Below is the first story from my collection of short stories, A Shadow Growing. You should read it and let me know what you think! It's like having 1 /13th of the book already!

Also, got some art to upload for Pico Day! Check it out HERE and HERE

APATHY

The smell of coffee woke Donald Sewill. It was not uncommon for him to lay in bed, listening to the automatic timer click in the kitchen, waiting for the dirt smell of cheap coffee to fill the small apartment. Neatly beside his bed, his large and comically thick glasses lay near his beige touchtone phone. Donald did not own a cell phone. He was from a generation that thought most home and business appliances should come in colors like Putty and Granite. He had been a Reagan Democrat, one of the Silent Majority, and had spent his youth filing away various boring documents in a large and mostly brown building roughly twenty minutes drive from his apartment. Donald was a severe man. He had strong feelings about politics, the welfare state and about a great many things, but there was not a lot of joy in him. He was not the sort you would share a joke with. He wasn't cold exactly, but if you asked Donald Sewill what the best medicine was, his reply would not be laughter, it would be penicillin.

There were several business review magazines, a trove of aging TV Guides and a host of neatly folded newspapers tucked squarely within the rectangular wooden top of the heavy brown T.V. set. Donald had lived alone most of his life, and was both a hoarder of things and a compulsive organizer. His tiny apartment held more brick-a-brak per square foot than it had any right to, but all of it was meticulously ordered and arranged. Once, about fifteen years ago, he had brought one of the receptionists from his work over to his place for dinner. She had declined to stay for dessert. Apart from the occasional maintenance man, she was the last person besides himself that had entered Donald's apartment. This did not strike Donald as odd, in fact, it did not strike Donald at all. He poured his coffee and took a wincing sip.

Life or something very near it had passed Donald Sewill by at a barely perceptible pace. He took very little interest in those around him. He could not tell you the name of any of his neighbors, although you could still smoke in a hospital when he had moved in. He pulled on his brown socks, seated at a beige formica table beneath a ten dollar chandelier, and pulled his slacks off the ironing board where they had been neatly waiting since the night before. He looked at his watch reflexively, even though he instinctively knew what time it was. Donald's routine changed about as often as his telephones.

With an hour to go before any normal person would leave for work, Donald was backing out of his parking spot and creeping slowly out into traffic. For more than two decades Donald Sewill had taken the same route to work. Five minutes to the onramp and another ten on the interstate would have cut his travel time by a third, but Donald always took the same dusty highway, with the same brown landscape. He was nothing if not a creature of habit. It afforded him what he would think of as his alone time, although from the outside most would see all of Donald's time as alone time.

It was on this little stretch of dessert highway that, if ever, Donald got closest to a sentimental feeling. The flat and often barren landscape afforded plenty of time to contemplate and make right all the injustices of the world. He had solved the issue of unemployment, of continued national debt and a great many other things in the comfort of his brown car. As luck would have it, as it always did, the sun rose orange and bright just east, and the entire surface of the brown landscape lit up gold like molten lead, spreading shadow fingers behind the sparsely separated brush. Donald might not even admit it to himself, but it was for this magnificent light show that he wasted forty extra minutes a day driving. His eyes would gaze out and catch all the subtle changes that spreading light and barren land made together. It was a kind of reflection, an almost meditative sense that Donald was only vaguely aware of. It was a sense of being a very incredibly small thing beneath an enormous golden sky, and the thought that being alone was right and proper. He would often think of his mother, of looking up at her as a child. He would daydream about lost loves, first kisses and the smell of cinnamon on warm toast. The landscape opened Donald up like a cheap dime store novel, and every emotion he never had made a cameo appearance on his golden morning drives. It was also because of this same brilliant and awe inspiring spectacle that Donald did not see the burgundy Oldsmobile nose onto the highway ahead.

There was a loud clap. Perhaps thunder. He wasn't sure from where, but his mouth filled with very thin and copper tasting blood. The Oldsmobile wrinkled, spun-shot away and settling almost perfectly facing Donald's windshield. Donald was thinking about rain as the golden landscape went to black.

Donald was not aware that he had hit another car, he was not entirely aware of anything exactly. His ears were full of cotton. He could faintly hear a single note being played on a keyboard, and looked through shattered glass to the top of a head pressing heavily on the maroon steering wheel of a smoking burgundy Oldsmobile with surprise that approached alarm. He had no sense of time. The world had shuttered out and back in again. He was on an alien world, and it was a few full seconds before his mind put all the jigs in place. The noise did not shrink or grow, but steadily poured from the facing car and right through Donald's head. He clicked the seatbelt undone with a practiced touch, and thought about how wrong all the movies had been about accidents. He did not stagger from the car, and found that for his sore tongue, he felt exactly as he had when he had left his apartment. He looked through the growing smoke at what was left of the driver. Something slid in his stomach, something akin to being kicked in the stones, and he almost threw up. He could feel the heat like slick metal in the air as he got closer to the car. He was a few steps away when it grew too hot for him, and he took a step back, squinting reflexively at the horn blowing endlessly from the stoking furnace beneath the bubbling hood. He saw something shift in the back seat. A tiny hand waved past the window and was gone again.

He stepped closer to the car, into the curtain of burning air towards the back door. He could not hear crying. He imagined a pale face turned in squinting agony, but the back seat was too dark. His mind saw the open mouth screaming the world full of car horn. He pulled at the handle and part of his palm slid off his hand and dropped like a pile of cheese on the asphault. The door was locked. The smoke snaked it's way at first then blanketed his entire head, choking out all the oxygen. He dropped to to his palms and knees, and for the first time realized he was missing skin as the gravel struck exposed meat on his right hand. He rolled pathetically away, letting the cool air guide his retreat from the growing smoke. Gingerly, he sat up on his knees and saw clearly the entirety of the damage. The smoke filled his eyes like thick black water. He watched as the smoke consumed the car, everything but that single note disappeared behind the growing black plume. He saw, but he didn't. Even as the tiny glass cuts began to draw air and make their presence known, his mind was somewhere else. He saw something terrible and he chose to ignore it. He walked back to his car and got in.

His car looked bad, but was still drivable. It was still running, and when he turned the key the starter whined a protest. He backed up, turned, and started towards his house again. He did not look back at the smoke. He could smell gas on his hands.