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B Piccini
from Volume 5: Anomaly
by UTS Vertigo
INSERT SECTION TITLE B Piccini
CREATIVE WRITING
66 66by you’ve ended up at the local chinese place for dinner. you know that you won’t know how to find your way back here tomorrow — when you realise that the fried rice is actually really good (they don’t use that horrible diced ham, it’s got real pork).
the server there, she doesn’t have a face. the air is balmy and the tables are set for people who will never arrive. you’re leaning on a chair and you’re watching her move deftly, from checking the register to organising the plastic flowers. some part of your subconscious notices the rigidity of her movements. you’ve been here before, you’re sure she’s changed. you just don’t know what has taken her place.
you notice a basket of fortune cookies in front of the till. you meet the not-servers not-eyes and she beckons you to take one, while you wait. you feel your memory of what her eyes looked like slough away from your consciousness like rotten meat as you reach your hand into the basket.
it’s an odd thing, fate and fortune telling. part of it feels natural; a human behaviour that fills the void of purpose that lives inside of us all. you’ve never felt connected to the idea of having a purpose, you exist to exist in places like this. you are, at your foundations, liminal.
you are an adjoining piece of furniture, a stepping stone. and so, as you peel away the wrapper, crack open the sweet cookie, and pull out the slip of paper that is its nectar, you find comfort in the blood red, shifting, bold lettering that reads: “You are already dead”.
