Alone Again Or by Michael Bassette
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Alone Again Or
A Novel
By Michael Bassette
2006
Part 1: Sleeping
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Syd sat in his one room apartment looking out his window onto the street several stories below. He ate a peanut butter sandwich that stuck to the roof of his mouth like paste and tried to dislodge it with the bitter taste of foc. His normal midnight snack.
He thought about how he was in a poor area of Steeple City, and how even though the people drove battery cars and only ran the room disinfecting Spaires Machines if they had children, the people walking in the street below were happier than him. The foc, an anti-depressant and stimulant, only made his head pound so he set the mug down.
Down in the street along the sidewalk he saw a young couple holding hands. They walked through the cool summer night together. The boy wore a necklace with a pendant in the shape of a screw; a sign he was of the Neo Freudian faith. The girl wore a circular medal. From the height he couldn't tell what religion it was but he knew she wasn't a Neo Freud. He hated Neo Freuds and felt his stomach churn with bile.
The foc, he thought, I need to cut back.
He knew that he was really avoiding thinking about a topic that was in the back of his head. It had been there for weeks. He wanted to go to the agency and adopt a wife. He blocked the usual pattern of thought: finding someone the usual way hadn't worked for him since University, he would think, and at twenty four he was sick of sleeping by himself at night. And who would look down on him for it? Only his brother, and he hated Dave.
In instinct he filled his mouth with the bitter liquid from the mug an