It was a blue-gray evening dipped in pink and orange when Simon Waterbones drove his car into a KFC restaurant in downtown Amarillo, Texas.

There was a mess of broken glass, toppled tables, spilled chicken and drinks.

He stepped out into a cloud of dust, coughed, brushed himself off. “Shit. Sorry about that.”

An old woman was on the tiled floor covered in gravy and mashed potatoes. She was twitching and moaning.

A man got on his phone and called the police. He pointed a stern finger at Simon. “You’ll get life in prison for this!” he shouted.

Simon got scared and ran. His feet popped and flopped upon the grimy walkways of a dim downtown.

When he couldn’t run anymore, he stopped to catch his breath.

He was in a lowly neighborhood of beat down houses from another time. He heard the wail of police sirens in the distance. He ran up some cement steps and onto the porch of a smeared green abode. He slammed his way through the front door and skidded into a dining room. There was a table with people sitting around it. A man slammed his fist down and dishes rattled. His bushy moustache moved when he spoke. “Just what in the hell is the meaning of this!?” He stood up and threatened Simon with a butter knife. “Get out of here!”

A young girl turned her head and looked at Simon. “Please don’t kill us,” she said.

Simon ran back out of the house. The man with the butter knife chased after him. “I’ll stick you if you come around here again!” He threw the knife like a circus performer and it barely missed Simon’s face, then clinked away on the walkway. Simon bolted toward the tall buildings rising from the guts of Amarillo. His plan was to go to the newspaper building where he worked.

He rode the elevator to the second floor and went into the newsroom. His cumbersome and inept boss, Christine Divine, scowled at him. “Your lunch break is an hour, not an hour and a half. Do you want us to miss deadline?”

Simon took a seat at his desk and illuminated his computer screen with a simple touch of the spacebar. “Sorry. I had car trouble and had to walk back.”

Christine scoffed. “I’m surprised another relative hasn’t died.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Yes. I am.”

“So what if I lied? If this place wasn’t so God damn awful, I wouldn’t mind coming to work. But it makes me sick every single day, but I can’t do anything about it because of money. Fucking money. I have to live this shitty life because of money. I have to crawl in here every single day miserable out of my mind because this society we live in doesn’t just allow people to be what they were truly meant to be. So, yes Christine, I lied about my uncle dying, I lied about my cousin dying because I simply can’t stand to be here!”

“Then maybe you should find somewhere else to work.”

“If only I could.”

Simon opened InDesign on his computer and went to work laying out some newspaper pages. He didn’t say another word to anyone for a long time. Most of his co-workers hated him. Simon often called out with ridiculous excuses, and it was his co-workers who often suffered for it. “Fuck them,” he thought as he thought about it.   

He looked up from his work and saw one of the reporters talking to Christine. Simon overheard the following words: KFC. Car. Crash. Injuries. Damage. Suspect fled. Home invasion. Front page story.

“That’s me,” he whispered to himself. “I’m trapped. I’m dead.”

He looked up and big Christine Divine was standing over him. “We need to slot a new story for the front page. Some lunatic crashed his car into KFC and ran off. Make a spot for it. It’s on its way.”

Simon sharply saluted her as if he was in the military. “Yes, mam.”

She rolled her eyes at him and walked away.

Forty-seven minutes later he was putting the finishing touches on his own story. He printed the proofs and passed them out to the other copy editors. None of them were his friends so maybe they wouldn’t notice that the car in the photo was his. No. They couldn’t. It was covered in dust and debris. But then he realized the cops would soon track him down. All they had to do was run the plates, look in the glovebox. There it all was in black and white: Simon Waterbones, 2117 Virginia Ave., Apt. 4, Amarillo, TX. Knock, knock.

Simon went to the restroom and threw up. He had to escape but there was no escape. How and where to? He knew the only choice he had was to turn himself in. There was nothing else he could do. His life was fucked.

“I just wanted some god dam chicken and coleslaw,” he mumbled to himself inside the raspberry-colored stall of the men’s room. “I just wanted to have my dinner… And now my entire life is ruined because I suck at being a human being. I suck at being alive. I’m a walking disaster. This shit crawling around in my head is killing me.” He slammed a fist against the cold tiled wall. “Why was I even born?”

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Once his shift was over, Simon walked to a bus stop and waited. He shakily smoked a cigarette. The bus approached, it stopped and drew a mechanical breath. The ride to his neighborhood was dim and lonely. The city outside the window was moving points of erratic lights, traffic elongated like stretched out metal taffy painted like a psychedelic circus, a moon up high looked down upon him and laughed. He wished the bus would just keep going, break the barrier of the city limits and just go. “Drop me in the middle of Kansas, for Christ’s sake,” he mumbled to himself. “I don’t care. I’ll hide in a hotel elevator. I’ll chew on ice. I’ll try to breathe.”

He sat still and listened to the engine of the bus. It stopped and went. He could hear the clicking sound of the turn signal. The driver spoke over the radio to someone. Simon thought he heard him say: “Yeah, I got him.”

On Western Avenue, Simon reached up and tugged on the wire that signaled the driver to let him off at the next stop. The bus crawled to the curb. Simon got up and walked toward the exit. “Are you sure you want to get off here?” the driver asked.

Simon struggled to smile. “I’m not sure of anything anymore,” he said, and he stepped off the bus and into a sea of run down neon and city dirt. He watched as the bus pulled away with a polluted hiss. The engine growled. The machine soon disappeared.

Simon turned and looked at the orange and white auto parts store. He looked up and down the entire avenue and it was nothing but beat down stores dressed in electric signage. It was one long eternal strip mall.

He saw a burger place and went in. He ate a lonely meal at a plastic table. He sipped on a cold soda. He looked out the window and in it was reflected a dead-end life. His own face was distorted. His hair looked stupid. His eyes ached. He considered snuffing it as a worthy alternative. Life just hurt too God damn much.

He pushed his tray of food away and rested his head down on his crossed arms. He closed his eyes and listened to the garbage music overhead. There was a tussle of some voices. Customers came and went. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. His nametag said: MANAGER. “Hey. You can’t sleep in here.”

Simon blinked his eyes and got up. He dumped his tray of trash and walked back out onto the strip of meaningless shit. He breathed the musty air and started walking toward home.

The next morning there was a knock at the door. Two cops had come to arrest him. Simon wept as they led him to the patrol car and stuffed him into the back seat. The ride was long and painful. He looked out at the swirling city, and it spat back at him. He was full of regrets; they were spilling over. “Am I going to do time for this?” he asked the cops up front.

“That’s up to the judge,” one of them answered. “But you nearly killed people, so I figure you’ll get something.” They laughed at him.

“I didn’t mean to,” Simon pleaded. “I was just so upset about life. I lost control. I’m always losing control.”

“Not our problem, buddy,” the other cop said. “Now, why don’t you just shut up.”

Simon Waterbones was found to be a menace to society just as society was a menace to him. He sat in a prison cell and scribbled in a notebook with a half-eaten pencil. No one ever came to visit. He had no friends among the other inmates. They all hated him without even knowing him. It’s because he was weak and as fragile as glass. It’s because he was different. The world didn’t fit him, and he didn’t fit the world. He had been born in the wrong place and time. He sighed and looked up at a concrete wall painted death gray. He set his notebook aside and laid down on his bunk. He closed his eyes and tried to dream of flying.

END

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