This is for PhoenixBishop's contest here. The bold words are a part of the contest and this image had to be included...but that's in the second half. So...yeah.
Part Two can be found here.
Pretty please tear this apart!
Sampson P. Harrison was very possibly the most average of average men.
At twenty-three, he stood just below six feet, his hair was a lackluster shade of brown, and his eyes, although a darling green, were often lost beneath a ridge of thick black eyebrows that touched in the middle like the arched wings of birds. And in almost any case, the thicket above his eyes was less of an exotic trait and more of a physical blunder.
His personality was as equally devoid of interest as his appearance. His mother, charming, sweet, and as maternal as any mother could be, had always thought it concerning that her boy was so shy. And she had been even more concerned when, at seventeen, he still hadn’t shown an interest in women. She had been rather relieved, however, when he had reassured her that he was not, in the least, interested in men.
He just wasn’t interested, nor was he interesting.
For the last three years, he’d stood behind the counter of a slowly dilapidating convenience store, wielding a price gun and sweating bullets under the Florida heat. Over time, he had become a great acquaintance with Mrs. Sorenson, a humpbacked widow with dysadaption who visited regularly for cat food. Yet in all of her visits, Sampson had not once observed cat hair on her crocheted sweaters or smelled the faint tinge of feline on her when she would waddle by. And even though he was quite certain that Mrs. Sorenson was without any sort of kitten companions, he had never questioned her purchases.
Outside, parked beneath a batch of Leitneria trees, sat his ten year old, dark blue Renault. It had, at one time, been a shining example of automotive affordability. But after the passenger door had been lost to the ravages of a over-modified Ford pickup and the door of a sable, slightly older Renault had taken it's place, his car suddenly seemed almost too interesting for him to possess.
Sampson watched the clock impatiently. His shift was supposed to have ended twenty minutes ago but Jennifer, the waif of a girl who was supposed to replace him, still hadn’t shown up. Not that it mattered much. The store was empty aside from the trio of teenagers who had gathered near the slushie machine, whispering to one another. If it hadn’t been for the sun beating down on him through the store window, swelled to the brim with schadenfreude, he wouldn’t have cared less whether Jennifer ever showed up.
One of them wandered off out of sight for a moment and returned, his arms garnished with a dozen (at least) plastic-wrapped snack cakes. The other two, catching sight of him, grabbed up their frost-coated plastic cups and sluggishly dragged themselves down the candy aisle towards him.
Before the boys even made it to the counter, the back “Employees Only” door flew open and a dash of pink ran up behind the counter.
“Hey there, Sammy,” Jennifer chimed, throwing her red apron on over her pink dreadlocks. He had always recognized that in an awkward way, she was rather pretty. She had big dark eyelashes hiding her blue eyes and small, bright red lips. If it weren’t for the half-dozen pieces of metal that decorated her thin, over-plucked brows and the mask of exotic henna tattoos running in a cheetah print down her left cheek, she would have been just on the verge of gorgeous.
“Hey, Jen,” he answered back, stepping away from the register. The day had been dragging and Sampson didn’t hesitate to jerk his own apron off over the top of his head. Jennifer quickly rang up the boys and snapped away a twenty from the tallest of the three with an erinaceous head of sandy blond hair spiked into thin points. His sunglasses were too big for his face and seemed a sniffle away from slipping off of his nose.
Jennifer must have known them from somewhere and they chackled back and forth while Sampson counted the register. It was mind-numbingly monotonous work and he enjoyed it.
Once the boys had left, Jennifer glanced back to see if Sampson was still there. “How’s everything been?” she asked, her attention focused on the small magnetic mirror that had been clipped onto the back of a rack of gum. She grabbed her hair up off of her neck and whisked it back into a bright orange scrunchie.
“It’s been slow,” he answered under her sharp eyes. “There’s really nothing to report.”
“Thank goodness. I’ve got plans tonight so I’m hoping to get out of here soon.” She fiddled with the chunk of chlorine embolite around her neck. The tangerine-colored lump of mineral seemed ready to crumble off of its chain at any moment but she hardly noticed, drifting off into a momentary daze. “What about you? Any plans for the evening, Sammy?”
He shook his head.
“Oh come on. There must be something going on?” Jennifer hopped up onto the counter and crossed one long leg over the other.
“Nope.” Sampson had the same plans for every evening; Cheerios and sitcoms. If he was feeling particularly adventurous, he would possibly stop by the local video store and consider renting a comedy. But tonight, it would just be Seinfeld reruns.
Jennifer’s lips fell from her usual smile and he could tell that she was ready to flite him. “You know, it really can’t be healthy the way you live. You’re here every day and then you go home to do nothing except wait to come back here in the morning. You’re the inflicter of your own misery, Sam.”
Sampson wasn’t sure how to react. Part of him knew that she was right but a bigger part of him was shocked that she cared. Her gaze was severe and he understood that she didn’t want to let him look away. But he couldn’t handle the weight in her sad eyes and without a word, he dropped his apron onto the back counter and walked outside.
The sun was still growling at him, big and hungry. It didn’t help that the shadow had shifted since he had first come to work and his Renault sat in the heat, the paint slowly seeming to fade out of sight in front of him.
Sampson hopped into the car and stared at the dashboard, too irritated to ignite the beast.
“She has no right to talk to me like that. What does she know about living?” he grumbled at the radio dials. “She’s seventeen. She doesn’t know anything.” He popped the key into the ignition and the Renault purred to life. “I’ll show her.”
