It was a hot, humid day...

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Betty slung hash at the Pecos City diner. She was a real hard case who saw too much of life in too little of a town. Her eyeliner was already going south. Droplets of sweat glistened on her generous bosom.

Jake was a nickel and dime hustler who couldn’t make change for a quarter. He was working an angle on some college kid who was passing through town. Maybe he’d get a free cup a joe out of it. Maybe he’d take the kid for everything he had. It didn’t matter. Time is like Jello in Pecos City, and Jake was just a plain old grape, suspended between a bunch of mandarin orange slices, the type you get out of a can.

Jake and Betty were about to collide like a couple of scratched-up pool balls on a pool table that needed to be re-felted, only Jake was the eight ball, and Betty was about to scratch.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This story begins somewhere else, years earlier, when bitterness was still mostly just a taste in their mouths…

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:03 (eighteen years ago)

A young girl skips down a suburban sidewalk, her pigtails bouncing happily along behind her as she rolls a hoop sown the sparsely-wooded avenue. She hums a nonsensical song to herself, each hitch in her step introducing a jagged new interval to the tune. The sun beats down on her summer-bleached hair and picks out the scattering of freckles across her nose. Truly, this is the perfect encapsulation of innocence.

She is so involved, so entranced in her internal ditty that she blithely runs out into the intersection without looking. Normally this would not be an issue; after all, traffic in this sleepy hamlet is next to nonexistent. On this particular day, however, fate will decide to step onto the scene and remind everyone of the cruel vagaries that make up human exists by manifesting itself in the form of a dingy, dented minivan.

The noise of impact is strangly subdued; one would think that the abrupt reconfiguration of ones hopes and dreams would be louder.

― HI DERE, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:12 (eighteen years ago)

Fortunately, the van was a rental.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:23 (eighteen years ago)

Was the insurance in order? A small crowd gathered and waited anxiously while the driver called Hertz.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:31 (eighteen years ago)

Inside a nearby coffee shop, Betty LaBrisco watched the scene while downing the last of her cup of black coffee.

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:55 (eighteen years ago)

Betty was shaking. She had a little van that looked just like...no, she couldn't think about it. What if the frame was bent? What if the radiator was cracked.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:59 (eighteen years ago)

She was late for an appointment, and if her van wasn't functioning, she was going to have to walk. But walking was difficult when you had a broken patella.

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:01 (eighteen years ago)

Fortunately, she had an over-sized scooter.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:12 (eighteen years ago)

The sounds of panicked passers-by rang loudly in Betty's ears as she left the diner. Every cry of "Help! Call 911!" rang out like an indictment of her desire to shut out the scene. She hobbled across the parking lot, glancing at the scene just long enough to see the abandoned hoop resting against a decorative cornet sapling. She shuddered, hunched over her crutches, and hurried along.

― HI DERE, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:20 (eighteen years ago)

It was difficult, steering her over-sized scooter with crutches. Betty drove her scooter like she loved her men: preposterously.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:26 (eighteen years ago)

Men. What had ever possessed her to get involved with a nutcase like Jake? She should have known he was trouble from the first time they met, when he broke her heart and her patella in one evening. Why was she going back to meet him again?

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:33 (eighteen years ago)

As she approached the bus stop, her already-strained patience finally snapped. That's it, she thought, I'm taking the bus from here. I can't navigate this thing with my leg sticking straight out and the crutches are just in the way of everything. She pulled up to the bench and turned off the ignition, focusing on anything to take the image of the child's abandoned hoop off of her mind.

― HI DERE, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:36 (eighteen years ago)

"Shit, I am going to be late," she thought to herself distractedly.

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:55 (eighteen years ago)

The bus pulled up to the curb, tires crushing gravel into the pavement. The doors opened and the platform began to descend, beeping loudly in warning, drawing attention. Betty shrank into her seat. Two men and a woman with a stroller moved to the side and waited for her. She had never done this before.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 18:55 (eighteen years ago)

She'd alwys used her Oyster card, but it had ran out on the Circle line. London will do that to a girl out of water, it has a way of enveloping and drowning you.

― The Wayward Johnny B, Friday, 20 April 2007 19:32 (eighteen years ago)

Betty began to hyperventilate; her agoraphobia was beginning to kick in. She reached in to her bag for her Vicodin, hoping that it would take the edge off of her terror, as well as erase the pain in her knee.

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 19:43 (eighteen years ago)

She popped her pills and drove forward onto the lift. Slowly it rose, beeping. Beeping. Beeping. Her eyes had yet to adjust to the darkness of the bus interior. A shiver ran up her spine. Her hair stood on end. Inexplicably, a sense of foreboding. She reached into her purse and realized that she had left the last of her change on the coffee-shop table.

"Can you make change for two ones?" she asked the bus driver.

"Nope, change at the store!" came a cry from the interior of the bus, "Turn around and backward onto lift! Change at store!"

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 20:33 (eighteen years ago)

She began sweating profusely.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 20:34 (eighteen years ago)

(dude, if you want her to get off the bus you're either going to have to move her back off yourself or let her be the sole survivor of an unanticipated bombing - I'm way out of my depth when it comes to public transport. Although maybe Dan can help...)

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 20:39 (eighteen years ago)

Betty gaped at the wild-eyed man berating her. He was in a motorized wheelchair somewhat smaller than her own oversized scooter, which meant she would be stuck riding next to him all the way uptown. Even worse, if she backed into the bus, this person would be behind her. Already rattled from witnessing the accident, Betty weighed the pros and cons of putting her back to someone with flames and skulls on their wheelchair and decided to roll onto the bus facing forwards.

I hope the driver let's me on, she thought.

― HI DERE, Friday, 20 April 2007 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

Betty rolled onto the bus and put her two dollars into the meter. She began to turn down the isle but got stuck repeatedly. She ran over a rider's foot and jostled her purse. The bottle of Vicodin and her insulin needle fell onto the floor. Pills rolled across the isle of the bus.

The bus driver, ignoring the pharmacological debris, strapped her chair in. She smelled booze. Facing her, sat a man wearing two jackets and five pairs of pants.

She felt a wetness spreading across her lap. Her purse was sopping wet. The cap to the miniature bottle of bourbon that she kept as memorabilia from her honeymoon in Hawaii had fallen off.

The man with five pairs of pants got up and moved away from her, shaking his head and muttering something about standards.

The man in the chair turned to a man in a business suit, who was looking fixedly into a spot on the ceiling near the front of the bus, hands in his lap, knuckles white. He said, "Oh boy! that bitchin’ in the oversized scooter need to learn how to use backward onto lift!"

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 21:26 (eighteen years ago)

Betty burst into tears.

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 21:42 (eighteen years ago)

The reek of bourbon permeated the bus. People slid their windows open. They avoided looking in her direction.

"I'm a goddamned engineer," she shouted, "I made ceramic tiles for NASA, you fuckers."

She slapped her hand over her mouth. The bus remained silent.

Oh, fuck it, she thought, this is actually pretty fucking funny. The Vicadin was kicking in. She felt detached and a little giddy.

She looked at the man in the motorized chair and began shouting at him to get out of her head.

you people are going to have the longest bus-ride of your lives.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 20 April 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

People on the bus began to shift uncomfortably and mothers attempted to distract their children with whatever they had at hand.

― Sara R-C, Friday, 20 April 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.