For Amanda's last night in town, we got all dressed up and went
dancing. We tore unnecessarily through backyards to get there, only
stopping to marvel at our bad judgment after she tore a black fishnet
going over someone's fence in the dark. Amanda finished swinging her
body past the wire and stoof back with one arm raised. With starlight I
could just barely make out what she was looking at: a few solitary barbs
atop that section of fence, like the ones tattooed on her right wrist.
    "Come on," Petra said, tapping her shoulder.
    I tried too. "Come on."
    Amanda stifled a laugh with her other hand, the nwheeled around
to follow us.

    A little after 3am we returned, with Granpa Carl in tow. Carl is
exactly five days older than Amanda; both of them are a year older than
anyone else we spend time with. Hence, 'Grandpa'.
    Carl has said the house sounded familiar and asked us to show him.
As we walked up he nodded. "I forget the name, but they definitely used
to live here."
    Petra tried to look interested. I tried to look bored.
    "Deserted fucking house," Amanda hissed with joy. "I want to see."
    By simultaneously pressing at both hinges we got the front door off
quietly. We stuck together once inside, salting any nervousness the dark
produced with horror-movie jokes. The living room still had seating for
four, so we sat. Amanda scratched her calf, wincing.
    "Are you okay?"
    "Eh. Okay, sure." with the BRRRREKK of mesh tearing, she finished
shredding her stockings, pocketing the remnants.
    With the moon now visible through a window, we all looked like
cartoons; children's-book illustrations of adults with nowhere to go.
    "Back home they kept chickens," Carl said. "I bet that's why they
had the barbed wire."
    "You need security to move to the city."
    "Like your parents had."
    "My parents made the wrong choice, and leave them out of it."
    "You could have stayed in the sticks, and then I never would have
run into you again."
    "Doesn't sound so bad."
    "You know, you still get to leave even if you don't alienate your
friends."
    Petra exchanged glances. She produced a samll pipe from inside her
jacket and commenced the chemical soothing of nerves. By its second pass
the pipe was the only sound in the room: breaths sucked in and pushed
out, and the occasional click of fingernails on marble.

    I coaxed more from Amanda about her old neighbors as we walked home.
    "They would throw shit when they fought. Not at each other, just--"
She mimed a high arc with one hand. "I cut up my wrist on their chicken
coop when I was seven and I don't even think they cared."
    "Which wrist?"
    "Dumb question."
    "On purpose?"
    "Dumb purpose."
    Carl peeled off when we reached the apartment building the three of
us lived at. I caught him giving me his older-and-wiser face over
Amanda's shoulder as they hugged goodbye. The price I pay for keeping my
secrets, I guess.

written for Bugzajumpn in the big room 7/25/06

It's been something like four years since I got this request, and if memory serves, Bugzajumpn originally sent me ten pictures of the same car from different angles, which I wasn't sure what to do with. I said I really needed words, or at least things which were different from one another, and he(?) sent these.

With the four years since this was requested, the two years since I'd touched my typewriter, and my continuing vexation at people who give me proper nouns, I was more interested in finishing-- just DOING this to get back into it-- than in using every single thing he sent me. That said, the last time I watched The Osbournes, either Sharon or Ozzy threw an entire ham at their neighbors' house out of irritation, which is where that came from.

The dialogue is mostly awful, but some of the ideas behind it might not have been worthless. The rest of the story, whatever. (Though now that I think about it, the idea of a tattoo as token of previous injury came up in the second instant story I wrote; I wonder what that's about.)

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

<< back to more fast custom fiction<<