Remy

Misty · 2006-03-31T05:22:11Z

Remy By: Misty Lynn Ellingburg (2/13/06) 1 I first met Remy at the Tinseltown movie theatre in upstate New York. I had been OTR for two weeks, long since run out of money and felt intense hunger like a beast inside of me. Since Tinseltown was one of my fave hangouts before I ran off, I knew the entrances back and front, and there happened to be one fire exit in movie theatre 4 that wouldn’t lock from the outside. So I would sneak in, get extra large popcorns and pops from the garbage, and use the free refill system to eat. I was hanging out around the bathroom just before the end of some crap slasher flick, waiting for the massive crowd to come out so I could make sure I grabbed the garbage after a hot girl dumped it instead of an old fat geezer, when I saw Remy. She was walking down the isle, gazing at posters half-heartedly and sipping on a soda. Extra large, too. But she was kind of like, slim, so you wouldn’t figure her for an extra large girl. Every once in awhile she would see a poster that really pleased her, then she’d cock her head to one side and smile all huge, and I started to really like that smile. I sat down on the little bench and was happy to just watch her walk around. She would flip her hair every once in awhile, or scratch her neck like she didn’t know she was being watched. Just as she walked past, I cleared my throat. It was an accident. I hadn’t actually meant to call all that attention to myself. She stopped dead in her tracks, looked at me, then smiled this big old grin like I was an old pal from pre-school or something. “Hi!” she said brightly. “Oh, uh, hey,” I responded automatically. “Does the movie suck?” “Huh?” “The movie you want to see. Does it suck? Because otherwise why are you wasting your money just sitting around out here instead of sitting around in there? Or maybe has it not started yet? So that’s why you’re here? Anyway I’m Remy!” she pronounced it Reemy and stuck out her hand. I took it and shook it, dumbfounded. “So, does it then?” “Huh?” “The movie? Does it suck?” “Oh, no, it hasn’t started yet,” I lied, cocking my head just slightly and clearing my throat. She sat down next to me, crossed her legs exuberantly and asked, in a sing-song voice, “Which one are you seeing?” “Huh? Oh, uh…” I looked around at the movie titles. “I was just gonna see that, uh, that…” “The slasher flick? Don’t tell me you were going to see the slasher flick. Like, how totally cheesy are those? You can completely tell that the blood is fake.” “Actually, a lot of them aren’t fake, you know. Snuff films are getting popular too. I don’t know how they get away with murdering those people, though, Unless they’re enemies of the country or something.” I think that was the most I had ever said at one time. And she was a total stranger. “Oh God, I know,” she giggled, then turned suddenly serious. “I think it’s horrible. Ultra horrible, where the country is going. Where the world is going really. Like, did you know a hundred years ago killing was illegal? Except for government, but they couldn’t show that in a theatre, though.” “Uh huh,” I replied. My stomach chose just that instant to growl ferociously, like a scary animal in the wilderness. I flinched. “Eat much?” she asked with a laugh. “Ah, no. OTR.” “On the run? For reals? Who. Meg who. Why for?” “Uh…stuff…you know…just…” “Oh I got it. I’m being meg personal. I’ll stop. Hah. So yeah, why don’t we filch an extra large out of the garbage when the slasher flick gets out and capitalize off the free refill policy?” “You do that too?” She held up her beverage to me. “Where else would I get $6.75? I mean I have a crappy job down at the mini-mart Restaurant Extravaganza but I’m not about to spend my sweat and blood on a soda, you know? ‘specially when you can get one for freakin’ free if you play your cards right.” She laughed again. She had an amazing laugh. “Remy?” I said questioningly. “That’s me!” “Do you always talk to random strangers?” “No, not always. But yes, most of the time.” She laughed. “Why do you ask?” “Just checking.” “Yeah it’s a great thing to do if you’re bored or alone. You can make some awesome friends not to mention I’ve got shit else to do. My friends-the real friends you know from school and work and whatnot-they all think I’m crazy, but there you go!” “Oh.” There was a rather awkward pause, then I said, “Hey look the movie’s ending.” There was a massive tide of bodies and Remy and I stood up to catch a bucket. After the tide thinned, Remy plunged out, holding a popcorn bucket. “Man we were all over that!” she exclaimed, holding it up. “Let’s get some dinner and spit dude. I’ve got plans tonight and you’re welcome to tag along.” We went to the popcorn stand, and Remy worked the charm while I watched, then, eating the popcorn, we made for the escalators. 2 The escalators are meg scary if you haven’t been on them before. They’re pretty much the way the general public gets form one location to another. Basically you pay your quarter to the attendant at the main gate and get on a stair them shoom! You’re going a hundred miles an hour and holding on for dear life. Six seconds later you’ll be at the next stop, pay a quarter, get on, shoom! And so on. Gets you across town, across the state, across the country basically for the price of a handful of quarters. More efficient than cars, which ate the ozone, except for short journeys in which case you have to take the trolley. Apparently Remy and I weren’t going on a short journey. “Hey, you know what?” she told me, getting off of the third escalator and paying a quarter for both of us. “I don’t know your name!” “Oh. It’s Jordan.” “Great to meet you, Jordan. Meg great,” she extended her hand again, so I shook it again as I smiled. Remy was oddball. I noticed that at the beginning. But it wasn’t just the way she talked and acted that was oddball. Her clothes were oddball too. Like, meg different. Most girls I knew wore like, these environment friendly get-ups that were supposedly re-usable like made of plastic. So they’d be wearing either these super durable shiny plastic get-ups or else stuff made of special cloth, always special-tailored in the specific style girls wear these days. But Remy’s clothes were different. She had on something I thought were called jeans, just meg mutilated. And over it she had on a mini-dress made of gray cloth, that buttoned over the top half with big black buttons. Her shoes were like ballerina slippers and also gray. Her hair wasn’t shortish and parted in the middle like every other girl I knew, either. It was quite long, wavy and parted to the side, with a small gray hair bow pinned at one side. She saw me looking at her and smiled. “Like the get-up?” “It’s spiff.” “If by spiff you mean weird, then yeah, it’s spiff. Way spiff. Oddball too, but we won’t go there.” I laughed and clutched onto my backpack as we got onto another escalator. I thought I could probably look at Remy all day for infinity, she was so interesting, Pretty, but interesting. I had a feeling she was analyzing me too, so we would just stand there in silence analyzing each other. She had arched eyebrows. Somehow she made then grow that way. I thought that was different but also really sexy. Most girls I knew had kind of bushy eyebrows. Her eyes were gray like her cloth dress and hair bow and ballet shoes, really pretty gray. Her nose was sort of smallish and on the pretty side, her lips were big but not meg huge. They were pink. Not like lip-glossy pink, but sort of rose-petal pink. It was a nice pink. She had very smooth, very pale skin. I thought she was beautiful. “Off we go,” she said in that melodic voice, and we stepped off of the escalator. Instead of getting onto the next one we ducked over and under the rest of the escalators into a free-zone. We were at the Shoddies. The Shoddies, yeah, it wasn’t such a hot neighborhood. Basically it was row after row of box shoddy, for miles on end. The poor-ish people (being the majority) lived in shoddies. They were basically four thick plastic walls and an even thicker, flat roof. Environment friendly, too, everyone liked to add. Except that shoddies were usually freezing cold unless you were meg rich and could afford to buy a thermal heater. I didn’t come from the Shoddies. I actually came from the only place worse. But we won’t even go there right now. Anyway after two weeks OTR, a nice, friendly little shoddy seemed like a version of heaven to me. That is, if it had a thermal heater. And some cozy blankets to cuddle up in, preferably next to Remy… “Comin’ or not, Jordan?” “I’m coming,” I said, following her like an obedient puppy god. I was still snacking on the popcorn, just at the bottom of the bucket, and I would occasionally take a sip of her pop. “So you live in the Shoddies?” I asked. “Yeah, and don’t even diss on my spot,” she answered. “I’m not, it’s ultra meg.” She scoffed, now looking almost offended. “No, for real Remy, it’s spiff compared to my world. Arctic to the tenth degree.” She looked back at me and smiled. “I like when you say my name. How you say it, it’s nice.” “Uh…thanks.” “Hustle up, Charm Man, or we’ll be late.” The shoddy huts are plastic, unmovable, all ground into the cement base. The base goes for miles and miles, so basically there’s dirty cement and plastic and garbage strewn wherever. The sewage system under the cement is always threatening to burst in the Shoddies, and the Gov won’t take care of it because shoddy-dwellers can’t pay, so in some of the bad parts, the Shoddies don’t smell so hot. This was one of those parts. We kept on going until we got to the central part of the Shoddies, where there were trolleys and the like, then hopped on in the back because Remy said she was out of quarters-in other words, we couldn’t pay. “So where do you come from. Mr. Gorgeous Eyes?” Remy wanted to know. Then she blushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. That must’ve sounded ultra unarctic. You are just basically the cutest guy I’ve ever picked up so I’ve gotta keep tabs on you before you get scared and run away.” I wondered if she was making fun of me. Because I’m meg ugly, for real. She must have been deluded or something because I know for a fact. Unarctic to the tenth degree, that’s me. The opposite of Remy, who’s so cool she’s polar. “I’m fine. I come from the Dranges.” Her jaw dropped. “Oi. No wonder you are OTR, on the down loooow,” she accentuated certain words and I didn’t quite understand why but I liked the way she did. She was still frowning though. “Shoddies equal Bad. Dranges equal Worst Possible Case Scenario.” “I know. OTR. Down low…” I repeated like an idiot. “Which gang?” she asked, leaning in close to me in a conspiring manner. “Let me see your tat.” “Nah,” I replied. I didn’t want to admit I’d been adopted into the big-time gang, and I was OTR because I couldn’t stand it anymore. For two reasons. One being that the gang was so freakin’ scary she’d split meg quick. Two because I am a coward and I ran away. “Come on, let’s see the tat,” she took my hand and was about to roll down my sleeve to see the tat on my wrist. All the gangs in the Dranges tattoo their people on the left hand wrist. My tattoo was of a spider. A creepy spider that almost looked like it was crawling into my palm. “Forget it,” I said. Remy backed right off. I immediately missed the warm touch of her hand on mine. It gave me shivers and hella crazy goosebumps. “Here we are, hop off,” Remy said, which was difficult but doable. I hopped off the trolley and we went down a couple of streets. I heard vague music in the distance and thought I saw… “Are those strobe lights?” Remy gave me a sheepish smile. “No. No way. No way in hell.” “What a strange expression. Hell, I mean. You can go there by bus or trolley, they say. Straight down into the pit. Wonder why they haven’t made an escalator to heaven yet. Yes way, we’re going. It’s just a shod bash. I go all the time they’re great.” A shod bash. They’re great. As if. “I will get gang raped,” I told her casually. Everyone knows what happens when you try to get into a shod bash. They’re the hugest parties in like, ever. They take up three streets of shoddies. We were a couple of streets away and I was really protesting. “Come on, Jordan, don’t be retarded. I know these guys. It’ll be fun.” I don’t know why I agreed. But I did,

I think I disagree with Griffinkeeper about the use of slang without explaining it. Tons of science fiction novels do that. It's the future, so obviously they're not going to speak in exactly the same way we do now. The reader does figure it out eventually. However, a lot of their slang doesn’t sound all that futuristic…Bobo said something about it seeming more like 80’s than futuristic…“it wasn’t such a hot neighborhood.”

felt intense hunger like a beast inside of me

The whole “like a beast” thing seems sort of awkward. I don’t really recommend using a lot of figurative language with this voice because it seems out of place.

Tinseltown was one of my fave hangouts before I ran off

I don’t really think the word “fave” will ever catch on.

I grabbed the garbage after a hot girl dumped it instead of an old fat geezer

This is slang that they probably won’t still be using in the future.

She was walking down the isle

As I believe someone said before me, aisle.

She stopped dead in her tracks

I don’t think you need the “dead in her tracks” here.

We went to the popcorn stand, and Remy worked the charm while I watched, then, eating the popcorn, we made for the escalators.

I think this would work better as two sentences: “We went to the popcorn stand, and Remy worked the charm while I watched. Then, eating the popcorn, we made for the escalators.”

Basically you pay your quarter to the attendant at the main gate

I don’t know how far into the future this is, but I think it would cost more than a quarter, because money ends up being worth less and less over time…Like, you know how old people talk about how in the fifties you could get a coke for five cents or something? So I think in the future everything will cost more.

It gave me shivers and hella crazy goosebumps.

They’re still using hella? And they’re not even in norcal?

I agree with most of the stuff Poor Imp said. I disagree with Griffinkeepr saying “I want to actually be told the story as if it is from a master storyteller, not from a messenger or cell phone.” I like the voice and I think there are lots of different good ways that people can tell a story.

Also, I think realistic dialogue is a good thing.

All in all, as I said earlier, I like it and I hope you post more. The characters are interesting and I think the gang thing will be interesting.

Is Remy the title? Or have you not thought of a title yet?

Edit:

Writing from the first person is hard enough without trying to write it from the viewpoint of the opposite gender.

I disagree with this. People write about protagonists who have a different age, personality, level of intelligence, background, etc., so I don't see what the big deal is with gender.

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