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apocalypsosSo I gave myself a challenge to write drabbles for ten random characters from my original stories, either written or planned. And then I gave up on the drabbles and just let myself keep writing until I stopped.
Two down, eight to go.
*
Peyton had precisely one picture of Mary.
Any more, and she'd feel like a stalker. Any less, and she wouldn't feel comfortable. She paced the floors of her cabin at night as it was, itchy in her skin, waiting for something that wouldn't be happening anytime soon. Mary would graduate soon, and then there'd be college, and then who the hell knows? Maybe she'd decide she needed to backpack around Europe, or bum her way across Asia, and fly to the moon and never come back.
Peyton refused to think about Oliver. Thinking about him meant treading lightly, and Peyton had never tread lightly in her entire goddamn life.
Instead, she woke halfway through the night like she always did, pacing a well-worn track on the polished hardwood floor and only occasionally letting her gaze snag on the sole photo of Mary tucked in among her candid shots of the rest of the pack cavorting through the freshly-fallen snow this last Christmas Eve. It wouldn't be questioned, this one photo, with Jeff pitching a snowball from behind her and Lucia shaking snow from her brown-black pelt.
Every time her gaze caught on that photo, Peyton could pretend just for a little while that Mary was pack, that Mary was here and safe and free.
It was a nice daydream, for as long as it lasted.
*
Here is how Opal meets Sally:
It is the first day of classes in her sophomore year and for some ungodly reason she will never figure out, Opal is taking quantum physics. Maybe she is trying to challenge herself. Maybe she was really was drunk off two peach schnapps ice cream floats when she'd scheduled her classes. Fuck, maybe she just wanted to flunk out of college in a rain of fiery glory that will only end when she literally sets herself on fire in the center of the Quad right in front of that street preacher who keeps showing up and shouting that all of the educated females on campus will be eaten for breakfast by Satan.
Eh, maybe not. He'd probably roast holy marshmallows over her corpse, the lousy fuckstick.
It's at this precise moment that Sally enters the room. Fourteen students lift their attention from whatever they were previously engaged in – texting boyfriends, arranging notes and textbooks with anal precision, furtively buying pot from the guy in the back corner – to stare at the bald head, the blood-red corset, and the comic-print knee-high boots.
After a quick scan of the room, the girl with the shaved head narrows her eyes and heads straight for the seat right next to Opal.
She flops down with a huff, booted feet swinging with barely concealed glee for the longest moment. Then, without preamble, she leans over to a barely distracted Opal and whispers, “I'm not wearing any underwear today.”
“You say that like I care,” Opal mutters, not looking up from the Denny's placemat she stole and has been coloring on for the past ten minutes.
“Oh, I know you don't,” the bald girl whispers. “That's why I told you. Anybody else would think I'm hitting on them. You're not supposed to take that as a insult, by the way.”
“I don't,” Opal says. It's true. Truth be told, she rather appreciates not being hit on. It's one hell of a waste of time for everyone involved.
The bald girl leans close again and says, “I just don't like people thinking I'm getting away with something. If nobody knows I'm not wearing underwear, it's like this dirty secret I'm saving for a special occasion, like if that guy in the third row pretends to hit on me so that his girlfriend doesn't know that he's gay and instead just thinks that he's a dick.”
Someone makes a choking sound in the row behind them. Opal's pretty sure someone heard the bald girl, and grins like an idiot.
“Say, can you watch my stuff?” the bald girl says. She shoots a furtive glance around the room.
Opal frowns. “Why?”
“Because I'm fairly sure everybody in this room is going to hate me in about five minutes.”
Opal doesn't get time to dwell on that particular statement before the bald girl rises to her feet and bounds down to the front of the class with all of the energy of a cracked-out spider monkey. She snatches up a bright pink dry-erase marker from the teacher's desk and writes Dr. Sally Shines on the whiteboard in big loopy handwriting.
Opal's stomach jumps as the bald girl says, “Welcome to Quantum Physics, everybody. I'm Dr. Sally Shines, I had a two-liter of Mountain Dew and twenty-seven Pixie Stix for breakfast this morning, and I'll be your professor this semester.”
“Aw, fuck,” Opal snaps.
Dr. Shines just winks at her, pointedly ignoring the three other students who say the exact same thing.
Two down, eight to go.
*
Peyton had precisely one picture of Mary.
Any more, and she'd feel like a stalker. Any less, and she wouldn't feel comfortable. She paced the floors of her cabin at night as it was, itchy in her skin, waiting for something that wouldn't be happening anytime soon. Mary would graduate soon, and then there'd be college, and then who the hell knows? Maybe she'd decide she needed to backpack around Europe, or bum her way across Asia, and fly to the moon and never come back.
Peyton refused to think about Oliver. Thinking about him meant treading lightly, and Peyton had never tread lightly in her entire goddamn life.
Instead, she woke halfway through the night like she always did, pacing a well-worn track on the polished hardwood floor and only occasionally letting her gaze snag on the sole photo of Mary tucked in among her candid shots of the rest of the pack cavorting through the freshly-fallen snow this last Christmas Eve. It wouldn't be questioned, this one photo, with Jeff pitching a snowball from behind her and Lucia shaking snow from her brown-black pelt.
Every time her gaze caught on that photo, Peyton could pretend just for a little while that Mary was pack, that Mary was here and safe and free.
It was a nice daydream, for as long as it lasted.
*
Here is how Opal meets Sally:
It is the first day of classes in her sophomore year and for some ungodly reason she will never figure out, Opal is taking quantum physics. Maybe she is trying to challenge herself. Maybe she was really was drunk off two peach schnapps ice cream floats when she'd scheduled her classes. Fuck, maybe she just wanted to flunk out of college in a rain of fiery glory that will only end when she literally sets herself on fire in the center of the Quad right in front of that street preacher who keeps showing up and shouting that all of the educated females on campus will be eaten for breakfast by Satan.
Eh, maybe not. He'd probably roast holy marshmallows over her corpse, the lousy fuckstick.
It's at this precise moment that Sally enters the room. Fourteen students lift their attention from whatever they were previously engaged in – texting boyfriends, arranging notes and textbooks with anal precision, furtively buying pot from the guy in the back corner – to stare at the bald head, the blood-red corset, and the comic-print knee-high boots.
After a quick scan of the room, the girl with the shaved head narrows her eyes and heads straight for the seat right next to Opal.
She flops down with a huff, booted feet swinging with barely concealed glee for the longest moment. Then, without preamble, she leans over to a barely distracted Opal and whispers, “I'm not wearing any underwear today.”
“You say that like I care,” Opal mutters, not looking up from the Denny's placemat she stole and has been coloring on for the past ten minutes.
“Oh, I know you don't,” the bald girl whispers. “That's why I told you. Anybody else would think I'm hitting on them. You're not supposed to take that as a insult, by the way.”
“I don't,” Opal says. It's true. Truth be told, she rather appreciates not being hit on. It's one hell of a waste of time for everyone involved.
The bald girl leans close again and says, “I just don't like people thinking I'm getting away with something. If nobody knows I'm not wearing underwear, it's like this dirty secret I'm saving for a special occasion, like if that guy in the third row pretends to hit on me so that his girlfriend doesn't know that he's gay and instead just thinks that he's a dick.”
Someone makes a choking sound in the row behind them. Opal's pretty sure someone heard the bald girl, and grins like an idiot.
“Say, can you watch my stuff?” the bald girl says. She shoots a furtive glance around the room.
Opal frowns. “Why?”
“Because I'm fairly sure everybody in this room is going to hate me in about five minutes.”
Opal doesn't get time to dwell on that particular statement before the bald girl rises to her feet and bounds down to the front of the class with all of the energy of a cracked-out spider monkey. She snatches up a bright pink dry-erase marker from the teacher's desk and writes Dr. Sally Shines on the whiteboard in big loopy handwriting.
Opal's stomach jumps as the bald girl says, “Welcome to Quantum Physics, everybody. I'm Dr. Sally Shines, I had a two-liter of Mountain Dew and twenty-seven Pixie Stix for breakfast this morning, and I'll be your professor this semester.”
“Aw, fuck,” Opal snaps.
Dr. Shines just winks at her, pointedly ignoring the three other students who say the exact same thing.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-11 10:24 pm (UTC)He'd probably roast holy marshmallows over her corpse, the lousy fuckstick.
I am totally going to use that line sometime.