Gray

Distant cacophony of howling, malicious thoughts.

    A sick gray lens stifled his vision. Out of habit, he glanced down at his expensive, worthless watch, but didn't notice the time. The movement of the smallest hand caught his attention rather than its orientation. He watched it click. It somehow dulled the fog, similar to that of his eyes, which had sucked into his chest and scooped out his insides. A ring of salt sat around the wounds to keep his clotted mind thinking of them.
    The bus hissed and popped, its doors squealing open, but even this was distant and he forgot it as soon as it passed the surface of his thoughts. The gasoline and rubber was undone by the pervasive odor of vomit from his mouth. A thought arose from the calamity to cut him, to cut him deep in his hollow chest. "Your son hated the smell of gasoline."
    His clothes felt greasy, humid, cold and wrong, prickling at his pallor. His bones felt frail. It wouldn't take anything for the bus before him to crush his body. His heart would explode and he'd feel the most exquisite, freeing agony, before he was released.
    He picked his head up and had a vague awareness that it was important for him to get on. He retained his stare anyway as the bus closed its doors. It left him behind. Were he a stronger man, he would have cried. Nothing remained to force the tears to come, however, so he sat. Distant but present and gray.

Author's Note

250 word T.S. Eliot/John Gardner Killer Exercise. "A middle-age man is waiting at a bus stop. He has just learned that his son has died violently. Describe the setting from the man's point of view WITHOUT telling your reader what has happened." Revised six or seven times, possibly more. I still don't like it.