Pessimistic Optimism

no, no, no. he thinks. striding from one side of the room to the other he cannot seem to still, quiet, the voices running rampant through his mind. no. no. no.

he knows he has done something wrong, out of place, the words in his mind are trying to remind him. tell him how he got to this place.

he looks around at the walls in the room, the bed with the messed sheets, the woman lying under the thin sheet. breasts exposed, he doesn't know her name. he sees the tattoo of the rose on one breast, the right, and thinks again, no. no. no. this could not have come to this. that woman could not be who he thinks she is.

she also couldn't be dead, and the blood on his hands cannot be hers.

---

walking down the sidewalk, the women standing on street corners look like photographs out of a pornographic magazine. he has seen all kinds, striding the streets late, early, the time doesn't matter. they're always there, floating on the wind, drifting down the gutters that fill with refuse, sludge.

the sewage of the world living on street corners.

he walks past them, they call to him, wearing his shirt and tie. he looks safe. respectable. but, he knows they think, he is just like all the others, a man with needs and desires. the calls unnerve him, in a way they are frightening. some of the grins are partially toothless, some show lips obviously riddled with unnameable decease. one says, "hey, hon, a twenty is all it takes. for sixty, i'll walk you around the world."

the man just walks past, not slowing for the scowl of the woman. not slowing for the others like her, all wearing willing grins, but all alone.

---

the bar.

every night he ends up here, he never drinks anything that would do any damage then what has already been done in his life, short though it may have been. is. he walks to the counter, the bartender just looks at him and turns to the soda machine at his back. "i know, i know," he says in a voice that has a hint of bitterness. of knowing the world just as well as the man himself does, "just a coke. always just a coke. don't you know what a bar is for?"

"i used to know," he says, loosening his tie, a noose. he looks at the bar-back as he walks over over with the glass, sets it down. he wonders about being here. every night he comes, he wonders what makes him return.

his past?

or maybe it's his future playing the game fate is allowed to play.

either way, he thinks, uncontrollable.

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