Gemotions

The air conditioning in the pawn shop was broken, and the silence was suffocating. David hated feeling like this, wound so tight he could barely breathe. The fluorescent lights hummed with a maddening buzz. The shop owner watched him with a bored expression that seemed to mirror the emptiness he felt.

He began searching. The familiar disappointment of seeing the ring was a sharp, physical pain. His grandfather’s ring. The one his mother had been forced to sell when things went bad, the ring that his brother was too blind to see had kept their mother afloat. He felt the familiar anger, hot and fast.

“How much for that ring?” he asked, his voice rough. He could barely bring himself to look at it.