Teaser intro to The Grip

The Grip

Big Bro’s sclera, the white part of an eye, burns from perspiration magnifying a radiant sun bursting through the windshield of his ’88 Durango. His squinting brow could not block out harsh light projecting odd shapes against thoughts of Jim Bean and vomit. He closes his eyes again and focuses on the thin layer of skin pumping networks of cascading blood cells. He also recognized the familiar “floaters,” a word he made up for the hardly visible clear strands of protein making up pupil tissue. A truck stop television mentioned something about the sun being closer than normal sun. That was the last he had seen or heard any news in little over forty eight hours.

Slight twists of his vascular forearms excrete minute beads that glisten, as they slowly grow and fall, following veins to a plastic armrest. With high noon approaching, every glowing car on the block with dark paint could cook a steak. Inside his midnight blue sedan items were coming to rise like cup cakes in an Easy Bake Oven. Just one more hour parked without shade, thought Big Bro, causing him to turn in his seat and shield his face from invisible bon fire winds.

The upper middle class suburban neighborhood resembled something out of a magazine relating to futuristic utopias. Big Bro thought everything about this current moment contrasts the bottom bucket town he and his brother grew up in. Mansions on the street had three or more levels with high walls tucked two feet from the sidewalk. There are only a few dwellings on the freshly paved cul-de-sac without these walls and Big Bro was nestled next to one. It had a babied flower bed striping with inviting mix of vibrant colors leading.

Determined to remember what street they were parked on he uses his thumb and middle finger to rigorously message a hangover building up in his temples. The brothers’ long haul across the Texas panhandle was fueled with Yellow Jackets and Fourloko. These legal doses of speed that came in the form of pills and cans were purchased in a Gun Barrel gas station. A yawning, Big Bro casually fills his lungs with the syrupy odor of evaporated Fourloko lining clustered pennies collected in cup holders. This sweet aroma slid up his nose along with a bad whiff of a dried elixir of chili cheese bean burritos, onion dip, mac salad and cheap booze plastered to the outside of the passenger door. The orgy of smells brings the memories of the night before to fruition as he suddenly remembers the street’s name: Edgefield.