Hello Commons, I hope you’re doing well. The following has been saved as a draft on WordPress since December 22nd of last year. I’m not entirely sure what it is.
I vaguely remember the characters, and that there are other parts of this story, but otherwise this fragment is all I have. So, I thought I’d share it so the little 1 in the circle would go away. Good luck and have fun.
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“I don’t even fucking know what he took, he’s doing drugs again though,” she says into the phone, voice hoarser than a cough. “He always does this, one tiny variable gets thrown in and he just freaks right the hell out and chases a skanky Alice down the most glorious rabbit hole he’ll ever know.”
“The most glorious one he’ll ever know, you say?” he returns, amused.
“Yeah, because he never fucking stops doing drugs.”
Jenna damn near sprains her finger ending the call. She drops her phone to the carpet and throws herself backwards onto the bigger of the two couches, landing daintily. The fox didn’t love getting hit in the head but he probably shouldn’t be in the couchtunnel anyway, he knows better; he just wants attention because it’s lonely in the burrow.
After a few more moments of unknowingly sitting within inches of a grown red fox, Jenna stands up and walks over to the bathroom door. Her lower back fuses its bottom three vertebrae as she tries to bend and then separates them again as she stands with her other cell phone in her hand. Jahona watches her walk away, wishing she had come sooner so she could have heard the phantasm.
The couch trades phones with Jenna and gets jealous when she has somebody to call. Nobody calls the couch, Johanas can hear it weeping from the tub. The tub too weeps, but not for solitude; the tub is full of ‘Hona.
“Can you come over, please?” she asks desperately into the phone, zero introduction given. A moment of listening, then, “No, he’s not… okay first of all, we’re not fucking and we’re not a thing, and second of all, he’d never hurt a fly. Plus, I’d kick the shit out of him if he tried, times, he’s always too zonked on whatever to do any real damage.”
She listens intently for an entire minute, cleaning her spotless fingernails with her bottom teeth all the while.
“Yeah, and he said Crizzle is coming.”
Listening, then she peers out her window to see the massive leg of the evening patrol loom past. The curtain shudders less than she as it comes to settle in front of the glass.
“Yep, still going. Can’t imagine them stopping very soon, you’re best to just be sneaky.”
The conversation ends of natural causes. Jenna flips the phone closed and plops again, this time the fox is long gone. He has a mission, he heard the rumbling in the human woman’s stomach from the smaller of the couches. It resonated with his own in strange ways; he must remedy the harmony.
There’s a knock at the door. Jenna grunts and then stands. She looks through the peep hole and almost turns right around but the evening patrol will be back at any time. The blood of an innocent can’t be on her hands.
She closes the door faster than she opens it. From beneath a beret, the blonde boy smiles chipper.
“G’day, madame! Thank you for entrance, vampires are not welcome with invitation and you did not invite me, so you don’t even have to worry about all that. Look, do you have a moment to talk about H-”
“HUSH NOW!” Jenna screams. She doesn’t know it, but the scream startles Jahona in the tub and he thumps his head against the tile. “It’ll hear you, idiot. No, I don’t want to hear your sad little story, I stopped dosing a long time ago.”
She grabs the boy by the collar of his runner’s cloak and drags him to the curtained window. There, with one hand tufting his hair, she makes him watch her unlock and open the window. It slides silently, she’s oiled it well.
Then she slams it shut and the catch makes not a peep, incredible.
“When it passes this window, you count to five. Then, you open and peer around the corner to make sure you didn’t count too fast; if it’s gone, you go and that’ll be that.”
“That’ll be that?”
Jenna walks away and sits on the couch. The boy does as he’s told, wishing he could tell his story. He won’t eat, he won’t sleep, he won’t be welcome back to the brood, not until he tells his story. The evening patrol passes. The corpulent black spire reeks of barlmüt.
The little blonde boy opens the window but pauses, turning back. “Miss, are you certain I cannot tell you my story?”
Miss takes the second cell phone in her right hand and lobs it over her right shoulder, missing the boy and shattering the empty space of the open window. It clacks against the road. The boy gasps audibly but Jenna doesn’t make a sound – she tried to stay out of it, he just wouldn’t let her; his innocence is lost.
The boy closes the window silently, opens it, and closes it again and then repeats the process five times. Then, the broad hand of the patrol sweeps through. The boy is swept with it.
Jahona bursts from the bathroom, missing one pant leg and half the hair from his left arm. They don’t own a hair trimmer.
“Jon,” Jenna mouths, pointing dismayed at the open window.
Jahona sprints and closes it tight, clipping the locks. He watches the evening patrol pass, its beefy stomp inaudible, then draws the curtain.
“What the fuck dude, what’re you on??” Jenna floats lightly, as not to scare him off.
“What’re you off, ladybeans?” Jahona retorts, retreating to the kitchen to unjar a pickle. “You want a sour one?”
“Yeah, hit me.”
Jahona throws a sliver of pickle as he would a kunai knife across the apartment. Jenna catches it between two fingers.
As the vinnegar settles, “Dude, just tell me. We have the rule, you’ve gotta tell me.”
“That’s the thing,” a bite of pickle. Chewing. “I don’t,” swallow, “remember,” bite of pickle, another bite of pickle, smaller than the first. “That’s just the shit,” enough chewing to piss off a cow, then a swallow to piss off an uppity audience if’n it was joked about, “I have no idea. I don’t know Jack from Cracker right now, and you can keep the caramel off my corn, dizzy.”
“Man what the fuck?” Jenna sighs as she leans back into the couch, her pupils examining the inside of her skull. “Maybe you should just go back in the tub, dude.”
Jahona springs from the couch and swallows the rest of his pickle whole. He leaves a curve in the carpet as he makes the turn.
Jenna grumbles to herself regarding her current living arrangements. She checks her remaining phone – the screen’s cracked, clock illegible. Brilliant, she offed the other phone with the boy. She could make the run… the evening patrol only swept him, the phone should be there. Though, the patrol’s fast tonight…
Another knock at the door. She stands apprehensively and opts for the window to the left of the door, the one obscured by the bushes. They never look that way, only to the windows with the shudders drawn. The twist: those aren’t even windows.
The real twist: Crizzle is the one who knocks.
‘Shit.’
She opens the door quickly and to a crack, not taking any chances. “Hello Crizzle, how are ya?”
“I’m doing swell Jennifer, and how are you?”
He offers a hand for a handshake. Her hand flops into his like a dead flounder before quickly retreating behind the door.
“I’m doing well, what can I do for you?”
Crizzle smiles, shows just a little glimpse of his pearly whites. “Well Jahona called me, said there was a fox problem. I have my pest control business so I said I’d come by, check it out per bono.”
Crizzle tries to peer past Jenna. She doesn’t let the strange man view her house. He notices but pretends not to notice, but she notices.
“Is the fox still here?”
“No, sorry there, Crizzle. I-” she cuts herself off, eyes wide as lillypads. Her left on Crizzle, the right travels to the corner where her lids meet and watches the evening patrol loom past the window. The door slams with nobody to offend, not a sound is made.
“Jahona!” Jenna yells, deftly stomping to the bathroom. He closed the door at some point, so she begins a’banging. “Jahona, Crizzle just fucking showed up here, what are you doing?? You need to fix this shit!”
The fox hears the commotion as he enters the hole in the human compound. The gap between the outer wall and the inner foundation isn’t a wide one but he’s not about to get stuck, not with this plump bird in his jaws. He must share it with his friendly housemates, they didn’t need to give him those couches. Even if they’re sharing it, they didn’t need to give him access. They’re kind, they deserve a treat.
The fox crawls to the end of the smaller of the two couches and stuffs the bird into the ceiling of his tunnel. Its head pops out between the two cushions, unseen by the human set a’banging.
Jahona rustles in the bathtub. If only he had a blanket.
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Be well, Commons~
So I bought it off him for $10, slammed it with an orbital sander (among other sanding tools) and repainted it black; sold it for $50 too, not a bad flip.
