Five Strikes for Justin
There was no angel brandishing a flaming sword to keep her out of the Garden. No half-bitten apple to point to. So what? She was still peering back at everything she’d lost—wondering how she’d fucked up so badly. Her crime? Walking by a bar after work. Seeing the laughing silhouettes, the happy people inside.
First strike.
She’d craved a drink, a bit of peace. A chance to step outside of herself. It had been a long day. Endless terminal cases at the hospital.
The moment she’d walked into the bar… his gaze…crushing the back of her skull.
Second strike.
Fuck it, she thought, turning around to face him. Fake smile.
Okay, you won. Happy now?
He smiled back like they were old friends. She had never seen him before. She should have walked out.
Fled.
Her fingers curled around the handle of the scalpel in her pocket.
She had meant to put it back before leaving work.
#
Later that night, she recalled only hazy fragments from the final moments of their brief affair: a cobbled alleyway, whir of locusts, frogs croaking. Neck quivering like a rooster’s in the sputtering lamplight. Hail clacking on the ground, her hand marking each doorpost she passed in blood.
But before those fragments, memory was sharp: he’d swaggered over, asked her what she wanted to drink.
She said, ‘Whatever you’re having.’
Third strike.
Even then, it could have gone either way.It didn’t feel hers entirely to decide. She saw—perhaps imagined—a delicate scale floating above his head. A dandelion seed drifted down toward it from the ceiling—glinting in the smoky light. She wondered which pan it would land on as he handed her a beer, clinked his bottle against hers, ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Hi, I’m Justin. Cheers.’
He was good-looking—face-time a lot with the mirror, don’t you?
Still, it wasn’t sealed—not even when he tried to sound smart. Took him less than a minute, unprompted, to unleash bumper sticker truisms:
‘Know yourself’ … ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’
Fourth strike.
Had he learned those lines from an app? An Insta reel? Did he think that drivel would get her hot?
No. Nothing was fixed—until he uttered it.
The one line she couldn’t forgive:
‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’
He flexed his pecs against a snug T-shirt.
Fifth strike.
She almost said, ‘Really? You obviously haven’t spent much time in a hospital.’
But there was no point.
The seed had landed.
About the artist
Work has appeared in and is forthcoming in Hobart Pulp, X-R-A-Y, Post Road. Twitter: @luntz_david
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE…
Gorkoglyph 1.0
Cartoon No. 4
Leave a Reply