worms off string ! yale and ai
May 31, 2024 23:53:36 GMT -5
Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on May 31, 2024 23:53:36 GMT -5
I like winning.
I like the warm feeling that spreads out like a palm opening against my stomach, small tendrils of pride worming their way up my collarbone as I toss the last can on the ground between us. Sure, Ai had seven and I had five, sure, if you take that into account then we nearly finished at the same time, sure, sure, sure. I still won.
I don't need to win, losing's good too because in the end, I just like to be invited. Still, feels kind of cool, kind of nice when Ai looks at me just a little different, for a sec, like I'm a stranger, like I'm not real.
My throat is going crazy from the bubbles. I wince, put a hand over my mouth but the burp comes out between my fingers, so big and angry that it beats up my tonsils on its way out. "Daaaaamn," I whisper, "spicy."
The cans are littered at my feet, little silver prizes with holes keyed through the side, the tabs half-popped. "Who taught you that?"
I always wait for the question, never comes though, people are good at guessing and they're always gonna guess Sal but it wasn't even him. It's just physics, that's all.
Ai's talking, can held up in front of his face. Light coming through a hole in the ceiling bounces off of it and highlights one of his ears.
Sal never taught me how to shoot, Nowles did though. We used to go out to the woods at the edge of Nine and look for rabbits. We were all words, little action. Didn't bring any bunnies home but we shot a lot of cattails off of their stems.
"Okay," I nod, then bend down to pick my cans up. I keep bending though, forwards for forever until my knees are on the floor, the cans all around me. I didn't think I was that tall?
Ai's already lining his cans up, I got to move quick. The rifle's stiff across my back and it's keeping my spine straight so I have to fold in half just to reach the last can but then I'm on my feet and it's all good again.
There's an old counter standing crooked in the middle of the floor, it makes for a perfect place to line the cans up. I let them all out of my arms at once and they roll across the scratched up plastic surface. Every time I pick one can up I punch another one over. There's something wrong with my hands or my arms maybe, or probably just something wrong with me, dunno.
Stomach's kind of sloshing though.
"You go first," I tell Ai as I walk back over, "'Cause I won." My ammo's in the backpack and I've got to load up still.
I sit down to do it, pulling the rifle off of my back first. I found the bullets for it in the plate cupboard in the kitchen. Weird to keep the gun in the attic but the bullets in the kitchen but there are stranger things in my house.
"If I'm bad at this then it's the seltzer I just chugged, okay?"