Yet Another Bad Short Story, Part 1
It was a dark and stormy night.
Wait, no it wasn’t.
It was a dull and rainy morning, not a dark and stormy night. Sorry, I always wanted to start a story with that little Snoopy tribute line there. And now I have. And now I will remove myself so that the story can begin.
It was a dull and rainy morning and Glen was annoyed that he had been called in to the office unexpectedly. He’d only been doing consulting work for this company for a couple of weeks and other than an initial meet and greet he had never had to darken the door of the office. All of his work was done from home, or had been done from home until today. So there Glen was ambling from the park and ride lot toward route 13 when he noticed the red hand that replaced “Don’t Walk” on the traffic lights of his youth start to blink.
“Shit” he muttered and started hustling to make the light. Route 13 was a six-lane highway with intermittent pedestrian crossings and if you missed the light you were waiting for a while, a “while” being 2 minutes in this case but the if the 2 minute wait causes you to miss a bus and the next is 12 minutes later and the traffic through the tunnel gets 10 minutes worse while you’re waiting for the next one well…you can see that this is the modern urban dweller’s equivalent of “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost” etc can’t you?
So Glen started trotting as best as his 60 year-old legs would let him and made the far side of Route 13 and his bus stop just as the light turned green the other way. Glen remembered from his commuting days to keep moving and stand behind the bus shelter to avoid being bathed in a tire-thrown tsunami of highway bilge water. Good thing to because just when he turned around some unsuspecting twenty-something got a dousing from a Lexus SUV plowing through the bus stop. “That’ll learn ya”, though Glen.
The number 26 bus pulled up three and a half minutes later. Glen boarded and was relieved to see that only a few other people were on the bus and he would have an empty seat next to him. He settled in and zoned out, staring out the window as the bus moved out of the strip malls and airport motels and into the swamps that lay abutting the tunnel into the city. The swamps were his favorite part of the trip as they were beautiful in the strange way that decay can be beautiful. Glen remembered seeing a blue heron perched on a half-toppled telephone pole at sunset and thinking it was more real than anything Audubon ever painted. This morning the pools reflected the dull gray sky and the only signs of movement were shifting Venn diagrams of rain-induced ripples
The view was wiped away suddenly by the wall of the tunnel as the bus entered the tube and the action was so quick that Glen flinched and shook his head. The hum of the wheels echoed off the wall and Glen sighed and settled back in his seat. He hated going into the office. The yellow of the tunnel gave way to gunmetal clouds once more and the rain rattled off the window harder than it had been on the other side. Three stops later Glen was crossing the avenue to the building.
Wait, no it wasn’t.
It was a dull and rainy morning, not a dark and stormy night. Sorry, I always wanted to start a story with that little Snoopy tribute line there. And now I have. And now I will remove myself so that the story can begin.
It was a dull and rainy morning and Glen was annoyed that he had been called in to the office unexpectedly. He’d only been doing consulting work for this company for a couple of weeks and other than an initial meet and greet he had never had to darken the door of the office. All of his work was done from home, or had been done from home until today. So there Glen was ambling from the park and ride lot toward route 13 when he noticed the red hand that replaced “Don’t Walk” on the traffic lights of his youth start to blink.
“Shit” he muttered and started hustling to make the light. Route 13 was a six-lane highway with intermittent pedestrian crossings and if you missed the light you were waiting for a while, a “while” being 2 minutes in this case but the if the 2 minute wait causes you to miss a bus and the next is 12 minutes later and the traffic through the tunnel gets 10 minutes worse while you’re waiting for the next one well…you can see that this is the modern urban dweller’s equivalent of “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost” etc can’t you?
So Glen started trotting as best as his 60 year-old legs would let him and made the far side of Route 13 and his bus stop just as the light turned green the other way. Glen remembered from his commuting days to keep moving and stand behind the bus shelter to avoid being bathed in a tire-thrown tsunami of highway bilge water. Good thing to because just when he turned around some unsuspecting twenty-something got a dousing from a Lexus SUV plowing through the bus stop. “That’ll learn ya”, though Glen.
The number 26 bus pulled up three and a half minutes later. Glen boarded and was relieved to see that only a few other people were on the bus and he would have an empty seat next to him. He settled in and zoned out, staring out the window as the bus moved out of the strip malls and airport motels and into the swamps that lay abutting the tunnel into the city. The swamps were his favorite part of the trip as they were beautiful in the strange way that decay can be beautiful. Glen remembered seeing a blue heron perched on a half-toppled telephone pole at sunset and thinking it was more real than anything Audubon ever painted. This morning the pools reflected the dull gray sky and the only signs of movement were shifting Venn diagrams of rain-induced ripples
The view was wiped away suddenly by the wall of the tunnel as the bus entered the tube and the action was so quick that Glen flinched and shook his head. The hum of the wheels echoed off the wall and Glen sighed and settled back in his seat. He hated going into the office. The yellow of the tunnel gave way to gunmetal clouds once more and the rain rattled off the window harder than it had been on the other side. Three stops later Glen was crossing the avenue to the building.
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