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This story idea came to me in the middle of the night and I couldn't sleep until I wrote it down
And I keep writing on it in the middle in the night neutral
It's winter time in Innisburg. On a city block crowded with old apartment buildings and other relics a small figure swaddled in layers hurried along, nervously looking around her huge paper grocery bag. Over it only her green knit hat and curly blonde hair could be seen, bobbing with her jerky motions. She bit her lip as her building’s 20 plus steps come into view.
Obsessed with the possibility of dropping her parcel the girl slowly side stepped over to the lee of the stoop. Plastering her back against the stone she slowly bent to put the bag down. "Touchdown turnaround everything is safe and sound", doing her best slide step she plopped down beside it and finished singing, "everywhere and every time I am yours and you are mine" while dislodging her earbuds. The loud crackling beats coming off them echoed in the vacant street. She quickly rustled around in her many layers to find the CD player, turned it off and shoved it in the bag along with the headphones.
Crushing the second hand CD player and each other in the bag marked “May’s Food & Liquor” were dozens of cans of tuna, a carton of cigarettes and a few boxes of pocky. Sholeh got one of the latter out and ripped it open, “no” she said looking inside. The shattered pieces of candy rattled in the box, “Damn it!” she said, then shook out the shards into her mouth. As she crunched angrily, Sho brought her legs up to her chest; they were shivering violently trying to remind her that it was way to cold to dawdle. “I’m going to k-k-ill that ca-t, he can go sh-sh-shoping himself”.
To get warm again she got up and began dancing, horribly. It was the only way she knew how and for sure she never would have if she thought anyone could see her. On this street Sholeh’s building was the only one still occupied, everything else was rotten and boarded up. 375 Acer was barely one step above its neighbors in the looks department with the only clues that anyone resided here being an over flowing coffee can ashtray on the stoop and the only unbarred door on the block. A boy watched her from the corner of 15th and Acer, checked side to side and began down her street nose in a book and eyes on her. After a couple more “running man” reps she was ready to head up the landing. Letting out a frustrated hiss she tried to lift the bag a few different times, the boy making his way down the street was tempted to speed up and help, was actually blushing at the thought but she got it the sixth time. Keeping her body flush to the left railing she made good time up the stairs and disappeared into the entryway.
Why was the question that kept skipping through Theo’s brain, why am I following this girl? Slightly behind that in number of plays was “Why am I in the ghetto?” The thing was the blocks surrounding Sho’s were upper middle class in nature, this street seemed to appear out of the blue with its shabby grey hues and trash covered sidewalks. He had stopped to look around at the squalor for a few minutes and determined a lot of it to be an old office complex, but when he looked for the girl again she was gone. As fate would have it her door was stuck and Sholeh responded in her usual way, the thundering stream of obscenities gave Theo direction.
“God damn it, this place is such a dump” Sholeh thought giving up on opening the door with bag in hand. Trying hard to be gentle is never wise and when Sho’s tight grip failed as she set the bag down hard the sound of more crunching candy again had the curses roiling. Setting her foot on one side of the door frame it took a few dozen pulls to open the door. All this drama had her sweating. Sho took of her hat and mopped her brow. No more stops till she reached her floor was her game plan and as she hefted the bag and swiftly stepped into the building it seemed doable. Whether or not she could forgive her kitty for sending her on this escapade didn’t.
Theo had sprinted to her and got to her stoop just as the door shut. Cursing himself for being too slow he considered just going back. Screw it, Theo thought, I’ll just walk in and say I’m visiting a relative. Slicking down his platinum blonde bangs over his eyes and flipping them back a few times he made his way up the stairs. Once inside he was struck by how empty it was, and that it wasn’t an apartment building after all. He had been right about the street being office complexes, and the cannibalized silver letters above the front desk read something “Labs”. The only way to the upper floors was a massive stair case to the left of the lobby and Theo saw her, dirty blonde curls bobbing up and down as she scaled the stairs.
 little_courbure · Thu Dec 14, 2006 @ 09:44am · 0 Comments |
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