Trail Mix Chapter 2: Cranberries

Author's Note: Chapter two of a novel inspired by my Facebook Status. Things are going to get...cranberry-y?

Here's Chapter 1 in case anybody wants to check that out or needs a refresher: https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work/GreenLigh...

Trail Mix Chapter 2: Cranberries 

About two months after I dropped out of college, I was still doing nothing but jerking off and playing tic tac toe...with absolutely no one. Dirty Kleenexes, discarded scraps of lined paper, and the previous day’s laundry had become my closest friends. Luckily for me, they never ever left my apartment. It was like a sleepover every single night. My human, pre-law friends would try to contact me via cell phone but I had deleted most of their numbers. Apparently, none of them actually cared enough to respond to my hour-late text responses of “Hi, who’s this?” The days were starting to run together and every single one went like this: wake up, eat a granola bar, look at the clock, jerk off, go back to sleep, wake up, feel guilty, jerk off again, see if mom called, feel guilty if she didn’t, call her back if she did, feel guilty again, jerk off again, play tic tac toe with nobody, jerk off a third time, have another granola bar, and, finally, turn in for the night. For the past three weeks, though, my Saturday routine had been uproariously disrupted by a little girl and her ridiculous taste in trail mix. Today would be no different.

“Goodness.” I sighed, having lost my third game of tic tac toe in a row to myself “what on Earth does a guy have to do to get a win?” The setting sun outside of my apartment window told me that it was almost time to visit the little flower child. A look at the digital clock on top of Sockpile Three confirmed my fears. Not only had Amy Myers actually gotten me to pick all of the almonds out of her trail mix. She had also managed to convince her mother that $9.00 an hour was too much for her to be paying me to disrupt my masturbation schedule. Sadly, neither my schedule nor my pride was safe from Amy’s monstrous clutches.

The walk to the Myers's fancy-ass apartment building was never one I enjoyed. Even as I pen this pitiful tale I cannot fathom how the walk alone hadn't scared me away from the job. Of course it was always raining 'cause Seattle is like that, of course I always forgot to dig my umbrella out of Sockpile Four, and of course the passersby and their smartphones provided me with their undeniably pretentious background noise. Mom's guilt-inducing accusations of "laziness supreme" and my own desire to feel like a productive human being somehow made the walk tolerable, though. Living just a few blocks away from Amy and her mom's place also helped, even though it served as a constant reminder that the distance between coffee table mints and semen tissues wasn't very large. 

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“Yes, Mrs. Myers,” I grinned, trying my best to hide my true feelings about the job “I’ll make sure she is in bed by eleven o’clock.” Mrs. Myers’ quick response left me with virtually no time to wonder why an eleven-year-old girl had a bedtime later than I did when I was seventeen.

“Great, Mark!” smiled the woman “Please remind me to buy some more trail mix when I get home.

“Sure.” I replied, my eyes burning from the scent of her perfume “Have fun at your...uh, wherever you’re going.”

“Thanks a lot. You kids play nice!” By then, I had given up on being peeved when Mrs. Myers called me a kid. Thinking back on it, she wasn’t wrong to call me that. A kid is exactly what I was: a lazy, unproductive, and unrepentant kid. My only problem was that there was another kid in the apartment who decided she would never let me forget that.

“So, Babysitter,” grinned Amy “are you going to get me my trail mix now or are you going to get me my trail mix now?” My previous screw-up with my pants zipper still loomed over my head like a personal raincloud. Until I redeemed myself, I would have to let Amy think she was in charge.

“Alright, alright” I sighed “I’m on it.” The girl gave me a sarcastic thumbs up and ran off into the living room. When I opened the cupboard, I was greeted by a sight that made me want to fall over and die. The floor was covered with cranberries, strewn across the white tile like little drops of red punch across the surface of a glass of milk. Half as angry as I was surprised, I ran into the living room where Amy was sitting criss-cross-applesauce in front of the blaring, sixty-inch television.

“Excuse me, Ms. Sits-Too-Close. Are you aware that the cupboard floor is just covered in cranberries?” Amy paused the DVR and whipped her head around to look at me. My palms began to sweat and I swallowed a lump in my throat as I prepared myself for her smart-ass remark.

“I’m quite aware of that, Mr. Can’t-Deal-With-Messes. That’s something I threw together earlier. You know what to do, though. Just get out the broom and sweep, sweep, sweep! Then you can give me my trail mix.” The sweet look on Amy’s face as she pointed to the supply closet made me want to come back with the broom and hit her over the head with it. My desperate need for the $9 I might have made convinced me not to.

The supply closet was just like any other I had ever seen: small, cluttered, and cramped with everything readily visible except the one thing I actually needed. How this girl’s mother could maintain her sanity during the week and still get all dolled up on Saturday nights had me puzzled. Equally puzzling was just how well the little girl could snap at me. When I was eleven, the only way I knew how to insult someone was by calling then a “poohead.”

“Hey, poohead!” screeched Amy “I haven’t seen you walk by here with the broom and dustpan yet. My trail mix nerves are growing impatient.” Apparently, she had mastered my childhood insults, too.

“I’m looking for the broom,” I yelled back “Just give me a few.” Before I could continue my search, Amy ran over to the supply closet and pulled a two foot-long broom from under a pile of old newspapers.

“What the hell?” I groaned “Why is you guys’ broom that small and how did you find it that quickly?”

“Well,” laughed Amy with an odd, purple twinkle in her eyes “let’s just say this particular broom and I are really good friends.” I scratched my head in confusion as she thrust the broom into my lap. “Here’s the dustpan too. Now you can go clean the floor and get me my mix.”

“Oh, great” I moaned, hoping my sarcasm would put a crack in that wicked smile of hers “I guess I’ll go do that now.”

As I bent down to start sweeping the cranberries up, I couldn’t help but wonder what I had just seen. I was a hundred percent sure that I had looked under that pile of newspapers to find nothing at all underneath. Did she really just pull this broom out of thin air I thought. Nope. That only happens on TV. Safe from my fleeting moment of panic, I continued to sweep, letting the semi-distant sound of late night cartoons lull me…off...to sleep.

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“Wake the hell up, you lazy worm! There’s a whole lot of shit I’ve got to tell you and we haven’t got much time.” I slowly rubbed my eyes and sat up on what felt like a block of cold steel. Even though she might very well have called me a worm, whoever had just decided to call me one wasn’t Amy. When my vision came into focus, I saw a tall, beautiful woman in a pointed hat standing over me, her lips curled into a familiarly evil grin. She wore a navy blue overcoat with a black dress shirt and a bright red tie.

“Hello, Mark.” chuckled the woman, peering down at me through two glowing pools of purple light “I am Amelia. Welcome to The Void.”

To Be Continued