Montag had read that there were people in the world, in other countries, who were starving, kept poor as vagrant's dog, somehow because of the way people lived over here.

This was the thought nosing through his rain, sniffing around and nudging about his everyday experiences, tugging at strands of memories and pushing them aside, looking for an example crushed flat and undetectable under the still bulky, numb perception of his life.

Montag felt his eyes begin to droop with the tediousness of standing around, waiting, with no one with anything to say to talk to, so he wagged his head back and forth, stood quite suddenly erect, and his eyes popped open. Awake, he scolded himself. Be alert. Look there. Look! And so he picked something, anything to focus on, just to stay focused. Montag slipped back into a molasses-like trance again, lost in thought, absentmindedly drilling a hole deep inside the thick skull of the person standing in front of him in line. Montag clenched his toes, digging his heel into the tile floor for some connection to the earth.

Earth. How ancient and ignored, mythical in how we don't care much to understand it.His eyes ran across the rows of check-out counters and slid to the floor, swiping the supermarket for the answer. His bouncing eyes finally landed in a pyramid of oranges, perfectly round and waxy in the light just hanging overhead. The more he gazed, the more peculiar the shapes became. Like when you say the word, "wall," or something, repeatedly, a hundred times, and it gets sticky in your mouth as you say it again, this time with more enunciation. But after a while, it still sounds like the most bizarre word that ever rolled of your tongue.

"Hey. You're next."

Montag's trance shattered. He swung his head to the customer behind him. "I'm sorry?"

The woman just looked at him, with half-lidded eyes. She glared at the ceiling and removed a Seashell from her ear, as if for the third time in two minutes.

"You're next. They're ready for y- what?!" she hissed abruptly. Montag's gaze dropped to the floor, and he flinched. Clutching her leg was an imp, with gnashing, slobbering little fangs, little snotty, red nose crinkling, yanking on her pant leg. In one grubby hand was a mobile cellular device. The small screen was dominated by bright neon colors, flashing, spinning, noisy little characters, but a moment later, the phone smacked onto to the floor, thrown by the raging child.

He was utterly fascinated, in a morbid sort of way. "What goblins children are," he murmured, watching the child stamp and moan and yell and sniffle, a little cry gurgling in such a small, sweaty throat, rising louder and louder until the child was howling, like the cats outside the window at night, but loud as a siren. Somewhere behind him, he could hear more yelling, angry and whining, an adult tantrum, but what a presence, that tyke, like a police car itself had parked in the middle of the supermarket, lights pulsing and sirens wailing, stealing the show, like that one time in one of Mildred's shows she was always glued to. He couldn't look away, no matter how repulsive, just like he couldn't in class once, years ago, watching a dead rat's belly get sliced open to reveal slimy, purple bulbs lining it's stomach in a science video. Absolutely disgusting and hypnotic, all at the same time. He was very glad he and Mildred decided not to have kids.

The mother groaned, exasperated, and hauled the child away, leaving the phone stranded in the aisle. The tiny, neon figures were still dancing across the screen, jumping around and twirling, making little pinging sounds. A lively tune buzzed from the phone, distorting once in a while when a fuzzy wave of black and white washed over the vibrant screen.

"What are you doing? C'mon, I don't have all day" the cashier huffed and motioned him forward, "What're you looking at? C'mon."

Montag, startled, moved swiftly along, setting his frozen foods and box of coffee packets on the conveyor belt. As he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and leafed through bills, he glanced back at the pyramid of oranges, all so impeccably arranged and full of color. Not a bruise or a scuffed up patch on the orange skin. The cashier leaned over the counter and snapped, very close to his face, plucked his receipt from the machine, and waved it in front of him until Montag got his wits about him again and took it.

But he didn't leave immediately. Montag made for the door, but that question was tickling his brain again. It was making him uncomfortable, like a yawn that he just couldn't completely execute. What is it that we have here that others don't? Montag had a hard time imagining where these other people were or what their lives were like. He stared at the fruit department again, and let the thought climb around the shelves of his mind, rifling through his memories, lifting up blocks of familiar things, habits, routines. He let his head fall to the side, studying the orange pyramid, trying to see what it looked like upside down. He caught himself quickly, and looked around to see if anyone else noticed the fireman looking pensive, about fruit of all things. Everyone was looking somewhere else, off in the distance, miles beyond the cream-colored walls and automatic doors, looking down at their phones, tablets, fiddling with Seashells, brushing their clothes. He felt a breeze on the back of his neck, and he tossed a glance over his shoulder again, a thought squeezing past the rest of his dull experiences to the front of his mind.

All of the sudden, he felt like an alien, exposed and bewildered, like he was plunked down here at random from outer space. Montag drank his surroundings in, scanned the ceiling, the dimly lit fruit department, the toilet paper and holiday card aisle, and saw an excess of things, different things, categories of things with tabs labeling where to find cardboard pizzas and canned foods and dental products and bags of coal. How odd is that, a pyramid of fruit? Basket after basket of food, packaged, peeled, shiny with tiny drops of water, cold, smooth, colorful, and big, but they came from somewhere. Somewhere dirty and unsterile. Somewhere by a creek, near the woods, where there are strutting chickens and smelly cows, maybe. Dirt and dust and rust. Poop. Animals. But bananas? Do they come from somewhere else? Montag shut his eyes and tried to remember.

It didn't come. He stood there, waiting for another minute, and shortly left the store.