You could smell him from the entrance. Always the same. He’d enter, wearing the same faded jeans and brown shirt pass by the tables salute and shake hands with those he knew, usually the whole place
pull out a bill from his back pocket Put it into one of the slot machines Choose a simple game with fruit symbols and activate the autoplay feature then look for a drinking buddy
He rarely picked me but that evening he did
Sat down across from me and lit a cigarette and went on talking
“I’m pretty damn positive,” he said. “There’s worms in my gut.”
“How d’ you know?” I asked
He grabbed his shirt and stretched it away from his chest. “Look at me. I’m scrawny as a putrid toothpick. But my gut stays round and swollen. Plus, I’m always hungry even after I eat. Even after I drink beer. Stomach feels ever empty, ever grinding on naked gears. It’s hell, man. Seriously, don’t get married.”
“What?”
“What?”
“What was that about marriage? I thought you were telling me about your gut worms.”
Nodding, he grabbed a paper napkin and wiped at a beer stain on the front of his shirt. “Marriage is like gut worms, alright. It consumes you from the inside and eats away more than half of everything you try to invest in yourself. Also, you can’t possibly get rid of it without causing serious damage to your body. And dignity.”
“Oh. Um, are you married?” I looked at his fingers. Saw no ring. Only a lot of dirt rimming his cracked nails
He watched the slot machine on autoplay as he replied, “I was engaged, yes. Healthiest times of my life. My love introduced me to one of those blender machines. We put in carrots and apples, pears, prunes, oranges, and a lot of ginger. Now that shit was healthy. But you see, a healthy lifestyle only works if you’re healthy to begin with. It doesn’t work with people like me. I prefer investing the money into the fruits of slot machines, not blender machines. My love, she didn’t like that. It’s… probably what determined her to add bugs to my smoothies.”
“Damn, what kind of bugs?”
“Eh, you know, all that can be found in one’s garden. Grasshoppers, ants, cockroaches, butterflies, centipedes, ladybugs, snails, spiders, rat shit. The usual.”
“And you drank them every time? How long did it take you to figure out what she did?”
He shrugged. “Eight years? Ten?”
“I see. And, did you have any big wins at the slot machines in those years?”
He shifted on his chair to reach with his hand and scratch his ass before answering. “Well, nah. But I definitely will tonight. Just watch.”
We watched the slot machine going on autoplay Watched it like a very entertaining show on TV There was something to it, something almost magical. It wasn’t so much in the slot machine itself as it was in the eye of the gambler. You could tell he was the type of man to get drunk and then mug you for gambling money and you’d hate him for it only as much as you’d hate the rain for getting your clothes wet or the bee for stinging you
He was a natural element of the town’s ecosystem
I still miss the bastard
Unlike the creditors who came after him a couple of nights later
«I’m not doing it to be edgy,» she says as she applies a Hello Kitty sticker to the blade of a hunting knife, right across the edge and starts licking and slurping at it
She said she found the knife inside the tin box that held her father’s ashes
I think he was some army dude
She did tell me how he died but somehow every time she did it the story was different
Probably because she only spoke of it when she was drunk or on some other shit
The knife was her old man’s prized possession, I was told
«Once he used it like a saw to cut his own hand off,» she said. «But he bled too much and just passed out.»
«Damn. Why though?»
«Don’t speak of it in vain!»
«Uh, sorry. So why exactly did he do it?»
She watched the knife, the sticker applied to the blade. Smelled it and rubbed it against the side of her face, eyes closed and recalling memories pleasant to her only
Daydreaming as a profession 