Friday Fiction

Tilting my head to the side, I considered the dusty lump in my hand, the smear of clean revealing the word "Kodak", a hint of their signature yellow peeking through the holes in the letters. "Who even uses film any more?" I wondered aloud, rubbing the rest of the canister on my cutoffs to remove the dust. I pursed my lips, "Well, the tail is tucked in, so it's been rewound." I rolled the canister in my palms, humming quietly, then shrugged and tucked it in my pocket before dipping my hands back into the bucket of warm, sudsy water to retrieve my rag and continue cleaning off my new find. After an hour of serious scrubbing, I was damp head to toe with a combination of sweat and splashed suds, but I smiled as I dropped the rag back into the bucket now filled with murky brown liquid. The dresser was gorgeous, as I knew it would be the minute I saw it. The wood appeared to be oak, stained a deep brown that accented the Art Deco cut outs and inlays. I took a dry rag and began rubbing furniture oil into the wood, restoring some of the gleam as I first applied then carefully smoothed off the polish. Finally satisfied I nodded to myself and, careful to avoid pinching my fingers like I had at the yard sale, maneuvered the dresser onto the plywood on casters that served as my homemade dolly. I left the drawers sitting in the driveway and scooted the dresser inside, arranging it between the two bay windows under the black and white photograph of desert lightning that I had found in a yard sale three years ago. I stood back and admired the dresser, but my eyes drifted up to the photo and I smiled, as I always did, feeling myself being transported to that desert in the grip of a storm. I could almost hear the sizzle of electricity in the air. Shaking my head to clear the thoughts, I took a step back and nodded, "That finishes this room, don't you think?" I glanced at my calico cat, Betty, who lounged in the sunbeam on the window seat. She flicked the tip of her tail and stared back. "I'll take that as agreement." Rolling my shoulders I continued, "I'll just go get the drawers and we'll have a lovely place to store blankets and pillows and, well, anything we can think of." I laughed as Betty yawned and returned her gaze to whatever cats stare at out the window. I never saw any birds, but that didn't mean she didn't. Three trips later, and the dresser was complete. I considered the gruesome mystery that sat bookmarked and alluring on the other window seat, then wrinkled my nose as the cool of the house alerted me to my soaking clothes. "Shower and dry clothes first, book second." Betty twitched her tail but didn't turn to look at me, used to my habit of talking to myself. I tugged off wet clothes as I made my way to the bathroom, pausing to dump them in a soggy heap on the lid of the washing machine and flip the stereo on, cranking up the volume so I could just make out the melody over the pounding of the water. Once dry, I gathered up the rest of my laundry and, congratulating myself on my industriousness, began filling up the machine with cold water. I looked at the pile of clothes, a small mixture of darks, lights and everything in between. "Sort them by color," I muttered to myself and began making even smaller piles on the floor of the laundry room, stopping to check the pockets as I did so, "Come on...windfall" I urged, hoping for enough "free" money to justify a splurge on Chinese for me and Betty for dinner. My fingers closed around the lump in the pocket of my damp cutoffs and I extracted the film canister again. I looked at the crumpled five dollar bill, two nickels, a dime, and twelve pennies adorning the top of the dryer and set the film next to it. Betty padded down the hall and stopped at the doorway of the laundry room, sitting primly and tucking her tail around her feet before meowing inquisitively, "Nope. No Chinese for us tonight, Betty. But I'll whip something up. What do you think, soup?" I added detergent to the washer then considered the three piles of sorted clothes before rolling my eyes and scooping them all into the machine together anyway. "If they haven't bled all over each other by now, they're not going to. Right?" I flipped the lid down and grabbed the money and film, stuffing them all into my pocket before squatting down to scratch behind Betty's ears, "Did your sunbeam move or was I just taking too long?" She meowed again then began to purr as my fingers found the persistent itch at the base of her ears. The film canister poked my thigh, "What do you think, five bucks ought to be enough to get some film developed, right? Should we blow our windfall on alleviating curiosity?" Betty butted my hand then stalked off. I watched her move down the hallway before standing, "I thought cats were supposed to be curious." I dug the film out of my pocket and eyed it, "Oh what the heck...maybe I can take a vicarious vacation with complete strangers." I hopped in the car and zipped over to WalMart, grumbling quietly about the fact that I never seemed to find a parking spot in the same state as the store. I dropped the film off at the one-hour and went to gather some necessities for me and treats for Betty, who had been batting her last catnip filled mouse around suggestively for the past few days. I knew how to take a hint. Photos and supplies in hand, I zipped home, resisting the urge to flip through the pictures until I was ensconced in my bay window with Betty. When I got home, I set the plastic bag on the counter and dug out the photos. The rustling bag brought Betty scampering and I scooped her up, settling us both on the window seat. She meowed and wriggled but settled down when I started scratching her ears before flipping open the photo envelope. The first 4x6 was a punch to the solar plexus. My fingers stilled and I stared, mouth agape. Betty butted my hand with irritation and I tilted the photo so she could see, "Look familiar at all?" I stood, spilling the photos onto the floor and sending Betty scampering off prrrowing madly. I held the photo up and to the side of my framed desert storm and stared in awestruck horror at the continuation of the scene. The shadow on the edge of my print was not, in fact, a Joshua Tree as I had always imagined. With shaking hands I pulled the print off the wall and set it in the middle of the floor, laying the 4x6 to the right where it clearly belonged. I glanced at the photos spilled on the floor and, one by one laid them in place, expanding the scene. Shaking, I stood and walked to the window and watched as clouds rolled in over the mountains and the first drops of rain splattered on the dusty ground. Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the desert that stretched out behind my house and the Joshua Tree that graced the right edge of my property. I moved away from the window and looked back at the collage of photos that showed the landscape I knew well. My haunting desert lightning storm taunted me from the center of the tableau even as the air sizzled with the storm outside, but my eyes were now drawn away from that bleak beauty that had always captured me. Now I could focus only on the remains of the Joshua Tree and the body that lay dismembered beneath it. The body with my face.
get the Fiction Friday code	about Fiction Friday
Technorati tags: fiction, fiction friday