“What?” Billy’s eyeing me from the side of the room behind Jessica, while sitting with Lousia who is fuming.

“Seriously, Randi, look at this.” She’s stopped drinking her juice, and the other girls are looking with her.

She’s not going to stop nagging until I do it, so I give Billy a wink, Lousia a smirk, and then turn around. “You have got to be kidding me.” Standing in line is Eeaky Freaky Beaky in a mini-skirt and tank top, her hair done up in perm that’s got to be a home job.

“I know!” Jessica’s starting to laugh now. “Who does she think she is?”

“Someone with a much smaller ass, obviously. I can’t believe they make minis for wide loads.”

The table next to us is laughing, and Beaky’s looking over her shoulder, eyes wide. She looks at us, and I look her up and down before starting to giggle.

“You can see all the veins in her thighs,” Jessica says, “It’s called tanning, girl. Try it.”

I sit back. “Now, girls, it’s not her fault. Her mother obviously read her two many fairy tales. She hasn’t figured out that ugly ducklings grow up to be bigger, fatter, uglier ducks.” Oops, my voice was loud enough to carry and Eeaky Freaky heard me. She spins back around, shoulders slumping.

I turn back around, and smile at Billy again.

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“Doesn’t it drive you crazy?” he asks, staring at me over the top of the round glasses. Without the purple tint of the lenses, I can finally tell that they’re green.

“What?” The sun’s started to set and the air has turned chilly. The bench is cool when I shift to a different position.

He doesn’t seem bothered by it, lying there on the grass. “Staying in one place! I mean, you’ve been here your whole life.”

“I like it here.”

He sits up, sending the beads on his fringed vest clacking against one another. “You could come with me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I laugh, just a little. All day and only half the things he’s said have been serious.

“Come on, leave with me tonight. Just pack up and go.” He sounds earnest, but I can’t see his eyes now. The sun’s reflecting off the glasses, off the prayer beads and the peace sign on his necklace. They’re the only bright spots in the shadow he’s becoming.

It’s tempting. I can feel a tug, deep in my chest, and ache expanding when I never knew it was there in the first place. Set aside obligations, responsibilities, duty, all those other chains. Try to see what freedom really means. I’ve glimpsed it, today, letting him drag me around this town I thought I knew. What would it be like, letting him show me the world? I could. “No.”

I don’t know which of us is more surprised with the answer.

Deck: The Mythic Tarot Meaning(s) Used: Sometimes the Knight of Wands will enter one’s life in the form of a charming, exciting, and rather unreliable young man.

When his task was completed, he turned around, weaving around the creaking boards as though they were landmines. In the darkened light, his movements were slower, his steps not even whispering on the carpet. He came to a halt outside room 214, swallowed, and with motions as precise as his steps had been, went to his knees.

The brass door handle swept past his eyes, and he ducked his head until he was eye-level with the keyhole. The old hotel maintained all the old fixtures, which was one of the reason he’d taken this job. Closing one eye, he used the other to peer through to the room beyond.

The drapes were open, but not the lighter gauze curtains. He could see the room’s occupant silhouetted against the light from outside. She was standing with one arms raised to her head, the other resting against her legs, almost as though she were posing for him.

He licked his lips, and leaned a fraction closer. His eyes traced the curves of her legs up to her hip, to the slight hint of her breast along the side of her chest, rolled over her shoulder down her firm arms to her hand, which was now moving away from her leg. Now, he could see the knife, the long curved blade with the serrated teeth on the inside edge. He bit back a gasp, turned his gaze from the woman, thought he could make out the shape of a limp hand reaching out from the bed sheets.

He dived back, hands flailing out to catch himself. They landed on the wood, which issued a deafening creak in the quiet hall.

Prompt: Voyeur, Digital Image Cafe Photos of the Day: August 28, 2007

With a groan, he rubbed his eyes and then stood up. The lab door banged against the wall as he left the room. The hallway wasn’t crowded this time of night, but the few people there avoided his path as he stalked towards the vending machine.

He stopped before reaching it, his attention caught by a rumpled newspaper dropped on one of the benches. The case was front-page centre. Picking it up, he scanned through the sensationalist drivel, and then froze.

Mr. Vaugh’s next murder-mystery, about a man who gets away with his wife’s murder, is due out next month.

Publicity. That’s what he was missing. Maybe not a motive for murder this time, but motive enough to play shady at the scene of an accident. Especially when you knew well enough that the police were going to look at the husband first. Standard operating procedure, and Mr. Vaugh was just the sort to know that.

Junk food forgotten, he ran back to the lab, smiling as he felt the start of a rush that sugar couldn’t touch. The evidence wasn’t inconclusive after all; he just had to look at it in the right way, after all.

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I thought it was bad before. No sex for six months, but we could kiss goodbye. We could sit together, watch a movie. We could talk.

Maybe I shouldn’t have taken their advice. If I hadn’t brought it up, we’d still be living like roommates, instead of like strangers.

’Course, maybe this is what I needed. After all, how much clearer does it have to get before I see that we don’t have a marriage anymore?

She stopped in the doorway, breathing heavily and leaning on the frame for support. The scent of sweet potatoes drifted up from the crock-pot, and she closed her eyes, willing strength into her fingers and hands.

“Oh, Granma-Lucy, let me take that,” a voice from her side exclaimed, right before she was relieved of her burden. She opened her eyes and smiled at the young woman with corn silk hair and helpful blue eyes.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, patting the woman’s hand. This was Davey’s youngest, she was certain, but God save her, she couldn’t remember the child’s name.

The young woman turned to carry the crock-pot into the dining room, where the family was gathering. Her four children and their spouses; her ten grandchildren (Davey among them, arguing for the right to carve the turkey) and the spouses of the ones still married; and a host of great-grandchildren on top of that. She rested against the doorway a moment longer, watching them settle down to the meal she’d prepared.

The room was busy with movement, and chatter, and good natured teasing. She smiled, enjoying the contentment she always felt when she her family was here enjoying themselves. Eventually she joined them, sitting at her place of many years, looking down the long table one time before bowing her head to say Grace. She gave thanks for her family, for the food she shared with them, and for the fact that she was still here to enjoy their company.

Deck: The Cosmic Tribe Tarot Meaning(s) Used: Use your resources to nourish those around you.

“…”

“This wasn’t my fault, you know?”

“…”

“Well, it wasn’t. Anyone could’ve made that mistake.”

“…”

“Okay, maybe not anyone, but still.”

“…”

“You weren’t paying attention either. You could’ve stopped me.”

“―――”

“Right. Look, even if it was my fault, which it wasn’t ’cause I didn’t lay the bottles out, it wasn’t on purpose.”

“…”

“Which doesn’t exactly make it better, I know. But it’s not like it’s permanent.”

“…”

“The colour will fade in a few weeks.”

“…”

“Blue suits you.”

“―――”

“I know, not for hair.”

Prompt from A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves

The sun was already setting, bright and painful as the last time she was at the lake. The last time, she’d watched it through tears of rage and hurt. Now, the tears in her eyes were from frustration.

Before, she’d swum out here to get away from him, from the hurtful words that were breaking her heart. She’d reached the dock, sat shivering as the sun set. Her teeth started to chatter, her skin broke out in goose pimples, and still she didn’t go back in. She sat there, until the sky started to darken, and then she’d stood, just let it all go.

It had seemed so final, like nothing could be done. Seemed like that to him as well, maybe. By the time their car had reached the city, they were on their way to working it out. A few months later, they’d succeeded. Now she was back at the dock, freezing n the water and hopelessly searching for what she’d thrown away.

When the light of the sun caught, reflected back at her from below instead of above, she didn’t believe it. Even though she’d come looking, she hadn’t actually expected to find it. Still, there snagged on the edge of the dock’s floater, her sparkling engagement ring.

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In the night, they were as dark as the sky, but far more restless. He could see them churn in the beam of the lighthouse. They reached up, singing to the sky in crashing and rocking echoes. It seemed to him, at times, as though they were screaming, “We’re here! We’re here! You can’t see us anymore, but we’re still here!”

He knew how they felt.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t known beforehand that the post would be lonely. He’d looked forward to the solitude, in fact. A chance to get away from everyone and everything. A chance to perform a duty of worth.

He hadn’t expected it to weigh upon his mind like this. If he did his duty well, and he did, then he would never know. It was only when the light failed to warn the ships that anything was heard of them. Usually shrieking metal and the drowning cries of the crew.

He chuckled to himself, and tossed a stone into the calm daytime waters. No, no one had heard anything of him since he took the position. So he was left to exist here in anonymity. When the night was dark and the singing of the ocean the only sounds, his thoughts turned melancholy. They tended to take on the depressing phrases of high school poetry: would anyone notice if I died today? Would the world simply continue on as it had?

Likely, it would. There were precious few to be effected by it, after all. At least, there were few, unless a ship needed the light in the time between his death and anyone noticing.

Prompt: The Lone Sentry, Digital Image Cafe Photos of the Day: August 12, 2007

It wasn’t the right tactic, though. She’d just come off looking like the bitch if she did that. No, she’d wait it out. At some point, Simone would say or do something, and she’d take the opening.

She didn’t need to throw the first punch, not when she could save it, and through the last one instead.