/lit/ - Literature

>>23173510
In a dim-lit hovel, the stench of stale beer mixing with the acrid smoke curling from a half-burned doob, Jason Bryan slams his Pabst down. The sting of memory cut through him, jagged and raw, a furious surge of rage and nostalgia.

"I just wanna go back to the fucking mall," he snarls, voice gravelly with the residue of too many nights being royal with the crown. "To be ten again, when the world wasn’t such a shitshow. There was a corner store, lit up like a Dutch rave, everything shiny and bright. And that colossal wall of L’eggs pantyhose, with 90 degree bent skinny styrofoam legs, a young boy's curious dream in the checkout eisle. I couldn't tell you why it was something special. It just was. Everything untouched, even with the dark clouds of my parents divorce gathering omnimously in the distance."

I took another swig, the liquor burning a path down my throat, a futile attempt to wash away the bitterness that was all too noticiable by the crabs of /lit/.

"Walking through that mall, clutching a roll of quarters dad handed me like it was some kinda peace offering. As if that could bridge the chasm he was digging, day by day. Made us feel like explorers, a family on patrol in some uncharted retail wilderness. Colonists in a land of discount racks and neon signs, pretending we were whole."

A laugh, harsh and devoid of humor, it spilled from me.

"Wanted to feel fulfilled, you know? Wrist aching from the joysticks of Double Dragon, Haggar piledrivers, shoulders bruised from lugging around Target bags heavy with G.I Joes and Rambos. The smell of cinnamon mixing with three slices of pizza for two bucks in the air, like some gluttonous communion with the other fat and damned wandering this newfound place, a name we had never heard before-foodcourt."

My gaze dropped, lost in the haze of smoke and memories. "Shoppers, every last one of us. Trying to fill the void with whatever shit they could sell us. Flashy lights, final fights, Camcom and Nintendo, I was a happy child, for a bit, in that innocent haze before the pit of hell broke through. Happy, even though everything was about to turn to shit."

I lean back in the terminally online chair, the fucking thing creaking under my weight, a fucked-up shadow against the flickering light. "Angry at my old man, for all the ways he wasn't there. Hurting for my mother, trapped in her silent battles that ended in suicide. But those days at the mall... they were peak 90's, a whisper of what could've been, before everything piled on that woke express elevator to the shitshow."

The bottle's empty now, just like the optimism of days gone by. Jason Bryan sits alone, wrestling with the ghosts of a childhood lost, a bipolar nostalgia for a time when everything seemed possible, even in the shadow of impending doom.

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I'm going to finish the 10-15 books I have 1/2 written, then take a break for awhile, maybe get a regular job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUjSXVdom-Y