being a story in which vomit is mentioned quite often
by laura
someone had vomited on the sidewalk. in the morning when the businessmen and women went to work, it was there, shining wetly in the grey dawn. everyone who saw the lumpy puddle carefully avoided it and continued on their way, assuming that the city's sanitation service would clean it up by lunchtime, when they could walk to starbucks without having to worry about stepping in the vomit. as the morning went on, however, it became increasingly evident that the vomit had not been cleaned up. it was right in the middle of the sidewalk, too, as the old ladies would complain, one of the busiest sidewalks in the city.
joey, aged six, was walking down that particular sidewalk with his mother on that very morning. he had just been taken out of school, with what the nurse diagnosed as stomach flu. he was feeling decidedly queasy, as his mother pulled him along towards the bus stop, when the puddle of vomit came into view. very shortly, passersby were hurriedly getting out of the way of joey's harried mother, who had picked up her son and was running to the public restroom before joey could make a contribution to the puddle on the sidewalk.
as the morning went on, the sun came out. the puddle of vomit began to dry in the sun, but as it had been a rather copious vomit, it still looked fresh. it also began to smell stronger as the sun hit it.
a group of punks loitering on the corner of the opposite sidewalk began to smell the vomit. curious and vaguely disgusted, they crossed the street, to a cacophony of horns, to investigate.
'fuckin' disgusting'!' yelled one in delight. 'you can see carrots in it!'
the punks had great fun pretending to vomit on passersby and daring each other to pick it up. after awhile, however, the vomit lost its appeal and they went back to their usual street corner to bum some cigarettes.
morning turned to afternoon and the sidewalks filled with people going on their lunch breaks. whoever had vomited on the sidewalk the previous night had found a rather bad place to do it, as there was a little cafe on that sidewalk which had been steadily losing customers all morning due to the smell. when lunchtime came, there were a number of people who found it necessary to go elsewhere for lunch (naturally, a great inconvenience for those people who thrive on daily routine).
a smartly dressed businesswoman, walking to an important meeting whilst talking on her cell phone, sidestepped to avoid a rowdy group of teenagers on their way back to class and stepped right into the vomit. she did not notice until halfway through her meeting, where the assembled businessmen and women were slightly distracted from their discussion by a mysterious, though not altogether unfamiliar, smell. when she realised that the smell was in fact emanating from her, she was forced to run out of the room on the pretense of fixing a contact lens. while she did so, everyone else in the room discovered that it had been she who had been smelling the whole time. it was a rather humiliating experience for her.
the aforementioned teenagers saw the woman step in the puddle of vomit and were therefore delighted for the rest of the day.
as evening fell, the vomit had been the victim of several more inadvertent steps, and was looking a little worse for wear. and it smelled quite strongly by now, especially since someone had spilled a soda into it. some people had spit in it, as well, so it was looking every bit as disgusting as it had looked in the morning--maybe even more so.
karen was on a blind date, and hating every minute of it. her friend becky had insisted that karen would like this guy, but karen found him to be an uninteresting and pretentious bastard. he had taken her out for thai food, which she usually liked, and ruined her appetite with his long-winded stories about nothing. after dinner, he proposed that they take a walk to the movie theatre and see what was playing. as they walked, karen was trying to think of ways to get out of spending any more time with him, but so far had come up with nothing that wouldn't include his driving her home and making her some chicken soup (which she hated). he was that kind of person. they walked slowly up the sidewalk, and karen decided that if she had to be on a blind date, then she was lucky to be on a blind date with a man so utterly wrapped up in himself that he didn't notice her ignoring him. he didn't even notice the awful smell coming from up ahead.
take me back to
the beginning!!
