intro

The Grip

Big Bro’s sclera, the white part of the eye, burns from the perspiration upon opening his right eyelid, magnifying a radiant sun bursting through the windshield of his ’88 Durango. His squinting brow 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 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 magazine relating to futuristic utopia. Big Bro and everything about where he is at the moment contrasts the small town where he and his brother grew up in. Every house had three or more levels with high walls tucked two feet from the sidewalk. There are only a few homes without these walls and one such had a babied flower bed striped with inviting colors. This house was at the end of a freshly paved cul-de-sac at the end of which Big Bro is nestled on the curb.

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 were purchased in a Gun Barrel gas station that came in the form of pills and cans. 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 is then combined with an 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.

written by jacob jones

edited by matt and jacob