Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Erika...
Erika: WHERE IS RICH CRONIN NOW?
me: He's on a La-Z-Boy somewhere. Watching TV.
me: The room is dark and the TV provides the only light. He gazes at the chip crumbs above his navel, ponders what he did to get him all alone in his mother's house again. Even she had plans.
me: She almost hired a babysitter, but Rich insisted he could take care of himself.
Erika: His mother frowned, but relented, and left him alone to sit as he is sitting now, eyes melted from prolonged TV watching, face contorted into a permanent half smiling gaze from when he'd heard a joke on Happy Days, which was just now getting to Ireland because that country's in a like a wind/time tunnel, y'know?
Erika: And then he heard the crackle of a radio being turned on. His little sister inserted a CD, pressed PLAY and LOOP and then left to go meet her friends at the Mall, which was called Mall of Ireland, because what else are you going to call it right? Rich did his best to sigh through his screwed up mouth and tasted a hint of melty iris on his upper lip. The faint, but familiar cords of his one big American hint floated into his eyes, and his melting eyeballs began to tear up.
Erika: He looked to the right, towards the medicine cabinet, where he kept an old and trusty friend of his, but remained seated, ultimately too lazy to wipe off the chip crumbs and get the gun.
Erika: Which he kept in his medicine cabinet. THE IRISH, YA'LL.
Dec 9th