By Monica Davis

There are consequences for every choice, she thought. This line outside this seedy grab ‘n go that she had been forced to join, case in point. Had she gone to bed at a decent hour, she would have been well-rested before she took to the road at the crack of dawn this morning.

Instead, she had stumbled out of bed, her eyes at half-mast, fumbled into her clothes, and headed out. No breakfast and morning traffic finally caught up with her in some little town in the middle of nowhere. She could feel her blood sugar dipping. No, she thought, this isn’t a dip, I’m crashing.

The line appeared to consist of characters from Deliverance. The man ahead of her in the line was tall, big, and stinky, and by the look of the long beard covering his chest, an advocate of nicotine. Big man needed a big meal, and big man was deaf; he kept asking the cashier to repeat herself. She wanted, no, desperately needed a donut, maybe two. 

“Please, please, hurry up,” she pleaded under her breath.

He must have heard her because he reached back and pulled a wallet from his back pocket. It was attached to his belt with a chain that was hung with little ducks. Her vision began to narrow and the ducks blurred into tiny little donuts.  That is what I need she thought and reached out a hand to take one as the man responded to the cashier’s question, and grunted, “Yeah, I want dip with that.” He turned and a huge wad of tobacco and juice shot from his mouth and landed at her feet.

Dip, she thought, as she started to fall. I’m dipping. Please don’t let me dip into his dip. And she was gone.

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Active in theatre and film and television since her youth, Monica has also worked as a reporter and theatre critic; her poetry has been featured in DarkWinter Literary Magazine and in the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society’s (SCWES) online/print magazine, Not An Island and their 2023 and 2024 Art & Words Festival Anthology.