Failure To Thrive

Flowers

May 25, 1998

Faint country music played overhead as the universally loathed wimp otherwise known as Stewart Stevenson tapped his fingers on the cash register, the Tractor Supply on the outskirts of this rundown town fairly empty, as usual. Whoever had decided to have a Tractor Supply built in a place like this must have had a few screws loose. Most of the local farms in this impoverished part of the state had completely gone out of business hardly a few years into the Dust Bowl, the only survivors over half a century later entailed an extremely unfriendly family's struggling cattle ranch right on the edge of Highland and some reclusive old guy who lived about eight miles out of town with cotton fields so unusually prosperous that he was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil. Ever since the majority of the original farms in Highland had died off, the oil fields had become the next best place to find a job before a ton of fast food joints had suddenly popped up in the late 1960s. There just weren't many local farmers left. Anyway, most of the shoppers that came to Tractor Supply were less likely to be farmers and more likely to be really frustrated guys looking for obscure tools that the handful of hardware stores near the theater didn't already have for their random handyman jobs, so the average day as a Tractor Supply employee was either extremely stressful or extremely boring. Thankfully, today was extremely boring. Stewart glanced at his half full bag of jelly beans, debating whether he should finish them now or wait until after his next break since there wasn't anything else to do; the boredom was nearly painful, but at least he didn't have to worry about confrontation, one of his many fears. Then, his portable MP3 player, which he'd gotten as a gift from his mother along with a heaping plate of cookies on his most recent birthday, stalled on a song and let the sound of enthusiastic chirping from somewhere near the back of the store that announced the seasonal "Chick Days" sale bleed into his ears; those feisty little chicks were available from early spring to late summer every single year and their telltale chirping was pretty much impossible to miss. The chicks were so cute that he had tried to buy one for himself a few weeks ago when he'd first started his new job since his parents couldn't say no if he used his very own money, but then the fuzzy little thing had pecked his thumb and left him a changed man who would force his coworkers to hand the chicks to the customers instead of handling them himself, clearly not wanting a repeat of the mentally scarring incident that certainly had not left a physical mark whatsoever; Stewart, whose psyche was quite fragile, thought that it should have been illegal for something so cute to be so unreasonably vicious. Clumsily batting at the buttons of the MP3 player, he ended up skipping the song currently stalling and starting a new one instead. Oh, well. Half-heartedly shrugging with one shoulder, he redirected his attention to the waiting bag of jelly beans; unlike Beavis and Butt-Head, his idols, Stewart was more prone to mild disappointment rather than sudden anger when things didn't go his way. He was much slower to anger, especially since he always had plenty of sweets to make up for all of the other empty aspects of his life.

Outside, Beavis was walking with his arms spread out for balance on the narrow concrete divider separating the Tractor Supply's parking lot from the main road leading out of town, obviously not having been scheduled to work at the Maxi-Mart today since he had somehow wandered this far across town; wandering around aimlessly on foot for about nine miles was not a quick trip, and his feet had a few new blisters as proof of the hours squandered in mindless travel. At any moment, he could fall over and land either in the empty parking lot or in front of an oncoming vehicle speeding down the main road; for some reason, everyone always seemed pretty eager to drive away from Highland. Naturally, Beavis was totally at ease, clearly not giving half a shit about consequences as was his typical fashion. Slowly inching forward, he wavered slightly as a beat-up sedan zoomed by, which was going at least 50 miles over the speed limit since the local law enforcement crew was always busy gambling in the back of that one sketchy pizza place instead of enforcing traffic laws. The vehicle that he'd barely even noticed was the exact same sedan that had always been parked in that one driveway which had used to be covered in chalk all of the time. The wussy chalk drawings had completely stopped appearing a few years ago, so whoever had drawn them must've either found a cooler hobby or died, or something like that; after all, people did go missing a lot. Beavis didn't actively remember the exact sedan itself despite it having just passed by, but his subconscious had immediately jumped to vague recollections of a colorful driveway and how he'd thrown a crumpled soda can at the car parked there once, or twice, or thrice. He didn't remember what brand the soda can had been, what the pictures on the driveway looked like, or what color the car had been; well, that sedan was one of those perplexingly indescribable colors, anyway. All he could recall was a jumbled mess of colors and sunlight in his eyes. It had probably been during some random summer day because he was pretty sure he'd been dripping with sweat. That was pretty much the most detail he could get out of that. Sweat. Oh, but what if that had never happened? Maybe those were a bunch of different memories all spliced together. That was why he didn't spend much time trying to remember things that much anymore, which wasn't that big of a change since his memory had already been pretty crappy to begin with anyway. Sometimes, he would suddenly begin wondering if half of his memories had ever been real at all, and it didn't really feel that cool. Sometimes, his memories were more like dreams, which was super confusing and annoying since that meant all of the good things that he could remember probably didn't mean anything substantial, forcing him to hope for the best in the present, which really sucked on days like today. Stupid Butt-Head. Sometimes Butt-Head was extra cool, or even kind of nice in a very subtle manner- but never for more than a few seconds at a time, especially since it would have actually been super creepy if Butt-Head was nicer any longer than that anyway- in his memories, but of course memories couldn't be trusted. Just like dreams, memories almost always seemed very real at first, but then suddenly, they would immediately be revealed to have never actually happened at all or to have been completely out of order, leaving Beavis looking like a total idiot yet again. There was no point in dedicating so much as a second to hope in the intangible. Not when he could shove a rock up his nose or something cool like that instead.