Waiting For The Dealer

by Ly Faulk

Todd walks in, skin bubbling. His arm is cut open and every time a bubble rolls down his arm it squirts plaid blood out onto the carpet.

“I think I hurt myself,” he mutters.

I start howling laughing, bending over double, the whole thing. My stomach is starting to hurt and my cheeks burn yet I can’t stop laughing. Screeching hysterically, I point to a towel lying on the couch. Todd gets the picture and wraps the questionably clean towel around the wound on his arm.

“How… did you… do that?” I ask between chortles and gasps for air. His bubbly face looks at me in confusion.

“Do what?”

I sag back onto the sour-smelling couch, rank after years of spilled beer and old sweat, suddenly deflated.

“Damn, do you need a doctor?”

Todd looks down at his injured arm.

“What the fuck, man!”

I shrug and crack open another beer. I think Todd is reaching for the phone to call an ambulance but he only reaches for another beer from the cooler between us.

“When’s your guy going to get here, anyway?

“He texted he was on his way.”

“That was three hours ago.”

“Whoah.” Todd drinks his beer in one long chug, the golden liquid swirling like a typhoon as it drains from the bottle.

“Are we out?”

“Yeah.”

I turn on the TV.

“It’s going to be a hot one today,” the weatherman says to me. “Stay cool and don’t
forget to hydrate.”

I raise my beer in a toast to the television. I look over to say something to Todd but he is asleep, drool dripping from his drooping lip and onto his Pink Floyd t-shirt. On the TV, a beautiful woman is telling me that she loves me and can’t live without the heat of my embrace. I look over at Todd, suddenly repulsed. Not able to hack it, I go outside to wait some more. I light up a cigarette while I’m there, the great expanse of grey sky over my head.

Twenty years ago, I was a young boy who imagined himself to be a future rock star. I never learned to play an instrument so that didn’t work out. In ten years, I will be dead from a heart attack. Todd will inherit our single wide and move another boyfriend in within six months. In twenty-five years, no one alive will remember my name. But for now, I see headlights in the driveway.

Ly Faulk (they/her) is the Editor-in-Chief of Eco Punk Literary. They are the author of several chapbooks and her latest, I Don’t Think I’d Make A Very Good Borg Drone, is available from Back Room Poetry. They can be reached on Twitter @whismicalraven. Learn more at https://lynnceefaulkcom.wordpress.com/