What Does A Highlighter Named Ambition Taste like

Intro to a short story about failure, showing up, and success !

Short expert from a story in my book….. posted a piece on this before but this the rewritten version after I have taught myself somethings and boy does it sing !

He was forty-t

wo years old and smelled faintly of Fabuloso and regrets. The scent clung to Alex Crumb from his night-shift warehouse job. The kind of job that profited off you having no other recourse in life. And when you finally gave up completely, they replaced you as easily as swapping out a Pop-Tart flavor in the break room vending machine. But tonight, under the buzz of a flickering kitchen light, he was done being a loser. There is a specific kind of courage in people who decide to try to correct course later in life after years of being punched in the heart.

He had enrolled in a community college. He sat there at his kitchen table preparing for his upcoming test.

He closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids the plan was pinned to a board. Red strings connecting each thing to the next. Degree. Red string. Better job. Red string. Millionaire. Red string. Model wife. Red string. Big Fake Tits. Circled in red. Twice. The goal. The proof. The thing that told you that you had actually made it. He let himself feel the whole thing — the specific dignity of a man who had figured it out even if it took him longer than everyone else. He opened his eyes, snapping back to the here. The dream still fluttering behind his eyelids. The long road from kitchen tables to mansions with stables standing between him and his double red circled goal.

A set of highlighters lay fanned out beside his notes. One claimed it smelled like “Ambition.” Alex stared at the word for a moment. Every ambitious person he had ever seen looked miserable. But better to be miserable hand in hand with success than stuck in an endless cycle of letdown after letdown. What did ambition even taste like anyway, he thought, eyeing the highlighter longingly. Curiosity got the best of him. He took a little lick. Just a tiny one.

Ambition tasted disgusting. Instantly, his vision blurred and the room swayed. His head spun. “Aw, crap,” he thought, right before he bent over in his chair and threw up. An hour later he woke up to the world still spinning. The taste of iron in his mouth. Ambition clearly did not sit well with him. He wiped the blood anyway and uncapped the lavender-scented highlighter. Undeterred.

The old Alex Crumb would have called it a night right here. Would have taken the poisoning as a sign. Would have closed the books, turned off the light, and gone to bed telling himself he’d try again tomorrow, knowing full well tomorrow would never come. Doubt crept in slowly. Ants crawling over his prefrontal cortex. You can’t do this. You’ll always be a nobody. He stared through the kitchen wall, eyes half open, half closed, seeing somewhere miles away from his current situation. His hands moved across the table, touching his notes, his pen, his highlighter. Each one pinned to the board behind his eyes. Not a loser anymore, he whispered, like the words were fragile. Biology test. Graduation. His breath steadied. Millionaire. Wife with Big Fake Tits. He donned his armor and with it came the quiet certainty that he could face whatever humiliations this path had waiting for him. He grabbed his sword and got back to the battle.

Biology class was at 9 a.m. sharp, which meant he showed up at 7:30. A character trait he had picked up from his mother, who would camp out the night before the grocery store opened in order to buy apples. She would be greatly disappointed in him if she knew he was only there an hour and a half earlier rather than a full eight hours. Oh well. He was used to being a disappointment.

He sat in the front row, posture ramrod straight, heart buzzing with caffeine and terror. He knew how he looked. Forty-two years old. Front row. Surrounded by kids who still had the luxury of not knowing what failure felt like yet. But humiliation was apparently the price of turning your life around, and he had already paid worse prices just getting here. He was going to pay it. His stomach had something to say about all of this though. Like Kuato from Total Recall, reaching out from the folds of his generous midsection, screaming at him to run. To get out. To free himself from the particular awkwardness of being forty two in the front row in a class full of children.

Gas leaked slowly, silently from his anus. Kuato was screaming and writhing now. Was it really just the awkwardness of being here? Or did he need to see a doctor after last night’s poisoning? His eyes searched the room for any reason to avoid his mind finding an answer.

He found his reason in the form of a beautiful young woman sitting two rows back. Wavy hair, chipped black nail polish. She had dropped her pen and it had rolled in his direction. She was entirely a different species from Alex and her expression assured everyone around her she knew as much. He picked up the pen and walked it back to her. Mankind in all its ugliness handing a peace offering to a celestial being. She blinked at him. He grinned the way astronauts grin at aliens during first contact. Large. Oversold. Desperate to communicate friendliness across the vast distance between their two species.

As with most first contact scenarios, friendliness is confused with attempts at mating or war. This case was no different. She stood. “I just want everyone to know,” she said to the entire class, “that I realized something important about myself today. Just this instant actually.” The world freezes when beauty makes an announcement. Alex wondered if he announced that a tiger was eating him slowly, feet first, whether it would get the same response. Alex knew the answer in his bones. The tiger had been eating him for forty two years after all, and he had tried announcing it all throughout the meal. “I’m a lesbian now,” she said confidently. A pause. Then slowly someone in the back row started to clap, one by one the rest of the class started to join in. Someone shot off a confetti cannon. Slowly the commotion died down, but it took a while.

She sat down, radiant, with flecks of confetti in her hair and turned to stare at him. He nodded calmly and whispered “congratulations.” He was legitimately happy for her. But he was starting to wonder if it was a coincidence that he seemed to be the focal point of so many women having epiphanies, or suddenly remembering they had a prior engagement at the mental hospital. He brushed all of this aside as irrelevancies to what today was about.

He was here to change his orbit. To find a planet where he wasn’t failing so badly at life.

“Clear your desks everyone, it’s time to take the test.” Alex smiled. It was time to leave his home system. This test was the first step.

The classroom buzzed as items were put away, paper whispering like dry leaves. That’s when Professor Fennel appeared at Alex’s desk, moving with the calm dignity of a swan wearing a cardigan. He was a soft-edged man in his late sixties, with silver hair, and a neatly groomed grey mustache. He smelled faintly of old library books and cinnamon. His round glasses magnified his eyes just enough to make him seem permanently surprised by everything.

“Mr. Crumb,” Fennel said warmly, with his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I must say, your attendance has been impeccable. You radiate preparedness.” Alex blinked at him. He opened his mouth. Then closed it. If anyone was going to help him shake off the tiger that had been eating him for forty two years it was Mr. Fennel. Still, he wasn’t entirely sure how to receive a compliment like that yet. It sat on him like someone else’s underwear.

“Uh — thanks. I’ve been working on visualizing the outcomes of my plan,” said Alex. “Oh, what’s the plan?” asked Fennel. Alex squinted his eyes and took a breath, channeling his vision board and his armor. Only the payoff came out. “Big Fake Tits.” Fennel blinked once behind his magnified glasses. Then twice. “Well,” he said carefully. “If that is what makes you happy, then go for it.” “Not for me! For my wife!” said Alex. “Oh, I didn’t know you were married,” said Fennel. “I’m not,” Alex blurted.

He patted Alex’s shoulder with grandfatherly care. “No matter the outcome, know this: you are capable of remarkable things. The grade will simply catch up to who you already are.” Alex’s lungs inflated like party balloons. “Yes, sir.” “Good lad,” Fennel murmured, and drifted off down the aisle, the hem of his cardigan swaying like a victory flag.

He gripped his pen — slick with nervous sweat — and stared at questions that looked like riddles written by Bigfoot. He could make out some of the words. Everything seemed English adjacent, but the gaps were Bigfoot’s to fill. Still, he scribbled away, confident this was the start of something big.

He had become used to this kind of treatment. Not just from women but from life in general. Life could flip him off as much as it wanted. He was going to keep charging. To seal the deal he mouthed Big Fake Tits silently. Forgetting he wasn’t existing solely in his own head, he snapped back to the classroom just in time to catch a look of utter disgust spreading across the chipped nail polish girl’s face. Embarrassed, he swung back to his test and got back to deciphering Bigfoot’s riddles.

Alex went home that night feeling like a man who had taken his shot. Professor Fennel went home to find out if it had hit anything.