.About--ZG Design-- The Vortex-- Scrawl-- Store

Shorts-- Poems

Business was slow that day. Most of the time that Kurt sat behind his grey vinyl counter was spent contemplating the building's walls. Strangely enough, they weren't even real walls...they were windows. On occasion, a passerby would see the store from the sidewalk or parking lot and stroll on in, literaly. They usually ended up strolling into one of the polished glass panes by mistake and would keep doing so until they either found the door or gave up in total frustration. The second hand on the clock above Kurt's head swept in smooth circles as he sat patiently awaiting a customer brave and stubborn enough to come inside and give him something to do. He looked at his watch. It was almost 10:30am. Kurt turned at the sound of a soft "thumpthumpthump...thump" that came from the office behind him. A flock of blue jays plowed one by one into the polished windows and then dropped out of sight into the shrubbery blow. He turned to his desk and pulled out a pad of note paper and a black Bic pen. Flipping the book open to the third page he laid down a mark in the column boldly labeled "medium sized birds". He let out a sigh. Snapping the book shut, he tossed it back in the drawer and pushed it closed. "That makes 53 this year," he reminded himself. The time was now 10:29. After a moment of patiently waiting and whistling out of tune his watch let out a cheerful beep announcing the half hour, but when he gazed down to it, he saw that it had stopped. He began tapping it furiously with his right index finger. The windows thudded from the impact of a customer hitting glass. Moments later, a finely dressed man came flying through one of the windows directly in front of Kurt's counter. Standing up quickly, he brushed bits of glass from his black tuxedo as he tried to regain his dignity which, up until this incident, had been rather high. Kurt watched hopefully as the man in black walked stiffly over to him but was quite surprised when he screamed in his face, "Dexif wodniw taht teg dluohs yllear uoy!" "Excuse me?" asked Kurt, having no clue what the man just said. However, instead of responding to the question, the anonymous visitor simply walked off to one side of the counter and began browsing through the merchandise. Kurt looked tiredly around at the shelves which had been stocked with the same material for the past year and began to think about resigning and finding a job at a place with slightly fewer windows. Suddenly, the man who had now wandered off to the back of the store, let out a triumphant cry and began waving a packet of Bic pens over his head. "At last," Kurt thought and was mildly startled when the man started walking backwards through the shelves and over to him again. He seemed to be looking for something again but still held the pack of pens down on his right side. Upon reaching the counter, the customer held back the pens instead of holding them out, paid for them, and seemed ready to leave when he screamed, "You really should get that window fixed!" After that note, he walked stiffly backward 20 feet, brushed some bits of glass onto his tux, fell to the carpet, and flew out the window. "Boy, was that strange," Kurt said to himself. His watch let out a cheerful beep announcing the half hour and clock behind his head wound back a second to 10:30.