Abandoning a Questionably Bright Future

[Strichev]

She sort of approached me from my back, her arms stretched around my neck. I could feel her hair on my shoulders, a lock of hair beneath my t-shirt. I should have faked surprise, leaned back, took her hand…anything, just not nothing. Nothing is what I did. She sat down on a log a few feet away. I could see her eyes shimmering through the flames. Dark blue ponds with fire dancing in them. I wanted to kiss her, to stare into the depths of her eyes, to drown in them. Instead I asked her whether she believed in aliens…

While deciding whether to enter the bar or not, I was thinking about some statistics. Rather dumb statistics, but still. It’s said that most teenagers - I hate that term, it’s too artificial – have properly kissed at the age of fourteen and a half. I’m eighteen, and how do you think that info made me feel? Like a piece of shit, that’s how. Especially because I don’t consider myself a teenager.

The place was not as populated as the noise people inside were making would make it seem. It was pretty clogged with billowing clouds of smoke, though. I took a seat in a dark corner. Perhaps it was a bit too dark, for it took ages for the bartender to see me. He was the most complete example of a snob I’ve ever seen. He probably didn’t even wash the glass in which he brought me scotch with ice I ordered. It didn’t bother me, though, as I only wanted to drink my consciousness away. Half a glass later a pair of shady, junker-like people took the table a few feet away. One had an empty looking grey backpack. The thump it made when it was placed on the table negated the looks. I couldn’t see them too well – things were getting a bit blurry – but the one without the backpack handed out a Sirius credit card and got a gun-like object wrapped in an oily rug. He tucked it away in his coat’s inner pocket (I remember thinking about the stain that rug could leave on his coat) and abruptly left. After that it’s all a slideshow, or a particularly laggy cut scene. The Junker seemed surprised when I slumped on the empty chair. If there hadn’t been all that metal weighting him down, he would have jumped 10 feet into the air. Not hesitating one bit I got to the point.

“How much?” I said.

He didn’t appear to understand me. Or perhaps he didn’t want to.

“Listen, I dunno what you think I am, but I’m not what I think you think I am.” A funny guy he was.

“The gun. How much for the gun?”

“A gun. How much does it cost!?” He heard that, all right.

“Keep your voice down!” he said in an obvious discomfort. “I dunno anything about guns. Got it?” I was getting calm again and his show almost made me laugh.

“Listen; cut it, heh…I’m not LP-LP…LPI, for chrissake.” My tongue was starting to feel oddly unresponsive.

With a shade of despise he thoroughly examined me from head to toe. And back again.

“Mkay. I won’t be staying here long anyway. 200 and you’ll get a nice skull drilling, ozone-burning illegal piece of scrap metal.”