The Business Press

A period piece.

On June 14 2017 at around 1 p.m. he swallowed a handful of Xanax and took the bus to the shopping center. He got off and sat on one of the red spherical bollards outside the Target for a while and watched people go in and out of the sliding doors. He drooled a little. No one looked at him except a little kid. He had on a shirt with a photo of a German Shepherd in a glittering oval frame with the words “Barack 2008-2016 Gone But Not Forgotten” printed in a faux-cursive font underneath. His mother slapped him hard and yanked on his arm and the boy stopped looking at him. He went inside the Target and wandered around for a while. He looked at all the smart TVs playing the same thing in the home entertainment section (high-contrast high-saturation swooping arial footage of the Colombian rainforest intercut with high-contrast high-saturation underwater footage of the Great Barrier reef) and tried to remember which one was the model he owned. Other than the size of the screen, they all looked the same. He thought about buying another one and then felt his pockets and realized he had left his wallet at home. He wandered over to the women’s clothing section and looked at the bras and panties. He took a few of the lacier pairs into a changing room and dropped his pants and boxer briefs and rubbed his flaccid dick on them and laughed flatly. He put a pink thong over his face and took a selfie and posted in on his Snapchat. He left the panties on the floor of the changing room. He stood in the middle of one of the main aisles near the pharmacy pickup and turned slowly in circles and looked at an Italian porn star’s Instagram story. He had met her and her manager at a party at some guy’s loft in Tirana a few years ago and her manager had taken him aside and told him he could have her for the weekend for $5,000. He said no but he followed her back the next day anyway. He got bored of his phone. He wandered through where the groceries were and stopped in front of the refrigerated goods. He opened the magnetic refrigerator door and took an egg out of one of the cartons on the shelf and tried to crack it into his mouth, but it was more like he crushed it, and the egg imploded in his hand and grainy bits of shell fell into his mouth along with white and yolk and he coughed and spat it all out on the floor. He wiped his slimy hand on his sweatpants. He thought he saw an older black guy wearing a Target vest following him so he ducked into the bathroom. He went into one of the stalls and got down on his hands and knees and felt around behind the toilet bowl. He found a Chinese off-brand water pistol that was all black with a bright orange tip taped to the back. He filled it from the toilet then spent a few minutes taking pictures in the bathroom mirror pressing it to the side of his head and putting it in his mouth with his finger on the trigger and posting them on Snapchat. When he left he saw the older black Target guy was waiting for him but before he could do anything he raised the gun and blasted him. On the way home he fell asleep and missed his stop. It took a long time for the next bus to come and while he waited at the bus stop he looked at the guy next to him and tried to crumple him up into a ball of greasy paper with his mind. When he got home it was the hottest part of the day. The woman was still waiting for him in the corner. He swallowed some more Xanax and snorted a bump of ketamine and tied her ankles to the legs of the chair with black power cables. He spent a long time untying and retying her wrists behind her back, trying to make the knot perfect. He ran his hands up and down the pantyhose on her legs. He stuck some thumbtacks into her breasts and twisted her nipples with a pair of needle-nose pliers. He took a knife and cut her face but the wound didn’t bleed. He looked at the knife and realized it was made of rubber. He watched some high-stakes poker on ESPN2. A guy in a soccer jersey tried to bluff with ace high and lost $1,150,000 in two minutes. He put his head in his hands and the gesture was replayed on the screen twice in slow motion. He flipped channels. He opened a bag of Doritos then realized he wasn’t hungry. He lay on the floor and watched the sunlight skew across the ceiling. He looked out the window and read the license plates on passing cars. It got dark. He tilted the woman’s head back and poured Gatorade into her mouth and pinched her nose shut until she had swallowed it all. He lit a cigarette and put it out on the palm of her hand. Later he saw someone scream and claw at their face in an old movie. He fell asleep on the couch around 11 p.m. and didn’t dream.