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Oil on Canvas<br />
Kyle Mangan<br />
Part I<br />
A Haggard Look in the Mirror<br />
My God, I look like Hell. I feel like hell. I haven't had a hangover in<br />
three years. I look better than I feel, though. Which I feel is important to<br />
note. I think it's the lights, they're florescent, and bluish, or not bluish, I don't<br />
remember how it works, but the highlights all seem cool and the shadows<br />
feel kind of warm. This is a strange place. These are strange lights. This is a<br />
strange mirror.<br />
I should have sat somewhere else. I should be eating somewhere else. I<br />
don't want a cheese dog. I don't know why I ordered a cheese dog. Yes I do.<br />
I ordered a cheese dog because I taste death in my mouth and the restaurant<br />
that caught my eye, as I drove past last night, with the neon yellow painted<br />
windows promising healthy food, fast service, and low prices, "Pita Pete's"<br />
—clever— doesn't open until noon and I have no intention of being anywhere<br />
near Pete nor his Pitas at noon.<br />
So now I'm waiting in this diner for a cheese dog that I had no intention<br />
of ordering and doubt I'll finish, as I really would just like to have something<br />
substantial in my stomach before I start driving, which means something high<br />
in fat, which means processed, neon, liquid cheese. I ignore the somewhat<br />
relevant fact that I've never eaten a hot dog in my life, much less a cheese<br />
dog, without having the benefit of spending the next four hours using my<br />
uvula to bat it back into the acidic depths reserved for most anything that<br />
enters my mouth, making an exception for gum, those packing peanuts they<br />
put in your mouth at the dentist, seven tongues since I was sixteen and<br />
Jesse Jones decided argyle sweaters and converse shoes made me the most<br />
irresistible sophomore since Holden Caulfield... he was a sophomore right?<br />
Doesn't matter, I don't care. I should have been nicer to Jesse. Where was<br />
I, though?<br />
The taste of death. Sounds like something from a nineteen thirties radio<br />
serial; trench coats, fog horns, everyone's sporting a fedora, chasing dames<br />
in red satin cocktail dresses wearing poison lip balm. But that's not this.<br />
This is different. This is frothy. This is the result of twice filling a bathroom<br />
sink with a spattered coat of burgundy Sangria, all ingredients swallowed<br />
separately of course, substituting beer for 7-up, rum for fruit, and wine<br />
for everything else, though there were thick chunks of pineapple which I<br />
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