Razorblade Tears

by S.A. Cosby

He felt hands flutter against his back and shoulders. Words of encouragement were mumbled with half-hearted sincerity. It wasn’t that folks didn’t care. It was that they knew those words did little to soothe the wound in his soul. Speaking those platitudes and clichéd homilies seemed disingenuous, but what else could they do? It was what you did when someone died. It was as axiomatic as bringing a casserole to the repast.

I knew I should’ve never rented to no ex-con. My wife told me but I didn’t listen. Every time I try to give somebody a break they screw me,” Artie said. Spittle sparked from his lips. “Well, somebody gotta screw you since your wife gave up on getting you to take a bath more than once month,” Buddy Lee said.

Ha!

But time was a river made of quicksilver. It slipped through his grasp even as it enveloped him. Twenty became forty. Winter became spring, and before he knew it he was an old man burying his son and wondering where in the hell that river had taken him.

Human beings were wired to get used to just about anything. That didn’t make you hard. It made you indoctrinated.

You let an animal know you’re afraid of it and it loses all respect for you. If it doesn’t respect you, it has no qualms about ripping your belly open and showing you what your stomach looks like.

They could call what they were seeking justice, but that didn’t make it true. It was unquenchable, implacable vengeance. And life, inside the graybar and out, had taught him that vengeance came with consequences.

Ike spied a silver BMW in the rearview mirror, driven by a woman with the most severe I-want-to-speak-with-the-manager haircut he’d ever seen. She zipped by them doing at least thirty miles per hour, like she had some dalmatians in the trunk that she needed to make into a coat.

Ha!