The Last Sign Painter [New WIP]

I was the last sign painter.

I say was, not am—but not because I’m presumed dead-as-a-doornail.

No, I’m not dead. Not yet. Hopefully, with a prayer, not yet by the time you read this, and if it hangs around longer than the stench of my own life–

Well.

Maybe I’m more than a sign painter now. Your now.

I could still paint signs, I guess.

Signs to ask for money on the side of the thu-way rail. 

Instead I hire myself to scour the flappy metal slits of the city's coin-ops, from just after dawn until I get too tired to keep beating feet, for coins and chits I can exchange for credits.

I don’t usually fuss with vehicles—not that I’d mind relieving some careless folk of their forgotten coinage, maybe a pair of sunglasses with decent lenses—but when an alarm goes off it’s so embarrassing.

The coin-ops don’t care if you take the forgotten coins.

No one cares.

But today—that day, I was hungry.

…

Sun sticks in my eye and I squint through the fuzzy gray smog, pillars of humanity whisking past me, creating swirls and cyclones of the viscous mist.

I stick a hand in my trouser pocket–

Damn.

A hole.

I swear I had enough coin for a sambo or two, a drink or three, but now I’m broke.

Broke as a fucking joke that no one laughs at.

I dip the fingers of my right hand under a doorhandle.

Clunk.

Locked.

I walk a few more down, like, as if, I thought maybe that was my car and I’m just looking for the right one. They do all look the same, don’t they, Eddie?

I pretend to be looking for my own legally purchased vehicle, peering down the block into the endless smog, trying handle after handle after handle, no one stopping or noticing me.

One of the doors opens, and I almost don’t even stop.

Oh, right. I don’t have a car. I was just looking for an open door.

If I did have a car, I wouldn’t have bought this one.

Even my minus-level eyes could recognize the rust rot, pool of battery fluid leaking underneath, the seats that looked chewed on.

But like a magpie of old I stuff myself into the passenger seat and shut the door, digging with my talons into the trove of receipts and pop cans that litter the cab, looking for treasure.

Ftzz!

There’s a pop of electricity, the sound of wires snapping together like when you forgot to turn off the ‘lectric before twisting in.

Let me know what you think.

HARTWELL