All Over The Place
The first thing I broke was a coffee mug. I don’t know why I decided to break it. It was hard in my hands and as I gripped it I could feel that it would break easily. I threw it against a wall. ¶ The mug broke into pieces against the wall and left a mark, not quite a divot. It looked like a scuff. The pieces were mostly larger, and jagged like teeth, but not quite. I thought looking at the pieces that they looked like teeth, and then I realized that teeth are always very naturally shaped. But pieces of something broken look unnatural.
I don’t know what the mug was made of. I thought it was made of porcelain but the only thing I could think of that I know is made of porcelain is a toilet bowl. I associated the mug with a toilet bowl, for some reason.
Since I’d broken a coffee mug I decided to break the coffee maker next. The coffee maker was made up of two main parts, the pot and the machine. The pot was easy to break. I didn’t have to throw it and I knew that I wouldn’t have to throw it. I think I could remember breaking a coffee pot before, by accident. I dropped it on the floor and it broke immediately. The glass pieces were mostly very small, besides a few that were much larger, and the plastic part of the pot was intact after I dropped it, but I felt satisfied having broken the glass.
I decided to put on socks.
The coffee machine was larger and made of hard plastic. I knew it would be harder to break it. I wanted to throw it against the wall but it seemed like it would really damage the wall. I raised it above my head and thrust it into the kitchen tile. It didn’t break the first time. I tried again, harder, and then again. When it broke, it broke in half into two larger pieces that I knew I could break into smaller pieces, but I thought I’d probably have to use another object, and I wanted to move on to something else.
I opened the cabinet and took out about seven dishes. I broke them one by one against the kitchen floor, and then I threw one like a frisbee into the living room, for no real reason. It hit a framed photo I’d hung on the wall and the photo fell when the dish hit it and broke. The glass inside the frame broke and exposed the photo. I felt like I’d done a pretty good job having broken those two things at once.
I wanted to break a window, maybe more than one, but I knew that someone outside would notice. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was destroying things inside my house. I left the kitchen so that no one would see me through the window.
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Stephen Piccarella lives in Philadelphia. He’s a graduate of Bennington College. He contributes regularly at Electric Literature’s The Outlet and at APIARY Magazine online.
Nikolais Shumer-Decker grew up in upstate New York. He graduated from Hampshire College in the spring of 2013 and has since been living and working in Philadelphia. His short stories have been published in the Quick Brown Fox and The Reader.
