The thermal paper, slick with the thin polish of the chemical Bisphenol A (or S, determined by how a country tends to select the carcinogen that appeals to them) burned black into the pristine surface, feeding into the hand of the clerk. The paper extended about fifteen centimetres, until the sensuous whirring abruptly halted and she tore it with a clean, perfect rip. The very picture of a practice perfected through thousands of attempts. Without even asking (hardly anyone did anymore unless they were new to the job) she placed it, untarnished, into my waiting hands.
The procedure went as follows — and it is a delicate procedure, so pay attention: upon collecting a receipt, it is absolutely necessary to keep it as received, doing little to disturb the natural curl which the smaller receipts tend to normalise into. As for the larger ones, the problem lies more in the maintenance of the whole, assuring that nothing is unduly bent or dirtied as you bring it to its home in a clear container, so as to ensure that your eyes can observe its insertion into the box with its brethren, to ensure that all is well and safe. You mustn’t be deceived. Many a time have things appeared normal to simple inspection, only for gross impurities to lie under the surface. So, it required something beyond the calculus of a master, one with a clairvoyant eye that saw flaw without seeing. Upon my first misstep of that kind, the reverberations of such a miscalculation were a persistent malaise, one that crushes you mentally like an immovable weight. The receipt is not so fragile a thing, though, and with strenuous effort it is possible to corral them into passability.
It is only once you are assured of its propriety in the bunch (which must never reach above a dozen, as by that point they grow restless, pushing into one another and causing tears in the absolute worst case), the next step comes upon your return home, where you flatten them gently with something made for the task: I prefer an unheated iron but a flat stone or a hardcover book might just as well do the trick.
“Do you really keep all of them?” she interrupted, looking at me quizzically.
“So what if I do?”
“Nothing… I was just curious,”
The nerve. I pulled back my hands, keeping the paper out of her reach. This kind of disrespect was not something I was wholly unfamiliar with, but all the same it was kind of nagging that wore thin on my papery thin patience. Where was I? Yes. Receipts told a story, a narrative which told of the places the tips of fingers grazed, the pressure points which pressed up against the city around me and returned their warmth — a physical imprint, an heirloom from plastic to the kind sheets which cost nothing.
Laying sheathe within an unassuming cabinet in my room was the true intricacy of the system, where the pilgrimage came to an end. In an assortment of colour-coded binders, the very rudimentary pieces of my life have been collected and sorted into folders reflecting a taxonomy of mood, taste, situation. Red meant that some kind of strain came with the purchase, green was the indication of a reliance on a habitual, almost homely purchase to soothe the nerves. It was neat and ordered, the narrative of a small life splayed out in vivid polychrome.
The flashy nails of the cashier were much the same. They were glossy, reflecting the dim fluorescent light of the convenience store overheads.
“Did you get those done recently?”
I had no reason why they had caught my eye, even less certain why I spoke up about them. There was a look of strange realisation that I was in fact talking to her, meeting my eyes which lay upon her hands, before she replied, “Um… Yeah…”
An echoing silence descended throughout the deserted aisles of the shop, ending when I clutched the handles of the plastic bag and left with the faint jingle of the door. People have always called me strange, but not in the way you are probably thinking. Not the kind of high functioning sociopath which would make for a good case study, nor the brain-addled half-wit that is the cause for news publications in a small town with nothing better to speak about. My ailment was far more boorish.
I had never been truly checked for anything because there was nothing evidently wrong with me, but through the way I lagged behind my peers when it came to the general outlook of life, it was clear that I was some sort of living specimen, inhuman in some regard. Never knowing my parents, I had come to the assumption that I was some sort of single celled organism, splitting off from another just like me and into existence. The sort of amoeba that simply is, but never strives for anything more — the conclusion I had long since come to was that the idea of conviction was created in utero.
Greyish kind of entity that I was, I chose to document life through documented transaction. It might have been for fear of being forgotten, but it was more to act as a voucher. The only proof that they ever lived. My footsteps brought me to the blinding light of a restaurant, passing under the golden arches and into its bowels on the underground where there was a world of cut white tile, foreign to the night above. My fingers glided across the kiosk as I selected my food and with it came the low whirr of the delicate print. The surface was more matte than usual, some of the letters imprinted with blots evident as if the roll was spit out. With a rip across the triangular cutter blades I ended up tearing the lower part along its length. The perforated edge had been cleaved in two by my brutish hand. Smoothing it out, I delicately put it away hoping that the flaws may resolve themselves upon next viewing. It was an idle hope. I unconsciously tapped my foot on the floor, waiting. Finding my seat, I solemnly ate the food. Uncaring of its slovenly make, I chewed and chewed until the faint salty taste was the only thing left to my mouth.
The night was cool. I felt as though I were a part of the wind current, subsumed within the changes in atmospheric pressure, deflected by the looming highrises towards home. That night I sat at my ritual, feeling the tactile reassurance of the lustrous sheets. Like neurological pathways, they sorted themselves out. One to red, one to blue, one to green. At last I had come to the final two of the night. I lightly drew open the red binder once more, sliding the pristine sheet within. In the act, my eyes finally came to rest upon the final one. A torn, slipshod creation. There was really nowhere to put it. It was not the first time a receipt had come out bastardised, but it was the first time that the feeling was not accompanied by another. Disgust at its creation and my hand in it, solace in the purchase itself, none had visited my poor apartment tonight. It was empty.
The next night was not so different from the last. Work ended somewhat earlier and I was bid towards the long trail of the nightly commute, a narrow and unbroken pathway which stretched out towards infinity. The only company the fluorescent lights of the street. They were familiar strangers — a constant presence that I had never gotten to know. In spite of the season, it was still somewhat warm outside. In my hands was the plastic casket, empty for the day because of my inundation with the tedium of the day. And so, into the sheer light of the convenience store I soon returned.
Maybe I was chasing something which I did not know. Avoiding yesterday’s catastrophe, I chose to peruse the instant food aisle, choosing beforehand for a cup of ramen as my companion for the night. Scanning through the inventory, the flavour I usually bought was not there. In search of my prize, a specific brand of carbonara that had a certain comforting punch, I robotically picked apart the shelves until they were bare. It was nowhere to be found. Did this portend to some greater evil I had yet to see? There was no way of knowing. Deferentially, I closed my hand around the throat of a wide, rigid bowl. Another familiar flavour, it was a red pepper my uncles would treat me with on visits, back when I was a child. Today it was plastered with the caricature of a smiling man whom I had never seen before, an assurance of quality which could be trusted for the whites of his teeth and his handsome face — if he could be in so good a condition, why would his food not be?
Approaching the counter, I rummaged through my coinpurse placing each individual piece of metal upon the table and counting them up towards the total of which I was a little short. Unable to clear away the change, I sighed and moved to retract them before the colourful hand swept them away from me. Looking up, slightly bewildered, I met eyes with the woman for the first time.
“Close enough, don’t you think?” she said with a sheepish smile. Looking at the figure on the ramen package, he looked almost the same. Though I could not really see her eyes in the reflection of her thick-framed glasses, I could only think they had assumed that similar piteous softness. “Though, I suppose I won’t be able to get you a receipt this time, that okay?”
Uncaring as to her donated kindness I reached into my coat, withdrawing a card almost surgically to complete the transaction. Only, I froze as she spoke a soft entreaty, “Seriously, I insist. Okay?”
Finding no proper response, I could only nod my head and walk from the store. The feeling did not really hit until I was at my station, left to simply wistfully look from the coloured folders to the food who was divorced from it. It was orphanized. Its fate to disappear from the world, without a trace. He did not seem to mind given the look on his face, but was he really okay with that?
With reverence, then, I peeled back the plastic lid and poured in a rush of boiling water. Closing it once more, I poked holes through his cheeks to let the steam escape. Then it was all I could do to place my hands against the bowl to feel his warmth, fleeting though it was, as it rushed out of him. To complete the meal I donated him an egg, some fishcakes, green onions from my fridge, all a part of documented history, their marks perhaps speaking to his phantasmal presence on the lonely night. Maybe he might be remembered that way. Finally, I let myself bite into it. It was neither good nor bad, but definitely changed from how it tasted when I was younger. Such was the usual pattern — nostalgia tends to cloud how something felt when you had less worries. Though, it could have just as easily been a simple ingredient change. It had been a while, after all.
After finishing, I reached for a cigarette which lay amidst the mess of the coffee table. Only a quiet, cold feeling remained, even as it caught fire. Holding out the empty bowl before me on the tips of my fingers, I studied its plastic ridges. There was nothing that would bring it back.
The man, once so assured of himself, was cast into the garbage. He was as discarded as the food in my stomach. In the depths of my heart I wanted to bring him back to life, to kiss those pallid, smiling lips into bloom and assure him that he would be remembered. Smoke clouded the room the more I exhaled, but it was still cold. As I moved towards bed, I spotted something on the floor. It was the receipt from yesterday, the runt whose smudged body had been further deformed by misplaced foot, causing it to tear nearly in two.
Bending over, I picked it up and stared at the content — the merchant info was illegible. I grabbed a pen from piles of garbage on the counter and scribbled a large M where it should have been. The transaction ID was half faded, irrecoverable. The itemized section was clear in some places, but not insofar as to tell what kind of burger it had been, given the split right through the item. Trying to wrack my brains, nothing came up; I tried fitting the broken ends together, but it did not really make it any more clear. The burger was pretty bland, so nothing helped to signify just what it might have been. Only that there was one of them (seen through the evident x1) and that I had eaten it. The price was perfectly fine, as too was the mode of pay and the legal policy scrawled upon its bottom. Dropping the pen, I truly looked at it. Reading the, “Thank You!” inscribed on its head, it felt like a joke. For the first time, I felt no reason to hold onto the receipt. Without another thought, I discarded the delicate sheet alongside the ramen bowl. I wanted to apologise, but it had no ears to hear me.
Weeks passed. Nothing in my life had truly changed since that day. I had a feeling that the night had spurred something inside of me, but when I arrived to buy the morning coffee next morning, I relapsed into habit. I had traced my finger across the thin layer of polymer and it felt as if the hole had been mended somewhat. The faint, plasticy smell of the resin secreted from its pores and brought something like consolation as I had stood against the current of the morning breeze, pushing into me like an opposing tide. But it was not as my fears had been allayed. Since that night I have had a curious knot in my chest, worsened not when collecting the receipts themselves, but when I withdrew them by the end of the day, when categorising them into their little boxes. Somehow, it felt like a betrayal. A disembodied smile would flash to mind. Maybe it was a sin of some sort, but it was hard to tell given my inexperience with those kinds of things. The doors opened with the faint toll of a bell. It had changed since last time, sounding almost like what you might hear on the top of a church. Mechanically, I sorted through the columnal nave, reaching to pick up dinner. Whatever promotion had put a man’s face on the lid had passed, now bearing naught but an edited image of the food alongside some cartoonish caricatures. I sorted it into my basket.
Coming to the counter, I was met with a smile. Her face, eminently visible now, was smooth, almost like thermal paper.
“No glasses anymore?” I asked, the words escaping me.
“Contacts,” she responded genially. As I placed the items on the counter neatly, she began to scan them. The pinks of her nails were visible to the eye. She spoke up again, following my gaze, “I guess I switched one small hassle for another,”
“It suits you, either way,”
She laughed as she continued her work, before abruptly looking upwards once more. “Your receipt?” the question hung upon the air.
“Yes,”
With those words the paper began to feed through the machine, almost before I spoke them. Watching, I saw the result — the thermal head had not made its prescribed contact, so the sheet came out blank and white. The tear was perfect. Without paying particular mind to it, she handed it to me. I knew its ailment even as I took it from her hand. She only seemed to when she saw me hold the perfectly transparent sheet before me, its emptiness clear by the light which seemed to shimmer through it.
“Ah, it makes these mistakes sometimes. I can fix it up, if you like,”
Turning to her, something like a smile broke across my face as I shook my head. Grabbing the plastic bags from the counter, I walked from the store, the door shutting behind me as I left that rigidity behind. I used to think that it was the paper which burned those memories into reality, but they were only really warm for a moment.