Monday, July 17, 2006

And I've written pages upon pages, trying to rid you from my bones... [random story]

Okay, it's 11 o'clock and I am going to try to start and finish a short story before midnight, for shadow boxing since no one has given me comments and indicated that they are reading. I would also note that I have stopped trying to find appropriate The Who lyrics and that today's title is from the Decemberists. Bourbon in, story out (I hope). Here goes:


"Put your fiath in the POWERS-that-BE and Their powers will continue you to BE!" The bum's sign read, I threw my change in his outstretched cup, chipped black with a mathematic proof of theory of relativity on the outside in chalk-white. I wondered at the meaning of his sign and then at the more pressing issue of getting a meal for myself. I had wandered into town a few hours before and intended to spend only a few more here before hitching a way back out again.

The beat-up pickup truck that brought me into town had only stopped at a light that was just off of the highway exit and lead straight back onto the highway out of town. It's driver didn't really seem to avoid the town, but rather ignored it. He had forgotten at first that it was here, only remembering it when a sign told us it was only five miles away. He was heading north and I was trying to get west, another interstate running east-west was "a mile, maybe two" outside of town. He dropped me here and I decided to find a meal, but I was far enough out of my element that Hardee's was Carl's Jr and people look at you funny if you ask about Kum and Go. My beaten and battered innards couldn't take another gas station meal of beef jerky and diet pop without rebelling horribly miles from a toilet.
I kept looking around the little town and asked a few people, but my ragged appearance, while normal to the people who picked me up when I was hitching, made them point me towards the homeless shelter. I settled for a gigantic greasy burger and a couple of beers at a local bar.
I moved to the edge of town where the beat-up pickup's driver had told me the interstate would run west. The driver was right and I found an interstate heading west. I stuck out my thumb and hoped.

Okay, separated from the story, I have no idea. This is crap, but I'm twenty minutes ahead of my deadline so I'm calling it. Here's what you get, no plot, no tension, no finish, now go away.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

i wrote some crap. Sorry.

Apparently, I hoped for the wrong thing, because shortly after, it began to rain. I debated whether to head back to the bar as the warm rain flattened my hair and made the highway asphalt hiss. The moist air cleared my head, and I wondered again what exactly I thought I was doing. Apart from hitchhiking to get where I was going, obviously.

Like a thirsty leech, my clothes sucked in the falling raindrops, and became a cottony second skin. I felt heavy, ponderous. Like a large tree, set in it’s ways, stubborn and wise and full of secrets. No one knows what a tree knows. No one knows what I know. The rain continued, falling in a steady hush that drowned out sounds I hadn’t paid attention to before. If my clothes had been thirsty before, they were now most certainly sated, soaked and bloated to the point of complete saturation. And though a slight breeze made me shiver, my shoes were so soggily set that I couldn’t find the will to move. All I could do was stand there, planted, and wait.

I waited.

I waited and smelled the wet dirt, the displaced worms, and the cooled asphalt.

And as I waited, I watched the rain move on, and the sun shyly skitter from cloud to cloud, before finally setting in a blaze of reds and oranges. Fire, burning away the roots. Slowly, I lifted my foot, and with a slight squish, turned back toward town. Perhaps I would head to the homeless shelter after all. And in the morning, I’d return with some salty French fries and a beer, and move on.

2:10 AM  

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