Parking Lot
The single security light left the parking lot with pools of shadow around the bins of cans, bottles and newspapers. "I should have done this earlier," I thought, jumping when a gust of wind set a stray can rattling across the empty parking lot. A Harley roared into the parking lot, and the burly driver, head to toe in black leather, drove the bike around and around me. As he stopped, I mentally measured the distance to my car. He held up a pizza box. "Where's the cardboard recycling?" I pointed. He tossed the box into the bin and was gone.
Stranger in a Strange Land
The security guard paused in front of me. "You can't take your camera in."
He looked horrified when I looked straight back at him and said, "Well, fuck."
I crept along with the rest of the line, laughing behind my sunglasses at the black and the piercings and the plaid and the attempts to put short Utah haircuts up into inch-high mohawks. They waited for me to freak, then looked increasingly uneasy as I just smiled faintly.
I was in the same hundred-square-yard space as Billy Idol. As if I'd let the Warped Tour crowd intimidate me from that.
Drabble: parking lot
It was late, it was dark, it was spitting rain, and I had my head down as I trudged across the empty parking lot to the grocery store.
The pickup was going too fast as it turned in off the street.
I jumped, he swerved and locked up his brakes, but he was still doing about 15 mph when the corner of the bumper clipped my thigh and tossed me 20 feet.
I tucked and rolled and landed on my shoulders, then rolled twice more before I could stop.
Some perverse quirk made me ask him if he was okay.
sacrifice
I must have heard it, but I don't remember.
The wind blowing orange through the dorm lobby curtains.
Squealing tires, voices.
The cacophony of shouts, unhelpful.
Above it all, Alaska's voice over and over, "I can't have killed someone. I can't have."
But he did. Drunk, fighting with his girlfriend, leaving rubber on the parking lot.
The security guard stepped out to wave him down, see what was wrong, if he could help. Alaska ran him down.
I didn't go; Kathy held me back. I stood on the darkened porch, lost, while the man I called Grandpa bled to death.
Those are all good. Liese, that's heartbreaking.
First of all, many many MANY thanks to Lee for taking over the topics for a while and giving me a bit of a break. But now I'm BACK, baby!
Challenge #137 (in the parking lot) is now closed.
Challenge #138 is animals. Specifically -- though you're free to write whatever you wish, as always -- I'm thinking either (1) write from the POV of an animal (in the wild, a housepet, a zoo animal -- anything), and/or (2) give the animal actual dialogue.
No drabbles featuring Mr. Ed, please....
::slinks away to consider writing about monkeys wearing pants::