Yogurt

It was his bench, he had laid claim to it a long time ago. Last summer he scrounged up some paint and painted it bright fluorescent neon green. It was his bench.

On those days when he was particularly filled with testimony he would stand on the sidewalk and yell at the cars as they passed, blaming them for global warming and for being a part of the JFK assassination. He hated doctors, lawyers, firemen, and pharmacists the drug lords. The pill pushers trying to get everyone over medicated so that they could take over the world. It's in the bible he screamed, read Revelations you damn sinners!

He smelled, he tried to fight it off with aerosol sprays and hung car fresheners, the ones that looked like little pine trees in the armpits of his coat, but still he smelled.

One day he found an old box and some markers and decided to make a sign. He found that if he pissed on the dried out markers it restored them. He thought for hours about what he wanted to say, his message to the hundreds, thousands, millions that would be passing his corner over the next few days all to read his sign, his revelation, he began to sweat. The pina colada pine trees in his arm pits began to get soggy as he sat there forming the words. He scribbled furiously and went over and over the letters, so that they were black, black as charcoal, black like the pavement on the street in front of his bench, his home. Finally he sat back and admired his work.

The next day he stood there in front of his bench, the neon green bench holding his sign, his message: Why are you staring at me?