The four main characters are "very" loosely based of the characteristics of the 4 animals themselves. (For example, I made the “hound” Avery hairy with scars, I gave the “rooster” Richard red hair, I tried to make Misty’s movements cat-like (jerking or twitching something when she’s annoyed, like a cat lashes a tail), and I made the "donkey" Maurice big, steady, strong and dark.) The point of non-fiction is not to have a conclusive story, but to craft dialogue and descriptions to paint as 3-D a picture of characters as possible without technically getting inside their heads or giving any actual details about their life and story. Leaving the picture as fragmented as when you arrived. (Basically, you restrict yourself with as many rules as possible and see what you can still write.)
Anyways, not my favorite actual story (since like all good modern pieces, the ending doesn't make any sense and I feel vaguely depressed after reading it), but probably the most technically brilliant I have ever written according to modern fiction genre guidelines. And, considering that it cost considerable brain power and several hundred hours of solid slaving, it's worth sticking up here.
“I Don’t Owe Them Nuthin”
Maurice shuffled his feet and bent behind a newspaper, the headlines “Georgia State Senate Judge Dodder Removed from Practice” helping his white beard to obscure his dark, wrinkled face. Grime seeped out of the corners of the eerily silent bus station, determinedly avoiding the broom of a reluctant, pimple faced teenage janitor. The broom itself moved so slowly that the dirt slid right underneath the bent bristles, clotting together in the soaking humidity of July.
The station was mostly empty at this time of morning. Besides the janitor, only five occupants idled about the station. A thin old woman with heavily bleached hair and painted on eyebrows scowled at everyone as she sat primly on her seat and ate an overripe, worn apple. Leaning against the far wall by the ticket booth was a short, muscular old man with long scars etched across his face, disappearing in the mass of grey hair that peeped out of his open cotton shirt. A plump figure enveloped in an expensive black overcoat huddled in the opposite corner to everyone in the room. The only thing that could be seen peeping out of his coat was a sweaty ticket to Harlem, shoved out of the huddle in his hand so that it could plainly be seen by the watchman who circled the station, seeming to hope that the occupants would lose their tickets so that he could have a chance to send them back to the humidity.
Maurice peered carefully around the paper again, measuring the people in the station, his eyes straying often to the scarred man in the corner. The teenager shoved his dustpan into the corner and slowly removed the lid from the garbage can to empty it. Old cheeseburgers, sour orange juice bottles, cigarette butts and day old abandoned coffees released their scents into the air, seemingly determined for one last bout of recognition.
“Attention all passengers expecting bus #568, there’s been a hold-up and she’s expected to be about an hour late,” the bored ticket agent yawned, “We apologize and hope to resume normal schedule short-,” she didn’t bother with the last syllable but switched the mike off, returning to her novel.
The scarred man had frozen as she spoke, absently flipping a switchblade open and closed. A soft growl slipped from his thin lips and he flipped his cigarette from his lips to the floor, grinding the warm end deliberately into the cool cement. “I sure wish they’d hurry up, we don’t have all day.”
The thin woman sniffed and at glared at him, “I’m sure the bus driver is a man. A woman sure wouldn’t be late.”
“Mistletoe-“
“Misty,” she corrected angrily, crossing her fishnet clad legs.
“Whatever, I’ve ain’t never seen a woman do nuthin’ on time.”
“There ain’t never a good time for nuthin’,” she smirked.
“Please, please, can we be inconspicuous?” The black lump in the corner stood quickly and moved over to them. “Please? At least until we get out of the city?” the fat man nervously swiped his face with a once-crisp, white handkerchief and smoothed the bits of fading red hair that clung to his scalp. Glancing at the headlines obscuring Maurice’s face, he swore and snatched the newspaper, ripping off the front page and handing the rest back.
Maurice took the rest of the newspaper back slowly, taking care not to not move his back from it’s rest on the seat, “Could you sit down? You’re giving us all attention now.” Outside a steady wave of voices and the scent of fresh coffee and glazed doughnuts approached; spilling into corners of the different bus stations. The four future passengers in the station moved together into a far corner, avoiding the flow of people trickling into the station.
The fat man looked nervous, “Are you sure this is a good idea Maurice? I mean, won’t everyone follow us to Harlem? What if someone sees us there?”
Misty snorted, “Unlike you, the rest of us ain’t wanted enough to be followed. We’re all too old and stupid.”
The scarred man slid his knife back out his pocket again and began restlessly flipping it open and closed, “Speak for yourself. I think most people would rather see me with a knife in my back. Eh Maurice?”
Maurice shrugged, re-focusing on the two leaning across him to whisper underneath the ears of the station. “If I was mute it wouldn’t matter. I usually know too much. What does it matter anyway? We’re all running from our own devils, aren’t we?”
The scarred man shifted on the metal bench, massaging his bent leg absently. “Question is, is we running from the devils or is we the devils running away from them?”
“Devils are useful,” observed Misty, “and our problem is we ain’t. I’m not saying we ain’t devils, but the devils that we is ain’t even worth running.”
“I sure as hell am,” scowled the scarred man. “I didn’t spend my life making it better for it to be worth nuthin’.”
“Well if it’s worth so much, what’ve you got to show for it? One busted leg and its a ‘goodbye Captain, you’re ain’t enough of a devil anymore, go find your own hell or we’ll send you to one’. The devils that are worth something are all hung full of money and power, it’s us that are the skin and bone devils, not even good enough for a real meal.”
“Oh no, I must beg to disagree. Money and power do not indeed make you infallible. Oh no indeed, whatever it is cannot be chalked up to money and power. Money falls into holes and power is quickly bored when it’s stuck with one person. It only stays as long as that person is strong enough to feed it,” the fat man squashed the news paper fiercely in his hands and began absently shredding the corner.
“Amen to that,” muttered the scarred man, “Man’s got to fight every inch of the way just to keep a bed under his head.” He spoke absently, his narrowed eyes occupied with scrutinizing every person entering the station. Occasionally he tensed, leaning back into the corner as he studied a face an extra moment, before training his eyes on the next passenger, his fingers absently opening and closing a worn switchblade.
Misty narrowed her beady eyes, “So Avery, you like all egotistical males feel that woman cannot be found in power, it’s only the men that’re worth mentioning.”
Avery snapped his knife closed, looked annoyed. “Now you’re just putting words in my mouth, I don’t hold with that at all. Not at all. I’ve known plenty of women who were a sight more powerful than men.”
Much to Maurice’s relief, the words hissing across his chest finally lapsed into a moody silence, leaving him free to brood quickly, trying to review everything he wanted to have a good think about before it was too late. Before soft drops of lead made a meal of his flesh.
“What’re you so darn shut tight about?” Avery’s abrupt question yanked Maurice’s senses back to the present. He shifted in his seat, trying to re-direct his stagnant blood flow back through his body. Glancing around, he noticed to his surprise that another bus was there, filling with lumps of flesh; lumps of flesh that didn’t think, just breathed.
“Brooding”
“Why?”
Maurice shrugged, “I have a theory about brooding. If everything in a person’s life goes through at least one good brooding, he knows what’s happened in his life. Lots of people say that they wished they’d lived their life differently, but they don’t know how. I think that if there is one person in this world that any man has the right to know properly, it’s himself. I figure if I keep my life regularly brooded over, I’ll know it well enough to know if I’ve lived or not.”
“Well said,” remarked the fat man. “But what if you don’t like what you see?”
“I don’t know what you see matters so much as being able to see, if I were blind-”
“I think all that’s a pile of manish thinkcrap,” Misty interrupted, twitching her skirt angrily, “a woman’s got as much right to know her life as a man does. Why is it only the men that’s ever talked about? What’s all this “he” business? Where’s the “she”?”
Avery rolled his eyes, “You were poorly named in that dove shop. Your tongue’s about the least misty I ever did hear.”
Misty twisted her lips in a snarl, then snapped them firmly into a tight line as a long, silver bus pulled into the station. Heads, bent over newspapers discussing war overseas and glossy magazines discussing wars of appetites, snapped upward in unison to check the number englossed on the bus front against the numbers on their tickets. Some heads dropped back to their reading, while others hastily gathered bags together, wiped crumbs from their sleeves and discarded breakfast remnants under dusty benches.
Maurice carefully picked up his plain black suitcase and battered saxophone case, pausing to gasp in pain as his back spasmed. Misty gathered her flowered bundles tighter and the fat man busied himself with carefully dusting off his small briefcase, both pretending not to watch Maurice’s weakness. Straightening, Maurice took a deep breath, wrinkling his nose in regret at the sour, old smells that leaked filled his mouth, before leading them slowly to the bus. Avery hastily stuffed the knife into his pocket while eyeing the watchman across the room, grabbed a battered duffel bag and limped after the others towards the bus.
He paused by the entry to watch the passengers, scaring most of them his intense stares and fist clutching a bulging object in his pocket. When the last passenger had boarded, he stepped on to the bottom bus step, pausing behind a skinny, flowered back that swayed slightly as a claw-like hand searched a purse for a ticket. Avery tapped his good foot impatiently, trying his toe trying to squash the ants that ran in a line in front of him carrying away an old peanut butter sandwich. Finally reaching the shriveled driver, he shoved his ticket close to the bespectacled nose.
“You’re going all the way to Harlem too?” The bus driver seemed surprised, “There’s a whole bunch of people on here going there. Not sure why. Is there a convention or something?” His question was innocent and polite, as he slowly marked Avery’s ticket. But Avery flinched, as though someone had threatened to throw something at his face.
“I don’t know,” his voice trailed off and he stared at the ticket for a moment, “but I hear it’s a nice place. There’re different people up there.” The bus driver didn’t seem to hear what Avery said, but nodded placidly as he returned the ticket and closed the bus doors.
The sun seemed to pour sweat from its long beams of light as it followed the snarling sea of cars that crept through Atlanta. Speedometer needles sporadically leapt to 80 and crawled back down to 10 as the flow of commuters craned to see what smashed humanity crowded their roads this morning, then shoved gas pedals to make up for lost time.
Maurice glanced at his companions. A visible relaxation had swept through the group once the doors had closed, but cords of tension still wound through them and stood out in blood veins and nervously curling fingers.
The fat man nervously glanced around the bus, then moaned and leaned back. “More people have that foolish paper; everyone will know who I am!”
Avery looked at him in disgust, “Rich, you ain’t stopped whining about that since we all met. Would you just shut up and relax? You ain’t in court no more and no one cares. The only ones lookin’ for you are in your head.”
Richard looked affronted, but somewhat relieved by Avery’s opinion. Then he winced and wrinkled his nose, “When was the most recent time you have bathed?”
“What’s the point in bathing?” Avery demanded.
“Well-“
“The purpose of bathing is to make everyone it bothers happy. It don’t bother me, and I surely couldn’t care less about making this stupid world happy. And seeing as they sure as hell don’t want me here, maybe I should remind ‘em I’m still around.”
Richard appealed to Misty, “Does it not bother your feminine sense of smell?”
Misty snorted, “First of all, don’t throw me that feminine crap. It’s men who care about smell, not us. I sure didn’t soak in vats of melted, rotten flowers for my pleasure. And why should it matter anyway? It don’t bother me. My mother never set much store by those scents unless it got her more money, and I don’t neither.”
Maurice suddenly spoke, slowly, “When I was a boy, the smell of blood used to bother me.” Everyone was silent as they stared at their hands. Richard’s were smooth and well cared for, but ink stained his cuticles. Misty’s veins and brown spots contrasted with her bright red fingernails. Avery’s fingers were twisted with long, curving scars. Maurice’s hands were rough, callused.
Finally Avery spoke, “Maybe it used to bother me some to, but it ain’t for a long time now.” His three companions nodded silently.
The bus wove steadily up the east coast, steadily re-circulating the pocketbooks of hundreds of passengers. Avery did not stop snapping his blade open and closed until they had passed through North Carolina and Maurice reminded him that switchblades were illegal in Virginia. They had no trouble keeping their seats; no one would sit anywhere near them. People boarded the bus, threading paths through the aisles of sweaty, mildewed coke and coffee seats. Sneakers clung to the gummed and sticky floor, kicking hamburger wrappers into corners. They did not look at the four old passengers eating stale peanuts near the middle of the bus; they just walked by.
Avery laughed, “You’d think with all those nasty seats someone might find it more pleasant to sit by us.”
Rich had stopped staring nervously at the passengers near the Georgia border. Now he stared longingly, self-consciously trying to smooth wrinkles from his suit with his wrinkled hand when passengers shoved by, looking defeated as each passed without acknowledgement. Near the border of North Carolina, Misty snapped, “Would you stop that almighty fidgeting? No one’s going to look at you. There ain’t anything worth looking at anymore.” Richard jerked his once-manicured hand away from his greasy scalp and shoved it into his lap, looking irritated.
Maurice, who had been watching Misty and Richard from across the aisle leaned over, “Richard, you signed execution warrants and incarcerated people for life. Why aren’t you still hiding?”
Richard stared at the briefcase always clutched in his lap, and then let it slide softly to the dirty, humming floor by his seat. “They always saw me though, they knew who I was.” He barely whispered, but they all heard.
“When we left I thought you didn’t want anyone to know you,” Misty’s voice was almost kind. Richard stared out the bug-smeared window. They had watched the clear glass smear as they passed town, city and state boundaries. Bugs smashed one by one against the glass, their exoskeletons exploding their life juices of browns, grays, yellows, and greens. “I thought I didn’t either,” Richard finally answered.
Halfway through Virginia, after a few hundred browned fields, the passengers noted black clouds of smoke spilling from the bus. Alarmed, they alerted the sleepy driver, who nodded absently and ten miles later lurched the bus abruptly to the right onto the broken road that exited into a small town.
After a thorough examination of the smoldering engine, he peered through thick glasses into the bus and announced in a quavering voice that it would probably not be repaired until at least the next day, and he suggested that they find places to spend the night. Most of the passengers wiped sweating brows, contemplated worn billfolds or empty food supplies, then sullenly reached for cell phones to call awaiting friends or family and complain about the delay.
Rubbing her hip slightly, Misty carefully descended the dirty steps of the bus to the warm, cracked pavement. Flaring her nostrils slightly, she sucked in the air, her chest expanding to hold the Virginia she sucked in, and expelling the stale, foul air from the bus. Her tongue darted around her lips. “It tastes wonderful!” she exclaimed, her lips creasing upwards. Avery, who had stumbled out behind her in time to fill his own lungs with the rich, black smoke rolling from under the engine choked, trying to cleanse the smutty particles from his taste buds. “Yeah,” he coughed, “wonderful.”
Maurice led them all quietly to a tall oak tree on the side of town. After checking the base carefully for fire ant mounds, he declared it safe and they all lay down, since creaking sit bones demanding a horizontal rest. But no matter where they turned, they couldn’t get comfortable. Gnarling roots seemed to grasp spines from all directions, gently twisting rocks into nerves and shoving grass straw down shirts. Maurice’s back spasmed twice and Avery clenched his teeth as a turn onto his side ground a particularly large root into his leg. Sweat dripped slowly, even without physical movement. Misty’s eyebrows ran down her face. Hunger crept up and began singing in their bellies.
Avery stood up restlessly, massaging his twisted leg, “There ain’t a place in this world that’ll let me be easy for minute now is there?”
Richard groaned as he stood and walked in a circle, eyeballing the small town surrounded by hay fields, trying to force his muscles to recall their long-neglected function. “I don’t have any money for a hotel. Ya’ll?”
Misty shrugged, “I’ve never used money to get a room in a hotel.”
Avery glanced at her, “You’re here because you got too old for clients, not because you got bored with the ones you had.”
Misty glared at him, furiously. “And you’re so much better? How just because of a bad fall you couldn’t even keep five poor souls in line?” she snapped.
Avery glared at her angrily, “Keep your shirt on, I only meant that your methods wouldn’t work here. And as for the boys, they weren’t idiots. I just waren’t useful to them anymore.” He pulled his knife from his pocked and began restlessly flipping it open and closed.
“But you was the one that started it,” snapped Misty, her voice losing its steadiness, “They wouldn’t ever have even made a deal if you hadn’t started it. At least someone else started me, I was never in control. But you, you should’ve controlled them, you should’ve. You were the boss! Who do they think they are? Who are any of us? We ain’t useless. We ain’t! They had no right, nobody’s got a right to just kick you out, no right-” She stopped speaking suddenly, her chest heaving.
Into the humid silence Maurice spoke softly, examining a smooth leaf in his hands for holes, “I thought once if I helped the world, it would help me. Like a bank, you know? You deposit your life and then you’re supposed to be able to withdraw.” His fingers found a hold in the corner of the leaf and began pulling, separating the veins on the leaf, letting the shreds sift through his open fingers to the ground, green bits rolling past newborn pink palms to black, calloused fingers. “I guess you can’t trust bankers though, can you?”
Misty watched his leaf, mesmerized. Abruptly, she grabbed her flowered bag, pulling a small bottle and a feathery white shirt from inside. She poured the contents of the bottle on her shirt and began frantically scrubbing her chipped red nails. Maurice’s nostrils tingled as the acetone brushed against his receptor cells. They all stared, mesmerized, as the red paint came off, staining her white shirt, filling it with red. Finally she stopped, staring at her hands, reddened now only by her fierce scrubbing.
Grasshoppers, frogs and crickets were the only sounds filling the dead silence. Finally Richard leaped to his feet. “Hell, what are we doing here? We don’t need people.” Misty emptied her bag unto the ground. She poured out bottles of perfume and smeared her makeup on the grass, viciously; broken bits tumbling past the blades of grass and nestling at their bases with the dirt. When she finished, Avery pulled her to her feet, slowly closing his knife.
“I think there’s one in this town,” he said quietly.
Richard looked surprised, “Are you sure?” Avery nodded.
Richard shook himself, rumpling the strands of hair that clung to his scalp and carelessly creasing his shirt, “Well, I don’t see why it needs to be Harlem.”
Misty smiled, “I like fresh grown tomatoes, straight from the garden. No supermarket in-between.”
They all looked at Maurice. His callused hands shook as he contemplated them slowly, like an old man trying to read a book. Finally he looked up, “I don’t owe them nuthin’.”
They followed Avery to the town. The town wasn’t dirty or clean, just empty with a little clutter. He walked straight through, counting road names, peering through the settling darkness. He wound through the quiet streets, past the tiny town inn and old gas station. The pumps at the station were square with white on black numbers that scrolled up, nothing digital. Two old second-hand stores, loaded to the brim with scarred wooden furniture, patched curtains, musty books and old instruments. The warm air had sunk into the pavement, leaving the air cold. They passed a junkyard, everything neatly organized in piles. Maurice commented, “This town doesn’t kick anything out does it?”
In front of a dimly lit older house on the end of town, Avery stopped abruptly, as if reading a sign. Young weeds grew tall around the sturdy brown, framed building, clutching at the sides, choking the old weeping willow tree. Nodding in satisfaction, Avery silently climbed the clipped green steps to the door and opened his knife. Maurice paused by the base of the willow tree to open his battered saxophone case. Six gleaming pistols nestled in the crushed red velvet. Selecting one, he handed two more to Richard and Misty. They didn’t speak, but nodded.
Avery yanked the whining screen door and kicked the second door inward. Two trim men dressed in identical business slacks and ties looked up, startled, their hands frozen over the piles of white powder on the table.
“Let the blood run,” Avery shouted. The men relaxed at his words, hands quickly returning to their work. The blonde man answered “The blood runs red, what is it?”
“Your blood is gonna run red. Tip-off. State wide.”
The men looked bewildered, then incredulous, “Hey, what’re you smoking old man?” The redhead looked irritated, shoving his dark hand through his slicked back hair, flaking dried gel onto the floor. “We would of heard of it, now why don’t you get-“ The table suddenly jerked as three round holes appeared in the center of the unvarnished wood table, sending powder into the eyes of one man and splinters into the arm of the other.
Maurice stepped into the room, waving a badge, “FBI!” He roared, “Hands down! On the ground!” With a startled squeal, the two men leapt up, throwing a wooden chair at Maurice as they ran out the backdoor. A car door slammed and wheels screeched against the cooling pavement, the sound strange in the peaceful night.
The four stood silently for a moment, looking at the house like someone returned from a long trip. Then Richard quietly walked to the fridge and pulled out salami and cheese. Misty moved to the cupboard and found some cans of pears. Avery swept the white powder into a battered garbage can, coating discarded orange peels and pizza crusts with a fine, new film. Maurice put his old ID badge in his pocket and searched the white, painted cupboards for dishes. Avery reached for a broom to sweep the floor but Richard caught his arm, “Leave it. We don’t have to clean it if we don’t want to.” Avery smiled, put his knife inside a kitchen drawer and closed it with a firm click.
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