Tree Of Stories

My story Big Cold Room is in the latest issue of A. Hicks Hope online magazine. Check it out!

http://www.ahickshope.net/dreams.htm

          He was sitting there on his couch eating some chips that were supposed to taste like pizza. They didn’t. He just liked salty things, and these were the closest things he could find that fit into that category. It didn’t really matter. He was so tired that he couldn’t even remember what sport he was watching. He’d been working all day, and he finally came home to his pizza chips, and he was almost asleep when the phone rang like it knew how much it bothered him. Against all odds, he picked it up.

            “Hello?”

            “Yes, is this Usiel? With the brown Cadillac?”

            “Yeah.” He hated his stupid name. Like, it was tight, but everyone who said it always said it like they were saying a curse word, so he hated it. He almost hated it as much as he hated the fact that, after years of scrimping and saving and wishing to own a Cadillac, it was broken more than it worked. He hated that it was brown, too. It gave people the impression that he was about fifty years older than he actually was. It was the kind of paint job that said it was the least of the owner’s worries.

            “Hi, this is Tommy from the garage. You said that you wanted to replace the engine on this vehicle?”

            “Yes, that’s right. Is something wrong?” He already knew the answer. He also felt very sorry for himself and decided it was time for another pizza chip. His dog came into the room and tried to jump onto his lap. The great brute was roughly the size of an oil tanker, and Usiel could feel his soul being crushed, so he pushed him away. He sauntered out of the room and back down the hall like he should be one upset, the nerve.

            “Well, not really. I mean, we could still replace it if that’s what you want, but you could just buy a whole new car for how much we’d have to charge you. Well, I mean, not brand new, but, uh, of equal value to the car you, uh, previously owned. Or something.” There was a long silence where you could almost feel the self-pity and frustration floating through the air. “Sir? Are you still there?”

            “Yeah, sorry. Don’t do anything to it tomorrow until I come by.”

            “Alright, that’s fine. We open at eleven.”

            “Okay, thanks.”

            “Have a nice night, sir. See you tomorrow.”

            “Bye bye.” And he hung up. He hated it when he earnestly said “bye bye”. He felt like an idiot. What people thought of him was of the utmost importance. Now this guy probably thought he was some kind of weak little loser with a really stupid name and a dumb brown car.

            It is a time like this one in a man’s life that usually ends up causing some sort of reflection on how life has been so far. And so Usiel reflected. He was twenty-seven years old. He gave up drawing for a career in the Air Force when he was seventeen because he thought flying was cool. Several years later, he found himself in Florida with his dumb brown car and an even dumber brown dog. So the question entered his mind? What did he really have going for him? Well, for one thing, he had a wonderful wife. She was probably the only reason he wasn’t aggressive and was instead merely passive-aggressive. He could also fly a large aircraft with the capability of sinking the entire country of Japan. This was more cool than useful, but you know, whatever. He was still a man with manly, explosion and violence-related needs.

            This made him feel a little better. Plus, he had a few more pizza chips so he was in relatively high spirits. Yes, life was okay. And he really wanted to go fly some planes.