Jesus H. (or) Time flies

This is still here?!?  

I could not remember the word Smashwords.  

This was the best route my brain decided to take.  

Our Hero Returns

I am trying to think of a start-up.  I keep seeing ads for Door Dash.  The models look far too healthy and optimistic. 

In trying to assemble a writing project I discover that the characters are not 'the lost' but 'people who lost'.  Some old Pulp song lyric bubbles up, concerning nubs who lost the plot. 

I work for the state.  I work with people closing in on retirement.  I work with sick old people who should retire but won't because they can't; they must endure until the next hash mark.  I work with people who need public assistance for housing, who state relief when a fellow co-worker volunteering at a food bank lowers the stigma on tapping that particular albatross.         

I hate my job.  Encountering 'kick the can down the road' bureaucracy and its companion creature the irreducible bottleneck wearies the soul and inflicts a thousand tiny cuts.  This is how blue minds turn red.  

All the other jobs I apply for are some brand of 'customer service'.  All I've done is customer service. How in the name of holy fuck did this happen to me?  

There's a start-up idea. 

A numerical system for figuring out how you got to where you got and the likelihood you get out of it.  And the likelihood you die while trying to gnaw your paw free from the hunter's trap. 

Location, Location, Location

Since you asked.  This is where the bodies are buried.  Where the paper is shredded.  Where the dreams were gutted and sliced and stored in single-use plastic.  This is the scream store.  This is an armpit of a demon seventy feet deep and rising.  This is ignorance and bliss in a tug of war.  That was your last chance and your getaway car on fire on the side of the road.  This is the clown that molests at parties.  This is a zipper that will stick and make you late and determine the rest of your blink and miss it existence.  This is a headache that never ends.  This is a solution never implemented.  This is cheese on a saltine or indeterminable cleverness crucified on the tines of a bent fork. This is the drummer left behind by the band thumbing rides on the interstate on the grayest day of the year complete with flurries and ominous rumblings from the distant horizon.  Once upon a time hope roamed the hills, her strides athletic and pure.  And then we put her out of her misery.  This is where you ask how much longer and I tell you not long but maybe too narrow and almost certainly too much for your kind in this lifetime.