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WEST-
Scraps
University of Washington
Pike place. August 18. 1:33 p.m.
The two women moved through the stalls, against the predominant flow of human traffic. Shayna wore several layers of blowsy cloth, leggings, fat glasses perched enigmatically on her nose. Her friend, Ellie, looked like a tube of frosting, unsqueezed: a column with red hair on the top. Shayna would grab Ellie’s arm and the two would stand to the side, sucking in their stomachs and letting the other tourists elbow through. They’d roll their eyes, for they knew that they didn’t truly belong with this throng. They had their youth. They had their haircuts. They had almost no spending money.
They stopped so Ellie could touch things. She described herself as a tactile person. She touched earrings, jade rings, sequined stuffed lizards, blown glass, apple skins, jam jars. She took pictures of cherries, heaped onto trays, hands proffering watermelon wedges, wind chimes knocking gently together. They ran the gauntlet alright, Shayna picking her way assuredly through the tangle, Ellie trailing...
Cherry Street. August 18. 5:03 p.m.
He had dogged them all through the market, down to the waterfront, up on First Avenue, over the old streets, past the totem pole and the homeless men, silently holding signs.
“What does he still want?” Shayna growled.
Ellie didn’t answer: a tactile person, she was also fairly useless in situations of peril. Her lip trembled.
“I thought I could haggle,” she whimpered.
“Well you can’t!”
Shayna stopped, held out her arm, and forced Ellie to stop as well. They turned around to face their pursuer.
He blinked back at them, almost mirthfully. With a sense of fear, the girls knew he would be difficult to describe. He had a melty way about him, an indiscriminate presence that was neither completely threatening nor completely benign; a face that was smooth, but not young; skin tanned to a bright gloss. He opened his hands in a surrendering gesture, as if they were frightening him. The two girls in their bug glasses.
“Okay, so send him on his way with forty dollars and we’ll call it a deal.” Shayna held out the purse to Ellie. “Just pay him,” she ordered. “Just pay him whatever the fuck he wants. Except all I have is forty dollars.” Ellie jerked the purse out in front of her, dangling it before him...
From the Far Reaches
The Ohio State University
Eight o’clock that morning—a good hour before aliens from the Andromeda galaxy abducted
me—I stopped at the Koala Bear Express to grab a cup of coffee. At the register,
I asked Irma, the skinny, blue-
She shook her head and worked her lips the way old people do—like she’d just woken up after a night of boozing and had a fierce case of cotton mouth. “No news, Steve. But I will tell you this: I called the cops two o’clock this morning.”
“Damn, Irma,” I said, handing her a couple of bucks for my joe. “You’re telling me that you calling the cops at two in the a.m. doesn’t count as news?” I whistled. “That’s bull.”
She shrugged as she smoothed out my bills. “You know—if it involves a lonely old woman, who cares, right?”
At this point, she expected me to tell her that elderly women were just as interesting as anybody else, and that their stories deserved to be told. Instead, I made like I was playing a tiny violin.
“Forget it,” Irma said, waving a liver-
...“Closing the house up this early?”
“It’s almost Halloween, brother man. The snow starts flying in a few weeks, and if I don’t do the roof, it’s not gonna hold through the end of year. I should’ve been out here weeks ago.”
“Well, look,” Jamie said, sounding irritated, “I need you at ten instead of noon. So don’t get too comfortable up there, all right? The last thing I need is you snoozing on a roof when there’s meat needs cutting.”
“Ten? What—”
“Hold up a second,” Jamie said, and I heard a rustling sound, like he was covering the phone with one of his fat, callused hands. “What can I do for you, ma’am?” I heard him say in a muffled voice. A woman said something I couldn’t make out, and Jamie told her that yeah, he could fill the order. The woman spoke again and Jamie said, “Okay, so send him on his way with forty dollars and we’ll call it a deal.” I heard the rustling sound again and Jamie was back on the line. “Sorry about that.”
“You just move a little merchandise?” I asked, grinning at myself in the rearview.
“Yeah,” Jamie said. “That was Mrs. Perrault. Her nephew’s in town and he’s looking for a good time. Didn’t realize how little there is to do here and didn’t bring enough entertainment of his own—same old story. But we don’t talk about this on the phone...”
Prompt Two, West-
"Scraps" by Rue [47.6%]
"From the Far Reaches" by Leonidas [52.4%]