14 Carat Fool

My second mistake was wearing those shoes.

My first mistake was listening to Ronnie. 

Would you do it? She was purring, her freshly-dyed spikey black hair glistening in the streetlight glare.  Ronnie’s mysterious velvet coated question hung between us only for a few seconds before she answered it herself, by handing me a can of spray paint. Gold Dust.

Silly me.  That I’d misunderstood what Ronnie meant when she’d called this morning and said Let’s go out.  Silly me.  Wearing 4” leopard heels.  We were, at present, sitting in front of her boyfriend’s apartment building, her ‘65 Chevy convertible parked behind his truck.   She was eyeing it dangerously. 

He told me he really prefers blonds. 

She threw the remark at me sideways, scrunching down low in the driver’s seat as I held the can of paint.  It felt more like a grenade.  Her purring sharpened, turned drill sergeant, and a lock of spite colored hair shadowed her face. I don’t care what you write,  just make it good, and then she pinned on a final sugary Pretty please.

Why should I? 

I wasn’t about to swallow her plan, even with the added sweetener. 

Well, her voice was back to purring.  If somebody sees us, they’ll remember me.  And also?  Because if you don’t, you have to walk home… 

My stilettos hit the moon gray pavement, and I teetered over to the pickup.  I felt sick, but what choice did I have?  And then I had an inspired moment-one of my best, I might add.  As I pressed the little white spray button down, watching Gold Dust letters monogram green paint, I was the very picture of someone who wants nothing more than to be utterly forgettable.

RONNIE WAS HERE!!!

Rail

I was wearing my green wool coat.  The Coast Starlight was fifteen minutes late, and in the train station crowded with impatient travelers, I’d found a place to sit alone.  He shuffled over, took the empty seat to my left, and despaired that he was going home.  Asked if he could take my picture to show his mother and father because of course the subject of a girlfriend would inevitably come up. Nonplussed, I said ok, and I’ve wondered ever since if his parents approved of me.

~

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http://lilliemcferrin.com/five-sentence-fiction-waiting/

Grains of Sand

It’s what you’d do first.  Pray.  Plead.  In quiet desperation.  Loud until your voice gave out. 

Don’t go.

Denied that, you’d pray and plead again, to be allowed the chance to say goodbye.

Then, denied that, you’d ask yourself,

To have loved and lost-what was the point?

Because you long ago realized that in the ways of the universe, timing is everything.  That chances come and then are gone and in one such moment missed, this wreckage of misery and memories could have been avoided.

So you’d find the point.  And then you’d not be denied that, at least.

~

~

I had in mind when I wrote this, my 18 year old daughter’s friend Daniel, who took his own life a month after graduation.  Colleges will be starting up in the next few weeks, and kids will be leaving…but not like that.

~

I got to choose the song this week!

http://lancemyblogcanbeatupyourblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/100-word-song-cup-of-coffee/

Gold

Summer pirates,

Draw X’s on paper.

Find pieces of eight in pennies on sidewalks.

Winter pirates,

Draw hearts in the margins.

Love, only to let go.

And find true treasure in pieces of themselves.

 

http://lilliemcferrin.com/five-sentence-fiction-maps/

Surrender

I hold not dear immortal dreams.

Hopes ground in promises of youth.

That love lingers, when mortal flesh and soul are parted.

Hollow sentiment.

My heart has died, and so shall I.

Camisole

What first catches my eye is the color.  A depthless blue green.  Copper weathered by spindrift, and I can’t resist touching it.  I am wanting, so desperately, to feel beautiful, and somehow I am convinced that the loveliness of this fluid ideal of crushed silk and gossamer lace will seep into my skin, into the flagging image of myself.   I imagine it sliding over my shoulders.  Imagine it must be like slipping into water, and at once I am longing for the ocean, longing to be, where in my element, I am resplendent. 

(R)eject

He reminds me of a spider.  Or maybe I’ve just felt like a fly lately. We’ve been driving for what seems an eternity, and the only thing he’s said to me all day is California.  As in, that’s our destination, though the Golden State is miles away and I’m so tired of this road trip.  The passenger seat is sticky.  Uncomfortably web like.  (He always was a slob.)   My fingers fiddle with the door handle, and here, in the middle of nowhere, I realize I am not doing this any more.  Stop the car, I tell him.  I want out.

~

Here is the song prompt:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=melody+gardot+worrisome+heart

 

http://lancemyblogcanbeatupyourblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/100-word-song-worrisome-heart/

Losing Hand

I was never any good at Baccarat. 

Perhaps if I’d stuck only to playing punto banco, a variant of the game not requiring skill or strategy, I might have had better luck. Or perhaps if you’d agreed to play as well, it wouldn’t have mattered.  But you sat alone, and aloof, nursing your boredom on the rocks while I made excuses.  For my lack of ability.  For the lack of us.

~

Ice melts in alcohol.  Just as the odds of winning are always in favor of the bank.  You take another sip of this watered down existence we have.

And I fold.

Watered

Scorched-sand heat beneath her bare feet seems to move up through her body like mercury rising in a thermometer, and at its highest point, the sun begins to sear her skin.  The sea, her soothing solace, summons, and she obeys. There is an audible sizzle as waves hug her swimsuit-accentuated curves, baptizing her tangled hair, turning it to seaweed.  Mortal she transforms into comely mermaid.  And her blossoming siren heart blushes.

http://lilliemcferrin.com/five-sentence-fiction-luminous/

Voyage of the Maiden Pirate

She has been here before.  Tender back of the leg skin skin scraping against weathered-to-silver rough wooden edges.  She is sitting on the dock, sizing up, as she has done countless times, the logistics of allowing gravity to pull the weight of her body down the odd three foot or so, into the embrace of the waiting row boat. (Painted black, by chance, and graced, on either side of the bow, with a stenciled skull and cross bones.)

Courage, always hale and hearty when first she sits, is starting to fade.  As will soon the light, in mere hours.  Once again she wonders why she is unable to simply take the plunge, and once again in response, her mind prepares a list.  What if she loses her balance when the boat inevitably rocks upon receiving her, and she falls overboard?  What if she is unable to competently row the boat, and horror of horrors she drifts under the dock-and how on earth is she supposed to hoist herself back up on said dock anyway? 

Like every other time before this, she can choose to opt out.  Tell herself that perhaps tomorrow she will be brave enough. Yet in what is perilously close to becoming another overplayed moment of resigned defeat, her heart ices with a cold sense of the truth.  Nothing will change in her between now and tomorrow. 

The dock seems to be pressing a sense of this cannot wait any longer urgency into her legs.  A micro second of hang time before her canvas sneakered feet hit the floor of the boat, and while her arms wave wildly about trying to recapture her balance as the boat pitches and rolls in aftershock, she is none the worse for wear. Steadied, she laughs at the last few seconds spectacle of herself, parks herself on the narrow seat that spans the interior width of the craft, and tipsy with her first sweet taste of victory, sets the oars into the oarlocks and begins, in her own fashion, to row toward the distant shore.