‘Those fucking suckers can’t do anything on their own! I always gotta help everyone out in every. Single. Fucking. Thing!’ Russel yelled as he was slowly halting the car to a stop. He was heading to a plumbing supply store but was unable to park his car right next to the entrance because there were at least five other cars that had gotten there before him.
The reason for which he had to go there in the first place was the need to change the boiler in his bathroom. He hadn’t had the time to do it on his own so he’d hired a renovation crew that would take care of the plumbing while he was at work. Normally he wouldn’t do that. He used to be able to build a house all by himself; back in the day, there wasn’t a construction worker who could call himself an equal to the great Russell Jarkins. But his back had been giving him a lot of trouble for the last couple of years so he decided to run his company solely from behind the desk, without getting his hands dirty anymore. Those snot-nosed youngsters he’d hired had no idea how to install a boiler, or to change a simple pipe. Fuck, he’d even have to change all the tiles in his bathroom because of those idiots’ incompetence! Russell’s only consolation was his intending to take those imbeciles to court over the mess they’d made, making ‘em pay, for he wasn’t going to put one penny into that bathroom without it being returned to him and then some!
He was so sick and tired of all that madness that was going on at his place, he just wanted to get the equipment he needed and go right back home to bring some order to his devastated bathroom before wifey dearest started yapping again.
As he was getting out of his car, he noticed that the driver of the car in front of him, a hunched senior, got out too, and was by all means going to enter the store much sooner than he was, which meant that Russell would have to wait that much longer to get attended and consequently come back home a bit later. He could tear the door off his fucking Toyota just thinking that the old fart did that to him! Another person he noticed, that was walking into the store from the opposite direction, was a young, brawny man dressed in a polo shirt with the store’s logo printed on it.
Must be their dumb muscle, Russell figured. Only good for carrying things and not much more.
He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but the first thing Russell felt seeing the muscular lad was jealousy. He was jealous of the perfect shape of his shaved head, of the tan, the muscles that threatened to tear the fabric of the sleeves. He wished he could take the toilet bowl placed behind the window and bash the kid over his dumb fucking head with it.
Walking the few yards toward the store’s entrance, Russell almost stepped into dog feces.
People and their fucking mongrels! he thought but didn’t have the courage to say out loud.
But hey, in the end, the day didn’t turn out to be all that bad; the cashier allowed him to go first for he had only a few items to pay for whereas the other clients would still have to bargain for a while, talk about the warranty, and so forth. That was why he liked this store, too. It was small, located on the fringes of the neighbourhood he lived in, and he could have easily bought all he needed at one of those bigger home improvement retailers, but the owner of this store was the kind of guy who gave you generous discounts just because you chose to shop at his place.
After having put the boiler, the pipes, and the valves in the trunk, Russell nestled comfortably in the driving seat and just couldn’t get that smile off his face, so happy was he that he had gotten to check out sooner than the rest of the suckers.
And as he was about to turn the key in the ignition, his mood plummeted once more. There was that dumb muscle again, walking out of the store and carrying a huge box with a wash basin drawn on it. He was walking in Russell’s direction and it was clear as day to him that he was to put the box in the pickup that was parked in front of him. The rage of jealousy made his blood boil but he soon calmed down when he noticed that the dog shit was still resting quietly on the pavement. He stretched his spine to see whether the young man would step into it.
He has to, Russell said to himself in his mind, the tip of his tongue touching his upper lip. There’s no way he can see it.
And he was right. The young man stepped in the pile of dog feces without noticing it and went on to put the heavy box into the senior’s cargo bed.
Russell turned on the car with an elated physiognomy and drove away. Now he could work and toil all day long with a smile on his face.
Written by Christopher Sworen
A brilliant portrait of a self-centered, self-obsessed human being, Christopher. It's all about, and for, him. He cannot enjoy happiness unless it's at the expense of others. We all have this character defect to some degree, but this guy is an extreme case.
Haha. Sometimes, things just work out for you, even in this crazy world. Russell may be a jerk, but it sounds like he works hard and is overall a good guy and heck, he didn’t really cause harm to anybody else, unless he used some sort of Jedi mind stuff to make the guy not see the dog crap. Haha. Awesome story, Chris.