I think i was watching a lot of Todd Solondz

So, I wrote this in my first year as an English major.  It's one of those bits of detritus you find from your early education that simultaneously makes you cringe, and smile at the person you once were.  Anyway, it’s kind of long, so if you are pressed for time, I wouldn’t bother.

tl;dr  I one loved passive voice!


The man at number 7 Oakview Lane lived alone. He sometimes wondered why it had been named Oakview. There weren’t any hardwoods, much less Oak trees, anywhere near the slum masquerading as an apartment complex in which he resided. It was a sad-looking affair: eight decrepit old brick buildings, once the abode of hopeful 20-somethings looking to start their bed bath and beyond futures. It now sheltered various sleaze-hounds, recluses, and other soap scum of society. The way the windows were placed in relation to the door made it look as if the buildings where smiling. Gloating, perhaps, at the broken futures of their tenants.
But number 7 rarely reflected on this. Bradford Brown (that was number 7’s name) had a mind more happily employed. His hobby was thinking up new and ingenious ways to off himself. He felt a simple shot to the head or slashing of the wrists was too predictable. If you’re going to bite the big one, it should be memorable. His current fantasy was to throw himself in a cement mixer as construction crews filled up the foundation for some behemoth skyscraper. His bones would be forever preserved in the sediment and, perhaps someday, become fossilized. He delighted in the symbolism.
Of course, Mr. Brown had no intention of acting on these fantasies. But teaching at a city college often has this effect on people. Thoughts of self destruction flitted through Mr. Browns head as he packed his frayed leather knapsack with his lunch: pastrami on rye (with too much mayo), and an old water bottle full of soup. He had a thermos not too long ago, but since Sherry left him he had not been able to find much of anything. He set the brown bag containing his lunch on top of his Paleontology textbooks and graded papers so it wouldn’t get crushed. He blinked several times, thinking how different the contents of his bag were half a decade ago: Picks, brushes, sunscreen, and pieces of animals Hundreds of times older than civilization.
Mr. Brown climbed into his Honda civic and coaxed the engine into life. He was almost 6’4”, and his shoulders hunched and elbows bowed out around the wheel. The ancient car was covered in bird droppings. His parking space sat directly under a power line and pigeons liked to congregate there. Unfortunately, he was running late this day (like most days) and had no time to clean it off. He puttered out of the complex and onto the main road.
Mr. Brown was once Dr. Brown. But, since the incident, Bradford Brown had been unable to bring himself to assign those two letters to his name without cringing. Or, for that matter, look at a copy of National Geographic. It had been almost five years since the Archaeoraptor hoax, but Mr. Brown still though of it often, which wasn’t unreasonable since it ultimately cost him his career, his home, his wife, and his dignity--which was the most hardly felt of all his losses.
Mr. Brown was thinking about this while stopped at a red light. The light changed, and as he entered the intersection he had to slam his breaks to avoid hitting the blue Mazda that ran the red on the road perpendicular to him. As the car flew by him, he could see his bag fly up into the air, and his lunch bag collide with the dashboard, contents exploding onto the pleather seats. Horns began to honk as he scrambled to find something to sop up the lentil soup, and decided on one of the more poorly written papers in his bag. “Christ, I almost died people. Why the hell are you honking at me?” Bradford muttered under hot breath.
He arrived at the parking deck only a few minutes later. The tan and green building was reserved for faculty, which was a good thing as parking was nearly impossible downtown. He rolled down the window, and began to fish around for his parking pass, realizing almost instantly that it was at home on the countertop, not in his pocket. For some reason he continued to dog around.
“Parking pass please,” The attendant alliterated, without looking up from his magazine.
“I’m sorry, I seem to have misplaced it today, but I assure you I—“
“No pass, no Park,” The attendant replied, eyes still down, tapping the sign on the door of his kiosk, which reiterated his statement.
Knowing that arguing was pointless, Mr. Brown backed out of the gate and turned his car around. His class would have to be cancelled, which meant more work for him in the long run. Anger and frustration balled up at his Adams apple, and swallowing it took some effort. But he did, eventually, and drove to the nearest gas station to fill up his tank and buy a cheesy chicken burrito to replace his lunch.
When he had been working on the field, he experienced a similar choked up feeling every time he and his team uncovered something. It wasn’t driven by frustration. It was a feeling of fanaticism, of crazed enthusiasm and drive. He had been stationed in China; the Xiasanjiazi shale pits were extremely productive sites. Purchasing fossils from local shale diggers was common practice among paleontologists, although technically illegal. When Bradford came across a local farmer selling the Archaeoraptor, as it came to be known, the ramifications of the fossil blew his better judgment away. With characteristics of both ancient birds and thecodonts, this fossil could have proven the link between dinosaurs and birds irrefutable. And Mr. Brown would have secured himself a permanence to rival the bones that he studied. That is, if it had been real, and not a hodgepodge of fossils cemented together by the farmer.
It wasn’t completely his fault, though. His assistant Gregory, who had close ties to National Geographic, let it slip to one of its editors. They were putting together a piece on the links between dinosaurs and birds. Once again his lapse in judgment, and pride, prevented him from stopping the magazine publishing his findings before his peers reviewed them. When the fossil was further examined, it was quickly exposed as a fake. Bradford Brown was regarded by some as a perpetrator, deliberately trying to fool the world; by those less generous, he was simply an idiot who didn’t belong in the field. Since then Mr. Brown had been lucky to find work teaching, and had to become resigned to poorly funded state schools. Which is why his lunch was all over his dashboard.
The Gas-n-Go on Benton Street was the closest station to the campus, and probably one of the only non-chain gas stations left in the city. Bradford had been there several times before, usually to pick up a six-pack for the weekend on his drive home from work. He grabbed his bag from the back seat, and locked his doors out of habit, even though he wasn’t really concerned that any of the crap in his car would be enticing to any potential thieves. 
The door chirped like an electric bird as he entered. He walked along the aisles, examining the frozen burritos available. They were out of Cheesy Chicken. He stopped, and looked up at the ceiling, eyes burning and threatening to fill up with saline. It wasn’t that the cheesy chicken burritos were the only ones that didn’t give him heartburn. Bradford knew he told the clerk they were out the last time he was in there, and he promised to order more. And finally, after being both physically and metaphorically shit on by his day, his magnificent shoulders rose a few millimeters higher, adding to his hunch. The only thing that kept him from crying then and there was the thought of being mauled by crocodiles at the city zoo, or maybe ripped apart by angry gorillas. After composing himself, he settled on a beefy beanie burrito, and popped it in the microwave adjacent to the refrigerated food. He popped it in, and set the timer for 3 minutes.

He turned around to find himself starring down the barrel of a revolver. The cashier had his hands in the air, and was starring straight ahead.
“Don’t try anything,” The man holding the gun said, his eastern European accent dripping n’s and g’s. His exposed face was covered in scruff and his hands shook a little. His nose looked like it had been flattened by something as a child. It reminded Brown of the snout on an Allyosaurus.
“I want you on floor now, no funny stuff. No, wait.” The man waved the gun back and forth between the attendant and Brown. Bradford could physically feel it when the gun was on him, like his head was swelling.
“You stand by counter and act normal if for anyone comes in. Everything normal. You,” he said, gesturing with the gun to the attendant, “You fill bag with cash from safe and register. Do now.” The gunman’s hands weren’t the only thing shaking now, his entire body was vibrating, and beads of sweat hung of the end of his flat nose.
At that moment, Brown felt a twinge of recognition, the hairs on the back of his neck rose even higher. The realization tumbled down him, like a house of cards collapsing: The man holding him up was the driver of the blue Mazda. Mr. Brown got very still for a moment looking at the ground. When his head rose, his eyes were calm, and his shoulders seemed straighter than before.
“You owe me a burrito,” Bradford said softly.
“What did you say?” The gunman said, cocking his head in disbelief.
“YOU OWE ME A GOD DAMN BURRITO” Brown remained perfectly still as his voice rumbled down the aisle.
“What the fuck is this, what the fuck you talk of?” The gunman walked closer to brown, pointing the gun to his face. ”Burrito? Fuck you man, I have gun, I owe shit” he looked back to the register quickly, and then back at brown. He was still physically shaking, and although he tried to act as if nothing was wrong, the seemingly insane actions of Bradford were unnerving him greatly.
“I am very sick and very tired, and I—“
“You just shut up and look down you crazy piece of shit!”
“I will not shut up you god damned bastard.” Bradford rumbled on “I have been more than fucking patient. I put up with a lot, but you owe me a fucking burrito and your going to give it to me.” By this time the clerk seemed to have stopped loading the bag and wasn’t visible, still behind the counter.
“I give you shit” the gunman said, his voice cracked, and he was now visibly scared.
“Wrong answer, asshole.” At this moment several things happened, almost at the same moment; the microwave in the back rang, its three minutes expired. The gunman was startled by this, and fired at it. While the eurofuck was executing kitchen appliances, Mr. Brown raised his bag as high as he could, and brought it down on the neck of the flat nosed bastard, who dropped his gun. The attendant, who had been retrieving a shotgun underneath the counter, fired into the back of the robber, killing him instantly. The handgun, that started this whole mess, fell to the ground, and discharged, the bullet landing directly into the forehead of the attendant, who dropped to the ground. And, as his shotgun banged on the counter, it fired as well, its load landing directly in the stomach of Bradford Brown.
Crumpled on the floor, Mr. Brown thought of his mother. The scent of sandalwood and jasmine followed her everywhere, and he thought he could smell them,
instead of the attendant and gunman’s respectively released bowels.
When Bradford was seven, he had taken one of her crystal necklaces, overcome with the beauty of the sparkling rocks. He fell from his bike later that day, and the necklace was destroyed. When his mother confronted him about it, He lied to her, but cried the entire time he told her that a masked man had come in the house and taken it.
His mother had held him her lap for a long time before she turned him around and said “Bradford, bad things will sometimes happen, even if we are very good. But you mustn’t let those bad things change you into a bad person.”
“Would you still love me if I were a bad person?” He had asked her, tears still welling. “Child, I would love you with all my heart, even if you were a big bad Monster that gobbled people up.”
Bradford didn’t remember taking the necklace, but he always remembered what his mother had told him, and somewhere in his subconscious, he wondered if the gunman’s mother stilled loved him (but only for a split second.)
Blood was now covered Bradford completely, and he could see clouds of black amassing around the edges of his vision. With his teeth gritted he pulled himself forward, his blood leaving a trail across the floor. He pulled himself up to the stand where the fractured microwave lay. He reached inside, and pulled out his burrito, clutching it in his hand. He slid down to the floor, and placed the burrito filled fist across his chest, as the clouds took over, and everything turned dark.