Something I started up at the end of last semester but never kept going was what I called sketches, brief 300-500 word fiction snippets. I did a couple of them, and then stopped. But, I promise ladies and gents, I’m gonna try to keep it going. So, with that in mind, here we go.

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Had anyone been paying attention, they would have seen it coming. If just one of the patrons in this small convenience store in the middle of East Texas had been only slightly aware of their surroundings, they would’ve picked up on the signs, the small events and circumstances that set off the chain reaction, and things might have gone differently. But even in rural Texas, the social constructs of isolation and ignorance toward fellow human beings gets picked up. It happens later than elsewhere, but the trickle-down effect eventually reaches the small pass-through cities, even this one, known only for a Super 8 Motel and Wal-Mart.

And so nobody paid attention when Gil, the town’s record holder for most consecutive nights in the lockup because of public intoxication, came shuffling through the door, his brown Carhart jacket stained by beer and the foul smell of stale whiskey on his breath. Nobody paid attention to the snot-covered rag he held in his filthy hand, the way the dirt under his fingernails mingled with caked phlegm. Nobody saw the news report the store owner was watching on his miniature television, the way his eyes flicked back and forth from Gil to the screen.

The student, back home from college for the holidays, didn’t notice. He kept peering into the cooler at the selection of beer, wondering if his fake ID would work in his hometown, where everybody knew him.

The doctor didn’t notice, too busy working his BlackBerry in hopes of finding the list his daughter created for him.

The mother didn’t notice, and just managed to stop her two-year-old son from destroying an entire shelf of candy bars, starting with the Snickers.

But the owner, he noticed. He saw the way Gil looked sick, how his eyes drooped and his nose ran. How his body shook with the slightest of tremors, probably because of a fever. He saw the list on the television screen of the symptoms, each one matching Gil to a tee. And then, as the drunk approached the bread aisle, he coughed, and everything went to hell.