Day -183, March 12, 5:30:00am

There is a click and the alarm sounds. Joe rolls over and hits the snooze button, looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes again. Thank God it’s Friday. He pushes the covers off and slides his feet to the floor, sitting up in bed. Standing and stretching he makes his way into the kitchen to turn the coffee pot on, all set up to begin brewing the night before.

Day -180, March 15, 5:36:12am

He grabs a mug from the cabinet that reads “Cafe Ground” and pours himself a cup of coffee. He slurps it black and stares through the tiny window in his kitchen that looks down into the alleyway and across the next roof at the East River. Nothing is stirring and he watches the light of the sun begin to wash across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Day -176, March 19, 5:36:14am

He grabs a mug from the cabinet that reads “Mean People Suck” and pours himself a cup of coffee. He slurps it black and stares through the tiny window in his kitchen that looks out into the alleyway and across the next roof at the East River. Nothing is stirring and he watches the light of the sun begin to wash across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Day -173, March 22, 5:37:00am

He grabs a mug from the cabinet that reads “To err is human, to really fuck things up requires a computer” and pours himself a cup of coffee. He slurps it black and stares through the tiny window in his kitchen that looks out into the alleyway and across the next roof at the East River. The superintendent is moving garbage bags from one end to the other, and Joe watches until She begins to show him things.

The post stands at first like a severed arm with gangrene until the metal upturned fist of a shovel busts it into pieces. The engine puffs smoke from its exhaust as the metal lid on the stack rattles and the whole backhoe shakes with laughter. The tractor turns, rumbling. Then another post shatters. More laughter. More smoke. More rumbling. The dirty yellow machine shudders and lurches like a toddler picking up rocks. A massive clumsy baby with the power of 200 horses set free to destroy whatever latest structure is to be dismantled by Consolidated Empire Demolition.

From inside the machine, Joe looks the part of the heart, central to the body and the pulsing life force of the jaunting bouncing catastrophe on four foot high wheels. He is not there. He squints through his dusty Buddy Hollys as plaster board shatters before every flick of his wrist, as brick walls crumble beneath his feet. And he keeps them when they’re down without so much as a grimace. A girl in a beautiful summer sundress. Yellow. Bright, bright yellow. Her teeth are painfully white as she laughs like a child doing wrong. She flails about in mud, laughing. Bang! A pipe fails to give way to the club hand. Joe pulls a lever, slides it back, threads it through a new track. He switches levers and pulls far right like a batter pulling the bat back at base. He shoves the stick in the opposite direction. Bang! The pipe cries out but goes down.

No smile. No grimace. No focus. He is not there. There is just her in his mind. Laughing. Breaking everything. Beatrice.

Read the whole thread: The Hunger Engine

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