News
Arcade Games
Texas Hold 'Em
Popular Games
Strategy Games
RPG's
The Rusty Vault
Dev. blog
Web and Game dev.

go to comments!

Rules | Entry Summaries | First Round Rankings | Elimination Round!

The door opened and a chime sounded just above it. It was a group of workmen on their lunch hour.



Not wanting them to hear the juicy details of her story, Sally leaned in close to Jill and whispered in her ear her husband's designs for her and the girl with whom Sally knew was at their house this very moment.



Had there been a mirror into which Jill could view her reflection, she would have seen her face had turned as cherry red as her glass that contained her drink. She had no idea that what Sally described were even possible, let alone desirable. It was definitely past time for this conversation to end.



"Sally," she said, pulling back a bit. "That's probably the craziest thing I have ever heard in my life. Whatever you decide, I wish you the very best."



"Thank you for listening. I don't have anyone to talk to much these days. You remember Marilyn, I'm sure? She's at Syracuse studying to be an entomologist. Of all things, she wants to understand bugs. I don't get it, but then again, I know I'm not perfect. I've talked to her about some of these things, not what I just told you, of course, and she tells me that I should just do whatever makes me happy."



"You know," said Jill, "that sounds like good advice to me. Go with that."



"You and your mom have a good visit and don't be a stranger," Sally said, shaking her finger at her. "Also, you don't need to mention the details of our conversation to her."



"I won't. Trust me. Lips sealed."



"Tell her ‘hi' for me," Sally said, then walked away.



"I will."



Turning back to her plate, Jill looked down at the remains on her plate. She knew it would be cold when she resumed eating it. Sally Rae Dalbo's story alone could have probably reheated it.





The weather changes its mood. Widespread gray clouds begin to form in the west. The wind increases in speed. Tree branches with newly-formed growth, as a result, begin to bend more animatedly. The temperature noticeably drops by what feels like ten degrees within almost a ten-minute timeframe. The sun soon loses its shape behind the cloud cover that moves in over the town at a rapid pace, pushed along all the more by Nature's great exhalations.



A white-haired older man, hands tucked snugly in his jacket pocket, watches the young woman walk out of the dining establishment. He takes precautions so that she does not see him, looking out from a window from a pawn shop across the street, pretending to be interested in all of the various products for sale on the shelves. He allows her to maintain a good head start and then exits the shop. Its owner thanks him for stopping by, but he pays him no mind other than a raised arm with a curt wave goodbye, his back turned to him the entire time. He is not in the mood and time is something he cannot afford to lose.





Oh great, she thought, as she stepped outside to find that the sky behind her had begun to change colors, deep grays overtaking rich blues, signaling what would certainly be an onslaught of rain. Spring had not been around long, and the magnolias had yet to flower the way that only they can. She took a moment to examine two of them outside of Malzone's, knowing how beautiful they would become in only a couple months' time. Their existence was a magnificent display of Mother Nature at her best.



Any stickiness from earlier in the day had, for the moment, disappeared. People were beginning to file out of buildings for lunch, faces fraught with displeasure at the sudden change in weather, however. Some returned inside almost immediately. Jill speculated that they were going back inside in order to secure their umbrellas. For her own part, she needed to pick up the pace to get back to her hotel before those clouds really did let loose what they held inside of them. She had a mile-and-a-half-walk, but she was used to running far greater distances every day, so that was not going to be a difficult feat for her. Getting back to her room dry, however, might prove a bit more of a challenge.



The path she took was one that she used to walk as a child, before there were any stoplights. It led away from the town's market square and off toward the main road, but there was a sidewalk, fortunately, for most of the route. The wind blew her hair back so that her ears were exposed for the majority of her walk, and she regretted not wearing something warmer than her short-sleeve collared shirt, which had a tendency to blow open, revealing to anyone who got close enough areas of her body she would just as soon have kept covered. She had just bought this shirt and wanted to wear something "springy" for her visit. This particular shirt, with its pastel greens and pinks, was just the look she had in mind. Her khaki slacks, she noted, were also a bit on the lightweight side.



Her sound judgment, usually, and essentially, employed for her kind of work, was perhaps a bit lacking this morning. She thought to herself how she should have anticipated a change in temperature, given that she knew a front would be moving through sometime later in the day, but she thought she could get all of her loose itinerary in before any of that happened. Even an attorney can be wrong, she admitted to herself. She thought back to the time when even the great Matlock, while seemingly using his own apparent good judgment, unexpectedly argued on behalf of a guilty defendant. Though many in her profession did not think much of such a show, she had always enjoyed it no matter how far-fetched it was. She wanted to maintain the integrity of the main character while not necessarily living in the fantasy world that the show created where everyone who was charged with a crime was innocent by the end of the hour. Walking down memory lane triggered those fond memories as well, when she was completing her coursework in law and training for the bar and taking some time to unwind and watch a magician-attorney from Atlanta cast his spells to uphold truth and justice.



Several cars zoomed by now, even though the speed limit was a mere thirty miles per hour. Some must have been going forty or faster, she guessed. She saw an all-black Lexus sport utility vehicle that made her long for a new mode of transportation herself. Perhaps an elegant champagne color would be in order, she thought. Something to replace the ladybug-red Corolla she had owned since her days as a law student. It was a miracle the thing even started after fifteen plus years. She had spent many a pretty penny on maintenance, but she had difficulty selling it because of her attachment to it. It was the car her mom had bought for her, scraping together all of her extra income she could so that her daughter would have a means of getting around town and knowing that she would not be dependent upon public transportation and all of the interesting people who take advantage of that service.



In recent times, however, her mom had reproached her regularly for not trading in her car, especially with that generous salary she was now earning. But something in her said to drive it until the fuel injector could no longer breathe life into it, until the engine's heartbeat was finally gone, until the last axel atrophied due to the rust underneath, but she had held onto it, mainly out of sentimental value. It was becoming increasingly difficult not to want something nice, especially when one of the partners in her law firm drove a luxury European car. Like most things in her life, she did not dwell on not having what others had. She made do and that was enough, in her mind. Besides, not having a car payment extricated her finances so that she could have a nice domicile and retain some extra money as well. She was one of those people who would gladly sacrifice driving something nice and put the money toward living somewhere she liked. She rationalized that unless she were planning on living in her car, she only needed something that would get her from point ‘a' to ‘b.' It also did not hurt that she listened to a financial advisor echo those same sentiments.



The closer she got to her hotel, the likelihood the chance of rain increased. The sky was darkening rapidly, and she started to break into a stride reminiscent of her morning runs earlier in the week. One thing she was happy about regarding her wardrobe was that she was wearing her new green and white running shoes. She tended to buy two pairs of running shoes she liked, one for running and one for walking. It was far easier to keep the shoes she wore for casual purposes closer to pristine than it was to constantly try to clean up the shoes that she happened to step into a mud puddle while running in the early morning when the light is not the best for seeing everything that could possibly be on the path in front of her. Puddles, dog waste, which was always the worst, gum, random oil slicks as a result of cutting through parking lots, and mud. Those were the main hazards for your shoes. She thought she should make time for a run sometime during her visit, but this would have to do. She could see the hotel, with its signage light on now that the sky was dark enough about a half-mile away. She maintained her pace until she reached the parking lot and then resumed a normal walking pace.



Stepping through the automatic front doors, a bit out of breath, she was glad she had arrived before a drop of rain could touch her. Taking the steps up to the second floor, she almost tripped on one, but recovered in time to prevent any injury. There was no time for that, she thought. Better be more careful, Jill, she thought. No need to see my mom while a patient at the hospital.



Walking down the narrow hall, its dark blue and light purplish carpet with diamond patterns produced a hypnotic effect on anyone who dared look for too long a time. She kept her eyes focused straight ahead and walked to her room door. Taking the flat plastic keycard from her pocket, she slid it down the card reader. A red light was the only response she got from it. She slid it again. Red. Again. Red. Okay, she thought, this should not be that much trouble. Instead of sliding it down, she tried sliding it up and, to her surprise, the light blinked green and there was a clicking sound. She opened the door.



Her room was clean and she thought it smelled as if the attendants had sprayed some kind of perfume in it. It was better that the smell at Malzone's, for the most part. Walking to the bathroom sink, she ran some warm water and washed off her face and hands. Sliding off her shoes, she walked toward the hand towel and dried off. Exiting the bathroom, she walked to the window looking west from where she had come. The sky was not quite as dark as night, but there was definitely something looming in those clouds and she was elated to know that she was safe from anything that might, or would, pour out of them.



She turned on a lamp. Click, click. It was too bright, even with the shade on, so she the lamp off completely. She turned the switch just once this time for the bulb's lowest brightness so that she could read a brochure on the table in the room. She took it and walked in front of the window again, heading to her bed. She lay down, more than ready for a nice, long nap. The kind best taken on overcast days, where you feel as if you could sleep forever. She gave the brochure a cursory examination, then discarded it. Resting her head on one of the pillows, she looked up at the ceiling.



What a day it had been already. Don Wallace, Sally Rae Dalbo. Thinking of them brought back memories. These people's lives never changed. They would probably still be here in spirit form even after their corporal shells had exhausted themselves. She was thankful that she had the opportunity to attend college, thanks in large part to her dad allocating monies when she was younger just for such a purpose, and her mom's willingness to sometimes work two jobs to bring in more money when things looked bleak. A long time ago she realized that she was meant to help people and determined to take her skills and personality and values and throw the mixture of them together into the law profession. She had been acutely aware of the slick-talking, glad-handing, lawyer stereotype and refused to capitulate to it. If the world needed remaking, and she believed it did, she would have a hand as a chief architect in that grand design. She remembered her ex-fiancé poking fun at her, what he claimed, obsession with justice to the point of becoming, as he put it so eloquently, as much of a tyrant as those whom she opposed. There were periods where she would grant him his points, but there were also times when his criticisms were simply annoying, and simply not true. She challenged him on many of his arguments, and while the battle of wills usually agreed to a truce, she could not help but think, now that it was over, that it was a relationship destined to fail. But thank goodness that she was not in Sally Rae's shoes.



She closed her eyes. The images of all she had done and seen from earlier in the day passed through her vision and she was on the verge of sleep. Seemingly out of nowhere, a tornado siren blared away, causing her eyes to open wide. The decibel level must have been near a hundred, the siren's motor and fan working overtime to produce sounds that would warn anyone within the town. Postponing sleep, she got up to once again look out of the large window. The wind had increased its velocity even more and she could see paper and other small trash items blowing around down below. A family was rushing to get out of their car and into the building, the man holding the passenger's door open for his wife, their young daughter waving quickly to them both to get moving. An older man, whose back was turned to her, was fighting to even get to the front doors of the hotel, his white hair swirling wildly about him. It was a comic scene, she thought, but felt sorry for those caught out in the storm.



She turned on the television for the weather update. Someone must have sighted a twister in a neighboring town. Jill decided that she was safe in this place and that there was not much she could do right now anyway. Besides, surely someone from the hotel staff would alert its patrons in the event that they would need to seek shelter elsewhere. She decided to return to the queen-sized bed, with its outdated patterned bedspread and relax.