[The next many entries are the current story I am working on. This is twenty-three of who knows how many will be posted. Enjoy it while it lasts...]
He ran out of food before he ran out of movies. He knew he had to return to the grocery store and restock his refrigerator and pantry but it was almost as hard to leave this time as it had been his initial voyage outside the house. Before he left he had the sense to put a couple of bags of garbage in his trunk with the intention of using the dumpster behind the grocery store as his personal waste management facility. The second trip to the grocery store was quick, aided by the ease of entry and the near overpowering stench filling the inside of the store. The fruits and vegetables were now beyond eating and were breaking down in festering piles in the far corner of the store. The air conditioning had not discouraged the flies from descending and they were in abundance, hassling Adam as he tried to make it through the store in short order but not so fast as to forget something. Fortunately the freezers were all in working order so he made the majority of his selections from their crowded shelves as well as stocking up on canned food. Based on the amount of cans on the shelves he assumed he would have tuna and ravioli for as long as he could stomach it. The bread was becoming another casualty of time so he took a few minutes to dig through what was stocked and found several loaves of white bread that were still mold-free, dropped two into his cart and placed the rest in one of the freezers to try and prolong it’s shelf life. After half an hour he felt he had gathered enough food to get him through another week, at least, plus the stench and the flies were winning the war on his patience and he wanted to get outside. He had started out the automatic door–which opened flawlessly--when he remembered his annoyance from his last trip there and he stopped, jogged to a checkout station and started searching under the counter for some bags. “Plastic will be fine, thank you.” He threw a box of them into his cart and quickly left the store.
As he moved his groceries from the cart to the Volvo, he placed everything in the bags, piling everything into the trunk. When he steered the car out of the parking lot he didn’t hesitate, not because he was getting used to being the last man standing on the face of the earth but because he was distracted by the lure of the idea of stopping by the video store for more movies, even though the store was not conveniently on his way home. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, figure out why he wanted more DVD’s because he had not watched even half of the ones he had at the house. As he passed his street and continued toward Blockbuster he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Anything beats mowing the yard.”
All words and images ©2007/J. Colle
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