Free The Girl who Couldn't Come by Joey Comeau

toward the back of the store. The clerks that I passed smiled politely at me. They hadn’t heard. They would. 

    At the back of the store I entered the bathroom and I ran my hands under warm water. I soaped them with a squirt of the pink pearl soap. I washed the soap away and then I soaped them again. 

    The calculator cost me sixty-five dollars at the front cash. Washing my hands had given the old woman plenty of time to spread the word. I paid in cash and smiled at the nervous girl behind the cash.

    Outside, I sat in my car and took my knife to the packaging. I cut into the plastic again and again, until the calculator sat in my palm. Then I pressed the pad of my thumb against the shiny black ON button. The number zero appeared and already the world around me was beginning to fade. 

    I sat hunched forward in the parking lot of that store, my fingers on the plastic squares of the calculator, my other hand down the front of my pants. I had to concentrate. It was difficult, entering numbers and formulas with one hand and circling and stopping and circling again with the other. It was the perfect form of concentration. 

    When my legs began to shake, I pulled my hand out from my pants and I pulled them down to my knees. The skin on my leg pressed against the door of the car. I set the calculator against my cunt, so that the hard corner of the device pressed into just the right spot, and the cool plastic edge ran through the soft skin just right. I spat on my hand to make the plastic wet. I moved the calculator back and forth, pressing with the corner and then I reached for the knife. 

    I took the knife blade and pressed it into the fissure where the two halves of the calculator’s casing met. I continued to press the calculator into me, moving it slower now, my thumb reaching for the function keys. I ran the knife to the top corner and twisted it, like I was opening an oyster. The casing cracked. I moved the knife to the lower corner. 

    My legs were shaking more and more. I was thinking one and one hundred thousand. I was thinking compound interest and multi-level undo functions. Two level display. I cracked the lower corner, and the calculator opened. 

    I leaned forward as I came and looked inside. I put the knife down and I ran my fingers, wet, over the circuitry of the calculator. There were no sparks. There was no hiss. The circuit board was flat, with sharp points, and it was slick under my fingers. 

    I leaned back into my seat and left my hand resting on the exposed and ruined insides of the calculator. My breathing came easily and I felt as though I could sleep right there in the parking lot. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, listening to the passing traffic and the calm of my breathing.

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