought about turning on the tv and all of a sudden it turned on
by itself. At the time I was just stepping through the door of the apartment
when I thought about it and turned on and wondered if the cat had stepped on
the controller again.
  Nope, the controller was laying serenly on the couch and the cat was no-where
to be seen. 


-- 

- Craig Taylor   || Standard Disclaimer Applies (of course!)
duck@pembvax1.pembroke.edu (Pembroke State University)

Love is sentimental measles.