Cassie Fly

So I'm wandering around the internet the other day checking out websites I might send work to so I could build up some aura of legitimacy although I don't really know how that aura might be constructed any way substantially in a world of ones and zeros where nothing is permanent and no one really reads anything anymore. Aura, legitimacy and substantially are words I found by reading a actual book by the way.

I'm not saying the world is culturally barren or anything. Even if it wasn't I probably wouldn't be one of the bloomingest vegetables in the garden because my thoughts are mostly jumbled and run-on and have a high content of Twilight and Lord of the Rings. The only tweet or text I know is OMG and everyone knows that one right up to Cassie Fly who passed away at one hundred and five last week down at the retirement home I work at.

Cassie's last words were. “This world of computers is pissin' down on me like a cow on a flat rock an' I've had just about enough.” Then she passed. I only know her last words because my sister's cousin is a LPN at the home and had to be in there to change the sheets and clean out Cassie's room. My sister's cousin found a buffalo nickel, a button hook and a pack of Lucky Strikes in Cassie's bedside table.

I figured Cassie's story might get me published on one of these weird-assed web sites where all the stories are so short you wonder what the hell happened but when I tried to write her story down what I already wrote up top here was all I could think of and there didn't seem to be a place for any words like aura, so it was pretty much a bust.

My sister's cousin did pass along that she met some of Cassie's relations who came by to pick up the nickel, buttonhook and Lucky Strikes. Can you believe they wanted the Lucky Strikes? They only came in case Cassie had something they could bring onto Antiques Road Show but there wasn't anything like that and my sister's cousin did say the relatives didn't seem nearly as fucked up as she thought they would be considering Cassie came from back in the day when it was hard to find a husband who wasn't a mouth breather.

But anyway, I worked on Cassie's story for a while and maybe it's not sentimental enough or doesn't have a story arc (whatever that is) but it seems a little gooshy, nostalgic and like that sort of thing so I thought I'd send it along. If you feel a little sad after you read it my sister's cousin said the family is accepting contributions so they can pay off the retirement home and not have to sell Cassie to the University Medical College for a study on how the hell people get to live to more than a hundred these days when even litature is getting so goddamn short.