story-telling

Miss Demeaner

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“I don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about,” she said in a high-pitched voice that she barely recognized as her own as she grasped her dignity and her purse tighter and proceeded to leave the department store before anyone tried to detain her further.

Heart beating wildly, she willed herself to walk with a calm gait and not to look back, as she felt a flush of perspiration begin to bead above her lip.

It wasn’t until the subway cars closed and the car pulled away from the platform that she let herself begin to relax, followed by a rush of adrenaline as she felt her bag for the outline of the lipstick she had managed to nick in her first-ever taste of a life of crime.

Inspired by TheDaily Post Word Prompt: slight

Personal Inventory

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“If you’ve got, flaunt it,” she purred to her own reflection as she carefully loosened her highly teased and sprayed-within-an-inch-of-its-life curls with a hair pick, attempting to encourage it back to its peak height.

She was proud to still have all her own hair and was determined to make the most of it as it had been one of her best beauty features since birth.

She took one last appreciative glance of herself in the bathroom mirror and gave herself a wink before refreshing her Deep Coral Rose lipstick, adjusting the bosom of her blouse to fall just a bit lower and heading back out onto the floor for the remainder of her shift.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: flaunt

Passages

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It had been fucking abrupt.

She’d come home to the apartment they shared to find he’d moved himself out while she was at work. At work, working at the restaurant – his restaurant.

It was a shock. Strange to feel the ghosts of his things. For half of the life of their home to be gone, just like that.

It almost felt like the floor tilted in places – like a strange funhouse – where only her stuff remained, as if the weight of her things had warped the balance of the room.

She walked around, numb, dazed, picking up an odd hanger or empty CD case, watching dust bunnies scatter as she passed through the rooms.

The only remaining evidence of his presence were two flat unused cardboard boxes, $1.87 in change, and a few crumpled receipts.

Later that night, after the shock had worn off and reality had set in, she used the cardboard boxes as a makeshift bed. (The thought of sleeping in their bedroom was unbearable. Plus, she’d drunk the better part of a bottle of Red Label and the distance seemed insurmountable in the moment.)

It would be a month, after she’d moved out herself, after she found a new place, after a friend loaned her a blow-up bed, until she slept off the floor again.

(There’s nowhere left to fall if you are already on the floor.)

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: abrupt

Paillard Tendencies

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“Don’t make me take a mallet to you,” she said wickedly as she began to prepare the chicken breast she’d bought for her dinner.

It was little exchanges like this that made her apartment feel a little less lonely at night.

With a giggle followed by an almost imperceptible sigh, she rinsed the breast in water and patted it dry with a paper towel, and returned to the task at hand.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: mallet

Perfectionista Blues

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“You don’t have to get all frantic about it,” she said to herself soothingly as she realized that the gel manicured nail of her right forefinger had just come un-gelled and fallen off.

“Life will go on. It is not the end of the world,” she continued, though somewhere inside was a part that did indeed experience such an event as life and death, and no amount of coaxing was ever going to change that part of her mind.

And so it was that she stopped the car and ran into CVS pharmacy to buy a box of Bandaids to use one to cover the naked nail, and to appease that part that simply could not move forward without it.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: frantic

Reliable Sources

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“What?! No!” she desperately exclaimed just after two of the three bank tellers suddenly and without warning flourished “Next Teller, Please” signs and left to do Heaven-knows-what.

This, just after the debacle at Starbuck’s whereupon she stood waiting at the register for five agonizing moments -watching all six employees do whatever the hell they do other than deal with the customers (which is why she had banned going there years ago until in a moment of weakness she decided to give them one last try) – before raising her voice in an attempt to get service, which was a humiliating, abysmal failure.

Taking these events as signs she was just not meant to be in the world today, she scurried back to her apartment, back to safety and the surety of the attention of her cats, both of whom adored her unremittingly and vied to be in her presence 24/7.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: suddenly

Spring Break

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“Yeah, typical,” she said to no one in particular, as she entered the last room of her day that needed cleaning to find it looking as if it had been ransacked by the CIA, fallen victim to yet another collegiate tsunami.

As she surveyed the wreckage, she knew that she’d never be done in time to make her class at the local community college.

“If only,” she said, shaking her head, as visions of somehow wreaking havoc on those who so thoughtlessly tore through her hometown every March ignited enough of an impetus to begin the work necessary to restore the room to occupancy.

Inspired by The Daily Post Word Prompt: typical