Thursday

Empty Shelves: Consecutive Substack Story 1213

Copher’s is out of kitty litter.

The shelves are stocked with everything else.

Copher’s is the only store in town that carries kitty litter.

Two men came in and bought it all, the assistant manager says.

Back in the car to drive to Haskell.

Venoy is a sea of brake lights.

Some of the brake lights pulsate and you realize those are emergency flashers.

The road is blocked. You cut over to Carter. The brake lights on Carter are at least three miles long.

You turn around and drive home.

An oil tanker turned over, the internet tells you.

Marty Tolbrecht bought all the kitty litter at Cophers to soak up the oil that was headed for his lawn, a neighbor texts you.

You ask if they have any kitty litter and they tell you their Weimaraner poops in the backyard.

You stare at the blue plastic litter box, nice and clean and waiting for litter that you don’t own.

You didn’t think this through.

Paisley the Cat, who you adopted as a kitten stares at you. Paisley can’t talk, but her eyes are telling you you didn’t think this through.

As you wonder if kitty litter can soak up oil from an oil tanker another neighbor tells you that it wasn’t an oil tanker at all, it was a Porta Potty truck.

Marty Tolbrecht used the kitty litter for the right purpose, wrong species.

From the basement you pull the document shredder you got as a gift and never used.

You begin to shred paper and hope that Paisley doesn’t object to using shredded paper as litter.

“It’s just temporary,” you say out loud and go back to shredding paper.

You are shredding the paperwork from your divorce, and realize your ex-wife got you the document shredder when she was still your wife.

The internet tells you there is one fatality in the crash.

Fifteen vehicles were involved, they say, and it could have been much worse.

The shredded paper is still unused when you fall asleep.

When you wake up, you hear that the fatality was Michael Stanley.

You don’t know him well, but you would see him at Copher’s sometimes.

You remember him buying kitty litter.

You remember him asking the cashier if they could scan the kitty litter on the bottom of the cart, because he has a bad back.

Michael Stanley doesn’t have a bad back anymore.

But he might have kitty litter.

You look at Paisley.

Beyond her is a pile of shit on the little artificial putting green your ex-wife got you as a gift.

You use the putting green all the time.

You can’t be mad at Paisley.

But you can be mad in general.

It’s just temporary.

***

***

I’m going to continue this streak of publishing fiction as long as I can.

While I’ll always be proud of it, I’ll always be shocked that more people didn’t embrace it. Thank you to those of you who do embrace it.

My Venmo is James-Graham-80 if you’d like to throw me a tip (lifeline). I promise I put far more of myself into these stories than your barista does to your Lattecino (though they deserve respect too).

The Substack model of funding these offerings has dried up (and not just for me). The microfunding platforms take an insane amount of money for very, very little beyond an electronic transfer.

Thanks for reading.