The loud smack of a newspaper resounds out across the spacious, shadowy room that is Jittery Joe’s coffeehouse. The sound only competes with a low, gold-toned jazz trumpet spilling through the speaker system. Chintzy sixties deco chairs and lamps make up the decor, as ceiling fans turn uselessly, doing little to suppress the July heat wave. Carefully Nick lifts his rolled-up newspaper from the table and peers at the underside. Smiling, he looks to Travis across the table and says, “How many is that?”

Giving a cursory glance to a small note pad sitting near the corner of the table, Travis replies, “Twelve.” He reaches over to the pad and places another tally mark next to eleven lines underneath the letter N. To the right of that is the letter T, and seven more tally marks.

“Woo-woo,” Nick says happily. He pulls the carcass of a fly off the paper by its wing and tosses it to the floor where it plops down beside several others. “Damn them all,” he says dramatically through gritted teeth.

“Yes, damn them all,” Travis responds uncommited, still in a trance, his concentration set on the legal pad in front of him.

Nick looks around at the cafe’s other occupants for the one hundredth time that afternoon. Little has changed in the three hours that he and Travis have been haunting the place, searching for some inspiration in the heat. “My God we’re pathetic,” he laments to no one in particular.

Travis points at Nick with his pen without looking up, “You’re pathetic.”

“Shut up.”

Continuing his scribbling, Travis ignores Nick who lounges back in his seat to recuperate for a moment. The humidity of the day is sapping everything of vitality. Even the very act of killing a fly, normally invigorating (to Nick and Travis) is exhausting in the swampy, oppressive heat.

“Hey,” Nick says, sitting up in his chair. He reaches across the table to poke at Travis with his rolled-up newspaper. “Hey.”

Scribbling, Travis waves the paper off with his left hand.

“Hey,” Nick says, poking Travis again.

“Quit it.”

“Hey,” Nick persists. “Hey, hey.” He pokes Travis in the arm twice more.

Looking perturbed, Travis says slowly, “I am trying to write some lyrics.” He stares at Nick for a moment who stares blankly back, and then returns to scribbling, noting at the top of his page with large letters and an arrow pointing across the table at Nick, “STOOPID”.

Setting his newspaper down, Nick picks up his small black, hardbound sketchbook off the table and flips through it for the fourth time in twenty minutes. He stops momentarily on his last drawing, completed earlier in the day. Drifting over the head of man in a business suit, trying to shield himself, a convoluted angel sheds its feathers and assaults the little man with heaven-shattering, wavy lines of body odor. “I’m bored,” Nick whines. But then his eyes become drenched in hatred and madness as he stares at tiny black presence now occupying the page in the sketchbook. He slams the book shut with a vengeance, causing several people (Travis included) to jump. Then he cackles. “Moo hoo ha ha.” Travis mechanically moves his pen to the score pad and adds another tally. Opening his sketchbook to the page with the olfactorily offensive angel, Nick scrutinizes the addition to the picture—a small black, red and mutilated splotch. “Perfect!” he declares contentedly. He makes a note near the fly: “Stoopid fly!” It’s not long after the note is finished that he starts poking Travis with the newspaper again.

Travis speaks through clenched teeth. “What?”

“Entertain me, monkey,”

Travis writes furiously on his paper. Looking up at Nick for a moment, he smiles threateningly.

“C’mon, do somethin’ funny, Fat Kid.”

“Okay,” Travis relents, thinking seriously on the matter. “How’s this: Roses are red / Violets are blue / If you keep bugging me / I’ll kill you.”

Nick mulls the poem over for a moment in a scholarly pose, pulling on his beard, before responding in an educated tone, “I think the author had developed important intentions to illustrate with this passage, but his word choice blew chunks.”

Travis just replies with a you-asked-for-it expression.

“I’m sorry, man,” Nick says, setting the paper down and running his hand through his hair. “My brain’s just fried.”

Travis stares desperately at his legal pad one last time and then tosses his pen down. “No,” he says, wiping the sweat from his brow, “you’re not really buggin’ me. This is total crap.”

“What’ve you got?” Nick asks.

Travis reads:

“I will kill Nick and make him eat flies. I will kill Nick and make him eat flies. I will kill Nick and make him eat flies.”

“Blasphemy. But also incorrect. How’re ya’ gonna’ make me eat flies if I’m already dead, dumbass?”

The argument is brought to a halt as a fly lands on the page of the tally pad. Slowly, Travis lifts his legal pad up, and brings it down on the unsuspecting cretin with a satisfying slap. The fly proceeds to spill its innards on the note pad and die.

“Now that’s one dumbass fly,” Nick says, pointing at the remains mockingly.

“You giv’em too much credit,” Travis replies. Contemplating the smear on the tally pad for a second, Travis looks back up to Nick shrugging, “I s’pose there’s not much point in tallying that one.”

“Minions of hell,” Nick seethes.

Thinking on the carcass again, Travis says, “You know, houseflies really are the only species on the planet that I want completely exterminated. Everyone else can stay as long as they like.” After another moment, Travis haltingly recites, “Flies are the minions of Lucifer sent here to subvert us skillfully with their tiny buzzing voices, whispering horrors and irritations that only I can truly understand the villainy of.”

“Now ya’ got yourself a song!”

Read the whole thread: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: flies, Jittery Joe's, Nick Vaughn, poems, Travis Fleeting