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.