It was stale. Kale was always stale. It was cold and I felt like I’d eaten dirt. I looked up at John and smiled, forcing myself to take another bit of it between my fingers.
“Best you’ve made yet.”
“You think so? I used some worm feces for the fertilizer.”
I raised my eyebrows. I was in an old enough generation to know using shit in fertilizer wasn’t disgusting, but…
“Dude, do worms even shit?”
“Miniscule yet powerful, yes.” This was the happiness I had ever seen someone about worm poop.
“Yeah, yeah…fascinating…” my voice started to trail off at the same time my mind did. It happened often, and I think John was used to it because it was one of the few things he didn’t complain to me about. I just got so detached from things outside of myself. All I knew was that I had a body and a mind, and thoughts, but if you asked what was around me or what exactly the people around me were doing, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I just stood there and my brain turned off for a bit. I guess you can call it a zone out, but even when people zone out, they recognize the movement around them. All I recognize is my existence and no one else’s. Like there is no world.
I blinked. John was over the sink, washing the dirt from his hands. My eyes flicked around frantically to remind myself where I was. These weird fade outs had been less and less common sense I started Slur, but that just made them all the more sudden when I did have them.
“So what’s for dinner?” I asked, moving myself to sit in a wooden kitchen chair.
John tried to hide the fact that he was startled, but I saw and began wondering exactly how long I had been…away. Still, he turned and I saw the large clear bowl of mixed salad he was holding.
I groaned. “John, oh my God. How many days are we going to have salad? I love Mother Nature and all, but if we keep eating like this, we’re going to strip the poor woman dry.”
His expressionless face told me he didn’t find my joke funny. There was no use arguing with him. I placed a small portion of the mixed leaves and vegetables onto my plate and began prodding it with my fork. I wasn’t a herbivore, I was not supposed to live this way. Where was the meat I could viciously rip my highly advanced teeth through? What about fruit? Why did it have to be vegetables and vegetables as the two options for non-meat items?
“So how was your day?” He asked. He always asked. It was his only way to get information from outside that he could promptly complain about.
“Nothin’ much.” I muttered, shoving a cherub tomato into my mouth. “Though I’d check out the beach for a bit, but I couldn’t even see it.” This was my trick. Every time. John would have found out about my slur heroine use if I didn’t throw bones to him every day. He would go on for ages about the smallest things.
“Hey John, today I went to Central Park and they had advertisements playing across the water.”
“The only eventful thing today was a little kid crying that they stepped near some mud.”
I realized I could base all of this off lies, it wasn’t like he had a way to fact check me, but I always told him true stories. I actually enjoyed listening to him rant on and on about the failures of society. It was fascinating to me, and gave me a perspective I knew I'd never find out on the streets or in a focus meeting. So I told him little stories and kept him from interrogating me and instead interrogating society as a whole. Which, granted, I was a part of, but I never rally minded. Deep down, despite my grievances of his holier-than-thou attitude, I knew he was right.
Chapter Two
Start from the beginning
