woke up yesterday morning, threw on some jeans and a shirt and my ball cap, lassoed Jazz with the leash. I led her outside, listening to the automatically-locking door behind me close. At the exact same time the door clunked shut with impenetrable finality, I realized I hadn’t grabbed my keys. I turned to look at the door. Huh. Shit. I thought. I glanced down, and there’s Jazz, also looking at the door. She looked up at me, and the expression on her face was, clearly, “You just locked us out, didn’t you, Mom?”
     After taking Jazz to the bathroom, we went to the office to retrieve a spare key. There’s me. In the office. Looking stupid. With the dog I’m not supposed to have. Right. Jazz, being much brighter than most folks give her credit for, immediately played cute and buttered up the nice office ladies. She even let them pet her without piddling all over the floor.
     That pretty much set the tone for the day. I went to work and promptly — and I mean on, like, the second table — fucked my back all up. I had mopped the restaurant on Sunday night because we got hit late, and my dishwasher was swamped. I was feeling pretty proud of myself because I wasn’t crippled from mopping when I woke up Monday morning. However, at the second or third table I set up for my waitress, I’m standing there with a tray full of drinks on my left arm, serving out with my right. I picked up a cup of coffee in my right, did a little twist and lean to hand the cup to the guy, and fucking-A froze in brilliant pain.
     ”Take the cup.” I told him.
     ”What?” He said, glancing up at me.
     ”Take. The. Cup. Please.”
     Fortunately it was a regular customer, and I’m pretty sure it showed on my face that there was a problem, so he snatched the coffee cup out of my hand so I could straighten out and put the tray down. Wow, did it ever hurt, too. I’ve never pulled that stunt before. Pulled pretty much everything on the left side of my back in one go. I swallowed painkillers by the handful all shift yesterday. Luckily, it was dead slow, so I didn’t have to get up to much yesterday. I’m hoping for slow again today, because I’m not in much better shape.
     Hopefully, today is a better day. I managed to take Jazz out without locking myself out of the apartment, so we’ll take that as a good omen. Meanwhile, enjoy a Carnival recap:

BOGO! This Week Only! — Ania

     Ania awoke to a stabbing pain in her stomach followed by the sound of giggles in her head.
     ”You fucking bitch!” More giggles followed in resonse. She rolled out of her coffin. Her head was throbbing with pain as her hair was curling on itself, tightly. The giggles continued through a child’s rhyme, “All around the games of skill the clown chased the Lady. Lady got dropped with the clown on top! OOPS no more Lady!”
     ”Get out of my head you drag-queen-second-rate-whore!” The giggles became louder. Ania became enraged clawing at her hair to get rid of the curling. Scratching at her burning skin.
     She heard voices at her door, along with someone opening the deadbolts. The door opened to reveal a fat pig with over-the-top make up and bad clothes being held by a bear in overalls. Ania’s hunger grew and she savagely reached out for the pig delighted to hear it squeal as she sunk her claws in and pulled her into her darkness.

Inch By Inch, Step By Step, Slowly I Turned — Mr. James

     Becky stalked away from Celestine’s trailer, blushing furiously.
     That son of a bitch. She had half a mind to take off her belt and make him take her seriously. She knew how. Daddy had given her lots of lessons. Give the good doctor a few welts to remember her by, something to sizzle and twitch when he sat down and remind him of all the things she could make him feel, whenever she wanted…
     She stopped, clenching her fists at her sides, glaring down at the sawdust and straw with watery eyes. But she refused to cry. No. That’s not right. That’s just Daddy, still trying to fuck up her life. Becky took a deep breath, forcing her hands to relax. That wasn’t her. Well, maybe, once in a while, just for fun… But she didn’t have to be like that all the time.
     ”Hey, goil! C’mere!” She looked up, into a drifting cloud of straw. The big black crows, Heckle and Jeckle, were flapping furiously, carrying their pet scarecrow over the canvas wall between the trailers and the midway. The scarecrow, the puppet the birds plied with supernatural ability, had seen better days. It was torn wide open, and straw was drifting out with each breeze. They landed next to her, and one of them hopped down and began clumsily gathering straw. The other hopped onto the dummy’s head, glaring at her. “Yeah, youse with da thumbs! C’mere and help out, whydoncha?” She smiled.

Well of Worlds — JavaElemental

     Down the midway, Shaggy saw the rubes betting more, and betting faster, and at the games of skill the competition between young punks winning prizes for their girlfriends began to take on an ugly edge. When they won, their cheers held the ghosts of screams, and when they lost, their eyes were dark and angry, and Shaggy was starting to get a little nervous of it. Deeper still, the animals in Vincente’s cages paced and snarled and lashed their tails, and back by the rides, Dana misted through the House of Mirrors, watching as the patrons bumped into clear glass and mugged faces at the mirrors, and though the reflections were always twisted, now the twists seemed even more surreal.
     Masque stood in her chilled studio, a tall, half-finished mannequin before her. She was working on the eyes, a picture tacked to the cork board next to her. This piece was to be Angelica Huston as Morticia Addams, but the eyes just wouldn’t come out right. She was breast to breast with the ghostly white form, peering into its left eye, working a slender scalpel with quick, delicate swipes. Every few moments or so, she would pause, step back, glare at the picture, then glare at her sculpture. She’d been so proud of herself for getting the nose and cheekbones right, too. Damn the woman’s eyes! She went back to work, sleeves dragged up to her elbows, oh-so-carefully shaping the under curve of the socket, hissing between her teeth as she glanced from the picture to the sculpture.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 11:32 am and is filed under Original Fiction, Real Life, Tall Tale Tuesday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.