Crushed

Flash Fiction

The whine and pop of the impact wrenches at Pegraneau’s Wheels and Deals kinda sounded like a science fiction battle.

The Orc’s Lair was two doors down from his dad’s tire shop.

Daniel Pegraneau had every reason to be in the neighborhood. If Teryn turned around she couldn’t accuse him of stalking her, but Daniel knew she might anyway.

Maybe she wouldn’t know he was there even if he walked five feet behind her. Teryn acted like that sometimes, like he wasn’t even there.

She did send him an angry emoji and two hearts when someone hit him with a bottle from a passing car on West Branch.

He wore his eyeliner even thicker after that, worked skull beads into his dreads.

He had a poem for her in the pocket of his leather jacket.

If they did speak and he handed her the poem it would be hard to deny his purpose for walking behind her wasn’t coincidental, but he’d deal with that if he had the guts to catch up to her.

He stayed back, about a half a block. Maybe he should just say screw it and go to the Orc, drop in on a campaign. 

Teryn stopped behind Pickler’s. 

Daniel stopped when she stopped, which he realized was stupid. He took a breath and kept walking, wondering if his clutch on her folded poem in his pocket had smeared the ink. He let go of it, let his arms dangle at his sides.

Teryn did a weird little jump dance, then stomped.

Daniel was puzzled by it but liked it.

She bent over and looked at something, clutched her right arm around her stomach.

He thought she might have looked his way and he shrunk a little, wondering if his arms looked dumb dangling at his sides.

For a guy who didn’t care what people thought of him, or actually invited their scorn, he always cared what Teryn thought.

Without warning, she scurried around the corner like she was hiding from someone. From him?

He’d never hurt her.

She was gone around the corner. He walked more briskly now, wanting to catch her, give her the poem.

He slowed by Pickler’s. He always liked their chicken. His dad liked Shawna Pickler, maybe a little too much.

There was a donut wrapper on the ground, stuck there by grease or motor oil or...something, and an old penny partially melted to the asphalt.

He began to walk again when the bug caught his eye. A huge roach. It was partially crushed, but a leg still moved.

Teryn must have stomped it. He knew she loved animals. Maybe everyone hated cockroaches. Daniel didn’t. He loved bugs. Snakes too. Anything that was an object of fear or disgust he felt a kinship with.

He knelt. The roach was still alive, squirming but unable to propel itself forward.

It was the biggest roach he had ever seen, maybe exaggerated slightly because it was partially smushed, but still huge for a domestic cockroach.

Daniel looked around. Villegas was smoking in the alley behind the tire shop. A woman was putting her credit card into the parking kiosk.

Daniel pulled the cotter pin out of his septum.

Then he gently pulled the cockroach off the pavement. It wiggled. More of a writhe, Daniel thought. It was in pain.

He pushed the torso of the cockroach up through the cotter pin. The roach spasmed and went still.

Daniel threaded the undulating side of the cotter pin back through the hole in his septum and admired his new accessory with his phone camera.

He took in a whiff of chicken, wondered if chicken grease was the roach’s last supper, and kept walking in search of Teryn.

***

Photo by Micah Boswell on Unsplash