Monique's Story a Day Blog

Another story resulting from a random prompt generator (two people who dislike each other in the back of a cab). This one suffers, I think, from lack of content in the actual story. I think it would make a decent length short story if I added more depth to it, more ambiguous phrasing, drew it all out with some descriptive passages (the cab, the scenery they’re passing) and ‘bigger picture’ type musings.

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The Ride There

“I don’t know why we had to take a cab together.” Melissa sighs heavily as she speaks and looks at James with loathing.

“Ah, Mel dear, it’s not really so bad, is it?”

The frustration, Mel realizes, is that James truly does not appreciate the depths of her dislike for him. While he doesn’t like her, it is not quite the same thing.

“Anyway,” he continues oblivious. “This gives us the opportunity to plan our strategy before we get there. I think it makes complete sense.”

It does, of course. Sort of. That’s one of the things that Mel really hates about James. He usually, sometimes, occasionally, does have good ideas.

“All right then,” she begins. “What kind of strategy were you thinking of? Because I see this as pretty straightforward myself.”

“I beg to differ.”

Of course he did.

“I think we should take this in a new way. Instead of going in there and doing the same old same old, we pitch them a complete u-turn.”

“What kind of u-turn?”

“Take them somewhere new! Show them a brave new world.”

“Oh James. I don’t think so. I don’t think they want to go anywhere new.”

“They’re stuck in a rut!”

Once off on a course like that, James could go on for quite some time. Mel sat back, resigned to it.

James blathered on, high on enthusiasm but, as always, short on actual details.

The cab crept slowly through the heavy traffic.

Mel looked down at her watch. Too long, just far too long. Especially when this was only the beginning part.

James was saying, “So I think we should tackle them separately.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” she finally replied. “You know that never works, not in the long run. It’s utterly pointless and just gets everyone all aggravated.”

“Not really.”

“Yes. It does. You just act all oblivious to things and pretend that it doesn’t. I’m not going along with it this time.”

“Do you have any better kind of idea, then?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Well…?”

“This time I think we just talk to Mom and Dad like the adults they are and the adults we are, too. No strategy necessary.”

This story came from a random prompt generator that suggested taking two random sentences from a book, with one becoming the first sentence and the other the last. These sentences came from ”The World’s Best Karlson” by Astrid Lindgren which was on the bookshelf behind me at the time!

I am quite happy with how the characters began to emerge in this piece. I expect I will revisit this one later.

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Dinner Time

That was what Mum always said: ‘Mealtimes are supposed to be pleasant.’ I don’t why she said that, because it went against our usual, day-to-day experience. Mealtimes were chaotic and loud. There were five of us kids, so even if we tried not to be individually noisy, the cumulative effect was extreme. And it was not always pleasant-loud, there were arguments and the occasional punch was thrown.

I suppose it goes without saying that I did not learn proper table manners at home. We would grab at the food on the table, not waiting for others to begin. I don’t recall anyone ever asking to be excused when they got up. I learned those things later, in different places.

I remember a typical dinner. It stands out in my memory because of the other circumstances that surrounded it.

We were all there. Mum and Kate and Sue and Laura and Josh and me. And there was Laura’s  boyfriend Fred, too. It was my last day of high school and, being the youngest, a cause for celebration for all of us. For Mum, it was with a sense of great relief, knowing that she had somehow got us all through school.

It started out with the usual chaos. Then Kate said she had something to tell us and we all got sort of quiet because Kate isn’t that kind of person. She never talked much and, to the degree one could be a quiet person in our family, she was one.

Kate said she was moving out, that she was really happy and had found someone.

And then Mum said who is he and why haven’t you brought him over and if you think you’re moving in with some guy I’ve never met, well then you have another thing coming.

Kate was quiet. I could tell there was more to it, something that she hadn’t said yet, something that she was struggling with.

Then she spit out, it’s not a guy, Mum.

And it was my Mum’s turn to be quiet. And Laura turned to Kate and said are you a dyke then?

And Kate turned all red in the face as she does when a lot of attention is being paid to her. And she said, yes, yes I am.

Laura said oh god, just don’t tell me about it and she smirked at Fred who was looking at Kate with that creepy appraising look he gets when he looks at girls who he thinks are hot. He had never looked at Kate like that before as far as I knew, which made it all the more creepy and gross. I don’t understand what Laura sees in him. It’s not like she isn’t pretty, but then again, she isn’t very smart either.

Sue quietly said congratulations and I wasn’t sure whether she was being sarcastic or not, you can never tell with Sue. She doesn’t say much, but it’s usually nasty and then she’ll come up with some completely pleasant thing out of the blue and it takes you by surprise.

I felt I should say something, but being the youngest I more often hesitated than not. I wanted to tell Kate that I was really, truly happy for her, that this was great and would it be okay if sometimes I came over the spent the weekend at her new place with her girlfriend because I really thought I would fit in better with them than I did here. But I didn’t say any of that because Mum started yelling.

She was more angry now, knowing that it was a woman and all. She has no kind of religious excuse for her beliefs. She just has a knee-jerk reaction to things she’s unfamiliar with.

So Mum was yelling and I just kept quiet and felt bad about it.

But Josh sat there in the corner. His eyes glazed over, as usual, not paying attention to the food on the plate in front of him, fork moving automatically from plate to mouth and back again. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he neither saw nor heard a thing.