“You’re such a tart,” she says in jest.
But little does she know I’ve been screwing her husband for three weeks now. The question is, do I tell her right away, or do I wait until the bitch beats me at tennis again? Because holy shit, do I hate losing.
Short Stories
#SoCS – Volunteer
I should never have volunteered to drive you home. It would have cost me less to throw you in a cab than to have to clean the upholstery of my car, but then who would have carried you into the house? I’d hate to think the cab driver might have just dumped you out in your driveway and left you there to freeze, or worse, drown in your own vomit.
I threw my back out, you know. Carrying you up the stairs at the front of your house to get you inside. Why the hell do you live on the second floor? For God sakes, you could have at least had the decency to move into a ground floor apartment. And then there was Rex.
You told me your dog was friendly. Yeah, right. So why have I been sitting in the emergency room for three hours, again, for the second time in the last three days? Oh right. You didn’t know he’d somehow contracted rabies. Sure thing.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I still have a huge lump on my head from the cast iron frying pan your ex-wife hit me with, when she found out I let you get drunk in the first place. I know, I know. I shouldn’t have told her. But how was I to know your last words to her were, “Of course I’m going to AA meetings”?
I did think you had a lot of nerve to invite me out for a beer to make up for it all. And there you are texting me again…
I nede a rid hoame. At teh bar.
Hehe. Go fuck yourself.
This post was written in stream of consciousness and left unedited. If you’d like to participate in Stream of Consciousness Saturday, just click the link and see how! https://lindaghill.com/2016/10/21/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-2216/
#SoCS – Going in blind
This is so dangerous. This interview is my last hurdle. After this, if I succeed, I get the job and I’m off and fulfilling my dream.
I go in. The room is painted white; there are no pictures on the walls, no windows – no colour except the laminated faux wood table and a green chair. One chair. Will my interviewer stand?
On the table is a sheet of paper. I think at first it’s blank, but I turn it over and there are questions.
#1. (Your first test.) Do you have a pen?
I pull a pen out of my purse and for a second I panic – it doesn’t work!!! I scribble for a while on the back of the paper and a faint blue line appears. It gets darker. Good.
I write “yes” for the first question.
#2. If you were a bug, and you wanted to get into a house but there were screens at the windows, would you:
a) try to squeeze through the screen
b) wait for someone to open a door
c) find another house
What kind of question is that???!!! I ask myself. Flustered, I go on to the next question without answering.
#3. Did you answer question #2? If not, go back now.
I look around the room. Is there a camera? Am I being watched? This is weird. I answer question #2, b. I’m a fairly patient person… I mean bug. Whatever. I write “yes” for question #3.
#4. What is your dream job?
Is this a trick question? It’s the one I’m applying for. I write that.
#5. What colour is white?
White. That’s got to be the correct answer. Or is it? Is white a colour? If not, how do I answer the question? Holy shit, this test is hard.
#6. If your owner holds you by the back of the neck, do you:
a) bite him or her
b) calm down and remain subdued
c) explain that you’re not a dog, and would he or she please let go
What the fuck? I’m just about to cap my pen and be on my way when the door opens and a handsome man in a white suit with a white shirt and tie walks in and stands on the other side of the table.
“Hello,” I say.
The man says nothing. Expressionless. He puts his hands on his hips and blows air out from between his pursed lips. I wait.
“What do you do?” he asks finally.
“What… do you mean?”
“Question #6. You were about to leave. What would you do in that situation?”
I look down at the paper and read the question and the possible answers again. “Umm… c?”
“Is that your final answer?”
I look down again. I’m definitely not a dog. “Yes. That’s my final answer.”
Suddenly the room lights up with yellow and red flashing, turning lights. I feel as though I’m in a game show.
“Congratulations!” the man says. “You’ve got the job!”
I slump down in my seat, and put my forehead on the table. I got it. I got it. I GOT IT!
I’m going to make people millionaires!
This slightly insane post (is this how Regis Philbin got the job?) is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the following link to read the rules and join in: https://lindaghill.com/2016/10/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-1516/
The Chronicles of Mary, Part 2 – a 50-word story
Last week, Mary got her heel stuck in a sewer grate. As a car was approached at great speed, a woman in a cape (envision Professor Umbridge of Harry Potter fame) scooped Mary up and moved her to safety.
Mary attended the woman’s funeral shoeless. She wasn’t taking any chances.
Dumb – #AtoZ Challenge
I got it! I finally got a way to get on America’s Funniest Videos! This is gonna be great. All I have to do is cover the peak of the roof with sheet metal, and build a ramp coming down to it off the top of the barn. Oh, and I need my skateboard. Duh! I’m gonna grind for the camera, baby!
Author’s Notes:
1. It’s obvious where my inspiration for this piece came from, yet I have to hand it to the people who make up a good portion of those who get their videos on the show; their ideas are brilliant. It took me a while to come up with something original.
2. I have no plans to write Adult Content fiction pieces for this challenge, but it happens, and it’s sometimes beyond my control if I’m to remain authentic to my muse. I will place a warning in the title of those posts which fall under the AC category.
Shame – a 50-word story
It’s a major disaster. So much blood has been spilled. I had one job to do. Just one. How could I have been so careless? I’ll never be able to show my face in public again!
I should have known I was too clumsy to work in a butcher shop.
Thar’s the Rub – a 50-word story
“You don’t like her?”
“No. She rubs me the wrong way.”
“Which way does she rub you?”
“Oh you know. Side to side.”
“Do you prefer to be rubbed up and down?”
“From top to bottom, actually.”
“Hmm. I like the tummy.”
“OOh, and behind the ear is good too.”
Applied Art – a 50 word story
“What is the most romantic gesture you can think of?”
Sitting behind the desk in her best business suit, legs crossed, she tapped the pen on the bridge of her nose and stared at the question.
All she could think was, What kind of secretarial job am I applying for?
Mr. Strange
Mr. Strange was the normalest person he himself knew. He shaved every morning and put on his suit and went to work as an accountant in a perfectly normal firm downtown. He drove a Lexus and he lived in a three bedroom bungalow by himself with his dog and his cat and his three fish. The bodies buried in the basement didn’t count as other people. They were corpses.
***
Miss Harper enjoyed the company of Mr. Strange very much. She was a secretary at the firm in which he worked. She lived downtown a few blocks from the company in an apartment on the fifth floor. She didn’t drive, but she had admired Mr. Strange’s Lexus and even said so once. She was hoping he would invite her out to dinner.
***
Mr. Tarvell was Mr. Strange’s boss. He always thought there was something odd about Mr. Strange, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He knew his secretary, Miss Harper, had a “thing” for Mr. Strange and he wanted to say something but he didn’t quite know how.
***
Mr. Strange’s dog wouldn’t stop trying to get into the basement. He thought about giving the dog to Miss Harper, the secretary at work. She seemed lonely. Perhaps he would invite her over.
***
Miss Harper’s first visit to Mr. Strange’s house was an event that surpassed every event that she had ever had in her life. On the outside, Mr. Strange was a kind man. Gentle, it seemed. In fact he was the normalest man she had ever had the pleasure of working with. However, they had barely started into dessert when he swooped everything off the table, the table cloth included, and crawled over to her and kissed her passionately. They never made it to the bedroom. He made love to her under the dining room table, her head banging on one of the chair legs each time he thrust into her. She took a taxi home. She couldn’t wait to see him again.
***
Mr. Tarvell noticed a strange smell on Miss Harper’s clothes the next day. It seemed, somehow, that she had gotten moldy. Like she had spent the night in the refrigerator, cuddled up to a basket of rotting strawberries. He didn’t want to say anything lest it seem rude.
***
Mr. Strange was the normalest person he himself knew. That he would soon require a bigger basement meant that he would also probably need a new job. A better paying job. A job in a town where no one knew him. Leaving his present house to the dog seemed the wisest choice he had made in quite some time.
This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. It’s only late if you insist on changing the clocks at 2am… http://lindaghill.com/2015/10/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-3115/
SoCS – Root
“Dig,” she thought as she shoved the spade into the ground again.
“Dig, dig, dig, dug. Doug. It’s Doug I should be digging for. To hell with this root.”
But the root had been the bane of her existence since she moved into the house. Because it was more than a root. It was a stump. The stump of a tree that had been cut down maybe a century ago. God knew what was below it – maybe there was a cemetery down there, like in Poltergeist.
Chunk, went the spade. Chunk, chunk ching!! She hit something. Getting down onto her hands and knees she dug with her fingers until she uncovered something silver. Something shiny. A treasure! Could it be that all this work had made her rich?
With renewed determination she stood and wielded the shovel once again. The silver box was small – it didn’t take much to dig around it. But it was deep, like a tiny coffin that had been buried lengthways. By the time she reached the bottom of it, Doug had come home.
“Hey asshole,” she called to him. “Can you come and help me with this?”
“Go fuck yourself,” he muttered as he marched from the car to the house. He slammed the door behind him.
“Just a little wider,” she mumbled to herself. “And he’ll fit right in.”
***
Two weeks later…
The house had been deathly quiet for so long that it seemed as though noise had given up on her. Doug had woken up while she was still filling in the hole, but she took care of that with the spade. The silver box was the final nail in his makeshift coffin – or lack thereof. It was the deciding factor. Not only did she have the means to cover up what she’d done thanks to her discovery, she wouldn’t have to share whatever was in the box with him. Or anyone else.
It took three days to pry the lid off the box and then another day to figure out what was in it. A pair of glowing orbs, like cat’s eyes lay in the bottom, which was five feet from the top. Tipping it hadn’t worked, nor had turning it upside down. Now the object sat on the table in front of her. It had climbed out on its own it seemed, after she went to bed.
The object – what could she call it? A cat-box? – refused to move from the table. It smelled like toast in the morning, a chicken sandwich at lunchtime, and a steak at dinner. But every time she made something to eat, her food would disappear. Into thin air. The only thing it didn’t touch was her coffee and her booze.
She couldn’t leave the house; she was slowly starving to death. Except.
Every day for the past seven days there had been a note on the table when she woke up in the morning. The note read: if you’re hungry, dig up Doug.
This creepy tale is brought to you by SoCS. Click here and join in! Anyone can do it! http://lindaghill.com/2015/09/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-1915/
Linda G. Hill 