Episode 8

Morning, friends! Time for another mass of words. Oh boy!

If you're new here, I write short fiction three to five times a week using character and situation prompts to keep myself on my toes. It's practice! Something something ocean metaphor. You get it.

Today! Our hero, from https://writingexercises.co.uk/character.php:

And our scenario, from the same website:

Protective tree bark, huh?

Okay, let's see what I come up with.

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“Babe, I’m so glad that you’re working, but you’ve really gotta start quarantining your work clothes.”

Sara looked down and sniffed at her t-shirt. “I don’t smell anything. Is it really that bad?”

“The ability to not smell human shit must be a superpower,” said Janine in a deadpan. When Sara’s eyes went wide, she rushed to soften the statement. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be mean, it’s just… yeah, hun, you smell like your job.”

Sara flushed and apologized. “I guess that’s why it pays as well as it does.”

“Must be,” Janine said, then gave Sara a playful shove on the shoulder. “Go rinse off, then we can go running.”

“It’s not running.”

“It’s running with extra steps.”

“I’ll run you with extra steps.”

Janine laughed. “Go shower, dork.”

“Join me,” said Sara. She pulled off her shirt, backing slowly away, letting Janine take in the full sight of her flattened belly. Her hips swung, jeans perfectly accentuating her athletic curves.

Janine grinned. “Ew, smelly, no sex, gross poop smell”

“Yeah,” Sara said, turning and pulling off hey gray sports bra. “But I’m so cute, though.”

#

The shower was warm, and it soothed Sara’s aching frame. She’d had to admit to herself when the water first hit her that a bit of the smell Janine had complained of had wafted up with the steam. That was unfortunate. It was a good job, but it wouldn’t be worth it if she smelled repulsive to her wife five days a week.

Not that driving around portable toilets and cleaning them out was her dream job, to begin with. She’d taken the job for the pay. She didn’t mind the driving part, and the bit of heavy lifting involved would help keep her in shape, but it was the $23/hour starting wage that had convinced her. The ability to take Janine out for a nice evening from time to time, rather than just pouring every cent she had into rent and food and insurance. It was a nice thought.

The shower curtain rustled, and then Janine was there, poking her head and a bare shoulder in. She gave an exaggerated sniff and said, “That’s better.”

Sarah crossed her arms. “You coming in here?”

In answer, Janine stepped into the shower. Sara kept her arms folded across her chest as Janine approached, putting one hand on Sara’s hip and the other under her chin. “Hey, listen,” she said. “You can shower when you get home. We can designate some work clothes and keep them in a bag. We can run laundry more often. We’ll do what we gotta do, as a team. Okay? We got this.”

Sara smiled, and then Janine was kissing her, and suddenly the job didn’t seem so bad after all.

#

After the long shower, they dressed in athletic pants, tank tops, sports bras, and good sneakers, and made their way out to the little courtyard behind their apartment building. Patches of grass with short, thin trees divided the plaza, and chest-height brick walls surrounded the area, keeping it separated from the city buildings that surrounded it. A little piece of man-made nature in the middle of the concrete jungle.

“Okay,” Sara said, pointing to the edge of the courtyard. “Your goal is to jump to the top of the wall.”

“And I can get up there however I want to?”

Sara nodded. “Yeah, just as—“

At “yeah,” Janine started to saunter toward the wall. When she reached it, the placed her palms on it and hopped casually up, twisting to land on her butt. She crossed her legs, sitting on the wall and staring back at Sara.

“Brat.”

“That’s me!”

“You gotta do it while running. Like this.”

Sara broke toward the wall in a sprint. Her sneakers flashed white in the afternoon light, her ponytail swishing from side to side as she curved her trajectory and approached the wall at an angle. Never breaking her speed, she slapped a hand on the low wall and vaulted, tucking her legs close to her body so her feet landed on top of the bricks. He knees and ankles and heels absorbed the momentum she had built, bending to accommodate the sudden change in velocity, and when she was stable on the wall, she stood.

Janine was staring at her. “So you want me to do that?”

“I want you to run up to the wall and jump up on it however you can, yeah.”

Janine started to say something when a flash of orange caught her eye. She had no time to react before something lound and dull thunked into the trunk of the tree behind Janine. Splinters of wood and bark flew, showering the shrieking woman as she jumped off the wall with her hands raised in an instinctive gesture of defense.

Sara shouted, springing forward to take Janine in her arms. “What just happened?”, she asked, checking her wife for injury.

“I dunno, it just exploded on me.”

“Looked like a streak from the sky,” Sara said. She found no wounds on Janine, and the two turned their heads to stare at the tree.

In the trunk, inches from where Janine’s head had been, was a spot of bare wood, bark stripped away for a few inches in all directions. In the middle of the bald spot was a stone, held by the wood of the tree and just poking out, an orange glow rapidly fading as the wood around it blackened and began to smolder.

“Huh,” said Sara, squinting at it. “I think outer space just tried to kill you, babe.”

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I did it!

See ya tomorrow.