Two weeks ago he’d stopped shaving -- not to grow a beard, but because he hated the razor. Tim soon despised his facial hair even more than removing it. Now he avoided mirrors.
Tim plowed the breakfast bar’s clutter as if the documents were drifted snow. He propped an elbow on the flower arrangements’ sour, dry petals and forked up the first meal he’d eaten in days. Again he skipped saying grace.
Baked tilapia for supper. The fillets were deliciously light and flaky, but he’d made too much tartar sauce. He covered the bowl, turned to put it away, and stopped when he realized he ate fish once every six to eight weeks. The refrigerated condiment wouldn’t see daylight again before devolving into gray fuzz, or toxic gas, or worse.
Why not shortcut to the inevitable and get rid of the excess sauce? Throw it out. Toss it. Tim didn’t want to “waste” food, but all he’d accomplished previously was to defer discarding leftovers until time and a strong sense of destiny (and smell) forced him to take action.
Tim rinsed the creamy goo down the sink drain. His chest flexed. He was in control! Unchained from the drag of years! He could create and he could destroy; he’d shape his own future in much the same way he whipped up tasty gravies and dips. The existential, whatever he deemed either hurtful or inconsequential, could be dispatched to a swirling, grinding abyss. Buh-bye! Thank you for your pungent flavor accent!
His mind fizzed with possibilities. He opened the refrigerator door and appraised the overabundant contents. He'd prepared chicken salad last week, scrumptious chicken salad, but as a rule he never ate anything more than three days old. Now he was a Roman emperor endowed with the authority to determine which gladiators lived or died. Or perhaps he was the distant-past Inuit chief who banished the tribe’s elderly to remote ice floes. With a smirk Tim seized the tub of chicken salad.
Dawn painted pink the wall-clock and calendar. Knickknacks glowed. Tim’s face unstuck from the breakfast bar’s laminate surface and he peeled plastic stretch-film from his forehead. Like an artist’s palette, food stained his aching hands. Bleary-eyed he surveyed the kitchen until his gaze rested on the remains of a ten-pound sack of Russet potatoes he'd apparently banished one-by-one via the garbage disposal. Scattered across the horizontal surfaces were bottles, storage containers, jars of jam or honey, curries, bags of crunchy snacks, canned goods; a few unopened, most of them emptied. He'd run out of leavings and eliminated almost everything else from his pantry.
Tim had showed food who was boss.
The death certificate and insurance forms survived amidst the jumbled perishables and culinary accoutrements, a post-tornadic theme park of the savory and the sticky-sweet. Tim reflected on honey; its taste pleased him, the shelf life was eternal. Bees and their role were transient. Beauty shouldn’t be traded for durability, not ever, but maybe the fear of losing goodness exaggerated its value. A sunrise -- now, there was something to admire, undiminished despite our confidence another one will follow, and another after.
Michael Grant Smith wears sleeveless T-shirts, weather permitting. His writing appears in elimae, The Cabinet of Heed, Ellipsis Zine, Spelk, Bending Genres, MoonPark Review, Okay Donkey, trampset, Tiny Molecules, and elsewhere. Michael resides in Ohio. He has traveled to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Cincinnati. For more Michael, please visit www.michaelgrantsmith.com.