I hope everyone's doing well on this last day of 2014! I have to say that this has been one loooong
year and while there's been some fantastic things, there has been a whole lot of stress, and I'm looking forward to 2015 a whole lot :) I hope you all have a great time, get in a little celebrating, and maybe a kiss at midnight!
Oh, and Colors Like Memories is still free. (Yeah, I can't help the shameless plug...)
So, my writing group had a little fun with writing prompts this month, and I finally had a moment to write something up. I thought I'd post it here, just for fun. It's a little longer than I'd planned, but oh well. Also, I set out to write something kind of funny and upbeat, and well, that obviously didn't happen. Oops? ;)
laughed it off.
Surely someone with a sense of humor thought it was funny. A holiday prank, cliché
to the extreme.
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Oh, and Colors Like Memories is still free. (Yeah, I can't help the shameless plug...)
So, my writing group had a little fun with writing prompts this month, and I finally had a moment to write something up. I thought I'd post it here, just for fun. It's a little longer than I'd planned, but oh well. Also, I set out to write something kind of funny and upbeat, and well, that obviously didn't happen. Oops? ;)
· Write a story about a main character who is being blackmailed to
try and ruin someone’s holiday. Why does this happen? Who is blackmailing him
or her? Can he or she actually go through with the plan?
The first note arrived, words
cut out in bright magazine fonts and pasted together, and she
But the
question was, who? She gave it a few minutes thought in the shower, in between
making her grocery list and planning how to introduce herself to her new boss.
Later in the car, she had to repeat a whole chapter of her audiobook.
The threat,
included in the letter in the miss-matched wording in bright purple and green,
spelled out what would happen if she missed the first step: send a blank email
to an email address. It seemed harmless enough. But while sitting at her desk,
lining her pens up from tallest to shortest, she couldn’t bring herself to do
it.
It was just
a prank.
Surely.
Her
curiosity was a living thing with the niggle of wonder at who went to that much
effort to get her to do something so simple. And the cost? That was even more
ridiculous. Nothing would happen to her car. The garage she’d parked in for ten
years was secure. She knew Gus, the man hired to patrol. He’d never let anything
happen.
But her
self assurances didn’t get her car to start that evening. The garage felt like
it had been constructed from ice, like the photos she’d seen of those places in
Norway. Or was it Sweden? Not that it mattered. Her feet froze as she waited
for the AAA guy to show up and give her a jump.
It took an
hour. She took her frustration out on the treadmill.
Once home,
she made a list. Everyone who might have ever been pissed off at her over the
years. It wasn’t long. She worked mostly alone. Her clients never had any idea
she’d put in the hours behind the reports they saw.
Tapping her
nails on her kitchen counter, she stared down at the names. The one at the top
was the only one she kept circling back to. That wouldn’t leave her alone.
But surely
her sister had better things to do than put something together like this. She
had that studio, now, didn’t she? And a child. There couldn’t be hours in her
day to cut out all those words. To ruin her car battery.
Right?
A little Internet
snooping left her certain her sister was hearty and whole. She had a billion Facebook
posts to prove it. A niece she’d never met to tend to. And art shows in San
Francisco, London, and New York.
How long
she spent staring at her sister’s smiling face, at her niece cuddled in her
arms, she didn’t know. It was long enough that she missed her normal bedtime.
But before
she went to rest she opened her private email, carefully copied in the email
address from the note, and sent it. Blank. Just like the letter said.
She didn’t
need any more trouble. With the New Year approaching, things were too busy.
Three reports due in less than a week. Any chance of a free moment in the near
future wasn’t conceivable. Which was just how she liked it.
The next
morning, her phone dinged with an email, waking her a full minute before her
alarm.
She reached
out from under the thick pile of blankets, her hand slapping blindly along the
nightstand until she found the device, pulling it into her cave to read.
There was a
response from the blank email.
She held
the phone motionless, finger hovering over the message, until the alarm started
and she screamed, tossing it away from her.
Sighing at
her own stupidity, she picked it back up, and opened the message.
The email’s
lettering was at least uniform and easy to read. But it took three
read-throughs for the full meaning to come clear.
Swearing,
she pushed back the blankets to sit up.
This had to
be a mistake. Something stupid. Someone stupid.
Not a
harmless prank. Those few words made that clear.
Her hands
shook as she dialed into work. It didn’t take much effort to sound ill. Stomach
heaving, head pounding, palms sweating—if she didn’t know better, she’d think
the flu had found her.
Call the
cops? Send another email? Call her parents? A million thoughts wound through
her mind, creating a net that caught her firmly in its grasp. There was nowhere
to turn.
It took
three laps of her ground floor, a shower, and carefully chosen clothes, for her
to pick up her phone again. This time it was to dial a number she hadn’t called
in at least ten years. Not since The Fight. It was labeled in all caps in her
mental filing cabinet.
Three rings
and she almost hung up. She didn’t want to speak with her sister. Didn’t want
anything to do with her life. The woman was trouble. Always had been. But she
didn’t want any harm to come to her either.
The voice
that answered was far too young to belong to anyone she knew. Her niece?
“Is your
mother available?” She wasn’t able to put up any pleasantries with the girl.
“Let me get
her!” So cheerful.
She gulped.
The phone
clattered onto some flat surface and footsteps receded. She stared out her
kitchen window to the house across the narrow divide. The owners had painted it
a noxious shade of blue two years ago. Someone really ought to see if the HOA
allowed that kind of thing.
Static
filled her ear and she jerked away from her phone. Almost hung up. Then a
series of clicks and a voice came through. Deep. Male. Definitely not her
sister.
Had she
found someone? The father of her child, perhaps?
“Don’t hang
up. Listen to my instructions carefully. They will not be repeated.”
Her stomach heaved. “O-okay.”
The instructions were simple. The
amount. The drop. The assurance that all would be forgotten once they received
it.
She swore no cops would be brought
it, crossing her fingers behind her back.
Notes filled a page of her neat
stationary she only ever used for grocery lists. Her handwriting was almost
illegible, she noted with a half-hysterical laugh once the man hung up.
She glanced at the calendar. New
Year’s Eve. She’d be lucky if her bank was open. It took a few minutes, and
copious amounts of water splashed on her face, before she brought up her
broker’s number. He made enough off her account every year that even if he
wasn’t at work, she’d call him at home. She wouldn’t even feel bad about it—not
today. Not with this situation.
Or at least that’s what she told
herself.
A brief conversation, with clipped
and careful directions, and she hung up. There were still a few hours before
the half-day at the bank closed. She would make it, no problem.
Dressed in far more casual clothes
than normal—a skirt and heels did not allow for her plans—and she settled into
her leather seats. Driving was a blur, something she realized with a chagrined
shake of her head. Today was not the day to dwell on poor driving.
The bank was empty with the
exception of the teller who flipped through a magazine behind the counter. She
strode through the elegant entry and toward the tall doors that led to the
offices at the back.
Her broker waited for her there. He
held out a hand, his Rolex winking on his wrist. How much of that watch had her
money purchased?
Despite everything, she’d chosen
him for his eyes. The honest way he looked at her. The openness he used in
addressing her and her plans. He never condescended. Never for a moment didn’t
realize she knew what she was doing.
The door closed to his office with
a click. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a low voice, touching her shoulder to gain
her attention.
She’d been focused on the new painting
on the wall. It was bright—reds and yellows and a brilliant shock of orange.
She liked it.
Shying away from his touch—giving
him a little frown at the forwardness of his action. “Nothing. Do you have the
requested funds?”
With a sigh that she only noticed
because he did it when she insisted on a course of action he didn’t agree with,
he slipped behind his desk. The glass top was just as organized as hers, another
point in his favor.
“If you’re in trouble, you can tell
me. I’ll do what I can to help.” Again with the honest eyes.
She wondered, not for the first
time, if he’d mastered that look, using it against men and women like a secret
weapon. “Nothing is the matter. Something’s come up.” She settled into the
wingback and crossed her ankles.
His motions to pull the box from
his cabinet were jerky. Barely controlled. She noticed this and tried to think
it was because he didn’t agree with what she was doing. Not that he had a
choice. It was her money. She could do as she pleased.
“You know I’d help with anything
you asked, don’t you?”
It was the emotion in his tone that
drew her eyes away from the painting this time. The way he emphasized the
‘you’. It caught at some part of her that she hardly recognized.
Looking up to meet his stare, blue
and clear, she reminded herself that this was just another way he made his
clients trust him with their money. It worked. And she wouldn’t fall for it.
“Thank you.” She opened the box, did
a quick count, then signed the paperwork he shoved across the glass.
Without a word she settled the box,
surprisingly heavier than she expected, into the bag she’d brought. She rose
and went to the door without another word.
His hand on her shoulder—two
touches in ten minutes? What had gotten into him?—and she paused.
“Tonight….”
The rest of his words were lost in
the swirl of her thoughts. How could he ask her something like this? Now, of
all times? Didn’t he see enough of her with her monthly money meetings?
With a polite smile and excuse, she
bowed out of the office. In her car, she made a quick reminder on her phone to
find another broker. The idea didn’t sit well with her, but she didn’t know
why. It didn’t matter, either.
The drop wasn’t hard. It took her
two hours to drive to the city where her sister lived. The roads were clear and
she even found herself enjoying the snow on the hills, the crisp sunshine, the
lack of buildings surrounding her. How many years had it been since she escaped
the city? Three at least. Maybe more.
Her GPS gave her specific
instructions to get to her location. She half-wondered if the woman in the
system wondered what the hell she was doing, driving here.
She circled the block twice,
ensuring everything was in place. Then she pulled into an abandoned driveway
between two defunct factory buildings with windows like broken teeth. She settled
the leather backpack into the ancient coal chute. It had been cleaned recently,
with none of the paint or grime that coated the rest of the building. The bag
slid inside with a satisfying thump and she turned and hurried back to her car.
There, she squealed the tires in
her hurry to escape.
She didn’t go far.
A half an hour later, she waited in
the building across the street. The owners were gone for the day. Breaking in
hadn’t been difficult, despite the bars on the windows and the alarm system.
The curtains there provided the
perfect cover and vantage point. She’d been followed all day, to her bank, to
the drop site. But then the blackmailers got sloppy. They assumed she’d hurry
home to cower.
Of course they did.
That was exactly what she spent
years making them assume. Everyone assume.
The tall, broad-shouldered man in
the dark coat who emerged with her backpack tucked under his arm did peek
around the door, scanning up and down the empty street before he stepped
outside. A younger man, too skinny in jeans that looked like they’d been
painted on, followed him.
Neither of them knew what hit them.
The cops would later assume it was
a robbery gone wrong. There was no money. Just two bodies. A single bullet. One
was known as a loan shark, threatening everyone who borrowed money and couldn’t
pay it back with his exorbitant interest.
No one would miss them.
As she settled into bed that night,
the empty box stowed in her garage after a surreptitious trip to her sister’s
place, she glanced at her phone. The to-do list reminded her of the things
she’d forgotten today. The long hours ahead of her to get caught back up at
work.
But the last item, the one added after
her trip to the bank, that one she erased. For a minute, she thought about
adding something new, something that might allow her to remove the caps on The
Fight’s listing in her mind. Instead, she clicked off her phone and set it next
to her bed. They would have a much happier New Year without her in their lives.
