creative writing story

i wrote this creative writing and just need to see if it's even worth turning in. for those of you who haven't read my recent style, this piece is not really supposed to have a "real" conflict/plot, so keep that in mind.

so, i want to know what you think.

The moon was the color of pine nuts and the birds were chained to the sky. I was impersonating like a halibut. The air smelled of lemons. The clouds in the sky were like ropes and were hung just below the ozone layer to dry, still dripping with rain. It was the last day of today.

The street lights were on: flickering, yellow cones of light that marred the night sky. When I was young, I wanted to be a trapeze artist. But all I could now was disappear every time I passed a streetlamp.

I was going to the grocery store to pick up a sandwich.

The aisles smelled like saltwater and shampoo. It was the type of smell that reminded me of stainless steel. I zig-zagged through the aisles, arms out to the side, fingertips grazing the flimsy cardboard boxes. I wasn’t wearing shoes and the floor was gritty.

There was a man in aisle eight.

He hobbled instead of walked, feet clunking against the floor in an uneven rhythm, and wore socks with sandals and a neon hunting vest. He carried a bottle of ketchup in one fist. He handed me a box of cereal.

“Here.”

There were marshmallows in it.

I thought that was nice of him.

He had five o’clock shadow even though it wasn’t five o’clock. It looked like he had a toupee on, but I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have liked it if I’d asked.

I peeled open the top of the box and tore opened up the bag. The cereal dissolved into wet newspaper on my tongue. I saved the marshmallows for last.

When I stepped past the registers towards the empty moon-lit street, a store clerk wearing a red vest stopped me. His name tag said his name was Simon.

“Hey!”

I glanced at him as I swallowed the final remnants of the marshmallows. They tasted like rainbows and partially-hydrogenated corn syrup. Simon’s face was splotched with pimples and he was trying desperately to grow a mustache. He smelled of cleaning supplies. “Did you pay for that?” He gestured at my cereal box.

I swallowed but kept my pace, toes slapping against the floor. “No.”

He cleared his throat and spat a wad a phlegm into the trash can behind him. “You’re going to have to.”

I paused and flickered my eyes from the box to his face. “Okay.”

The cereal was a gift from the man in aisle eight, but I didn’t tell him that. He wouldn’t have cared.

If I were him, I wouldn’t have cared either.

I walked to the register and handed the cereal box to him. He rung it up.

It was four dollars and fifty-nine cents. I handed him a five from my back pocket with fingers dusted with cereal crumbs.

I paid for an empty box.

He handed the box to me without a bag and I looked at it for a moment before passing it back into his fleshy, pale fingers. His skin looked moldy. I was sure not to touch it. “Could you throw it away for me?”

He threw me a look, watery eyes rimmed with bright red veins, and snorted. “You just bought it.”
"I know.” Wrong answer.

I watched him toss it into the trash can, licking the marshmallow dust off my fingers, before turning towards the exit. The marshmallows tasted like the plastic bag they were sealed in. I swallowed and felt my mouth dissolving into a pool of saliva and nausea and hurled myself into the bathroom. I flung open a stall door and vomited into a toilet bowl.

It was rainbow colored.

I wiped my lips against the back of my hand and inhaled away the scent of bile. I flushed the toilet with my foot and watched the rainbow disappeared into the white porcelain. I threw the stall door back open, listening to the satisfying screech of the hinges, and walked to the sink. My stomach clenched in a fist before settling.

I rinsed my mouth out with the tap water. It tasted like bleach.

I hope it wasn’t.

I braced myself against the sink, fingers clenched around the sides, and coughed up a pale rainbow into the ceramic bowl. I turned on the water, swishing away my spit with my fingertips. I wiped them on my jeans and glanced up into the mirror.

My eyes were red.

I threw my palm flat against the mirror and turned on my heel towards the door, feeling my skin smudge the glass.

I limped out of the bathroom and tasted the faint strands and threads of bile filtering through my mouth.

It was the first and last day of today.

I walked of the store into the spray paint moonlight.

I wish there were a word for this kind of disappointment.