Short Story "Illegal Favors"

Two years of unemployment benefits are about to run up, not that they saved me from losing my house. I still had to sell it and move back in with my mom. At least she wouldn't be alone she said, but my company couldn't keep my girlfriend and I together. Once I was put on anti-depressants after the job loss she couldn't handle the baggage she said. Very considerate now how was I going to find someone who could handle that baggage she just added to me. The more you need someone the less anymore seems to want you, so f*cking much for tribal evolution or the Florence Nightingale effect. It took me ten years to find her, not that she was my first pick. In high school I had a best friend I loved but she, Alison Dunmor couldn't see us as anything more than friends. In college Gabrielle Hayes explained that we, too, were just in the 'friend zone' what a great excuse for not being lovers "oh I care for you too much in a Platonic sense Tom to really have romantic caring feelings for you." When I first worked at the local convenience store on Green Street I befriended a sales clerk with the nickname Pink. I never tried to validate the feelings I had for her because my confidence was broken. It was at my next job across the street at the video rental store that I met the shiprat Teri Wells and it was from that place I lost my job. I lost both jobs, because of the local economy was down. Clarksville was a run of the mill dead end mid-West town with no economic plan applicable to post-Industrial Revolution. We still have a hardware shop, a train station and two gas stations. One gas station is run by a middle Eastern immigrant named Ahmed who is very polite but off putting that is to say he doesn't do small town chit chat. The other gas station is ran by a very friendly drunk who blames bad business on supposedly illegal immigrants and not his overbearing casual Christian talks over overpriced gas. The train station is all but out of business and is simply a tourist attraction to people who want to see an old time relic. The fifties diner next to the station closed about the time my Dad died which was insult to injury as we used to go there and order Love Me Chicken Tenders and Bogart Burgers, but that was back in college and as I am running out of time I'll just stick to current events. Teri Wells is getting married to a guy whose philosophy could make Machiavelli look like a philanthropist. But security was all she wished for and never asked how. Far worse my Mom is dying of cancer, the cancer my father's smoking habit gave her. i cannot explain in simple terms the monstrously conflicted views I have on my parents especially my Dad. He taught me how to be a man usually by example and usually in the Goofus not Gallant sense to use an old Highlights reference. When I was young I always looked forward to Highlights, Reader's Digest, the newspaper puzzle section and the TV Guide. Pardon my diversions but its pleasant to relive some nice memories from the past. But I suppose its too late to look on the bright side although one bright side is I might not have cancer and never will know if I do. It's nice having the house to myself while my Mom's at the doctor, I couldn't bring my ladyfriend here if she hadn't gone and if she didn't go I wouldn't need my ladyfriend over in the first place. She is deliberately left anonymous for her own protection, she only came over as a business favor. It is her hand that handcuffed me, tightened the noose and wrote this note I'm dictating. The noose is not fully tightened yet but it was until one of us thought to clarify matters for the police who will naturally come and question this strange suicide, one that is strange as it can not be easily done alone but aside from this business venture I am alone. Anything missing here in the basement was used as her payment I trust her to use it to get out of this town and a career and a family because we're running very low on them here in Clarksville.