THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
by Noah Cicero




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three



Frankie is sitting in his living room watching a show on DNA.

He looks bored.

He is wearing a Wal-Mart jump suit.

A white female in her twenties is sitting next to him. She is smoking a joint. She has a look on her face like she is floating uselessly in space.

A scruffy white guy comes in. He looks like he has been beaten with a baseball bat. Like a semi-truck ran over him. He is fucked looking. His hat is pulled down to his eyes to disguise that his eyes are bloodshot and strung out.

Frankie says, “What the fuck do you want? Let me guess, hmm, crack?”

“Yeah, but I got no money. I got this pizza though. I’ll give you this pizza for some.” He shows him the pizza.

‘You wanna give me a pizza for crack. I’m trying to run a business here. We’re in America. Our currency is money, not food.”

“Listen, this is a good pizza. It has pineapples on it and green peppers just like you like it. I told them, my man Frankie needs a pizza; he’s a hungry hard working man. Give me a pizza with pineapples and peppers on it.”

“You are so full of shit. You got that pizza for free. I know they give you crack heads the bad orders. Don’t fuck with me. Let me see that fucking pizza.”

Frankie opens up at the box and looks at the pizza. The crack head stands there all jerky and weird.

“All right. This pizza don’t look too old. I’ll shave you off some.”

“You’re a good man Frankie. Everybody says you’re a good. God is watching your back. You know that, God spoke to me the other day. He said that I’m gonna get a million dollars soon. It is gonna come in the mail. He said that, the one and only God.”

“Will you shut the fuck up you dumb white bastard.”

The white woman smoking the joint suddenly says, “I think my brain just fell out of my asshole.”




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