Final Torture (StoryADay 2014)

The Final Torture

Another cold blast of air hits Alex like a steel beam forcing from her what little heat she has stored since the last blow only seconds earlier. She takes a deep breath as she moves her leaden-like legs once more up the mountain, her feet ankle deep in snow. She knows snow is supposed to be light, fluffy, full of fun, but this stuff is hard and heavy and scraps her ankles, leaving ice scratches with every excruciation step.

The searing sting of the wind and snow pierces her and she reaches to pull her down-filled coat closer to her body, maybe button the top button, pull up the collar. But wait! Her coat is not there. She feels so exposed, naked! Her stomach begins to bubble like lava and her mind is as frozen as the snow that is impeding her journey. She looks around frantically to either side and behind her. Has the wind blown her only source of heat off her? Has her coat dropped from her shoulders without her noticing? How can this be?

She must sit and think. What to do now? The warnings about freezing to death flash in her mind like the red light on a police car. She’s a Minnesotan. She knows the danger of stopping and hypothermia—-frozen digits, even death. But all the lessons she’d had in health classes can’t outweigh her need to sit.

As she does, the snow beneath her feels more like chilly linoleum, like the high-school floor too long in air conditioning. Her hip begins to ache with the cold. Her head has hit something smooth and hard, uncomfortable. Alex feels her head throbbing. Her blood vessels near her temple and left cheek are beating like a heavy-metal song. She hates heavy metal. It always gives her a headache. And she’s numb like someone has given her a shot of novocaine.

Wait! What is this? She’s not on a snowy mountain! It’s not even a snowy day! Alex shivers with the knowledge. It’s late May. The chill she feels is the air conditioning piped up to intolerable levels.
She forces her eyes open and until they adjust from her sleeping she sees only a blurry white.

She focuses harder. Ah, yes familiar concrete blocks painted that grayish white. Of course, she’s in the counselor’s conference room—-that claustrophobic den of the derided and devious students. Must have fallen asleep. But why is she here? What has she done this time? The bubble of dread gurgles in her stomach as reality riddles her body. Why had she decided to miss the calculus final? Why had she pretended to be sick so she could have one more day to study? Why had she squandered most of the day watching reruns of American Idol? Now she’s secluded in this raunchy room to take the test. She feels the cry in her chest vault to her throat, but she keeps it locked there. She won’t let it out.

Slowly, Alex rouses herself and grabs onto the cheap, plastic gray chair sitting askew at the graffitied brown table in the center of the room. She must have dozed off and fallen from the chair. Who is the idiot who decided to put those chairs with the slick runners in the rooms with linoleum? Kids are always falling off those things, especially if they tip back a bit. Why hasn’t somebody sued? Maybe she has a head injury or brain damage now. Maybe she can be the one to sue! Nah, that’d never be her luck.

As she lifts herself a bit more, Alex notices the door at the end of the small room. Her chance at freedom. Her only means of escape. The desire to run to it and fling it open, to smell the air of freedom rushes over her like the cold winter wind she felt in her dream. But she knows before she can feel that freedom, she must finish the taunting task at hand—-the calculus final!

Trembling once again, Alex sits in the gray chair, her thighs feeling the chill of the over-air-conditioned plastic and slides the dreaded pieces of paper waiting for her on the table into her view. Her chest contracts as she tries to breathe. She shuts her eyes and forces herself to calm down by counting backward from ten, a method Mrs. Jenson, the school counselor. has taught all the students to do before they take standardized tests. After she calms a bit, she breathes deeply and opens her eyes. She picks up her pencil and writes “Alex Winters, Block 3” in the top right-hand corner and begins. The only way to escape this hell is to endure one “final torture.”

About Everything

The old, mauve, overstuffed wing back was the perfect place for cuddling. Jenny and James had first bought it for reading, and it had been perfect for that, too, but they didn’t know when they picked it out forty years ago that it would also be the ultimate chair for cuddling grandchildren. But it was. For some reason an adult and child nestled comfortably together, cocooned there. Jenny had used it with all her grandchildren. She loved the way she could nestle her cheek in their hair and breathe in their youth. She loved when the child in her lap would bend his or her head up to her and smile. Each one had his or her own personality and to Jenny that most clearly shown through when they smiled. Each child’s smile was a bit different: cocked, a grin, crooked, wide or tiny and with each child’s smile she could also see the teeth, again filled with personality—some straight and long like James, some with a gap like her brother Tom, some crooked, some whiter than others. The smile also shown in each child’s beautiful eyes—again with their own personalities. Somehow love sat in her heart a little deeper in that chair.

Today she held her youngest grandchild, Maggie who had been one of those “surprise” babies, and she was a little one full of surprises. Jenny loved it when Paige dropped her off when she needed to run errands. She called them “Surprise Visits.”

As she and Maggie cuddled together, Maggie took the two fingers of her right hand that she had liked to suck for comfort ever since Jenny could remember, tipped her round, fair, pink-cheeked face up at Jenny, a huge smile showing her crooked front teeth that stuck out a bit because of her constantly sucking her fingers, her blue eyes rimmed with navy blue, sparkling with an ever-present merriment and said, “Candy?” Well, really she’d said, “canny” but Jenny had heard it enough times to know what Maggie meant. It was usually the first word out of her mouth, anyway.

“So you think you want some candy do you?”

“Yes,” Maggie said shaking her head for emphasis still gazing into Jenny’s eyes. Jenny loved the way Maggie always said, “Yes,” not uh-hu or yeah, but the real word.

“I don’t know, where would Grandma find any candy for you?”

“Right ‘dhere’ “ Maggie said with a giggle as she pointed to the wooden box that said “Lollipops for Good Little Girls and Boys” that Jenny kept well supplied with Dum Dums on a table by the wing back.

“Oh, this candy? I thought this candy was for boys,” Jenny said trying to look surprised. “Are you a boy?

“No,” Maggie said through another giggle, “I a girl!”

“Isn’t your name Ethan?”

“No,” Maggie said, her eyes widening as she pointed to herself, “I Maggie!”

“Oh, well . . . let me just read this wrapper here and see what it says. I thought they were just for boys,” Jenny said while pulling a strawberry-flavored Dum Dum from the box.

She inspected the candy closely. “Hmmm, it looks like you’re right, Maggie. This sucker says it’s for girls and boys! Would you like it?”

Maggie’s eyes glistened a bit merrier, if that were possible, “Yes, PEAS!”

“All right, let me unwrap it for you.”

“Sank you!” Maggie said, her little feet bouncing up and down, toes curled in anticipation, before popping it into her mouth perfectly like a screw finding its groove.

Maggie and Jenny sat for a few quiet moments while Maggie twirled the sucker in her mouth and bounced her feet up and down some more. Jenny cuddled her granddaughter in a little closer.

Suddenly, Maggie pulled the sucker out of her mouth, flinging it dangerously close to the shoulder of Jenny’s white blouse, “Where Mommy go?” she asked looking up and smiling again.

“Mommy went to the store.”

“Why?” Maggie asked swinging her Dum Dum back and forth like a high-school band director.

“Ethan needed some new shoes,” Jenny said smiling down into Maggie’s cherubic face, with a mouth now rimmed in sticky pink.

“Maggie, too?” It was always “Maggie, too” with the youngest, no matter the topic of conversation.

“No, not Maggie, too.”

“Why?” With Maggie, if her question wasn’t “me too,” it was “why.” She had just turned two recently.

“Your mommy and daddy just bought you new shoes last month. You remember. What color were they? Jenny asked.

“Pourple!” Maggie said, said swaying the Dum Dum back and forth again.

This child might actually have some band directing potential, “Really? They weren’t brown?”

“No!” Maggie said her little round face a little redder, “p-o-u-r-ple!”

“That’s right, Maggie. They were purple,” Jenny reassured Maggie, kissing the top of her head, feeling soft blonde hair just now growing long enough to cover her head in waves.

Jenny and Maggie continued to sit in the mauve wing back, lost in conversation until Paige opened the door and Maggie, mouth in the shape of an excited “O,” looked up at Jenny, and said, “Mama!” before jumping off Jenny’s lap and running to Paige in the hallway.

Jenny took a few seconds to enjoy the warmth that lingered where Maggie had been. Where there always would be a place for Maggie. She smiled with a deep joy. She knew those talks she had with Maggie were trivial. Many people would say they were about nothing. Jenny knew they were about everything.

Suspicious (1200-word short story) 5/1/2014

* I thought I’d try my hand at a short story. I found a site,StoryaDay.org, that gave writing prompts for May and decided to give it a try. I’m not necessarily taking their challenge to write a short story and post it every day. I never know if I’m supposed to count the title in word count on these challenges. I didn’t, so it’s 1201. Does anyone know the rule of that?

Suspicious

I hated those muggy, summer-night shifts at the gas station, Every smell hung heavier in the air, especially the gas and diesel. I couldn’t get around that. Sometimes it seeped into my pores, I swear, and my arms and legs puffed up like the Michelin logo that creaked outside on rusty loose screws. I could’ve fixed it, of course. Any of us could. I mean, the screwdriver was right there in the front drawer with jumbles of other junk. But it got so as the night wore on that I didn’t notice it. So what the heck. By the end of my shift, I was guaranteed a headache from the creaking sign and the fumes of gas and diesel. Sometimes some lady would come in reeking like heavy perfume she probably took a sample of from a makeup counter at the mall she’d just left. More “headache matter.” So most days it was me and my migraine as I counted out the cash at the end of the night.

I was also the only female on the entire staff, so I had to get used to being razzed a lot by the guys and customers. Stuff like, “Hey, kiddo, can I talk to your dad?” or “Whatcha doin’ after work?” One time some guy, a regular, walked in with a big, cheap-looking, blue bear, slammed it on the desk like it was the severed head of an enemy he’d just beaten and told me he won it for me at the fair. I knew I was supposed to be all complimented and squeal in delight, but—not the right environment—or guy. I told him I was allergic to stuffed animals. He stared at me for a few seconds, tilting his head from right to left like maybe he heard wrong—then gave a grunt, grabbed the bear from the counter, turned and stomped out of the station. Ringing those annoying made-in-India bells above the door that tinkled any time someone went in or out.

One night, about ten minutes before closing, some old blue Chevy, rusted all over the passenger-side fenders, drove in. I was catching up on the last few paragraphs of an article in Enquirer magazine when the ding, ding of that hose everybody drove over let me know they were there. I peered out the big, front window at them. There were more Miller moths on the window than I could count. I was glad Bert wasn’t still on duty or he’d have made me wash those suckers off. But he’d left early, had to pick up his kid at the dance. Normally, the “boys” wouldn’t let me at the station alone. I first noticed this guy turned toward his passenger, waving a fist filled with money at her. She kept shaking her head, “No” to what he was saying really fast like her head was on the “spin-dry” cycle. I couldn’t see her face, but I could his and it was lit up with anger. All scrunched and red, teeth clenching a cigarette that bobbed up and down as he spoke out of one side of his mouth. I kept thinking she should find another ride, get out of that car, but she stayed put like she was velcroed to the seat, frantically moving that head.

Finally, he got out, hitched up his jeans and stretched, money still clenched in his left hand, before he plodded over to the pump. His white t-shirt was torn on the bottom left side and he was whistling something—Country Western, I think. I was more interested in the girl, anyway. Something about her with him just didn’t seem right. She was rocking back and forth, biting her lower lip, her brown bangs so long they almost covered her whole eye. Periodically, I could tell she peeked over at him through those bangs. Once she looked at her watch. Once she bent toward the CD player like she was going to change the song, but then jolted a bit and let it be. Once she looked at me. Or I thought she did, anyway. Hard to tell with those bangs. I smiled at her and gave her that half wave you give to a person when you don’t really know if you should wave or not but you don’t want to be rude. I just wanted her to know I’d seen her. I felt like she needed someone. She gave a shrug and turned her head facing straight now. Except to put one bare foot, the right one, on the dashboard, I don’t think I saw her move again.
If Bert were there, I maybe would have gone outside for some cockamamy reason, maybe wash those Millers off the window or check the women’s room, just to have a better look and make myself feel more at ease, but he had told me not to leave the building—not to make myself a sucker. So I stayed put. He was my boss. But that feeling of her needing someone’s help stayed put, too, and I started to get a little nauseous. Aw, she’ll be all right, I thought, just a little lover’s spat or something. . . maybe he’s her big brother. Could be lots of things. But I’d read articles about girls getting themselves into all kinds a precarious predicaments and the idea kept tugging at me that she was one. Maybe she didn’t know how to get out of it. Maybe he was a molester who picked up hitchhikers and left their carved-up, battered bodies in a pile by the granite quarry. Maybe he ran a slave ring. Maybe . . .

The chime from those stupid Indian bells jerked me to attention before I had time to finish my last thought. I smelled his sweat long before seeing he was picking up a packet of peanuts from the shelf and a can of Budweiser and some RC Cola from the cooler. He plopped them onto the counter. His hands were dirty with black grime, really pressed in. Made me shiver a bit. He had a scar between two knuckles and maybe a bite mark on his forefinger. No wedding ring. Who’d marry him anyway? He put down a ten and said, like he’d been driving over treads, “Just these. Paid at the pump.” I couldn’t help but think of that girl in the car. How long was she going to have to smell and listen to that man? He dropped the change into his pocket and stuffed the bills there, too, before he swiped up his “goodies.” As the bells were tinkling in the door, he turned, leered at me, gave a wink, and started whistling again.

I had told myself I was calling the police the minute he left, but suddenly his face wasn’t clear. In my anxiety, I forgot to get the license number and, curiously, the more the car faded from view, the more my headache reconquered my thinking. “What a day. I can’t wait to get home and lie down,” I sighed as I counted the last quarter from the till and turned to lock up for the night.