Terminal
Derek Shirae
Something was wrong with the donuts in his eyes. His optic nerves were suspicious. Age was a disease, the doctor joked. He told Q that if he continued on the same trajectory, he would die. But Q knew he would die.
After the visit, Q purchased a box of chocolate-glazed donut holes from the pink and orange chain. He chewed the skin off each hole and turned it into tongue paste before popping the bald heads into his mouth. The girl at the counter wore a glazed halo. He purchased another box for the class. If the principal asked, it was bought with his own money and not with school funds. The principal was a by-the-book man.
Q taught summer school for students who needed practice. He treated the little muffins with old Halloween candy to get their attention, or to divert their attention away from his eyes. Q didn’t like being seen. Halloween candies were best because they were old as night and hallowed, Q told the goblins. Gave them a serious look and nodded. The goblins wrote it down in their composition books. They hardly ever spoke.
During lunch at his desk, Q snacked on chocolate kisses. He resented the time it took to unwrap them. Hated pulling the paper tassel, all the small crumbs of foil. So he palmed a silver handful into his mouth, chewed, sipped down the chocolate. Spat out the foil, for better or worse. Chocolate from a gold box was richer, but the presentation, so fancy, made it difficult not to share. The three witches he worked with were chocolate fiends and congregated around his golden boxes. He once brought in a red, heart-shaped box of cordials. Q found the box empty after school. He wondered how the three had shared the chocolates equally when there were 20 pieces. Which witch got the most? No doubt that one was the dominatrix. He stretched his legs. The right one hit a pie pan. He looked under the desk, where a black candle still burned. For his protection, the three assured Q.
An imp dropped a cup of cocoa and a sweet roll on the floor. Q retrieved the fallen roll and sopped up the mess with the sacrificed roll. He nestled it gently among paper towels in the trash. That night in his kitchen, he filled a mixing bowl with maple syrup and stirred in a cup of melted butter. He sank six waffles into the bowl and watched the sponges expand. Q ate, his fingers lifting out their soft bodies. Was it the butter or the sweetness? It was like trying to satisfy two lovers at the same time. In bed, he dreamed of powerful ladies mud wrestling, Raquel Welch as the Kansas City Bomber singing “The Age of Aquarius.”
The next day at school, after students were dismissed and staff vanished for good, Q snuck into the Fishbowl. This room had four glass sides with workstations at its center, intended for educational games. Q had heard rumors of these games. Heard you could turn yourself into anything but yourself, and this seemed to him a wonderful thing. He shut the glass door and sat at the Radio Shack computer. Scabs of dried chocolate covered its keyboard. He dabbed the keys with spit, rubbed each one clean, and tasted his fingers. Not always chocolate, but it would average out. His father had forbidden it, said Q could have all the chocolate he wanted in Heaven. A few years later, his father died, and Q took that as a sign.
The centipede zigzagged and devoured letters that spelled words. It was unstoppable. The green glow of its body lured Q closer and woke in him something crawling and alive. His eyes gaped, dilated to swallow the monitor. Moving in all directions, nights and days smashed into one another. A lifetime of 77 jobs he had quit, always a servant: in movie theaters, fast-food restaurants, diners, more movie theaters. The spells of unemployment consolation in between. Q looked up from the screen, imagined the ghost faces of mocking children with their tongues pressed outside the glass of the Fishbowl, a siren not far behind. And it dawned on Q that he wasn’t imagining, and somehow the darkness had become morning.
Derek Shirae is a computer programmer in Hawaii.
© Variant Literature Inc 2023