Lamentation
“Strapped with a ratty, brown backpack in which he carted his world, Chris had bummed a smoke when he first climbed in, but hadn’t spoken a word since. He looked like shit. I’d expected him to look bad; somehow, he looked even worse than that. Half his head was sheared in a bleached-out, homemade haircut, with crusted bloody slits around the ears, like he’d used glass shards for scissors and a toaster for a mirror. In the dim, blue-gray light of the cab, he resembled a cadaver, waxy, colorless flesh drawn tightly over protruding bone. His eyes, two vacuous pits, sat deep in the sockets with giant black rings around them, and his badly neglected teeth stuck out. When he sucked on his cigarette, he pulled so hard, you’d think his eyeballs might disappear straight through the back of his head and the whole thing would instantly turn to ash.
In the five or six months since I’d seen him last, he appeared to have lost weight. I’d seen cancer patients with more meat on their bones.
Write Review:
User Reviews: