LEAVE THE BOTTLE

With her head hanging low and heavy she stares back and forth from her lap to the phone in her fist.  There's no life there.  No little jingle of an incoming call, no little green light to show a text or an email has come in.  It's as still as a brick, like the weight down low in her belly, the weight planted firmly on her heart.  She looks up and she's a fright; tracks of mascara running down her cheeks from eyes red and bloodshot.  She tries forcing a grin onto her pallid face, but it fails and cracks and seems to fall off in pieces.  The bartender walks up to her to ask her things, but she does not hear him.  He wants to know how are you doing tonight, what can I get you, what are you drinking.  She knows what he is saying, but she only listens for the phone that won't ring.  She pulls out some cash and points at the bottle on the tallest shelf in the bar with a single, shaky finger and gets ready to speak.

NO REASON TO GET ALL EXCITED

I mean, it's just a severed head.  If you can think about it rationally it's really not that shocking.  If it were somebody I knew, somebody I cared about.  Or even if it had been somebody I had seen before and not known.  A guy on my bus to work in the morning, that lady who was always going into the lobby store just as I was coming out.  You know.  But this, this is nobody special.  Sure it's disgusting, but what would you expect?  It's a severed head after all, I think you need to expect a certain level of gore and mess when dealing with a severed head.  But you know what would be truly remarkable?  A head that was neatly removed from a body.  No stump, no trailing connective tissues or meat or gore.  Just a head, neatly and smoothly disconnected from the neck.  Now that would be something to talk about.  Something that you've never seen.  But then again, maybe I'm a little bit jaded.  If you saw as many severed heads as I do, wouldn't you start taking them in stride?

ASK YOUR DOCTOR IF ITS RIGHT FOR YOU

Symptoms include stomach ache, headache, heartache, heartburn, runny nose, running mouth, anal discharge, nasal discharge, oral discharge, inability to filter, fever, a fever for the flavor, chills, douche chills, hot flashes, night sweats, and nocturnal emissions.  Some users may experience overeating, overcompensating, depression, dementia, disturbances in the force, demonic possession, drowsiness, positive reinforcement, positive attitudes, attitude adjustments, alternate realities, anarchy.  Other side effects include life, because that's all it is.  You shouldn't need to see a TV commercial to sell you on it.  

CAM BAILEY HAS A BRAINSTORM

Cam hadn't counted on the explosion doing quite as much damage as it had.  He'd hoped that while the police and the fire department was dealing with  a minor fire in the basement, he'd be able to slip out of an attic window and then steal away across the rooftops with his little sack of stolen jewelry.  The problem was that ol' Cam there didn't know much about making bombs aside from how to set a time delayed fuse.  So when the bomb went off, it went off with an explosion that was more than twice the bang that Cam had intended and this was why Cam was left stranded on a third floor attic landing that had all of the stability of a box of crackers.   If I can just reach that pole, was the last coherent thought that crossed Cam Bailey's mind, right before the last of the beams in the basement went with a crunch like a boot on a pile of saltine crackers.  And as he plummeted to what was probably his death, Cam had time to think to himself  Hell!  I should have just set a fire on the first floor instea-  And then that was all for poor, dumb Cam Bailey.

SLICK

It had to be impeccable.  He carried a little set of tools with him everywhere we went.  A pocket mirror, tweezers, a little bitty comb, three different sets of tiny scissors, and a disposable razor for, well.  Just in case.  He'd once been described as "well-manicured," and the notion made him so happy that it became an obsession to him.  "Well-manicured."  He worked over that mustache of his every hour.  At least just a swipe with that ridiculously tiny comb of his, if not a whole half hour spent on trimming and plucking and maybe even a quick little shave to maintain the clean lines of definition.  If you were to ask him, he'd say he spent so much time on manscaping because he line between swanky mustache and "fu-manchu" was perilously close.  But nobody asked him that, or much of anything.  Because all he was to his co-workers and neighbors?  The creepy guy who was always working over his pervert mustache.  

OBVIOUS, OUT IN THE OPEN

A pack of students walked down the path in the early morning, most of them silent and tired but one of them loudly grousing about the indignity of an eight o'clock start to her day.  At eleven or so, that same girl wandered back down the path, idly noting the shape of a person hidden inside of a dirty sleeping bag laying beneath the trees by the fencing.  She didn't think anything of it, just some bum sleeping rough.  And then at three, this same girl returned with a different group of friends on their way to another class of theirs.  The same form lay there beneath the tree, seemingly unmoved.  This time she noticed, and started wondering more actively about who lay inside.  She walked by the last time at around nine, after a long day of classes and dinner and a few hours at a bar that didn't worry too much about state issued ID's.  And this time when the girl looked over to where that mysterious person had slept, she noticed black and yellow police tape strewn in a rough perimeter around that same area.  The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she realized what she'd been observing all day long.  Her shoulders sagged with the guilt, knowing that a very sad story had played out right next to where she lived her frivolous little life.

IN THE DRINKS AISLE

There was a tiny, tiny little man trapped inside of a bottle of water.  To say I was surprised would be an understatement.  Strangely enough, he seemed to be dressed in some sort of a spacesuit.  I looked around nervously not sure what to expect; a reality show or a truck from the funny farm.  The little spaceman slowly bobbed up and down in the liquid, one dead hand -he was clearly dead- still pressed up against the ridged side of the bottle.  I peered closely and saw his face was decorated with the worlds tiniest muttonchop sideburns and a pair of miniature green-tinted sunglasses, and a tiny peace symbol on a little string floated up by the crest of his helmet.  Should I buy the bottle?  Take the oddity on TV and get famous, or to sell it on the internet for a fortune?  Bring it to the government to explain how a hipster from the 70's ended up in a bottle of generic water in a convenience store?  So anyways, that's why I bought a ginger ale.

ANOTHER SHUFFLING ZOMBIE

This is a long ramp.  It's a very slight incline, but the length is what's going to give her trouble.  More trouble, that is to say.  Her jaw is hanging open and she's groaning slightly as she shuffles along, listing slightly to the left because of the limp.  It would have been easier for her if she'd managed to keep her cane in her left hand, but that was forgotten some time ago.  She might have fallen over if it weren't for the heavy purse that dangled absently from her opposite shoulder in an unconscious balancing act.  But there's no stopping her, there's no amount of physical infirmity in her that can top the unending hunger deep down inside her.  Relentless, she shuffles up the ramp with unfocused eyes on the closest bank of slot machines.  There's one machine wide open, thankfully one with armrests.