The Salt & Vinegar Man of St. Marks

I sat by the window for an hour and thought about my ex-wife. I remembered the long ago times when we would shave our heads together, then burn the combined hair clippings in a bucket on the floor. The smell stank up the whole apartment for days, but we didn't care. In fact we deeply inhaled the fumes hoping that it would bring us closer together - but it never did. Less than a month later we had separated. Both of us with buzz cuts packing up boxes... our eyes filled with tears.

Around lunchtime I stepped out to get some air. I purchased a bag of 99 cent salt and vinegar chips from the Bodega Man. The artificial flavoring was what I craved most of all. However on this day something was different. As I carried on down the street there was a strange taste about the chips. A taste that I found rather familiar and unpleasant. It was the taste of burning hair!
I rushed to spit them out in the trash can on the corner but I was stopped by a drifter woman who asked me for pocket change. I quickly handed her the bag of chips and she replied, "Thank you kind brother. May you live long and true."
It was a second later that I had dropped to my knees and began to purge forth the chips and lox I had eaten earlier that day for breakfast. When I looked up the woman was gone. There was bile and sick all over the sidewalk in front of me, and I was being watched by a group of old women walking out of the church from their afternoon prayers.