“I was not offended that JJ didn’t use my starter sentence.”
I said this aloud although there was no one in the room but the cat to hear my declaration.
Well, that was not entirely true. A character was there, ill-defined though he or she was, but with a need to respond.
“So what was chosen?” the character asked.
“3.. 2.. 1..” I said.
“What the hell kind of starter sentence is that?” they quickly shot back, brushing back a wave of bangs from their dampened forehead. They were agitated. I could see that. Hmm … maybe I didn’t so much see it as imagine it. But agitation was certainly in the air and it was clearly evident in his manner.
“3.. 2.. 1..” he muttered, his gender established. “That’s not a sentence. It’s not even the beginning of one. In my opinion.” As he spoke, he lifted a chilled martini (old school – gin and vermouth, no pansy fruit flavours). “I see problems with it.”
I sipped my almost cold tea, glanced over at the snoozing cat, sighed and said, “Listen, don’t be an ass. We have a few free moments finally. We can throw some shit together, can’t we?”
“Can we?” he replied. He gave me a look that not only communicated doubt, it communicated downright lack of confidence. It held belittling amusement. It was a look of scorn.
I scowled. I didn’t like the guy’s James Dean-like look (that hair!). I had never liked James Dean anyway and resented the fact I’d sat through those movies of histrionic rubbish because he was suppose to be the great young actor “lost too soon!”
“Yes,” I answered firmly. “We can. We can toss something together.” I was wishing my tea wasn’t so cold and so non-alcoholic. I envied him the martini. Though I sensed it was inappropriate for a James Dean look-alike.
The cat was indifferent. She kept sleeping.
“3.. 2.. 1..” he murmured. “So what’s this going to be? A story about a rocket ship? Kids playing hide-and-seek? Blowing up shit with mid-50’s film noir dynamite? And what’s with the two dots? What the hell kind of ellipsis is that? There should be three dots. I’m pretty sure of that. What’s the business of two? I don’t think we can work with that.”
“I can work with that!” I shouted. “Who cares what you can work with? You’re not real. You scarcely even exist! I just threw in some horseshit about your hair and James Dean and a martini because I couldn’t think of anything else. You’re barely here!”
Strangely, he suddenly had a lit cigarette dangling from his lips as he once again brushed his hair back.
“So,” he began, “I hardly exist. In that case, I can leave.”
“Yes!” I bellowed back. “You can leave!”
He shrugged – Marlon Brando style, which was a bit confusing. But in an odd way, it was appropriate.
He left.
And I was without a story. All I had were three numbers, sequential though in reverse, and an unsettling sense I had wasted everyone’s time, including my own.
And the tea was still cold. And the cat still slept.
Yet outside, in the street, a gunshot rang out and when I looked through the slats of the Venetian blinds of the window over the swamp green couch, in the street I saw the sprawled body of a young man who looked remarkably like James Dean.
It occurred to me that maybe there had been a story here but I had failed to find it.
I thought, “If only the starter sentence had been ‘1 … 2 … 3 …’”
(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #37.)