7-11

After everything went to shit we went down the street to the convenience store and it was already all locked up so we busted the front window out with a hammer. There was nobody in there and we grabbed everything we could stick into my pickup and fucking split back to the apartment. We had piles of shit. T.V. dinners ... frozen juice ... cheese slices ... corn dogs ... beer and wine ... chocolate milk ... soda pop ... Ding-Dongs ... Ho-Ho's ... Spaghetti-O's ... ravioli ... ice cream sandwiches. About an hour later the power went off. You could hear gunshots outside and people hauling ass, probably heading out into the sticks. We realized after a while the power was probably never gonna come back on. Like never again and so much of the shit we took was gonna go bad.

The last thing we wanted was the place to start stinking so we took everything that needed to stay cold out of the fridge and chucked it out the fucking window. The shit was all over the street. We polished off some of the beer, but we got worried about wasting it so we took turns sleeping and standing by the door with the hammer ...

About the author:

Zack Wentzs writing has appeared in Fiction International, Tape Op, Modern Fix and other places. His novel The Garbageman and the Prostitute is forthcoming from Chiasmus Press early 2005. He is a founding member of the band Kill Me Tomorrow, who released a musical version of the novel via Gold Standard Laboratories in 2004.