Day 97

Getting close to that 100 day mark.  Should not have dropped the ball or I'd be way passed it by now.  But, I'm not stopping!  Nonstop keep going!  Hi everybody


            The first month was a difficult one.  Space Cowboy knew it would be.  After two weeks of laboring over the quessadila maker, he finally figured out something to cook.  He settled for making quessadilas, the smoke clouding up his windows to the point where he was forced to open one. 

            The whitenoise fuzz was pretty entertaining, and Space Cowboy felt a little like one of Pavlov’s dogs for continuing to push the button on the remote.  He gazed out the window at what might have been the stars, but pollution shrouded the sky in mystery. 

            He woke up on the rigid square iron surface of his cot and rolled over to his side.  His whole body ached with the stiffness of the cushion, and he played with the TV button again for a minute.  He looked across the room at a stack of books, up at the ceiling fan that no longer spinned, and over at the door.  The kitchen was completely empty, the fridge smelled like old eggs and waffle batter. 

            A dog barked on the other side of the dor, its claws scratching on the frame.  He imagined it as a spotted little beagle, its round sad eyes looking up at the viewfinder in the giant wooden slab.  He saw it in his minds eye through a fish eye lense.  He opened the door and a cold breeze fluttered over his cheeks, a bad trick had been played on him.  He cursed the air and shut the door, wrapping a scarf around his face.

            He ran into Alice in the hallway, an older woman with a bad smokers cough and a lighthearted air.  He couldn’t think of anything to say to her, and she was usually content just smiling over.  He cringed when she began to open her mouth, but luckily she coughed, and he walked past.

The grocery store was across the street, the only noteable landmark on the block. The apartment building dwarfed it in size, it looked like a little white shoebox sitting next to a pair of black boots.

 In this socialist paradise, he could take whatever he needed.  The signs on the windows and door both stressed he not take more than he needed, and leave whatever he could give.  Luckily for him, that was nothing.  Like the rest of the buildings on the planet, there were bars on the windows.  A long skinny man in a kevlar vest wheeled a sealed icebox with meat through the wide doorway, and they expanded as he pushed through.  A gentle sucking noise powered the automatic doors.

Wally, the night and day clerk, thumbed through an ordering clipboard and put a big checkmark in a box with a black magic marker.  He wiped his face to remove a blemish that wasn’t there.  He sighed as he saw the size of the crate, pulling the collar of his checkered shirt loose and letting his neck breath a little bit.  

            Space Cowboy took his boots off at the door, eliciting a nod and smile from the armed security guard. 

            “No hard feelings about last time?”  The guard said, brandishing a black hitting stick.  “You can’t go trudging around with your boots on, you should know that.”

“No, I guess not.  How could I be mad at you?”  Space Cowboy said.  He felt a part of himself inside well up with anger and then dull like a dying ember.

He picked up a little green basket and chose between twelve different kinds of bread.  They all looked the same other than the packaging, so he picked the one with the football players on it.  It was between that one and the one with the army men. Armed guards on the outside escorted hooded men in cut off sweatshirts across the sidewalk, their ears .  The oily asphalt street looked like it might bubble up and swallow them as they crossed, the black pock marks like burnt pizza dough.  The fifth sun of Merp illuminated the glass of each building, heating the street to a toasty red.

            A rack of escape based equipment beckoned Space Cowboy behind the counter of the service desk.  The flammable liquids, astringent alcohols, and packs of razor blade.  They sat behind the counter, Wally noticing Space Cowboy staring over at them.

            “I see you have your eye on the cordless drill.  Now what would you want with something like that?”

            Space Cowboy looked down at his feet and shook his head.  He picked up a box of Delicious O’s cereal and dropped them into his basket, reading the back about possible prizes.  One such prize was a nail file, which the box explicitly stated might be found in “1 out of every 10,000” packages.   There was a recipe on the side panel of the box by the ingrediants for “Delicious O’s Brand Cereal Bars”, the other ingrediants being marshmallows and margarine.

            “Margarine?”  Space Cowboy asked himself out loud.  He found a container of it in the refridgerated aisle.  “Just like butter?”  Space Cowboy felt his mind extending on the spot.  “Little midget creature was correct.”

            The newspaper by the checkout celebrated the arrival of a newly appointed group of Space Dignitaries.  The caption said Bernard Bernie, the esteemed tribunal member of the Space Operahouse.  His monocle was etched into his face, projecting out in a hologram.  A face Space Cowboy recognized was seated directly to his left at the large rectangular table, gazing up into his eyes with a childlike confoundment.

            “Luther Pennybags!”  Space Cowboy crumbled to a knee.  “He has been behind this all along!”