Thomas Aidan Hiscock – Mussel Cove, Falmouth, Maine – 2025

***

The doors blew open on a foul breeze, spraying dirt across the floor. 

Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered.

A man emerged, seeping past the threshold. 

No proud chin or violent eyes…

Adrift, lost in a blur of hopeless days and lonely nights…

… Bent like a tree in the wind.

Flaking skin, scales decorated with dirt and decay…

The man collapsed with every step, swallowed by the earth.

His flimsy boots rose to the ankle, worn with dust.

The leather was cracked and dry, glued by a lick of white paint.

He stood hunchback, locked in place —

Forced to look ahead, staring down the barrel of fucking forever.

Vacant pupils rolled back…

Puffy eyelids, features sliding off his face…

There was nothing behind those beetle black eyes…

Nothing. 

Gone fishin’ and never coming back. 

He didn’t need eyes.

This amoeba? This resume of pain and bad decisions? 

This eternity of ‘not sure’ and have-nots? 

Bouncing like a pinball, walloped by life. 

Except there was no music… and the villains were all too real and the heroes never fucking showed up. 

No, he didn’t need eyes. There was nothing to see. 

No beauty, no love, no light. 

Just an endless wash of grey and the cattle prod of pain.

Streaks of dust lined his eyes — dark rings of toil, pressed into flesh…

A reminder that tomorrow always comes… that there’s no end to the sergeant march of time… that you always gotta’ pay the piper and no amount of nothing will change the fact that you’re a fucking slave. 

Without a word, he slapped four wet dollars on the counter, grabbed his beer, and slunk away…

Existence reduced to a can. 

Day drinking as a career.