Slices of Life.

The tiny room was dingy and almost bare.  A small bed.  A chest of drawers.  A little TV with rabbit ear antenna on a spindly table next to the one and grimy window.  One little wood chair, on which he sat, was in the room, hard and coated with the grime of years of nicotine and dust.  Transient hotels are like that.  Not much money coming in, not much money to spend on keeping things up.

He sat there, smoking, the blue threads of cigarette smoke slowly rising to a thin cloud over his head; not moving but to take a drag, barely exhaling.

In need of a shave, hair shaggy, tee shirt long in need of washing, dirty chinos and white socks gone grey, his hand shook as his fingers held the smoke to his lips.

He dropped his smoke to the cracked and lumpy linoleum, hit it with an old shoe he fished out from under the bed, then dropped the shoe, too, to the floor.

He got up, walked over to the window, and slowly wrote a word in the dust and grime of the window pane.  C R A P.

He walked back to the bed, laid himself down and went to sleep, thinking maybe it'll be different tomorrow.

Maybe.  Crap.


Ndinombethe