MELT ONE

They arrived at the check-out line at the same time. Oops.

Awkward, empty thought balloons.

She pushed a full carriage; he held a quart of milk.

“Go ahead,” she said with a quick gesture.

“Oh no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You go.”

“No, please,” said the logic of her overflowing cart vs. his one-handed purchase.

“Uh, ah…” And then he melted to the hard, scuffed floor, reduced to rivulets of green goo, and oozed under shelves of candy and tabloids.

MELT TWO

He was at work, standing at the time-clock, watching the minute hand. She was fanning herself with her timecard. “Whew, it’s too hot in here,” she said.

“Is it?” he said, not feeling particularly hot.

“I gwicklorr plallem blormat huh-gunuzuz, ha-ha,” she said.

He smiled and looked around and said, “Heh, yeah.”

And then her sentence suddenly solidified in his mind: “I guess you’re not old enough to get hot flashes, ha-ha.”

And he melted into a thin residue of gray gruel and seeped into the porous floor.

MELT THREE

She answered the phone, knowing it was him. “Yeah?” she said in an impatient tone.

“Hi. I, uh guess you don’t want to talk to me?”

“You guessed right. Look, I’m going through a really difficult time right now…” Loud exhale. “What do you want?”

“I…”

And then he slid like strands of overcooked spaghetti into the holes in the phone and traveled along the lines like a leaf in a stream, riding dial-tone, bumping over drum-rolls of hang-up clicks, slithering through busy signals, and the chattering nonsense roar of a million confused, tangled conversations that swirled around him until he drowned in a churning maelstrom of his own fluids…

Melting away…

Incredible.