Souls Make Noise

Deliveries To and From

Photo by Julia Maior on Unsplash

She did a thing to his soul, Shelly Collier did, and Nolan Bacharyan’s soul made a noise up his spine like a cookie sheet landing on stainless steel from a thousand lacks of confidence above.

Only Nolan could hear the noise, but Shelly Collier could taste the look on his face when he heard it, and thought, not entirely inaccurately, that Nolan was a little strange.

The universe’s greatest gift to Nolan was that he never believed he could rub skin against a creature as magnificent as Shelly Collier.

The universe's greatest trick on Shelly Collier was that those tiny white things that danced down her throat when her back hurt were not temporary residents, they were moving in without the noise that her presence caused in Nolan Bacharyan's soul and spine.

It was “balls glorious” in Nolan's parlance, when he got a job delivering for Flimber’s and “lava heat suck,” again in his words, when he'd pass Shelly Collier on the ramp near 35,her sign so tattered the word Bless was down to one S.

He'd stop when he could, his soul still made that noise, and he’d gift her cheese sticks Donna Flimber deep fried herself.

Shelly fed the cheese sticks to the pigeons, who always made a little noise, not nearly as loud as Nolan’s soul, not nearly as deep.

Nolan would never forget Shelly, which is what he had them write on the card that went with the flowers he sent.

Shelly died among all the pigeons , to whom she had given names, though she had forgotten Nolan's, the face that he once made, and her own.

***

I lost another friend to addiction today. Hurt and pain and ache aren't really preventable.

Dying from the addictions that follow those things is preventable.

I'm pissed.

I hope you enjoyed the story.