Something (Part 1)

On his way home from grad school, Avery, a twenty-something literature major with no significant height or weight, was taking his usually trek down Thimble St., its various novelty shops and bookstores lining the three-lane road between them, when he saw a penny lying on the sidewalk like a speck of shimmery orange paint on the pavement. He took notice of the one cent piece partially because he was a poor broke student of academia, and partially because its metallic hide palely reflected the light of the afternoon sun, causing a glint that had caught the edge of his green eyes. Hesitating only briefly, he slung his tan cloth carrier bag further over his shoulder so that it would lie across his back, and he slowly bent down to fetch the coin, gripping it between his right thumb and index finger. He raised it to his face and let its image reflect off of his glasses. The coin’s surface was grainy with dirt that had lodged into its crevices, and the image of Lincoln was curiously outlined by a dark rim of grit. As he let it roll around in the palm of his hand, he began to wonder what random person dropped it and why? Pennies are so easy to lose; if one could collect all of the lost ones, one would quickly become a millionaire. He chuckled at such an imaginative statistic, his dimples etching lines across his boyish face, and it was at that moment of humored contemplation that the explosion happened.
The only thing Avery’s senses could recall was a loud yet brief noise that sounded like a “pop” followed by a moment of an intense and heavy ringing in the ears that drowned out every other noise. His eyes watched the world turn momentarily white, as though everything had become luminescent; then, when his vision quickly returned, the only thing he saw was his own legs as he went flying through the air and crashed through the large window of a pastry store that he had been standing next to. He didn’t feel the impact of the glass or hear its shattering, though he did see its numerous fragments flying away from him and glow in the light of the explosion like red and yellow sparks. Nor did he feel the impact of the ground as he slammed into the store’s checkered tile floor and skid across it into a dessert display case, subsequently causing him to be buried beneath a landslide of various chocolate coatings and raspberry fillings. There he came to rest, and for a short time he simply laid quite still, his body sprawled out under the cover of sweetness, until at last the ringing faded away, and he could hear the distant rumbling of a raging fire, the shrieks of numerous car alarms, and what sounded like many voices: some crying, others shouting, all quite terrified.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2009