The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2018

phone beeping, an underwhelming chorus of everyday life. He held the phone in his hand. A text message from his girlfriend, Adriana. H EY ! M Y ROOMATE SAID THAT IF YOU SLEEP HERE AGAIN YOU NEED TO PAY HER RENT . A RGH ! B ETTER NOT COME TONIGHT . A thick blanket lay on the front passenger seat, with seven empty water bottles and a newspaper open to the week’s weather forecast. He noted that it would be below the 40s and considered buying another blanket. He had been sleeping in his cab since he was evicted from his apartment. Sometimes he took showers at Adriana’s, or he drove to Queens where a friend let him use the bathroom. Another text message. T HANKS FOR KILLING THE MOUSE LAST NIGHT . I NEVER THOUGHT THAT YOU WOULD BE SO UPSET AFTER THAT . S ORRY . The image of the dead mouse almost made him puke. Last night, he ended up shaking in Adriana’s bathroom after he struck the mouse so many times that he broke the broom in four pieces and the cabinet door in two. He stopped only when he heard Adriana’s yells. “Párale.” But with the first strike, he felt the pain of the animal, the pain that he needed to bring to an end until its body became dirt, inert, a red stain, part of the kitchen tile. This was the way his mother had taught him to kill chickens when he was six years old. “Break its neck so the pain is gone.” Hopefully, he could bear the pain to break his own neck. The doctor’s diagnosis to Xavier was simple, “No treatments are affordable to you and if there were one, it would be too painful, too much suffering to be worth it.” The doctor had gone on to describe the unattainable treatments in technical detail. His mother died in the same way without insurance, without treatment, without a ticket to one of those concerts that in his mind only had the purpose of showing off in one last act of extravagance. The Meadow 105