Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 97.0: Fall 2009

Eight Ball
by Belinda Roddie

He plays pool in a crowded billiard room.
There are cobwebs in his hair. There is dust
dancing on his lips. The sign outside the building
reads “Condemned.” It is surrounded by
barbed wire and steel fences.

One sneering watcher offers him a cigarette.
He lights it and aims for the corner pocket.
The eight ball bounces.
It always bounces back to him.

Those who watch laugh and bear their teeth.
They do not see that he is
grinning too. They do not hear the
crack of his pool cue against the felt that’s
faded from green to gray.
They do not smell the smoke
from his cigarette. They do not
taste the dust in the stifling air.
They feel nothing.
All they do is laugh.

The broken noose still hangs limply around his neck.
He cannot remove it.
He aims for the corner pocket.
The eight ball bounces.
It will always bounce back to him.
The game will never end.

Some day in this eternity,
he will learn not to care.

The work you see here was written in the fall of 2009. It was last edited in December of the same year.