Excerpt
The Ice Storm
Jeanpaul Ferro
AS THE ICE STORM REACHED DOWN ACROSS THE AFTERNOON and covered over the three-story tenement houses of downtown Arctic, turning everything into this futuristic looking ice palace, Cain Johnson tried to think of a few good things about himself. He was thirty-four now. And things had not gone the way his high school guidance councilor had once told him they would. He scribbled a few lines of description down, crossed out a few of them, and then looked down at the whole of his life captured on the back of an old envelope.
1. I have a beautiful 9 year old daughter
2. I make pizza for a living
3. I drive an old Buick Apollo
4. I’m neat
5. I have nice handwriting
6. I like King Crimson
7. I don’t like rap
8. I make nine dollars an hour
9. The Patriots are good, I like them
10. The Red Sox are not very good
11. Claim cakes are okay
12.
A giant black hole ripped through his chest as he looked his list over. He began to think that maybe lists were for people who had enough good things in their lives that they might forget some of them.
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