As the song says: “The weather outside was frightful,”. The snowstorm was unrelenting. White powder was cascading all around the city, covering the grime and filth that was so prevalent with a charming layer of snow. This was weather that was only to be experienced from inside shelter, preferably near something or someone warm. But for those who had neither, they can always go underground.

Not as deep as he would’ve liked, his apartment (which looked suspiciously like a cellar), Eli Cohen settled for being just beneath street level. Working on his laptop he let his fingers deftly glide over the keys, as a virtuoso would play a violin or the way an artist would paint brush strokes. Deeper and deeper he went. Lines and lines of code one after another after another. Letters, numbers, and symbols all going by and switching between colors so rapidly that it was likely to cause someone epilepsy if they weren’t careful.

The light from the laptop being the only source of illumination in the entire basement apartment, Eli chewed the cigarette nub between his teeth and winced when a bit of ash found its way to the tip of his tongue. He stopped typing. Raising his hands to the air and lacing his fingers together Eli cracked the bones in his fingers and hands with a satisfying series of pops and snaps.

Just as he was about to crack his neck Eli noticed the darkened bulb hanging from the ceiling begin to shake violently. Pounding steps from the floor above were causing his ceiling to rumble, bits of dust and a few ancient spider webs poured to the ground and would’ve gotten his laptop too had Eli not reflexively shielded it with his body.

Eli slowly stood up and reached for the light bulb’s pull chain. Lighting the room with a faint yellowish color, Eli crouched down and hurriedly began turning off his lap top.

After a few seconds the screen went black and he was forced to stare at his own reflection for just a second before he slammed the lid over the keyboard shut. The image stuck in his mind though: tired eyes made red by lack of sleep and excessive pot smoking complimented by ratty stubble that extended from his sideburns down and was clustered around his face.

Rising to his feet again, Eli looked down at what he was wearing and it caused him pain both real and unreal. It was a busboy’s uniform. Now he remembered who he was. Eli the busboy.

The door at the top of the stairs of his basement apartment slammed open, and Eli had little doubt in his mind as to who it was.

“What the fuck are you doing down here? You left on your ten minute break an hour and a half ago!” Eli’s boss yelled.

“I see, oh shit, sorry Abe, I thought I was on lunch?” Eli said. He knew it was bull and so did Abe. In a philosophical sense Eli wondered why he even bothered.

“I need your help upstairs, now. And it’s not ‘Abe’ when we’re working, it’s-”

“Mister Gold, right sorry, I forgot.” Eli said as he and Abe ascended the stairs to the upstairs delicatessen.

“You know you should really stop apologizing so much Eli.”

“Why’s that?”
“It makes you look weak, and sound it too.” Abe said. The pair entered the deli, leaving the musty cellar/Eli’s home behind along with the faint smell of pickled brine.

“Jesus, there’s no one here.” Eli pronounced upon looking at the mostly deserted restaurant.

“Do you want me to find something for you to do?” Abe asked.

“No, no, it’s fine, sir.” Eli said. Walking over the somewhat dirty floor towards the broom propped up in the corner, Eli grabbed it and began to sweep.

“No, use the mop, idiot.” Abe muttered the last part, though Eli still heard it loud and clear. Eli shoved the broom into a closet and picked up the adjoining mop and bucket. Wearing a scowl that occasionally took the place of his usual gloomy face (those being his only alternating faces apparently) and gripping the wooden mop handle tightly, Eli dipped the business end of the mop into the water bucket and proceeded to wet the floor.

Though at this point their relationship was a bit stressed Eli and Abe were usually quite cordial to each other. Sometimes even bordering on outright friendliness though the two didn’t see each other outside of the deli. What has to be understood is this: Eli and Abe had an understanding, Eli was allowed to live under the deli in the cellar provided he work and pay his own way. In return (besides giving shelter) Abe was to keep his mouth shut on where Eli lived.

The rest of the staff knew anyway. Some laughed at Eli behind his back, others did their best not to laugh in his face.

When it came to the customers most of them looked at Eli with pity. He was the gloomy fuck-up everyone could shove into a nice corner in their mind and feel bad for just enough to make them feel human, even if it was really only to bolster their own feelings of self worth.

Eli knew all of this, or at least suspected.

But he didn’t care. His off and on relationship with college (this being the “off” season) had yielded no results. No real family, none that he spoke of anyway. Eli was quiet and outside of Abe communicated with the rest of the staff only in one word answers and if pushed, light strings or phrasings.

“Hello Elly,” Ms. Stein greeted from her usual table near the big window. Overlooking the near empty streets outside. “How are you today?”

“It’s Eli,” Eli corrected. “And I’m okay, I guess.”

“Still fiddling with those computers?” she asked, glancing up from her hunched frame into Eli’s eyes through her own thick frames. Eli didn’t quite know how to respond. He looked at Ms. Stein with a mixture of pity and shame. Pity because she was alone and had been alone ever since her husband had hung himself, and shame because despite this and her being as optimistic as she was, Eli couldn’t stand her presence. He had tried almost every time she had come in to be nice to her. But whenever he began speaking to her, or most anyone else for that matter, a light buzzing would sound in the very back of his peripheral hearing. It would slowly grow and swell over the next minute or so. At first Eli could ignore it. But after a while the noise would become a physical presence in his mind. Like a balloon being inflated inside the confines of his skull, Eli felt as if he was a grenade with the pin slowly being pulled out.

When this happened Eli would excuse himself from the concentration or simply leave.

“Uh, yes.” he said softly in response to Ms. Stein’s question.

“That’s nice. It’s always nice to have a hobby. Did I tell you what my husband used to do?”

“No.” Yes, she had told Eli.

“He would whittle. He would carve these beautiful things, these images, animals, people, all sorts of wonderful models and such from lumps of wood!” she said with such enthusiasm that she caught the attention of a few of the other patrons of the deli. Eli smiled weakly at her. Trying to hide his blush he focused on his mopping.

“Have you found yourself a nice girl yet?” Ms. Stein asked with a wiliness to her voice that made Eli a bit queasy.

“No.” he answered.

“Why don’t you come to temple with me one day, huh? Meet some nice Jewish girls?”

Eli cleared his throat and directed his mop in a direction directly opposite of Ms. Stein. She simply smiled and waved goodbye as one of the waiters passed Eli heading towards her table.

“You nail that coffin shut yet Eli?” the waiter, Rick, said as he walked by Eli, lightly slamming his shoulder into Eli’s. Eli grit his teeth. Rick was everything Eli wasn’t. The apparently perfect Aryan specimen. Jesus lover and fit as any athlete despite never having gone near a gym, he was simply born that way. Some people are just born into goodness.

Eli swirled the mop. His eye followed the forming of the little puddle and as it began to spread and dissipate Eli thought of nothing. Nothing but code. Those little green letters, numbers, symbols that were more solid and tangible than anything he had found beyond the monitor screen.

“Hey Eli, get over here,” Abe called from the front. “I need you to do something for me.” Eli put the mop back in the bucket and left it propped in the corner near the broom.

“What do you need?” Eli asked. Abe hefted up a bag of garbage.

“Throw this out,” he said.

“Alrigh-”

“You didn’t let me finish, throw this with the other trash bags in the back. And then after you’ve done that, take all the bags and shove them in the compacter, okay?” Eli quirked an eyebrow.

“It’s practically below zero out there,” Eli said pointing outside towards the snowy wilderness that his modern city had become. “You’re not serious?”

“As a heart attack. Go.” Abe said shoving the garbage bag into Eli’s arms. “And don’t be so dramatic,” he added, “It’s not that cold.”

Eli, while holding the heavy waste bag in his arms, slowly stumbled and made his way out the front door and into the snowy drifts. After a few minutes (and considering himself lucky that he had only slipped twice) Eli went around the restaurant towards the back and dropped the bag amongst the others. Or rather, he dropped the bag on the snow that was covering the other bags of garbage.

“Shit,” Eli muttered. The wind kicked up just a bit, spreading more flakes of snow into Eli’s hair. He crouched and began digging in the snow barehanded to unearth the other bags. Before long, he felt one of his hands puncture something. Feeling something squishy yet possessing a hard point, Eli withdrew his hand and found to his disgust that he was holding a severed chicken’s head. Letting his hand drop to the snow he gently unclenched his grip and let the head roll into the snow. This can’t be it, he thought to himself. This can’t be life, or life as it actually is. Eli wondered. Is this it? Do you wake up in the morning just to work to sustain the shelter you need before you die?

Eli thought back to when he was a kid. Everything had seemed so simple back then. You do a little work in school and you were rewarded with love from your family and all the incredible cartoons and TV shows you could watch. The adventures and other situations depicted on that screen were real, they were real in the sense that to a child they could be possible. For all he knew, as a kid, these far flung plots about heroes saving the planet and their loved ones were true. All those fantastical realms of fantasy were just waiting for you just outside your front door.

But no.

What waited outside the door wasn’t adventure and the blossoming of summer romance. What waited for you was work if you were lucky and an early death if also, some might say, you were lucky.

Eli didn’t know when it was. Sometime before or after something. But at some point all the nice little boys and girls he had grown up with, gone to the same school with for so many years, stopped being so nice and open. No longer did they play fun games together and talked to each other. You were told it was normal for people to drift apart as they grew older, becoming part of groups that would influence their behavior as they grew up.

Nice old men down the street were now possible predators. A woman could end a marriage with a bullet. Love was something broad and wide in a world that was becoming increasingly narrow for Eli to tolerate.
Digging through the snow with a renewed fury, Eli pulled out one bag, then another, then another, one after the other after the other.

It took almost forty five minutes and Eli wasn’t even halfway done but he decided to collapse back into the snow, to rest for a bit.

He remembered the first time he successfully masturbated. It was to two women, alternatively a girl he could have slept with (he credited himself that it could’ve happened) and a teacher he found moderately attractive. He remembered the feeling, the brief sense at climax that nothing else mattered but that singular moment of pleasure and excitement. And the after glow, that satisfying tiredness that followed. It was an answer to a question he could never verbalize.

But as the years wound on and Eli grew from being a runty teenager to a young adult. The realization dawned on him that this wasn’t what most young men were doing. A good number of them were having sex with live women. Eli hadn’t and still hadn’t made that jump.

At some point, he discovered computers. And coding. Hacking was soon to follow. It was a challenge he could answer. And it was solitary, another plus. As he grew older Eli was finding less and less need for personal contact. Sure, a day job was necessary to supply himself with food and shelter but other than that limited interaction what other reason did he need people for?

It was suddenly very warm.

“Wake up!” Eli felt a sharp pain in his side, as if he’d been kicked. His eyes snapped open. And through quickly focusing vision he discovered he was looking up at Abe from the floor of the deli.

“…what?” Eli asked, shivering a little as it dawned on him just how cold he was.

“You were out of it by the compacter, had to drag your ass back in here.” Abe said, wiping his forehead. Eli slowly got to his feet and looked around. The deli was now almost empty save for the staff.

Glancing outside, Eli witnessed an ambulance begin to drive away.

“What happened…why’s that ambulance…?”

“Ms. Stein. She took a pretty bad fall.” Abe answered. Eli felt a deep impact in the pit of his stomach. Abe noted this and said:

“Don’t worry about it. She didn’t slip on the floor, she tripped over her own shoes. Broke her ankle, poor thing.”

Eli sat back, leaning against a window.

“You alright?” Abe asked.

“Fine, can I conk out for the night?” Eli asked.

“Sure, just tell Rachel in the back that she can go home.”

“Isn’t that your job?”

“Only when I don’t tell you to do it.”

Abe smirked but Eli paid it no mind as he walked off.

Heading towards the back of the deli, into the kitchen and into the staff break room, Eli saw Rachel begin to take her uniform off. Eli was about to say something until she lifted her shirt and the undershirt beneath was caught up and began to rise with the uniform.

For just a few seconds, Eli saw flawless skin that looked so soft and warm to the touch. The buzzing began in his ear at full force. He needed code.

“Hey Rachel,” he said, turning his head so as to look like he had just walked in and hadn’t noticed her undressing. “Abe says you can go home.”

“Oh, thanks Eli, I was just about to take off anyway.” Rachel said, her features betrayed nothing that said she had seen Eli previous to just a few seconds before. Eli nodded and began walking out back towards the front.

“Eli, could you wait a second?” Rachel asked. Eli paused in his tracks and looked over his shoulder at her. “Could you…walk me to my car?” she asked, not quite looking Eli in the eye. Eli detected a faint blush cross her face.

Rachel was a pretty girl with strawberry blond hair and crystal blue eyes. Her figure was nice and as rare it was in an attractive woman she had a nice personality to match, or at least Eli guessed from what little he knew of her.

“Uh…sure,” Eli responded.

“Great!” Rachel said with a little more enthusiasm than he expected. “Just let me get my stuff.”

Eli waited as patiently as he could while Rachel retrieved her things. Suddenly, dueling images of Rachel were dancing in his mind. The woman he assumed her to be and the person she actually was…this bashful blushing girl…it left an odd taste in his mouth, close to bile.

“Okay,” she said upon returning with her stuff. Eli nodded and the two set off walking across the deli to the front door.

“…shame about Ms. Stein.” Rachel said pulling back a lock of her hair behind her ear. Eli detected the pregnant silence between them. The buzzing in his ear was slowly becoming a dull roar.

“Don’t you think?” Rachel asked glancing at Eli as they exited the deli into the snow.

“Yeah,” Eli said, but then hastily added. “I hope she’s okay.” he felt that he was obligated to say this.

“Yeah,” Rachel said.

The pair continued walking towards Rachel’s car. As he was moving, Eli shivered a bit.

“Are you feeling okay, I mean after fainting and everything?” Rachel asked. Eli gulped back a wad of bile in his throat.

“I’m okay,”

“Just ‘okay’?”

“Yeah, okay,” Eli said, an iota of his frustration escaping his thoughts and latching onto his words.

Rachel eventually stopped walking at what was presumably her car. Eli stopped and tried not to look at her.

“You don’t talk a lot, I mean I know you know that, but…” Rachel began blushing again. “I’m sorry, I just…sometimes I don’t think and words just come out…”

“Yeah…” Eli answered, though to what question he had no idea. They stood in silence as the snow continued to fall.

“I thought you were Rick’s girlfriend,” Eli said before he comprehended the words. Rachel’s eyes widened a tick.

“Yes-well, I was-used to be.” Rachel spouted quickly. “We broke up.”

“I see.” Eli murmured. On the outside he was shivering from the cold. But inside his skull, his mind was whirring like an overdriven machine pushed to it’s absolute limit. Connections were being made. Images, sounds, colors, textures, sensations, feelings, all were coming together and swirling and bleeding together in a nightmarish rainbow collage.

Am I supposed to be with her now? Why did she break up with Rick? Is she looking for a Jewish guy all of the sudden? Why, why would she do that? Am I obligated? Of course, of course, of course.

Eli felt the anger in him rise. Irrationality be damned, this was a pure and simple truth. Anger was something simple, primal and real that he could hold on to without anyone’s permission or go-ahead.

“I’ll see you later then,” Eli said, his teeth clenched. He began walking away when Rachel spoke up.

“Eli…”

“What?” Eli asked, his fingers twitching, wanting so badly to return to the keyboard.

“I’m…I mean…”

Eli narrowed his eyes. Was this courtship? Eli could feel his perceptions shift. He was somewhere else looking at this situation from high above the clouds through a magnifying glass.

“I have to go,” Eli said. He began walking away into the snow, leaving tracks behind him as he did. “Goodnight.” he added curtly

Rachel stood there in the snow, blinking, feeling (justly or unjustly) wronged.

Eli trudged through the powder, his cheap shoes letting in some flakes of snow.

“I hate it here,” he mumbled to himself. He entered the deli and ignored whatever it was Abe said. Also ignoring Abe’s smile turn to a frown, and his open arms deflating to a slouch.

Slamming the door to the cellar behind him Eli descended the rickety stairs to his home.

He sat at his laptop and lifted the upper portion. Turning it on, he resumed typing.

Eli pounded at the keys. He thought about Rachel, about Rick, about Abe, about working at a deli. His childhood was in those keys, and with every keystroke he was running further and further from it. But towards what? What was happening?

Later, apparently hours later. Abe showed up again. And it wasn’t until Abe had shut his laptop did Eli realize that he had been yelled at for the last ten or so minutes.

“…look I don’t know what’s wrong with you, you heard about Ms. Stein then, huh? I told you it wasn’t your fault. Just…” Abe stuttered, he was sweating profusely. “Jesus, it’s rank in here. Just take the day off, okay, get your head together.” Abe stared at Eli who stared right back. The two exchanged nothing, then, quickly as he came, Abe retreated up the stairs.

Eli reopened his laptop and continued hitting the keys, breaking into regions and places of the Internet that no one save their creators had been before. Here he was De Soto, Magellan, Columbus, conqueror, hero, man.

Feeling the buzz in his ears and the din of a far off roar. Eli rose to his feet and clutched at his skull, scratching and tearing.

“Damn, damn, damn…” he said as the tears began to flow. Acting quickly, Eli took the boxes of supplies for the deli and began stacking them as fast as his ropy arms would allow. It got hot, he took off his shirt and tossed it over the wall he was creating.

Bit by bit, box by box, Eli erected the structure, filling gaps with whatever random object he could find.

To construct the wall Eli had to basically clear out the cellar, rearranging everything to support the wall. He wondered as he worked. How often had this place been used for sex before or even after it had become his place? He imagined a woman taking him in her mouth, letting him enter her.

He felt something far off. But then it was gone.

With the wall complete. Eli sat down and began typing and coding again.

A feeling of itchiness overcame Eli. So he took of his pants and underwear.

Hours went by. The battery of the laptop began to give out, to alleviate this, he plugged the computer into an outlet.

Whenever Eli stopped typing he chewed and picked at the calluses developing on his fingertips. Ripping them off he stained the keyboard.

Occasionally he heard sounds coming from the wall, someone slamming or hitting it probably. The wall held. But the sounds and noises persisted.
…
Later. Much later.

Eli woke up. He looked at the laptop, the screen was ready, waiting for a command.

Getting to his feet Eli walked slowly, noticeably much more fatigued than he remembered before he fell asleep. He put his pants on. He stared at the wall. And he noticed how it extended around the cellar, blocking…blocking…

“I see.” he said to himself. Beginning to rummage in the boxes, Eli began to push and worm his way through, forcing a path towards the cellar’s one window.

His hands now rougher than they ever were, Eli unlatched the window and tore out a few of his nails in doing so.

Squirming through the barely wide enough window, Eli’s bare stomach was scraped, cut, and gashed against the asphalt.

Rising to the soles of his bare feet and wiping the sweat from his forehead, Eli glanced all around himself. From the looks of the sky, it looked as if it was about to snow again.

The city streets were empty.
-End
2008

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...