Small Places : Nick L Belardes [2 of 128]

• What else can I do but shut the door behind me and start walking? I don't have a goddam car. And yes, it's because I'm not well paid.
• The grey skyline doesn't tower too far above wide, empty streets. From several blocks away I can see Buildicon Enterprises.
• Buildicon uses a four-story bank as its home base for product development, marketing, tech support and shipping.
• I see a line of ants on the sidewalk. They seem to be walking to Buidicon. I imagine them taking my place, in cubicles, hardly working.
• Boxy, the structure looms above the dirty horizon. Lines of ants spill into gutters and cracks. A leaf is carried with them like
• a stretcher. I imagine myself falling down exhausted, shrinking, lying on the leaf and carried into the darkness of small places.
• I'm not thinking about Mulani, not right now anyway. I pass a school auditorium, looks like a Lego.