aspartame aftertaste

Kyle sipped his diet soda and thought to himself. Like most, he thought silently, except when he suspected a writer was listening. The writer, though, hid behind a duck blind, observing Kyle through binoculars and jotting notes on grease-sodden napkins. The writer habitually forgot his notebook.

Kyle sat on a park bench because it seemed natural--the sitting, not the bench, which obtruded on an otherwise placid pond scene. He had swept away last week's droppings with his bare hands before landing. This caused the writer no end of theoretical consternation. Kyle sipped again, and again, and again, meditating on a distant billboard.

The writer enjoyed speculating far more than reporting, since it was easier on the imagination. Facts didn't jut out at awkard angles and spoil the narrative arc, or ice up the wings of fancy. Kyle's fifth sip was a deathblow to his Oedipus complex. The sixth shook the very foundations of metaphysics. His seventh startled the writer with its obvious yet subtle elegance.

Kyle's meditations ended as he reached the bottom of the can, sucking out the last few drops of guiltless carbonation. The sour aftertaste of aspartame collided with his thoughts and sent them skittering toward the duck blind. His eyes followed, and he noticed the writer. "Hey," Kyle said.

The writer grabbed notes and pens and binoculars and fled, abandoning the blind to the squirrels.

Kyle crumpled the can, tossed it in a nearby wastebasket, and reminded himself to write a nasty letter to his mother.




[seventeenth in a series]