This Friday, I participated in Rita’s Fiction Friday IX- Open Call
Rita’s Guidelines Were:
“Write a story using all the weapons in the original Clue game: a knife, a wrench, a lead pipe, a candlestick, a revolver and a rope. The fun part of this is that these items do not have to be used in a murder scenario, but can be worked into any kind of story in any manner you wish.”
Here’s what I came up with:
A traumatic event left me unable to cope with the typical facets of every day life. Now, I couldn’t leave the house without first going from room to room to unplug each lamp, appliance, light, and gadget in the house. Next, I’d go out to the car and drive about a quarter mile down the road before stopping to turn around, drive back to my house, park and get out of the car, to reenter the house and make sure that I really had unplugged everything. As you would imagine, living like this made relationships of any sort impossible. Benjamin, one of the few friends I still had, tried to help, and stopped over one day with some candles and a candle stick,
“Use these. Now you won’t have to unplug all the lights every time you leave the house.” He presented them with a huge grin, and with a side ways glance, I accepted the gift suspiciously. I guess it was a nice gesture, but why was he carrying a wrench in his back pocket?
“What’s the wrench for?” I asked nervously, he squinted at me confused, and laughed. I could swear to God that I detected a bit of nervousness in his laughter, which made me even more apprehensive of his intentions.
“Geez, Hayl, don’t you remember that I’m a plumber?”
“Oh, yeah,” I sighed, a bit relieved and embarrassed. How could I forget that he was a plumber? Was I truly losing my mind? After a long pause he said,
“When was the last time you got out? Why don’t I take you for a cone or something?”
I hesitated, and looked around the room for excuses, “I, um, I, can’t, I have to um,”
“C’mon, it will only take 20 minutes, 30 at best.” There was no getting out of this one. I placed the candle stick on my dining room table and followed him to his pick up truck. I climbed in and screamed in pain. Slowly, I moved my hand towards my butt to see what it was that I’d sat on. Once I got ahold of it, the corkscrew of a Swiss army knife glared back at me.
“Oh let me take that,” he said laughing. I gave him the evil eye as he tried to stifle his giggles. “Well, I can’t blame the knife entirely, 1985 was a good year,” as if! I am not a bottle of wine! As the date continued on, I grew more suspicious that he was trying to kill me. He pulled the truck out of my driveway, and I tried to stop him,
“Wait, wait a second. Where’s my seat belt?”
“Here,” he said, handing me a rope.
“What am I suppose to do with this?” I asked. He looked at me puzzled and said,
“Well first, I would loop it around the back of your seat, and then I would tie both ends in a knot at your waist. Just make sure it’s nice and tight.” He continued driving. He was unfazed as I began to hyperventilate. I knotted the rope so many times over that there wasn’t much cord left, then held tight to the seat digging my nails into the plastic. In times like these, I do the only thing I can: pray. One after another, Hail Mary’s rolled off my tongue like a auctioneer’s prattling.
Finally we’d arrived at the ice cream shop. I feverishly tried to untie my “seatbelt” but failed. There were too many knots. My friend came over to the side of the truck and tried to help me unknot the rope to no avail.
“I could just cut the rope…”
“No!” I interrupted sharply. I was going to hold onto this rope. It was better than no seat belt at all.
“Okay, okay, what kind of ice cream would you like?”
“Rocky road.” I said.
“Rocky road indeed,” I heard him mumble.
While I waited for him to come back with the ice cream, I fiddled with the radio as it began to sing one of my favorite Beatles songs,
“She’s not a girl who misses much.” Lost in thought, I began to wonder if this song was from Revolver or The White Album. I continued to wonder as the lyrics played through the truck and swirled around my head,“happiness is a warm gun, bang bang, shoot shoot.”
Though it was a warm day, refreshing breeze swirled through the windows mixing with the lyrical song, “when I hold her in my arms, and I put my finger on that trigger, happiness is a warm gun.”
Suddenly I shrieked with terror. If it weren’t for my restraints, I’d nearly jumped out of the truck.
“Oh shit,” I heard my Ben say from behind me.
“You shouldn’t have snuck up on me like that!” I scolded. For some reason he loved to scare me.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a smirk, “if it’s any consolation, you knocked my ice cream out of my hand.” I leaned over and looked at the pavement, his double fudge chocolate chunk had already began to melt, a steady stream of runny ice cream made it’s way through the parking lot.
We shared the rocky road cone. As we took turns taking licks, I began to think that maybe he wanted to be more than a friend. I always made it a point to stay away from guys who didn’t have their own place, but what do you do about the ones who don’t have seat belts? Is that a deal breaker?
Soon, he drove me back home. I was beginning to feel more relaxed. He didn’t have seat belts, but he did have a broad muscular body, dirty blond hair, and a smile that could knock a person dead. We pulled back into my driveway and sat a moment.
“Aren’t you gonna let me out?” I asked pointing to the rope.
“No, you’re not going anywhere yet.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really.”
“You’d better let me out or I’ll…I’ll,” I looked around the truck for ideas,
“Or you’ll what?” His eyes gleamed mischievously.
“ I’ll hit you with one of those plumber pipes!”
“Plumber pipes?” He laughed at poor grasp of plumbing vocabulary. “How about you give me one kiss and I’ll untie you?” This was all a bit unexpected, but it’s not every day that a man with gorgeous glowing blue eyes has you in this kind of position.