(Ebook) Chalk by Doug Diaczuk ISBN 9781772140873, 1772140872 Complete Edition
(Ebook) Chalk by Doug Diaczuk ISBN 9781772140873, 1772140872 Complete Edition
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Chalk_Interior_5.25 x 7.5 8/14/16 8:17 PM Page 1
CHALK
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Chalk_Interior_5.25 x 7.5 8/14/16 8:17 PM Page 3
CHALK
by
DOUG DIACZUK
WINNER OF THE
38TH ANNUAL
3-DAY NOVEL WRITING
CONTEST
I. Title.
For J. M.W.
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Chalk Flowers
his is you. You are thirty years old, single, and live in a
T one-bedroom apartment with beige-coloured walls, a tel-
evision with a snowy screen, and curtains that diffuse light
rather than block it. You lie awake in the sickeningly yellow
morning light, staring up at the ceiling, trying to think of a
reason to get out of bed. This is your life.
You walk into the grocery store and sing the song play-
ing on the intercom quietly under your breath. The same
songs play on an endless loop on a Tuesday afternoon and
you feel sorry for the employees who have to listen to the
same songs over and over again for eight hours a day. In
the frozen food aisle, a tall, skinny kid offers you a sample
of cheese on a toothpick. You take one and comment that
it is sharp because you remember seeing the word sharp on
a block of cheddar cheese once. You ask for another one.
You say again that it is sharp, sharper than the last sample
and you take another without asking. The kid does not stop
you, so you take another, and then another, until your
mouth is full of sharp cheese and your hand cradles a minia-
ture woodpile of used toothpicks. Through your stuffed
mouth you ask why the cheese samples are being handed
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out in the frozen foods section and the kid looks through
you at the frozen pizzas in the case behind you and doesn’t
say anything. You place the toothpicks on the blue table-
cloth because there is no garbage can and you thank him
for the cheese and tell him that you might buy some. When
you get to the aisle with the blocks of cheese stacked like
bricks, you look for the word sharp, but can’t find it any-
where, so you move along, a little dismayed and ashamed
for having lied.
At the express checkout, a young woman with her hair tied
in a ponytail slightly off-centre starts to ring through your
items. About halfway through your order she stops and you
can see by the way her eyes dart back and forth, and the
nearly imperceptible way her lips move, that she is counting
how many items you have. It’s over twelve. I’m sorry, she
says, the minty freshness of her gum reaching you on the
other side of the black conveyor belt that holds your thirteen
items, you have too many items. You will have to put some-
thing back. Can you make an exception? you ask. Sorry, rules
are rules. You pick up a jar of green olives and hand them to
her, saying that you don’t really care for olives anyway. She
stands there, holding the jar, unsure of what to do with it,
then she places it on the edge of the till, next to the register
and the “this till is closed” sign, and you ask what will happen
to the jar now. She ignores your question and brushes the
items over the red blinking light under a piece of glass until
it beeps and then she moves on to the next. You tell her she’s
ugly. She ignores you, and when she finishes scanning the
items, she punches in a total and announces it to you with lit-
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were someone else. Who did you think I was? you ask. He
tells you that it’s not important and apologizes and then walks
on. As you walk up the steps to your building you watch the
man casually walking down the sidewalk, the back of his
head balding even more than the top, and you wonder who
he thought you were and why you can’t be that person. Be-
fore entering the building, you lift up your feet one at a time
and examine the bottoms of your shoes.
Later that night you invite a friend over that you don’t par-
ticularly like. You drink a beer in your bedroom before he
comes and hide the empty can under your bed with the dozen
or so full ones. You drink another one, knowing that he will
be late. When he arrives, you offer him a beer and tell him
that there are some in the fridge. He tells you that there are
none and you say that you must have forgotten to pick some
up. You offer him green olives instead but he says that he
doesn’t like olives. You spend the evening playing Nintendo.
When you beat him you rub it in his face and tell him that he
is a loser. What you don’t tell him is that you’ve been practic-
ing all week just so you could beat him and call him a loser.
He asks if you want to go get a drink at a bar but you tell
him that you’re pretty tired, so he leaves on his own in
search of alcohol and a woman with large breasts and red
hair that he spent an uncomfortable amount of time describ-
ing to you earlier that evening. After you retrieve the beer
from under your bed and put it back in the fridge, you drink
several more and watch video clips online. You find a clip
of a politician shooting himself on live TV and you wonder
why you’ve never heard of this before. The video is fuzzy
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camera and you thank her for her honesty. After you finish
masturbating, you no longer wonder what her breasts feel
like or if they really are as soft as she says.
At work you stick the end of a staple into your index fin-
ger and squeeze out a drop of blood. You touch the finger
to your front teeth and taste the richness of the blood,
though you wonder if you are actually tasting the dirty metal
of the staple. You start to worry that there are bloodstains
on your teeth, which could upset your co-workers, so you
walk to the bathroom without talking to anyone and exam-
ine your teeth in the mirror. You cannot see any blood on
your teeth even though you can still taste it.
There is a message on the answering machine from your
mother when you get home. You can hear the worry in her
voice as she strains to tell you that Marie’s baby is still in the
hospital. You play the message again and listen to the sound
of your mother’s voice. It sounds so small, like it could fit
inside the little black machine, smaller still to fit on a single
side of the tape in the cassette. Things are looking bad, you
really should come, Marie needs the support. You stand in the
hallway in front of the machine still holding onto your brief-
case and running your tongue over your teeth. You secretly
feel guilty for wishing something bad would happen to
someone, even though you never specifically wished any-
thing bad would happen to Marie or her baby.
You call your girlfriend and tell her about Marie’s baby.
She shows genuine concern and then you tell her that you
can still taste blood on your teeth and she tells you that she
has to go. You practice playing video games for two hours
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Chalk_Interior_5.25 x 7.5 8/14/16 8:17 PM Page 19
and then call your friend and ask him if he would like to
come over and to bring something to drink. He tells you that
he can’t tonight because he has a date. You tell him that you
hate him and that he can never come over again because he
is a loser. He laughs at this and you hang up the phone, fairly
certain that you will never talk to him again.
You place two six-packs and a tin of mints on the con-
veyor belt and ask the ugly cashier if this counts as thirteen
items. She rings your order through without saying any-
thing and when she hands you your receipt you lie and tell
her that she is beautiful. She looks right through you to the
large storefront windows where the bus you were supposed
to catch speeds by. Rather than wait for the next one, you
decide to walk the fourteen blocks back to your building. At
the fourth bus stop down the street you see the fat man sit-
ting on the bench. You sit down next to him and ask him
how his day is going. He doesn’t remember you and he tells
you that this day is just like any other day and you laugh
louder than is necessary. He shakes his head and rests his
arms on his belly that nearly extends past his knees and he
makes you feel small. You tell him that he is beautiful, too,
and he tells you to go fuck yourself. I think I’ll walk the rest
of the way home, you say, and stand up, extending a hand
to bid the man farewell. He looks at it and then looks past
you for the bus that is two stops down. It was nice talking
with you, you say, then pick up your bags and start back
down the street.
You step over the flower that you have never seen be-
fore and walk around it in circles to try and look at it from
« 19 »
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