Grip (Start of the story)

The Grip

Big Bro’s sclera burns from parting the right eyelid to perspiration magnified by a radiant sun bursting through the windshield. His squinting brows could not block out the harsh light projecting odd shapes against thoughts of Jim Bean and vomit. He focuses on the thin skin’s network of cascading blood cells and “floaters,” a word for the hardly visible clear strands of protein making up pupil tissue. Before leaving his house a forecaster mentioned something about a closer than normal sun. That was the last he had seen or heard any news in a 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. It was high noon and every car on the block blessed with dark paint was hot enough to cook a steak on the hood. Inside his dark blue sedan items were coming to rise like cup cakes in an easy bake. The ideas of spending one more hour parked without shade spawned Big Bro turn in his seat and shield his face from an invisible bon fire wind.

The upper middle class suburban neighborhood was futuristically utopian to Big Bro and everything about where he’s at contrasts the small town he and his brother grew up in. Every house had three or more levels with tall fences tucked two feet from the sidewalk. There are only a few homes without a fence and Big Bro was nestled beside one. The house had a babied flower bed that striped inviting bright colors leading up to it. It was the last house at the end of a freshly paved cul-de-sac.