Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I post a random title. You write a random story to go with it.
Followers
Blog Archive
-
▼
2008
(18)
-
▼
October
(14)
- And Then We Got Married OR Does Your Mother Know?
- I Dream of Red OR It's Not Easy Being a Ninja Pirate
- The Sousaphone Incident OR He Walks the Earth
- Eight Summers in Addis Ababa OR Do Unto Others, Th...
- Cold Static OR Anywhere But Home
- A Universe in My Teacup OR Glass and Iron
- "A Simple Little Question" OR "Algorithm and Blues"
- Elephant Bones
- Black Noise
- The Cardboard Doll OR The Butterfly Wars
- Beggars Would Ride
- Born into Light
- Deep-Fried Moose
- Roscoe Falls Reflections
-
▼
October
(14)
2 comments:
You know the saying, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride"?
I'd like to propose an update. "If wishes were plotlines, characters, or ideas, this story would be longer."
But they aren't.
So it's not.
The End
I know a girl - wait. I don't know a girl - but I saw her once. Pretty wee thing. Well, she might be, if she fixed herself up a bit. As she was, well - she wasn't so pretty. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, because when I saw her, it was surely a low point for her. You can't go round judging people based on their low points. Just look at me - I'm a very important person, you know. You wouldn't know it to look at me now, but I used to have a tower and everything.
I didn't have my tower when I saw the girl, though. If I did, maybe I could've helped. Given her a place to dry her tears. I tried to help anyway. She ran away at first. Told you I wasn't at such a high point myself, didn't I? And I looked it, too. A few days of digging through garbage didn't improve her looks any, but it did make her a little more resigned to being approached by folks like me.
It turns out that all she wanted was to go home. Everything would be alright when she got home, she used to say. Out of this stinking city, off to - Philadelphia, I think. Just another stinking city, at any rate, but that one had her home.
I kept telling her, it's no trouble for a girl like you. Just scrounge up a bit of cardboard, write something that tugs at people's hearts, and they'll offer you rides. Not at first, of course, I told her, you look like shit. But they'll come. Even I can get a ride, and look at me. It's not going to be a limousine now, is it, but it'll get you where you're going. You might want to take a knife with you, too. Despite what you hear I never had to use mine, but you better take one just in case. Steal one from a kitchen, or find a nice big piece of broken glass. No shortage of broken glass around here.
No matter how desperate she got though, she never took my advice. I saw her do all sorts of things - half-eaten cheeseburgers from out of the trash can wasn't even the start of it. Right up until the end, though, she never begged. Not once.
I never told her a knife was a pretty handy thing to have in the city, too, even if you weren't hitchhiking. I thought it went without saying, especially with the things she was getting into. Poor girl. I bet that when the end came, she still wouldn't beg, not even for her life.
Post a Comment