I found the below bit digging through old files, trying to find something worthy of working on in place of the short story I should be re-writing. A lot of times I listen to music when I’m writing. When I do so, I punch in a few of the lyrics at the top of the document, just to get me in the mood, and to maybe remind me of what I was listening to when I look back at it. This was a Tori piece (off of a more recent album, Scarlett’s Walk I think?)… which doesn’t make a WHOLE lot of sense… but is interesting all the same.

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He drowned in those walls, under that ceiling, counting cracks, killing roaches, listening to the muffled sound of his mother’s daytime TV with its sparkling clean commercials for diapers and soap and breakfast cereal. They made him hungry, sometimes. Mostly he wanted to go outside. He watched the street below from his window, chin resting on the sill, for hours. They were in a corner house, next door to Ralph’s, so he could watch people slow at the stop sign and walk to and from the party store, empty handed on their way in, leaving with paper sacks. He watched the noontime shadows disappear and reappear as the day wore on. If it was going to be a good day he would hear her in the kitchen rattling around with pans and water would run, and if he waited, smells of food would waft into his room. Later, when she was quiet, he could slip out and clean out the pan, let his fingers get sticky picking up leftover pieces of macaroni or squiggly noodles. He would find any spills and lick them up and run his fingers along the inside of the pan as hard as he could, getting out the last of the residue. He would then slip back into his room, sucking on each of his fingers until the flavor was gone and his fingers were damp and tasteless.