Assignment 8

The first part of this assignment was to write a 2 page story where the character visits 3 different rooms, looks out a window of each, and to describe what he/she sees and does.

Part I
My eyes passed over the menu, only catching a word or phrase out of context, jumbled, as I waited for the drinks to arrive.  Carrie returned from the ladies’ room, and resumed our intense conversation.  She was recounting the drama which had played out between her boss and herself—a failed attempt at an affair, some missing petty cash, and something about a rodeo bull.  This was the reason she had arrived at my company, and was now my boss.  I was riveted—or at least I appeared to be.  As her mouth moved, my mind settled on a quiet spot in the back row of this theater, and my ears searched for other sounds.  Mostly just the mundane clatter of a restaurant, empty at this time of day, so each sound was more isolated than usual, and the room colder.  Just as I began to argue with myself over why, exactly, I had agreed to have lunch with my boss on my only day off, my ears picked up something of interest…Harleys.  A whole pack of them, by the sound of it.  I smiled slightly, then re-masked my face.  I could smell the exhaust, feel the wind whipping my hair around my face, and I wanted to run out and join them.  My heart raced for a moment, and I forced myself to tune in to Carrie, knowing that a daydream like that, in the middle of a lunch like this, wouldn’t work.   Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them slowly filing past.
     Suddenly, I stood.
“My coffee just kicked in—sorry.  I’ll be right back.”  My words fell together and I wasn’t sure if they were even in the right order, but I bolted for the other end of the restaurant.  As I passed the windows, my eyes stayed fixed on the movement across the street.  The bikers were filling the parking lot of the gas station.  My heart fluttering harshly against my chest, I moved toward the restroom.  Closing the door hastily behind me, I caught sight of myself in the mirror.  I was flushed, wild-eyed—and it made me laugh out loud.  I wanted to join them, I wanted to run away from this dead-end job, in this dead-end town.  I was a walking cliché, but I didn’t care.  I had nothing to lose.  I stood up on the edge of the toilet and looked out through a small, barred window.  The leather clad, bearded men were filling their tanks, buying beer, cigarettes—and chocolate bars?  I saw one.  The one.  I bit my lip and climbed down from my perch.  Just as I stepped out of the stall, Carrie crashed through the room, splintering my reverie.  
“What’d you fall in?”
“Oh. Uh. Yeah, I’m fine. Um…”  My mind went blank. I was caught, with no plan for escape.
“So, where was I?  Oh yeah, that bitch of a wife of his?  She keeps calling me, even though we’re, like, so over, and--”
She hadn’t noticed that we were walking directly into the kitchen, until I stepped through the swinging doors.  I had seen my escape route, and I would not be deterred.  
“What the--?  Lisa?  Where are you…going…”  her voice trailed off, and she stopped walking.  
My attention was on the back door.  The delivery door with the filmy, greasy window at the top.  I stopped, with my hand on the knob, and blinked.  There were flashing lights. Red. Blue.  My heart sank so fast I felt it fall—the bikers were surrounded.  


This part of the assignment was to write a one page story, starting with the ending, or a pronouncement of what the outcome would be.
Part II
Her skin was not only as white as porcelain, but now as cold.  She was curled around a big pillow, like a sleeping child.  She had found peace at last, and the only clue to its price was the shining black-red pool.
     Her childhood had been lonely and terrifying, filled with men who wanted things from her that should never be taken.  She never learned the right way for those things to go, but she did grow more and more beautiful as she drew closer to womanhood.  Before puberty was finished, or had passed completely from her system, she was pregnant—date rape, she said.  Her drinking and abuse of prescription drugs went unchecked, and somehow she had another baby, with a nice boy, but he left too.  She was diagnosed as bi-polar, and had a problem with cutting—addictions came as easily to her as the wrong men.  
Her beauty seemed to sharpen with each piece of her heart that was broken, and the art that she made, the songs that she sang, each echoed with the contrasting outer beauty and inner chaos.  She made all the wrong choices, by not making any.  She stumbled through her life, always looking for the next high, expecting that one of them—someday—would be the one she could stand on and use as leverage to get out of this life.  She didn’t stop forgiving the men who tore apart her spirit; she didn’t stop wishing that the next high would be the one with the power to liquefy the shreds of her self and bring them back to wholeness; she didn’t stop loving everyone with all the pieces of herself she still had.  With her tiny frame, and the opalescence of her skin, eyes, and hair, she could have been a fairy princess.   If she was, then maybe all this was to blame on  a wicked witch who had cursed her: jealous of her talents, her heart, and her beauty.  Sometimes even she believed this was the case.  It made her smile to see it like that.  
One day, her knight in shining armor came.  He was big and kind—he could protect her, and would.  She was safe, and had hope.  But he was not strong enough to keep two whole hearts beating; he needed her to stand alone, and be his partner, not his ward.  He left her—softly, gently—but she crumbled.  Spiraling downward so quickly it made her dizzy—or was that the alcohol?  Her world was jagged again; sharp like knives, dark like suffocation, empty like the night sky.  She tried to show him that she still needed him, but he was already gone.  She tried too hard.  She needed him more than even she knew—and it was too late.