Short Story / Cracks and Fissures
It was always evening inside this red carousel top, circus-style tent. The space was lit by the machines and the track-lighting mounted to the aluminum frame. David picked at a bright red vinyl patch that had been glued to the faded red vinyl tent. There were lots of patches on this tent, and new ones were added at nearly every stop. He considered ripping off the small rectangle to let in a little natural breeze and light, but he worried about getting caught by Max Fremont, the uptight Aussie owner of the tent. Aussies owned the whole fair and they made it very clear that they would not hesitate to send any of the workers back to his or her home country for even the most minor of infractions. This threat made it easier for David to control himself.
There are a lot of different types of glue that hold people together. For David Miller, it was Marlboro cigarettes and Mountain Dew. Without them he was like a crystal vase, trembling on a bumped end-table. Without them he felt exposed and vulnerable. Out-of-control.
Now that he was traveling with the Goodwill World Fair, he had to try and make it without Mountain Dew. So far they had been to three countries: Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. All of them had Marlboro’s, but none of them did the Dew. He drank Coke in Mexico and Argentina, and Kuat in Brazil. The fizzy, red, berry-flavored Kuat was actually a welcomed change, because he never really enjoyed the taste of Coke. It had always had a slightly bitter taste to him. Each of the twenty days he had been abroad, he missed Mountain Dew and thought of it often, though he would not let himself miss America.
“Hey, Dave, give me a fag,” Mel demanded, sliding up to David’s oak woodgrain vinyl counter. His pale, boney fingers waved impatiently in Dave’s sweaty frowning face. Boa Vista, Brazil was a very warm place, uncomfortably warm for this Maine native.
“I’ve got your fag right here,” David said. He grabbed his balls with one hand and slid the pack of Reds to the fidgety Brit with the other.
Mel helped Dave man the arcade tent. He was English and said weird things like ‘fag’ for ‘cigarette.’ If Dave didn’t know better, he would say Mel was a fag, but Mel was also David’s roommate and often brought girls home. He had his own grassroots goodwill mission all mapped out.
“Bugger off you yankee shirt-lifter,” Mel mumbled, cigarette in mouth. “Can you believe we’ve got eleven more months and thirty-two more countries left, living this bloody marvelous life? Man, all these Brazilian beauties are popping my popcorn. Did you see that blonde in the mini-skirt? I would poke that drunk or sober.”
“Most of the girls I’ve seen today can’t be over fifteen,” David said. They were thin, tanned, long-haired, giggling creatures. The over-fifteen crowd usually came after dinner with boyfriends and husbands.
“You can’t really tell with these birds. All of them have those hairless gashes.” He eyed them with his hazel laser beam eyes. The girls giggled more loudly and tossed their light brown hair.
David envied his looks. Mel channeled Prince Harry looks and charm, while David had often been compared to a young Jack Black by his frat brothers. Even though Mel had the looks, David could still hold his own with him, because he had a college degree. Granted it was a pretty worthless degree in Philosophy—he would have to go to graduate school and get a Ph.D. if he ever wanted to become a philosopher. Unfortunately, he had failed to get into grad school on his first try, and that is part of the reason why he now found himself globetrotting with the Goodwill World Fair.
Mel moseyed back to his post on the other side of the Strongman Machine, puffing the cigarette like a cigar, hands shoved into his khaki cargo shorts. Mel wasn’t really a smoker, he had just taken it up out of boredom and rarely inhaled. David had already tired of teasing him about it. Another point of pride for David was that Mel had yet to beat his score at the Strongman Machine. So what if Mel got pussy nearly every single night? He would probably get some weird international STDs, if he didn’t have some already.
As Mel disappeared in the midst of the flashing lights and clanging and whirring, Dave refocused his attention to the machine directly in front of him. “Batente!” he shouted at an eight-year-old boy who was kicking The Earthquake with his socked and sandaled foot. Because it was their job to protect the machines, one of the first things he tried to learn in each country was how to say ‘stop’ in the native tongue.
All of the machines were ticket/token redemption games: pushers, pinball machines, boxing games, shooting games, basketball, skee-ball, soccer, light pattern machines, and video games. This machine’s bright yellow cabinet featured hand-painted boulders rolling down a mountain into a rocky canyon. It was an octagonal-shaped game with eight individual playing stations.
All of the pushers were set to an average payout of 24%. The angled lip edges of the machine create the illusion that the coin they put in will cause an avalanche of coins to come sliding down over the edge. As each person steps up to the machine there is a brief moment of excitement and suspense—hope. They drop their token into the slot, hoping it will land just-so on the top shelf to push enough tokens onto the bottom shelf to push tokens into the payout slot and make the siren go off.
Sometimes it made David sad to watch people waste their tokens in the machine. They dropped their coin in, watched it fall, and nothing. They would stand there stunned, watching the pusher sliding back and forth, gently butting up against the coins, and nothing. Success had been a certainty in their mind. Then nothing. Most reacted with a fleeting sadness. Others rage. Others ambivalence.
This young boy reacted with rage. “Mau! Mau estrageiro!” he shouted. His brown eyes blazed in David’s direction, and he bared his white, widely spaced teeth.
These shouts broke the boy’s mother’s concentration from the Galactic Lightning machine. She threw down her tickets, shushed him, and dragged him out of the tent scolding, “Seja quieto!” The boy kicked up dust as wriggled and writhed.
David remembered when he received his rejection letter from the University of Montana. His mentor Dr. Philip Wallace had promised he could get him into their Masters program. The chair of the department was Dr. Wallace’s son’s godfather.
He had been so confident in his professor’s claim that he only applied to that one school. First, he got waitlisted. Then he got rejected. First, he was angry. He got a tattoo (a flaming airplane), pierced his tongue, wheedled his college sweetheart into having anal sex and then dumped her on her birthday, drove his car through the garage door (drunk), called his mom a pushy bitch, shoved his dad through a screen door, and got fired from his job at Hertz.
Stage two was depression. He called his parents and cried. He called his girlfriend and apologized. He begged her to come back to him and threatened suicide. She told him to go fuck himself. Then he took eight Oxycodones with half a bottle of Grey Goose and didn’t die. Instead, he experienced the longest, deepest, darkest sleep of his life.
A yellow light flashed, accompanied by a blaring, jarring siren. An old woman with grey curls, held her wrinkled green, linen skirt out to catch the tokens for her ecstatic granddaughter. David Miller winced and lit the eighth cigarette of the day.
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
This pretty much follows the short story format, which is good for the story to evolve. The writing is very very clear, and grammar is good. however there is something about this story.
Some of it is too sexual where it doesn’t need to be. I feel you should insinuate more rather than to crudely say things. not that it offends, but I feel it somewhat takes away from it.
The description of the tent is good. how it is inside and all. But when they get to Brazil it should be dustier(even if it’s a tropical place). the tone needs to change a little bit to represent that sort of nostalgic/ dusty/hot day in a very foreign place. I guess what I’m trying to say is to make it more foreign. It’s a carnival… where is the garbage? the noise of everything? are the token machines broken? they brake often. what about the ugly people that go to the circus. Is this a “freak show” kind of circus??
well I’m not saying to change it at all. this is just how I feel, but hey I liked it. You write really well.
- add/view comments (0)
Overall, I don’t see much need to flesh out more within the paragraphs that have been presented. I’m not sure how much further you have come along with this story beyond what you have posted thus far but questions I had while reading include the following:
Why was David studying philosophy? Is he philosophical in nature? What you have written thus far doesn’t necessarily support that he was overly much. There might not be any specific reason but it was a question I had while reading.
What is meant by the title? All I could think was that it was metaphorical somehow. David has fallen in a hole or has cracks in his life or has/is cracked. Then again, the continuing stories development could enlighten the meaning of the title more latter. Not sure.
How did David end up working for the Goodwill World Fair? It seems an interesting and oddly contradictory occupation to one who was inspiring to be a philosopher? Begs one to wonder what this lifestyle change decision will do to David as the story progresses?
So far so good, I’d say!
“It was always evening inside this red carousel top, circus-style tent.” I like the way you started off your story… it really grabs the reader’s attention. I saw a couple of spelling mistakes and very few grammatical errors, but other than that your story is nearly perfect. I really enjoyed it, it’s like it was dragging me into it.
Showing 1 - 3 of 3
Review item
Add to faves
GENERAL
REVIEW QUEUE
Ratings & Rankings
