Some of my blogposts are going to be writing that I am working on. I am taking a fiction writing class through the Writer's Studio and I want to share some of my work here. They aren't all complete stories, some just tidbits of stories. I would love to have your comments and feedback. Please feel free to tell me what doesn't work for you and what does. I'd love to know.
The following story is based on an exercise that we did from the story Sam the Cat, by Matthew Klam, www.matthewklam.com.
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It’s not the sight of all the cactus that gets ya, it’s the sight of nothing but cactus that does. But that’s why I love the road down to San Carlos. I am riding my bike down to Mexico and thinking about the heat and the dust and the fact that you never know what you will find. Will it be six stoned frat boys from the UofA, a rattler curled up next to my bike when I come out of a bar at two in the morning, a shrine to Our Lady up on a bluff overlooking the ocean, or maybe just myself, sitting on the beach with a sixer and a bag of fish tacos.
Folks back home tell me I shouldn’t come down here alone. “There are drug lords, robbers, …. it’s not safe for a woman on her own.” Well, what am I supposed to do, sit and home and wait for someone to come up to me and say, “Hey, I’d really like to go down to Mexico. Wanna go?” That’s just bullshit. I’ll go where I wanna go, when I wanna go. Besides, this time, I had to go now and I wanted to go alone. This ride down through the desert, the heat slapping at my face, the sun bouncing off the tarmac, the sound of the engine humming beneath me, and lots of time to think, that’s what I need right now. I need hours to think, to sort out the last few days.
I knew I would need time to think on my own. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t tell my family about the breast cancer, not yet, not until I’d sorted it out myself, if that was even possible. Was it even possible? How do you sort out a barely 30-year-old woman being diagnosed with breast cancer? I mean, I’d never even had a mammogram before. And now they were telling me that I was going to have to have surgery. Surgery … shit I don’t even have health insurance.
My sister would say that it’s my own fault, for trying to go it on my own, working from home, doing graphic arts projects, instead of getting a “real” job or doing like she did. She says I should get more education, but when she went off to get her PhD she ended up marrying her TA instead and now she’s stuck at home with three kids and spit up on her shirt. Well, she made her choices and I did too and now we just have to live with them, or die with them as the case may be. Wow, that’s morbid!
Grace always held it against me that I hadn’t found a man and settled down. Well, I don’t think settling down is my bag but, hey, I did try to get a man. Markus … yeah he’s a peach, a real peach. He’s older than me, almost 40, but still not as old as my sister. He’s hot, I mean smokin’. He has shaggy black hair that he’d dyed. It hangs down around his eyes in a sexy, shy sort of way. He loves long-sleeved Henley shirts and black jeans. He has tattoos all over his back and down onto his butt. That’s how he got me. I met him at a bar on Fourth Ave and I asked him how far down they went. He took me into the john and showed me. We did it right there and three weeks later I was pretty much living at his place.
Showing posts with label short fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short fiction. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Tinted Glass
I recently submitted the following story to the NPR 3 Minute Fiction contest. Check out some of the other stories, they are quite good.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105660765
Jemma was just leaving the thrift store with a sack of clothes for her and the kids. She didn’t have to rush since her ex had agreed to keep the kids and take them to school the next day. So she wasn’t rushing as she passed the café window. She looked in through the tinted glass and noticed the empty table with a stack of papers, waiting for someone to return. The slate gray of the clouds loomed in the glass behind her and reminded Jemma of the stormy cold days when she had chosen working in a café over working at home. In fact, she had been in a café the day she got the call, over a year ago now.
Normally, they ask you into an office to give you the news but Jemma’s boss was over 500 miles away, so she got a call. Yes, ten years with the company, not a lifetime by any means but not exactly a drop in the bucket. Of course that was true for so many now. Jemma could practically see herself that day, sitting at the table, with her tea and bagel, hanging up, putting her cell phone in her purse, shutting her laptop, and pensively sipping the rest of her tea. The bagel never got eaten.
Jemma continued going to the café after the call, looking for jobs online until she decided she shouldn’t spend so much on tea and pastries every day. The jobs were scarce and the money began slipping away. There were a few health expenses, nothing major, thank God, but the doctors were feeling the pinch too, so they said, and couldn’t subsidize everyone. After a while she just stopped going.
Jemma stood in front of that café, the bags getting heavier, the drops of rain beginning to patter on the sidewalk next to her. She wanted to go in and sit down at that table, order an Earl Gray with lemon and a chocolate muffin. But she couldn’t break the abstinence. It was her only control over the situation.
She smiled to herself to think of how she was saving on everything, using sugar instead of honey in her tea, walking the mile and a half to the thrift store instead of driving, forgoing the movies and the gym. Even the dog got only dry food, canned was for when times were flush.
Her features stared back at her in the window, no makeup, no jewelry, no hope, it seemed. It had been a year and her ex couldn’t help with the mortgage any longer. She knew she would have to call a realtor next week, not knowing if she would be able to sell the house with the mold problem.
She rubbed her wrist but her watch was no longer there. Fortunately, the price of gold had been strong during the last year. Even the kids had helped to dig through the drawers for cuff links her ex had left behind or an earring that she had been meaning to get repaired. The cash hadn’t been much but it paid for the groceries for a few weeks.
Jemma felt the chill creep through her bones even though the rain drops had ceased. She pulled the green chenille sweater closer around her, remembering how an old co-worker who she had run into the previous week, had asked her about it. “It is an Ann Taylor, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Oh yes, it is.” Jemma had replied. Who would have thought that you could find Ann Taylor at the thrift store?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105660765
Jemma was just leaving the thrift store with a sack of clothes for her and the kids. She didn’t have to rush since her ex had agreed to keep the kids and take them to school the next day. So she wasn’t rushing as she passed the café window. She looked in through the tinted glass and noticed the empty table with a stack of papers, waiting for someone to return. The slate gray of the clouds loomed in the glass behind her and reminded Jemma of the stormy cold days when she had chosen working in a café over working at home. In fact, she had been in a café the day she got the call, over a year ago now.
Normally, they ask you into an office to give you the news but Jemma’s boss was over 500 miles away, so she got a call. Yes, ten years with the company, not a lifetime by any means but not exactly a drop in the bucket. Of course that was true for so many now. Jemma could practically see herself that day, sitting at the table, with her tea and bagel, hanging up, putting her cell phone in her purse, shutting her laptop, and pensively sipping the rest of her tea. The bagel never got eaten.
Jemma continued going to the café after the call, looking for jobs online until she decided she shouldn’t spend so much on tea and pastries every day. The jobs were scarce and the money began slipping away. There were a few health expenses, nothing major, thank God, but the doctors were feeling the pinch too, so they said, and couldn’t subsidize everyone. After a while she just stopped going.
Jemma stood in front of that café, the bags getting heavier, the drops of rain beginning to patter on the sidewalk next to her. She wanted to go in and sit down at that table, order an Earl Gray with lemon and a chocolate muffin. But she couldn’t break the abstinence. It was her only control over the situation.
She smiled to herself to think of how she was saving on everything, using sugar instead of honey in her tea, walking the mile and a half to the thrift store instead of driving, forgoing the movies and the gym. Even the dog got only dry food, canned was for when times were flush.
Her features stared back at her in the window, no makeup, no jewelry, no hope, it seemed. It had been a year and her ex couldn’t help with the mortgage any longer. She knew she would have to call a realtor next week, not knowing if she would be able to sell the house with the mold problem.
She rubbed her wrist but her watch was no longer there. Fortunately, the price of gold had been strong during the last year. Even the kids had helped to dig through the drawers for cuff links her ex had left behind or an earring that she had been meaning to get repaired. The cash hadn’t been much but it paid for the groceries for a few weeks.
Jemma felt the chill creep through her bones even though the rain drops had ceased. She pulled the green chenille sweater closer around her, remembering how an old co-worker who she had run into the previous week, had asked her about it. “It is an Ann Taylor, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Oh yes, it is.” Jemma had replied. Who would have thought that you could find Ann Taylor at the thrift store?
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