Pirate Dog PDX

Fiction Friday!

This Week’s Challenge: End with "I never want to see you again." Maybe Annie did too many drugs when she was in college. Maybe Daniel's good looks and laser-focus charm had rendered her powerless to store any bad memories about what finally made her leave him. More likely, Annie thought, feeling like crap for the last two years since their breakup kept her from recalling memories of the crap they'd been through together. Crap overload amnesia. It happens. Ask your doctor. It's hard to exactly say why Annie couldn't think clearly about her choice to walk away from Dan. All she could think, and think often, was, "Wow. How out of my league was that guy?" Her brain, not really looking after her best interest, would respond, "Totally out of your league. Totally." Annie cursed her Valley Girl-esque internal dialog. "Self loathing and vapid. Super duper." Now, she was ready to remember, and let go. Said her wise friend on the subject: "If you've got your feet planted in your past, you're pissing you on your present." Since before Annie actually met Daniel, she marveled with her friends at the way so many women were drawn to him. He would hold his long arms out like an umbrella--sheltering women, young and old, from the attentions of any other man that might like to meet them. Annie smiled at the multiple women snuggled under his worship-worthy arms. Dan was like a hot Jesus to these shikses, as if salvation could be achieved through his holy sexiness. When they were together, Annie hadn't shared his attention with anyone. She remembered how special she'd felt about that. During her loneliest moments in the last two years, remembering Daniel's promises that they would be together forever, Annie whispered to the dark, "What was I thinking?" Yesterday at lunch, she remembered, people had treated Annie differently when Daniel was around. Men warned her that he was "a player." Women skulked around her like spies, plotting for the moment when they could pull his focus from her. One woman even sent Annie snotty "anonymous" emails. How stupid was this woman? Anyway, Annie's skin thickened to each woman's jab and she ended friendships with men who couldn't "just be happy" for her. It was unnerving. Other people aside, they were happy and shared a gift for dreaming big, dreaming of their future. Daniel loved his family. Annie loved them, too.  A big family just made their dreams richer. But, familial bliss was always, always broken by angry phone calls from the ex-wife who controlled the kids and his moods. Her psychotic rants and threats, or frantic, panicked calls from Daniel's children that their mom had been "drinking again, please come get us" ended all immediate and long-term plans, plunging Dan and Annie into drama that Annie was just too sensitive to maintain. Their dreams were big, but that woman's rage was bigger. Annie had started smoking to help her stress. She remembered the first time she lit up, after Dan's ex had marched into their house at 11:30 at night, without knocking, screaming about lawsuits she would file (and subsequently did). Last Tuesday, Annie was cleaning out her storage unit. She found a clay menorah that Dan's youngest had made four Hanukkahs ago. Annie had wanted to see her again, too, worrying about the little girl's future with that crazy woman. She made herself think about something else. Standing by the gate of the storage unit, she lit a cigarette, and calculated how rich the storage facility people were getting, doing nothing. What a great business model, she thought, hoping to get rid of all this crap before the rent was due again. She tossed the menorah into the box marked Goodwill. Like she even knew Goodwill-shopping Jews! Her little menorah would likely end up on the bathroom counter of some goyish hippie chick, stuffed with rainbow candles and incense. "Let it go." Keeping the treasure only memorialized history that Annie was ready to leave behind. She was here to purge. Two weeks ago, following her friend's "pissing on the present" advice, she made a new year's resolution to move on with her life--and to quit smoking, for the record, but first things first. She was even going to join e-Harmony, encouraged by the schmaltzy, but genuine-seeming couples in the commercials. While she was cleaning out her storage, she composed her profile in her head, weighing whether or not to call herself a smoker. After all, she wouldn't be, by the time she met anyone. Annie found a photo to post on the dating websites that made her look thin and pretty and, for a change, not preoccupied. In it, she was standing with Daniel at her cousin's wedding. He was as handsome as ever, but for some reason, she noticed for the first time in two years, the strain and resignation in his face. Annie had forgotten that he almost always looked like that--if you knew him well enough to look past his wide, gregarious smile. Seeing the sad, victimized man standing with her, she felt pity ... and relief not to have to re-live all the drama that had transpired between her cousin's wedding and the night she'd left. He chose to be a martyr. Annie had chosen to control her own life. She couldn't take watching her dreams die. As she cropped Daniel out of her photograph,  Annie remembered what she'd said as she walked out the door on that last night two years ago. She'd screamed, "I never want to see you again," horrified, at the time, by her angry lie. Sitting in front of her computer, her brain, trying to be helpful (for a change), said, "Thank you god for putting that behind me." She was so sorry to have hurt him, but grateful to be free to dream again. Annie focused on the jpg image of her cropped face, hit "Save," and the part of the photo that contained Daniel's image disappeared. "I never want to see you again," she said. And, this time, she meant it.
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Adolphus Can Dance (first fiction)

At Scarlet Star's writing class, we were given two five-minute exercises during which we had to write a short story. Fiction is a new venture for me. In the first five minutes, I got this card and had to come up with a story that went with it. Here goes:

Adolphus Can Dance

Agatha had inherited the mansion less than a month before. Her aunt never seemed to like her much, so she was surprised that her two cousins had been bequeathed boatloads of money, but not the home that had become the family’s country estate.

Years ago, Agatha had accepted her role as the family's black sheep, preferring the company of animals to the dullards at her wealthy family’s endless society gatherings. For the past few years, in fact, she was rarely even invited to soirees at the enormous, ancient castle that was now her own. Why give a party house like this to an awkward girl who preferred her animal friends to her blue-blooded bretheren?

Several nights into her stay at her new/old castle, wandering a maze of velvet-clad halls and newly discovered rooms, she understood her aunt’s wisdom. Agatha’s walls whispered stories of her ancestors and their adventures, before a house of this size meant that they were well-to-do. "It’s just how big homes used to be, when land was for farming and farming required large families and large families needed a house the size of an airport," Agatha thought. "Exactly," the walls sighed, happy for the peace and quiet. Agatha's aunt had done well by the house.

Across the ballroom, hunting trophy heads followed her with an animation that Agatha wouldn’t have imagined after such untimely, miserable deaths. Even her dog, normally a sad beast with heavy lips and the weight of the world born through his eyes, seemed at ease, surprising Agatha with his willingness to indulge her lonely evenings of dance and play.

(Ding. Five minutes over.  We were given different cards and told to shift the story according to  their instructions, still writing about the first card. Here's what the card said, and how I finished.)
“What do you think of our new fate, Adolphus?” Agatha asked, mostly to herself.

“Okay. Don’t think this is weird,” Adolphus began, his heavy Labrador lips fluttering spit as he grew newly accustomed to human speech, “but, until we moved here, I thought clothing, and your outfits in particular, were stupid. Now, though, I feel a little naked.” He wiped shoelace-length drool from his chin, and for the first time, got the human joke that he always looked like he’d swallowed sneakers. Why were human jokes so often at the expense of others?

Agatha stopped short, dropping Adolphus’s front paws to the floor, and considered her companion’s new skills and, it appeared, modesty.

“Well, you’ll need pants.” Agatha said.

“Yes. Also. I’d like my own room. It’s bad enough that I have to deal with my own nakedness, I certainly cannot deal with yours." Adolphus dipped Agatha, then spun her to the end of his furry, black front leg, with the panache of a dog who'd been dancing for years.

"Of course." Agatha said. When had her dog become so much like the rest of her family?

Ding. That's five minutes. Please, put down your pencils.

Hey! Fiction Friday is a thing. Finally, a resolution for the new year. From now on, until the moment it doesn't work for me, I'll be a Fiction Friday girl--except on the days they demand poetry. Bite me, flowerchildren.