Tag: fantasy

too bad: part three

The third of a short story in three parts.

“The night of Cassidy & Arthur’s dinner ‘date’ & its aftermath, and the story ends.”
Click Here for Part One & Part Two.

x

“Arthur? Is that you?“

Cassidy was confused to see him. She hopped on twenty minutes in to his bus ride, knapsack in-tow, to see him sitting near the front of the bus on one of the benches parallel to the aisle, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. She recognized his stubble. There wasn’t a spot next to him, so she hovered, still sporting her knapsack, holding on to the grip bar with clammy palms.

“Hm?“

She reached for his hood and flipped it off his head. He had some very noticeable scratches at the base of his nose and along his eyebrow line, but it was him, “What are you doing taking the bus?”

“Oh hi.”

“What are you doing taking the bus?”

“I couldn’t get my car started.”

“Oh.”

“…What are you doing taking the bus?”

“Somebody said they were driving later.”

“Oh. You couldn’t get a ride?”

“I didn’t think I needed one.”

“Oh. I had figured I’d just drive us wherever from the restaurant and then take us back to your car.”

“Never mind. I’m over it.”

“…We’re still going out after though, right?”

“How am I getting home?”

“…The bus?“

“Heh, you’re funny.” He wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Cassidy. It kind of threw me for a loop, too. You’re on my route, though, so I guess we can just come back the same way together, when we’re done.”

“Sure.” They puttered silently for a minute as the bus rolled along, “How much longer does it take?”

“Only, like, ten more minutes.”

“That close, huh?”

“Yeah, it just rips by when you’re driving yourself. You don’t get all the little detours.”

“Actually, I usually have to take the long way around on the highway. If I could take the one-way roads like a bus, I’d never be late for a shift.” She snorted. Arthur grimaced.

The bus went over a bump, and Cassidy lost her balance and stepped backward, smooshing her knapsack against the face of someone sitting on the chair behind her, “Get off of me!”

Cassidy looked behind her, “Oh, I’m so sorry!” She took her bag off and put it on the floor next to her. She started to think of another one of those absurd porn videos she’d seen in those brief, intimate exposures online, where it looked like the Japanese schoolgirl was getting raped on a public bus full of salarymen. But those would-be idiots had better watch out this time! She had pepper spray ready! She just had to kneel down, reach into her knapsack after she took it off, and fish for it – in the meantime, her ass would be sticking out. She’d be a sitting duck.

Arthur started to stand, “Did you want to sit down?”

“…No. No, thanks, I’m fine. It’s not much longer anyway.” He could have offered earlier, “So what happened to your face?”

“What about my face?”

“Your face! You have scratches all under here.” She motioned around her nose with her finger. Arthur flipped his hood back up.

“I just cut myself a few times while I was shaving. It’s no big deal.” They didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. Both justified the silence by being comfortable enough with one another to share the moments when neither had to speak. Or something.

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too bad: part two

The second of a short story in three parts.

“A flashback to the year before their encounter, when Cassidy was pining & unemployed, and Arthur wasn’t single but still wasn’t happy.”
Click Here for Part One.

v

Cassidy was nineteen. That she was on the Principal’s List her Senior year meant nothing now she had graduated.

But if strangers didn’t have a hard time ignoring her giant, six-foot-five-inch stature, then her double-d breasts were the deal-breaker, which she tried to offset from an otherwise tiny frame by only ever wearing dark tops.

She had ash-brown hair that fell to her waist, which she never combed as much as the time she spent considering she should, and as a result the ends were split and messy. Her mother offered to comb it for her, but it took too long when Mom did it, and it was painful, in more ways than one: Cassidy was at the age now that, if mother & daughter sat together too long, then the younger would get interrogated about all the maternal standards, like what it was Cassidy wanted to do now that it was approaching a full year that she was out of high school – motherly bundled with a few other unsolicited suggestions.

Cassidy’s jeans were two sizes too big for her athletic core, and today’s pair wasn’t any different. But that was her prerogative: if they were any tighter, they would accentuate her hips, and a lower body toned from taking PE class seriously. She didn’t need anything else on her person to stand out. She looked down at her belt: it didn’t feel so tight on her, but it was too tight for the pant, as the loose waistline hung all scrunched-up below the buckle at the front.

Did she lose weight? Again? She loosened the belt by a notch, grabbed the pant by the button, and pulled the baggy garment back up over the buckle, resting the space between her pant and the button on the top rung of the buckle, like a shelf.

She liked the way working out made her feel, and she loved the camaraderie of a friend group who all enjoyed spending time outside and away from their phones, unlike a majority of their peers. This afternoon, as she looked at her reflection in her family’s rose-trimmed bathroom mirror while wearing a simple black t-shirt, Cassidy grabbed her hair by its tuft and guided it through a tie and into a bun, stuffing its true heft within itself. She leaned forward and checked again for acne, in the small, inflamed clusters of blackheads that lingered near the caves of her eyes. She straightened up, and standing tall her eyes met the top edge of the mirror. It was like that for two years and counting, and she still wasn’t used to it.

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tanning parties do not exist

A short story for mature readers.

“A crusty, middle-aged loser is afforded a second chance at love, with tragi-comic (and self-actualized) consequences.”

Which window was hers’? The left or the right?
He threw the rock in the air & caught it: once, then twice, then over again; thinking it over, the thud against his hand cracking through the silent night air. He had seen this done a million times in the movies before, and he didn’t recall one single time that it didn’t work. He was going to give it a shot.
Any second now.
Thud, thud, thud…
Em would love it, he was sure. The gesture. Classically-romantic. Chivalrous. Well, not really. There was no way to climb up to her window except if he was Spider-Man; or if he lowered himself down from the roof, which he could see himself getting to via a Mouse Trap-esque Rube Goldberg setup that nature & suburbia had blended together over generations, like that tree in the neighbor’s front lawn with the long-reaching branch, that he could use to get to the neighbor’s roof, and then a hop over. He didn’t care about the neighbor so much. He was a goof.
No, forget it. Forget it! It was ridiculous! He expected himself to what, clip the carabiner that held his water bottle to his bicycle out-front to the laundry line? Tyrolene-traverse himself across, like he was James Bond? That would be pretty cool. But what was more likely to happen was him falling pathetically from the tree – after only getting maybe halfway up, barely passed the stump – and break something. His ankle, perhaps. But that was all hypothetical. Right now, he was trying to get laid, in the most dignified way possible.
Left or right window?
Crap… he dropped the rock. It tumbled a few times away from him in the grass before coming to a halt. Suddenly, things didn’t seem so quiet anymore. He was wasting time… pick one! Before somebody calls the cops. Some nosy, restless goof up at two AM on a Saturday morning! He picked the rock up and noticed it was damp now from the dew on the knoll. He looked back up at the windows, and threw the rock at the left one.
Left. He was sure that was the one. Too late now, as it tapped violently against the dormer, ricocheting off the glass & coming back at him on the ground by his feet. Why not pick it up and try again? OK, he will. He picked the same rock up and threw it back against the same window.
It sailed through the glass making a perfect hole, like a bullet. And as a gunshot would, the sound rang long & far, and it was a matter of moments before every dog in a two-block radius was getting in on the clamor. Crap! That wasn’t supposed to happen! That never happened in the movies!
What should he do? Should he stay? Should he go? Like that song… get the damn song out of your head right now, man! This is serious stuff! A light turned on through the left window – what was left of it – as a man’s silhouette approached & lifted the busted shutter. “Are you fucking nuts? Who’s out there? There’s no use hiding: I can see you from behind the shed!”
“…Hi Derrick!”
“How do you know my name? Do I have to come down there and kick your ass?”
“It’s George!”
“George? As in, Emma’s George?”
“Yes! I’m sorry I broke your window!”
“She’s not even here tonight, dude! You’re just lucky our parents are out too! What the fuck are you doing?”
“…I was trying to be romantic.”
“What?”
“I was trying to be romantic!”
“Did you think the rock was just going to bounce off like it was ‘Romeo & Juliet’? Did you even see the size of this rock?”
“I was sure it was a small one!”
“A small one? Look!” Derrick bent down and picked the rock up, holding it high up: “This thing is fucking enormous!”
“Well, it didn’t seem that big a second ago!”
“It’s huge!”
“I’ve been out here a while, OK?”
“What the Hell is going on out here?” It was the next-door goof patrol, sticking almost his entire upper body out his upstairs bedroom window, “Hey Clear-mont, do I need to be calling the cops or what?”
“No, it’s good Bob, thanks! I’m taking care of it.”
“Well take care of it faster, cause some of us are trying to sleep!”
“George, go away. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Derrick closed the shutter and the impact against the sill broke some more glass from the frame. You could hear the shards rolling down the eave, with some making it to the edge, pitter-pattering on the concrete below like rainfall. George was pretty happy with how the whole experience went, really. It could have been way worse, like, if he didn’t get along with Em’s brother. Or if Em really was home, and he got the window right after all, but it broke her glass and scared her. And then he would be explaining to her why he thought it was romantic to break her bedroom window at two o’clock in the morning.
He walked around the front of the house only to find that his bike was missing. Where did it go? Wasn’t this where he left it? How long had he been standing there?

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