Holes
by Lisa Nikolidakis
There is a woman in the Circle K who is maybe 40, plainly drunk, possibly crazy, a specimen most would call "white trash." She is talking fast about things that don't make sense to me, things about the environment and aliens and unions. She's yelling and poking holes in the two-liters with a Phillips screwdriver. Soda is streaming, spouting in thinly arched columns that fizz, the store a sticky palace. When she looks at me, she pauses, quiet, frozen to her spot, and I turn away, look down and to the side and anywhere but at her, afraid that it's contagious, afraid of what will come out of me if we hold each other's gaze for too long.
The woman behind the counter makes a noise like tff, as if to announce that she won't clean the mess, that she doesn't get paid to deal with these kinds of things. A short man who is also visibly drunk is pouring peanuts into his mouth from a tube, squeezing them out, wiping the salt from his face with the back of his hand, swaying. His eyes are red and he's up close for the show though I can't tell if he is a part of it. I'm not sure if I'm part of it either.When the sheriff arrives, he's hooting and hollering as loudly as the poker. The peanut man chimes in too, begins to bellow, something low and guttural, a sound like a howl, and he throws his neck back, his O-shaped lips pointed at the soggy ceiling tiles. There is no order here, no reason to keep it all together though I want, more than anything, to do this—have worked so hard over the past year to do just this, to push the anxiety down, to quiet the impulses, to stay calm and together and normal. I hmmm softly to myself. I no longer know why I came in here, but it's getting harder to figure out why I'm not shattering and smashing and listening to the sound of breaking. The sheriff walks out with howling man, and as they pull away from the front of the store, they are singing a song I've never heard.
The hole-poker has calmed down, but too much. Her face has gone blank, the skin paled, the eyes flattened. I think I have seen her before, maybe someplace else, maybe everywhere, looking back at me from mirrors. She looks as though, without two-liters left, she might poke holes in herself. I remember a wasp's nest I found as a child. Not knowing what the holes contained, I knocked it to the ground and before I could stamp it out, before I could destroy it the way all children destroy things found in nature, the wasps clung to my legs and arms, piercing my flesh, poking holes. Maybe some creatures just have to destroy. Maybe all of them do.
I am currently a PhD candidate in Fiction at Florida State University. I spend most of my time writing and teaching, though when I need a tactical diversion, I paint self-portraits or sculpt animals out of meat.