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Steven Suils

Restriction: Make up a name and write a back story for a stranger you see today.

He trudges to work, not really hung over but in that fuzz of the barfly, grudging every step up the hill. That’s all I see, is the grudge.

He works in the kitchen at a terrible gyro shop, soaking in the lamb and mustache wax. The kind of guy who wishes he had enough money and irony to be a hipster, but he’s really just a blue collar dude.

He’ll spend his evening tonight at the usual bar, sitting in the usual seat, getting incomprehensibly drunk before 9pm arrives. Anyone accidentally sitting next to him (“Oh, I was just waiting for a friend”; “Is this your bag?”) will get treated to his droning take on current politics. Somehow it manages to be charming, sometimes. Mostly he settles into the contours of the wood and listens to the infernal metronome in his head tick back and forth. If someone shows a genuine interest in conversation, he lights up briefly, a burning filament, before the drink fizzles him out. He stumbles home under the moon to collapse on the stained futon. His high school friends used to call him Awesome Steve.


categories: 365 writing