Rest Stop

by Nat Cassidy

Abe takes a little comfort that E-mail Lady’s all but guaranteed to win, but still. What a shitshow.

OOF. If only

As if this year hasn’t been traumatic enough. Bowie dead. Prince dead. George Martin dead. Alan Rickman dead. Chyna dead. Abe fuckin’ Vigoda dead.

Trauma’s trauma, but I think some people are still just born assholes.”

Safe inside the store—so bright, so blissfully cool after even just a few moments of the muggy summer air—and he feels better. Sometimes capitalism knows how to hold you just right.

We’re all in this mess together. Things like religion, like nationalities, are just trivia. We’re all just bugs against the windshield of time, right?

Yeah, that must be it. Just the air conditioning. Definitely not the sound of someone crawling through the ceiling towards him. Definitely not the soft titter of someone giggling.

When evil comes, Abraham, it does not wear a mask. It looks as plain as day.

But what’s the point of surviving if he sacrifices his damned humanity to do it?

‘I love this glass. It is so beautiful. It carries the water to my lips and keeps me alive. It catches the light. But if, one day, I accidentally drop it and it shatters, my heart breaks with it. I am so sad. So I must remember: being broken is the glass’s truest nature. It will be broken far longer than it is whole. It is meant to be broken. It is already broken. How can I be sad then, for this brief illusion of wholeness?’

We’re all just biding our time before we break, aren’t we? This is just the rest stop.

Is this the feeling of being broken? He wonders. Or is it the process of breaking? Is this how it feels to refuse to break? Or is every moment simply its own act of creation? Its own god, too holy for a name?