Unearthing Old Writing Part Deuce

Two stories written for a Creative Writing Course in Spring of '09:


Story #1:

The umbrella. "Tit and tat and bone for bone," were the words that resonated through the musky dimlit room; the smoke from the last camel had yet to subside. The folk twinged slaphappy number gave the girl in bed the relaxation she needed: muscles unclenched, sighs of relief. The music of this singer, the Pete Segar of our generation, was the only thing that made sense to the disheveled head on the pillow.


Another dull Saturday afternoon on an abandoned campus. As if living in a room resemblant to a hospital with white brick walls wasn't enough, staying past Thursday at a suitcase state college was downright introverted and dismal with a lack of bodies bumbling around.
Looking out a single window into the courtyard surrounded by towering residential hall monuments dedicated to deceased scholars, Elizabeth punched the digits of her boyfriend's number rapidly and without haste, pushed the phone up to her cheek, chanting under her breath, "C'mon. C'mon... C'mon!"
"Hey I'm busy what do you need?" Daniel said without a pause, before Elizabeth uttered a solitary word. She opted to protest, since she knew he was only in his room, on his computer.
"Why are you working on a Saturday? Can't you come hang out for a while?"
Then there was a pause.
"Daniel?"
Still no sound.
"Daniel, can you answer me?"
"I just can't today," he finally managed to shoot out. "I'm sorry. I got to go."
Without as much of a bye, Elizabeth snapped the hand-me-down, piece of shit cellphone shut and let out a sharp exhale.
A dining hall meal for one and a five page paper written later, Elizabeth ran up four flights of stairs so steep they seemed almost perpendicular to the ground, and into her getaway car. As her friends blasted some new wave underground indie rock, Elizabeth racked her brain for ideas.
"Whaddya say we do something creative. Let's DIY some shirts!" she exclaimed.
Piling the plastic bags of fruit of the loom t-shirts and paints onto her friend Jenna's floor, they, along with Jenna's boyfriend Jason, began an afternoon of good natured tomfoolery. The dorm room was littered with arts and crafts; it could have easily been mistaken for a kindergarten classroom.
While Jenna was snapping photos of some of their decorative new threads, Elizabeth felt inspired by the sudden flashes of the camera and began to rummage through random artifacts in the desk drawers. Finding a typical black umbrella with the velcro strap secured tightly around the nylon fabric, she had the hair-brain scheme of recreating a Disney moment.
Without saying a word to Jenna or Jason, Elizabeth ripped off the strap, clicked the metal button upward, and out flew the the protective armor, resilient to mother nature's sobs. Being the ham she had been her entire life, Elizabeth, with her blonde hair in pigtails and her long pink skirt fluttering about, hopped up onto a chair and held it above her head.
“Look! I'm Mary Poppins!” Elizabeth said with a grin on her face.
Laughing, she began to twirl it around, lifted her right leg upward in a dance position, and began to wail, “Just a spoonful of sugar, helps the medicine, go down...”
Jenna snapped a picture.
A rainy spring had passed, and Elizabeth made the decision that all undergraduates succumb to after years upon years of befuddled mishaps with roommates, awkward sexual interruptions, and run-ins with inebriated jocks: moving into an apartment complex off of campus. Merely a couple miles away from campus, but still, away.
While collecting and gathering all the things that had a purpose in her new residence, Elizabeth phoned her non-existant-yet-at-times-chivalrous boyfriend for some assistance.
The phone rang for three complete intervals. Right after the “Hi” in the voice mail, Elizabeth snapped

the phone shut, opened it, and redialed. She knew he was there.

“Yes?” Daniel's agitated voice rang out.

“Hi... I was just... wondering something?” she sheepishly asked.

“What is it now?” Daniel asked. He was a man of few words.

“Could you possibly help me move some of my belongings into my apartment?” Elizabeth questioned

again. Thinking to herself, she wished she had a car so that she didn't need to ask someone who didn't

want to be bothered into helping or spending time with her, ever.

Pause. Like usual. Why do I put up with this?

“I think I'm going gray,” Elizabeth joked; it was meant to be a harmless.

“I'm BUSY Elizabeth. Don't you understand I have work to do? Something you should be doing more

often? We'll see. I might be working till late. Don't depend on it.” Daniel lashed out.

“I'm sorry,” she uttered. “Bye...”

Why am I dating a 22 going on 50 year old?

Elizabeth lost the motivation to pack, and the ability to function. Curling up in bed, she laid there, her

thoughts in constant limbo.

Taking a stroll on campus one day with no certain destination in mind, Elizabeth tried to clear her mind of all annoyances. In the distance ahead, she noticed a bushy facial haired boy walking toward her. Instantly intrigued, she stared at his startling handsome looks. Mystery boy had a certain spring in his step that was mesmerizing.
Probably younger than me, all the cute ones are.
Then she noticed he was looking at her.
As they were mere feet away from passing, Elizabeth lost control of her motor skills. “Hi!” she blurted out.
Oh my god, are you serious. I just did that?
After her incredibly outgoing moment, Elizabeth was instantly shy and awkward. Surprisingly, the boy had stopped to respond.
Together, they conversed and covered just about every inch of asphalt the school had purchased in its 150 years of existence. Paul, a sophomore who admired experimental music and his father from Mexico, was unemployed. This did not matter to Elizabeth; it was actually a pleasant fact. She found herself blabbing, telling him every possible known fact about her: how she was originally from halfway across the country, that she took a year off after graduating high school, her affinity for learning, and love for spontaneous, random moments. His giant brown eyes just stared back in full attentiveness, something she hadn't received from anyone in what seemed like light years.
“Want to come back to my dorm and watch a movie?” Paul asked in a completely harmless voice, a tone that didn't seem too expectant of anything.
“Sure, why not?” Elizabeth agreed, sequestering away all of her thoughts of Daniel.
Returning to a dorm room non-resemblant to Elizabeth's old jail cell or Jenna's rustic quarters, it wasn't any better. But with a commandeering resident like Paul in power, he had spruced it up with band posters, musical instruments laid strewn across the room, and somehow, had remodeled his bed into a fort by slipping his mattress underneath the high rise bed frame, draping a sheet over hard metal springs where the mattress normally resided.
As they crawled under the frame, where people generally shoved boxes and shoes, Paul grabbed the John Cusack favorite, Better Off Dead, popped it in his computer, and set it at the end of the mattress, inside the fort.
While Elizabeth paid attention to most of the movie, she couldn't help looking over at Paul every once in a while; he was too adorable for words. Wanting to touch him but knowing her commitment limitations, Elizabeth got closer, rubbed her foot against his; tried every subtle move in the book.
The movie credits rolled; Cusack got the girl, as always.
Pulling away from Paul's lips, she was confused.
What just happened?
Elizabeth didn't remember anything prior to the breakaway. Who initiated it?
Glancing into the dark and realizing she had lost complete track of time, 3am glimmered from Paul's small desktop dialog clock. Worry, in every form imaginable, filled Elizabeth; she had to leave immediately. Not wanting to appear frazzled, she softly spoke to Paul.
“I need to go back to my apartment.”
Alone, she walked off of campus and onto vacant city streets. Adjusting her headphones and putting her music player on shuffle, into her ears flowed a sad, melancholy tune. As if it just had to happen at that moment, she began to feel intermittent drops of rain fall on random places of her body. For most of the journey back it held off, but in the home stretch, it poured, and so did the tears from Elizabeth's face as she ran the rest of the way home.

Having not slept a wink but still residing under the covers, Elizabeth shot out of bed and called Daniel at eight in the morning. Honesty is the best policy, right?
Her thoughts controlled her every move.
Around two hours later, there was a knock at the door. Five minutes later, Elizabeth finally mustered the courage to open it. There stood the elusive never-to-be-seen-or-heard-from boyfriend.
Daniel knew something was up; even if he wasn't around Elizabeth all the time, he knew how free-spirited she could be. This wore on his mind constantly; a new cockeyed scenario of Elizabeth cavorting around arose every couple hours or so.
Finding it relatively easy to tell what happened for what it was: nothing serious and just a kiss, Elizabeth finished with a collective hope that everything would be okay.
“Are you fucking serious?” Daniel almost shouted. “Are you fucking kidding me? I can't... I can't believe this.” And with that, he arose from his seat with a face full of the deepest disgust, and left her apartment.
Conditions were gloomy for the next few months: (s)he fought with every word she could manage, (s)he'd want to make up, (s)he'd want to never be together again, everything would reverse, rewind, fast forward, pause, flip-flop, intensify, lessen: and this pulverized Elizabeth. Neither of them could shake each other off or let one another go without a fight or a change of heart. Eventually it ended; Elizabeth and Daniel had cut off all contact permanently.
Buckling under the pressure of her new I-don't-know-who-I-am stress laden environment, Elizabeth began her new bad habit of smoking. She had finally got her own car, but a week later, it was stolen from her apartment complex.
Oddly perplexed that night, she wondered why someone would commit such an ethically immoral crime. She smoked a cigarette and fell into bed, listening to that slaphappy number. She felt like the bearer of bad luck. Then, as if a light bulb flashed above her head, she remembered.



Story #2:

Momentarily shocked, Elizabeth jolted upright, touching her hand to her head. Barely able to see due to a blinding, pulsating headache, she squinted around the unkempt quarters. As a warm breeze swept in through the window, a single stalk of a healthy fern brushed against her nose, and glancing upwards, the robust plant hanging from the ceiling above the bed swung back and forth.
“Good morning sunshine,” said a voice on the opposite side of the foreign room. “You feeling okay?”
“I kinda uh...” Elizabeth trailed off for a second as she fumbled for her glasses on a rustic side table. “...feel like shit.”
Adjusting the kitschy frames behind her ears, she looked past the bed, where Benjamin sat at a cluttered desk, cutting material with an exacto knife. Looks like we got ourselves a handyman.
“What are you making?” Elizabeth asked running her fingers through her knotted long blonde tresses, the other hand holding her naked, tattooed body upright in the crumpled heap of white afghan blankets.
“I'm making a leather wallet for a friend,” he said, looking at her warmly. “You drank quite a lot last night.”
Benjamin diligently kept at work, and Elizabeth found herself attempting to recall her alcoholic consumption. Benjamin bought the first round, I bought the next, then I put three more gin and tonics on my credit card...
Reaching over the side of the bed for her tote bag, she shuffled through her belongings for a small zip-up tote, where she had remembered there being two ibuprofens left. The night came flooding back in an intense stream of thoughts and emotions, trying to fight against the current of stabbing pangs.
The sun glimmered in the weekend sky, it was the first pleasantly warm day to happen to the small suburban apartment near a cluster of nearby businesses.
Not feeling up to par to write a ten page paper comparing different newspaper's coverage of the sexual revolution of the 1960's, Elizabeth decided the appropriate thing to so was spend the day looking for job. The twist: without a car.
As a previous relationship turned for the tumultuous, Elizabeth had recently went through leaps and hurdles with men, and in acquiring a cheap, reliable car. I just want it to get from point A to B. Having scoured on-line services on her O key-less, 'slower than molasses in January' laptop, she came across a $2,700 dollar pre-owned Dodge Neon.
After meeting with the private owner, an older mechanic who kept up maintenance on his own cars, Elizabeth learned that it had once been his daughter's when she lived up in Boston during college. Northeastern University sticker and all, it was a gas efficient vehicle in good condition.
“Since it seems to have old tires, could the price be knocked down a bit so I may buy new ones?” Elizabeth asked with a kind note in her voice, looking the man in the eyes attentively.
The father didn't take a moment to mull it over. “Just leave 300 dollars out of the check.”
A few excruciatingly obnoxious DMV and bank visits later, the car sat in the parking lot of her complex, night black with a cartoon creamsicle air freshener slightly swaying back and forth in the windshield.
One afternoon after her morning class dismissed, Elizabeth had remembered a box of clothes from her father's house was waiting to be picked up. Enjoying the forty-five minute commute she had once driven so many times before, Elizabeth set off for highways and back roads setting her musical selection to Tom Petty.
“But she grew up tall and she grew up right
with them Indiana boys on an Indiana night.”

With each step Elizabeth cradled the poorly taped together box to the open trunk of her car, she theorized the bottom would burst onto the driveway in one massive, colorful avalanche. Thrusting down the popped end and hearing it click, Elizabeth departed down the unpaved road and took a right onto Rt-202, which connected two small rural towns of two neighboring New England states.
There was a certain dead feeling in the air as Elizabeth cautiously drove away from the Feeding Hills and back into the adjoining Constitution state, one that lingered in the newly overcast clouds. The pavement was wet with chilly drizzle that set in as the temperature dropped. Elizabeth proceeded with caution down the long stretch of a two-laned road: to the left there were vast fields of already plowed corn, up ahead a minute or two on the right was the town's public high school.
In a bizarre, fleeting moment the front end of a Toyota Prius shot its entire front end out of the exit of the high school parking lot; the driver showed no indication of what direction he was turning; there was 15 yards between the two vehicles.
Knowing she couldn't swerve left on the narrow road into oncoming traffic, Elizabeth realized and accepted her fate: since collision was inevitable, she turned her wheel as sharply to the right as possible and slammed on the brakes. With dread in her voice, Elizabeth stammered a lyric or two of the Cat Steven's song that had just shuffled onto the Ipod, squeezing her eyes shut before impact:
“How I wish I had someone to talk to, I'm in an awful way.”
Severely whiplashing as the cars tore into one another, the Neon and the Prius both did sufficient 180 spins. While the Prius knocked a mailbox down across the street, the impact on the Neon crunched in the front end, shattering the battery.
Elizabeth sat in her car, completely unmovable. I've had a car stolen, and now this? This isn't happening. Shaking profusely, she exited the car.
“Are you alright?” she managed to muster, even though her mind was elsewhere. It couldn't seem to think anything other than Why? It wasn't my fault. Neither of these were my fault. They happened within weeks of each other. This couldn't have happened. I shouldn't have made the trip up here.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the younger looking teenager's loud, booming voice: “GET YOUR FUCKING CAR OUT OF THE ROAD.”
Why is he talking like this to me? It was his fault. “Are you kidding me?” Elizabeth asked in shock and disbelief.
Sitting back in the drivers seat with the door ajar, Elizabeth attempted to start the engine, but the ignition and gear were locked up. She shot out of the car. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” she repeated a little louder with more frustration in her voice.
It was the most arrogant little asshole she had ever come across. Since he wouldn't stop shooting her repulsively evil looks, Elizabeth stood in the middle of the road, shaking. Having heard the collision, an older woman ran outside with her younger daughters. She was the owner of the down-turned mailbox.
“What happened, dear?” the woman asked Elizabeth while looking at the teenager, as she, along with Elizabeth, had noticed the cold hostility being emitted from him. She settled her sights back on the frazzled young 22-year-old, putting an aged, weathered hand on the girl's sweat-shirted shoulder.
“I was on campus in class, and I drove up here during some free-time between classes, and my last car got stolen a couple weeks ago, and now this, and I'm not going to be able to make it to my next class...” Elizabeth rambled off into tears.
“I think they're going to understand,” the woman assured her.
Once the police, ambulance, and tow truck arrived, all were having unsuccessful times dealing with the 17-year-old boy, who was apparently driving mommy and daddy's car. Sitting in the ambulance refusing the medic's questions on whether she wanted to be transported, Elizabeth stared down silently at the steps of the open side entrance of the over-sized van.
“Thank you for being so patient, responsive, and detailed about what happened,” a mustached police officer came into light in the open doorway, forcing Elizabeth to look upward. “The other kid is being rather arrogant and cocky. We've had issues with him before.”
Oh great. One of those high school misfits.
Taking Elizabeth's personal identification and car information, the one-piece suited tow truck mechanic wrote the responses to about 10 questions of an entirely verbal relay. Sensing her patient, yet melancholy composure, he finished with something that made Elizabeth smile.
Cupping his hand by his mouth and leaning in towards her ear, he whispered, “Just between you and me, I heard the kid just started crying.”
As the sun set on that warm Saturday evening, walking back from the center of town, Elizabeth was feeling positive about her prospective job opportunity. Feeling particularly upbeat, she walked to the package store and bought a six-pack of micro-brews. Fitting upright in her over-sized tote bag, she slung her alcohol laden bag onto shoulder and returned to her apartment.
The living room and kitchen were spotless after Elizabeth painstakingly cleaned up after her two roommates, who would be in and out like tazmanian devils; leaving atrocious forces to be reckoned with. It took the length of three Ryan Adam's albums to finish.
Sipping on a beer, Elizabeth received a message from a rugged looking fellow she had met a couple nights previously at a bar in Hartford which cordially invited her to see a DJ at an old warehouse that had been newly renovated as a bar. Benjamin, however, was not available to pick her up, albeit wanting to. He only had time to drive to work, then to the party.
Holding her bus pass tightly in her hand at the corner of her complex at night, Elizabeth walked up the steps of the public transportation in a Space Ghost t-shirt and flanel skirt. While she had never gotten the courage to take any other route than the bus to campus and the mall, she was ready to explore beyond what she knew. I'll be okay, I can do this.
With a quickly sketched map of the streets, stops, and times she needed to make the night successful, Elizabeth sat calmly and quietly on the first bus, transferred to another, and put on her headphones. A message popped up in her text messages. “There's going to be a get together after the party at my house, if you'd like to take that route,” Benjamin had written.
Since Elizabeth asked the driver prior to the departure about her certain stop, ten minutes later a voice rang over an intercom: “Farmington and Prospect.” Getting off, she wandered into a nearby gas station looking for answers.
Never being good at telling north from south, Elizabeth asked the sole employee in what direction from the gas station a certain street was. “So I just take a right and head up towards Sisson Avenue?” she reiterated. “Yes, it's a piece of cake,” said the man in a thick accent.
Her phone rang. “Hey Elizabeth, where are you? I'm nearby right now and I want to pick you up,” Benjamin said. “I don't want you walking there alone.” Well, I would have been fine. What a nice guy.
“I'm near Evergreen Ave, and there is a CVS nearby,” Elizabeth said, guiding Benjamin to her whereabouts.
“Stand in front of the CVS, I know where it is,” he said. “See you in a minute.”
Just as she leaned to sit down on a concrete stoop in front of the pharmacy, Benjamin's Audi shot into the front lot. Smiling, Elizabeth hopped into the car, regaling Benjamin about her bus travels, even adding in a little anecdote about making a toddler on the bus smile. While he didn't say much, he smiled back, and she knew he was listening. They arrived at the bar, ordered drinks, and danced to the mixed beats, colliding with many of the mutual friends they had been with when Elizabeth and Benjamin were first acquainted.
Awaking on the bed again, she rolled over to see Benjamin still working on the wallet, an airplane made out of beer cans dangling above his desk. He noticed her stir. “Feeling any better?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Elizabeth yawned. Benjamin laid the materials down and arose from the chair, crawling onto the bed to join her. Giving her a kiss, the two laid in each others arms until it was time to go home. While Benjamin attempted to find the keys to his car, she laid on the hammock tied between two trees in the small, garden-like backyard.
Spacing out to the budding trees and bushes, Elizabeth realized that she didn't remember the tail-end of the night.
“Found 'em,” he said, and they sped off onto the highway blasting music through the rolled down windows, letting in the early spring heatwave. Elizabeth got lost in the hues of the blue sky and the pristine, white clouds.
Things are only going to get better from here.