The exercise:
Write something which takes place at: the bus station.
Our helper, Genevieve, arrived this afternoon after a long bus voyage from Calgary. She was in a surprisingly upbeat mood after a trip like that and we're all very much looking forward to getting her acquainted with our strawberry plants tomorrow morning.
Also: it took a while to break the ice, but I'm pretty sure Max is in love.
Also, also: new internet connection tomorrow!
Mine:
A twenty minute stopover in the middle of nowhere at two o'clock in the morning. Really. Who's bright idea was this, pray tell? It better not be anyone travelling with me tonight, that's all I shall say on the matter.
No, actually, it isn't. Did the person responsible for this ridiculous schedule simply make a typo? In that case, he or she could be forgiven.
Of course I would then want that person's direct supervisor alone in a dark alley to discuss my feelings on the subject, and to possibly offer a few pointers on how to double check your subordinate's work.
Seriously, twenty minutes. For what? To make this miserable journey just a little bit more soul destroying?
Maybe the driver has a special lady friend he likes to visit. I couldn't blame him for that. I mean, look at the fat bastard! It's not like he's got too many options on the romantic front.
What's this now? Masked men boarding the bus, yelling and waving guns and knives over their heads? Well, at least now I know who gets to suffer the brunt of my anger.
3 comments:
She left them alone that early Monday morning. Dad was sleeping. Mom had not come home yet. She had to leave before she did. If she looked into Mom’s weary eyes, she may turn around and go back to bed. Which is exactly what she had done for the past three years. She stayed. Because they needed her. Or they would kill each other. Dad struck Mom once. Only once. Mom struck him four or five times. But that was back when she was drinking. Before she found Christ. Or Jimmy Swaggart or Tony Robbins. Religion was fluid in there house. Few things really mattered. Work. Manners. Don’t make a mess of things. Don’t be noticed. Just be loving and what not. Praise Jesus. The bus station smelled of piss. Worse than Uncle Everett. She had taken the bus once. To Jerome. A few hundred miles away. Mom had a cousin there. There were only two bedrooms. She slept in one. Mom shared a room with her relative. She had her ticket in her hand. She waited for the 6:54. She just wished she knew where she was going.
Max seems to fall in love easily! You're going to have trouble with him when he's a teenager at this rate... :-D Still, it's good to hear that your first intern has arrived safely and is raring to get to grips with the mulching spade.
Your bus station is an exciting place! I do hope that Genevieve wasn't confronted by anything like this on arrival – or if she was, that she managed to fight them off casually with a spare mulching shovel she just happened to bring along with her. Still, your narrator amused me no end when I read this, so well done!
The bus station
The guard noticed the woman standing near the stop for the number 93, shivering with cold and clearly inappropriately dressed. He wondered if he should go over at all at first – you got some odd types here, and just the other day there'd been that attack by the masked men. He smiled as he remembered them being fought off quite unexpectedly by an elderly man with an astonishingly heavy walking stick and an attitude like that of Henri opening his birthday present to find a live cobra. His smile disappeared at that point, as smiles always did when people thought of Henri. Just in case he was near.
"Excuse me ma'am," he said, approaching the woman, his eyes carefully fixed on her lips so that he would appear to be neither staring nor ogling. "You're not really wearing enough for this weather."
"B..b..but I was told to come here," said the woman, her teeth chattering with the cold. Protruding bits of her were turning blue in the corner of the guard's vision.
"Like this?"
"Well, yes." Her tone conveyed that she thought he must be slow at the very least.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, playing to her suspicions. "I don't think well in the cold. Who told you to come here?"
"Why, the shoplady in Dysmorphia."
The guard thought about this for a moment, wondering why a high-end lingerie boutique (catering to those women delusional enough to think they could wear super-model underwear) would have sent a woman here so... deshabillé. Then he almost heard the words in his head, and he smiled faintly.
"I'm sorry ma'am," he said carefully. "But I rather think the shoplady asked you to go to the bust-station for a bra-fitting."
David - I think that final line perfectly sums things up. Some great details in there as well; I particularly liked the passing reference to Uncle Everett.
Greg - oh, I imagine he'll very much be a problem as a teenager, one way or another :P
Enjoyed your little reference to Henri, and that punchline was both unexpected and cleverly funny :D
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