Lipstick, check. Mascara, check. Drivers’ license, check. A bunch of random clothes stuffed in my duffel bag, check.
The alarm clock went off this morning at 6 a.m., just as it does every day of every week of every month of every year. Just as it’s been doing for the past 6 years.
God, I’m bored. Working at a prairie dog desk in the middle of more gray prairie dog desks in a taupe colored world that overlooks a parking lot is enough to drive anyone to do what I’m doing today.
I’m leaving. I threw whatever clothes I could grab in a duffel bag, grabbed some lipstick (red) and some mascara (black) and left. The open road feels so good. I have no idea where I’m going.
Or maybe I do. I think I’ll drive to the Grand Canyon and look at wide-open, red desert spaces where maybe an actual prairie dog lives. No, that isn’t right. Prairie dogs live on prairies, right? Like in Nebraska.
Only, I would never go to Nebraska or any of those little square states in the middle of the country. I’ve been bored enough, thank you very much. And as far as I’m concerned, one cornfield looks exactly like another.
I wonder what my boss will say when I don’t turn up and I don’t call. She’ll probably shit a kitten. Or at the very least, a hamster.
God, I hate her. All she does is bitch, bitch, bitch. Nothing is ever good enough for her. Nobody ever works as hard as she does or stays as late as she does or whatever the complaint du jour is.
Everybody hates her. We all hate those cubicles and the grayness of it all. I don’t even bother decorating mine. Some people do, but it looks sad to me. It’s like trying to put a big pink bow on a turd and thinking it changes the intrinsic turdiness.
Whatever. The open road beckons and I am heeding its call. I’m not going back. To that damned job anyway. I’ll come back to town. I guess.
Maybe I’ll see some great little place and move there and work in the local doctor’s office and know everyone by their first names. Ah, that sounds nice. Like the “Cheers” bar, I’ll be Norm and everyone will know and like me.
That’s not the case here. It may be a small town and it may be a small job and a lot of people may know who I am, but few of them like me. I guess it’s because of what she did all those years ago. My mother. She just left one day and never came back.
My dad did what he could, but he couldn’t raise 5 children by himself. He got us a pretty good stepmother, but we all sort of drifted along. Everyone wondered about Mama. I know I did.
Is she dead? It’d be nice to know. People in town never treated us the same once she was gone. You’d think they’d rally around and help, but they acted like we had a contagious disease or something. I really should ask somebody what they know. After all, I was only 6 when she left, and I don’t remember much.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
What’s that noise? Is the car making that sound? Is there a truck backing up somewhere nearby?
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Ah, shit, it’s the alarm clock. I’m awake.
Tags: Narrative, Short Story
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