Here You Go: A Collection of Garbage and Other Things

Attack of the Jumbo Shrimp

Jack had given up on his dream a long time ago. He was like the rest of them now, pale and uninteresting and flat, like so many copies or clones plodding about the city. They were all faded from hard work, not one possessing that spark of life associated with youth and long gone carefree days. 

He rose at dawn, ate breakfast, and went to work. Then he returned to his gray apartment in a monotone neighborhood and watched some mindless telly or did some more work that he brought home from the office. 

Except on Wednesdays. 

For Wednesdays were grocery days. 

And he could never avoid the jumbo shrimp. 

Jack went to the same grocery store, bought the same supplies. He knew where the seafood aisle was, and avoided it with a dull sort of tenacity, the sort that comes when you've long forgotten the reason why you did something. 

But he could never avoid the jumbo shrimp. 

Sometimes a bag was there in the meat aisle, lying right next to that piece of steak that he wanted for his Thursday Grill Nights. 

Other times, he would move a bag of bread to reach for another, and a bag of shrimp was there, somehow. 

Sometimes they showed up in the vegetable section, other days, the dairy. 

He never acknowledged it, just simply picked what he wanted and moved on, with a sort of stubbornness that still remained after most of his personality had disintegrated. 

It was a war, alright, a war between Jack and the jumbo shrimp. 

The rules were unclear, the goals undefined. But all the same, Jack continued to ignore the shrimp, and the shrimp continued to attack Jack. 

On particularly stressful weeks, Jack would sometimes glance at the bags of shrimp waging war against him and glimmers of a woman would appear in his dull, gray brain. 

On those days, when his vision was tinged red, like the color of a particularly vibrant scarf that woman had worn, he would concede defeat to the shrimp by picking up a bag and sliding it into his cart. 

Other days, when his vision was particularly monotone, he was the victor, never even acknowledging the bags that lined his vision, picking out meat and eggs and milk and checking out without even a glance at the white plastic bags filled with memories he'd long since confined to the past. 

Some weeks, his vision went green, calling to his tired mind bright, fresh grass and laughter? A woman's laughter? He was too tired to remember, and too drained to care. He would look at the pink shrimp tinged with sprays of brilliant white crystals, and acknowledge a truce. 

His life was a gray canvas, with little spatters of red and green and pink, but he didn't want to see the colors. He didn't want to know that colors existed. He was fine without the shrimp, without the elusive memories that slipped through his grasp like fine mist, lost to the currents of River Time. 

And sometimes when the red was particularly bright, particularly garish, he grew angry. He didn't like being angry. Being angry was tiring, oh—yes, it was so tiring to be mad. 

Why shrimp? He would think angrily to himself. Why me? He would bemoan angriling to himself. He would throw the bag of shrimp away, the white plastic untorn, unopened, unsullied. 

When the gray came back, he would go back to the trash can and fish out the shrimp. When the anger was replaced by the nothingness he embraced like an old friend, he would opened the bag of shrimp and make something to eat. Then he would watch some brainless telly or do some work he had brought home from the office. 

And then it would be Thursday, and he would forget the war. Forget the red scarf, and the green grass, and the sound of a woman's laughter. He would forget the woman, the memories, what it felt like to be young and a dreamer, and his mind would turn to other, more important things. 

He would think of stocks, and insurances, and spreadsheets and balances, all gray and safe and monotonous. 

And the jumbo shrimp would cease to bother him. Until Wednesday came again.