Ex machina
Bottom of the drink: they hadto go. The Coke machine, the snackmachine, the deep fryer. Hoisted
and dragged through the hallsand out to the curb, they sat withother trash beneath gray, forlorn
skies behind the elementaryschool, wondering what their nextmove would be. The Coke machine
had always wanted to livethe life of a hobo, jumping trains,eating from garbage, making fire
in old oil drums. It had somestrange romantic notions of being homeless,is what the deep fryer thought.
Its opinion was to head to court,sue the bastards at the school for earlytermination of contract. It was
the embodiment of justifiable anger.It believed privately that it was an incarnationof Nemesis, the goddess of divine
retribution. What the snack machinethought, it kept to itself, but it did saythat nothing ever ends. The others
were confused, then angry, but finallyunderstood, or thought they did. The snackmachine’s candy melted in the sun.