None?
Nobody was able to take up the challenge. Nobody was able to think of a vanity plate idea. Nobody.
Oh well, that's fine with me, so does that mean I get a free frappe? *smirks*
Anyway, here's a piece of fiction I've written at late. Which you don't have to read but if you do, tell me if it deserves a following chapter.
Schandenfreude.
(Pleasure in the misery of others.)
They started calling me mother in the summer when I was fifteen and I wasn't fond of it at first. It was because Angela ran away from home upon learning she was pregnant and I let her stay in my house until her miscarriage two months later over Margaritas and what she later reckons was probably fatigue.
While it lasted, I was glad Angela got pregnant. See, I live in a large two-storey house with six bedrooms plus the servant's quarters. My own mother, who is dead in her own way, works as an Archeologist for a private research firm in South Africa and this means she is rarely home. Every year, she pays for the nanny who basically ignores me unless I needed feeding, the gardener, the gardener's nephew (they obviously tend the garden) and the chef. They're there to make sure that I exist and make it appear that I coexist healthily with other human beings in my house. This is of course a complete faux pas as far as my intellect and sanity is concerned. In truth, it was Angela who was doing me a big favor.
In the whole duration she was crashing at my place I never really got the details of her whole pregnancy ordeal save for (I) the father, (II) the fact that the father had no idea, (III) the fact that her parents have no idea and (IV) the fact that she wanted to have the kid. I wasn't sure what was going through her mind that time and why she didn't tell the people who should have been the first to know. And I never attempted to confirm it. One thing I knew for certain was that she took comfort in my not asking too many questions. I wasn't intending to anyway.
At seventeen, they still call me mother though now on an entirely different context. My stepfather, who owns the largest company in our little town of Blue Heights, controls more than half the town people's salary. I had a severe clash with an imbecilic cheerleader the previous year when she flattened the tires of my friend Irene's Mustang. The immature reason behind this unnecessary muddle was due to the said cheerleader's ex-boyfriend dating my not too often noticed girlfriend. The next day I told my stepfather to fire her father and he agreed to do it under some terms and conditions on my part, which weren't really that hard to deal with. They were driven out of town and Irene and her new boyfriend Greg lived happily ever after. And they call me mother still, because of this I think. Godfather wasn't fit gender-wise and Godmother sounded too obvious. Drop the God and you've got me. Excuse the ego inflation. Monologues do that to you.
***
Don called me up around 23:08 just when I was about to go to sleep and insisted I took care of my drunken teenagers. I agreed.
Why I take care of people, I don't know but I do it. There are many things I cannot explain about myself although I try to present things in a logical train of thought. Like how I turned off the car radio when I drove my way to Don's place so I wouldn't miss it. The music usually dies down around two in the morning and I was sure that the band wouldn't stop playing until midnight. As usual, I was right.
***
"Where's Angela?"
Don lead me to the backyard and he pointed at some people gathered around in a circle somewhere near the pool. I could hear a mixture of laughter and shell-shocked gasps coming from them. As I walked towards the crowd I saw Angela lying still on the wet grass, a spilled drink on one hand and her face on the palm of the other. Next to her was a guy named Cameron, kneeling in front of her and caressing her knees, her thighs, finding all this very amusing as he progressed his hand beneath her skirt. I stood in front of him and I grabbed him by the collar before he could take off Angela's underwear.
"Hey! What the f-," Cameron quickly retrieved his hand when he saw me and let go of the panty. "I'm drunk, really, I am. I don't know what I'm doing."
"You seem pretty conscious to me," I pulled my fist back and punched Cameron in the face. His nose bled instantly. "Were you not, that should've helped."
Cameron stood up and wiped the blood off his nose with the back of his hand. He looked at me pathetically and slowly turned to walk away.
I grabbed Angela by her deadweight arm and placed it around my neck so I could drag her to my car. Don was watching from the other side of the pool and he nodded nervously when I saw him. I gave him a wink because I could handle it myself.
The minute we got to the car Angela woke up and I settled her on the passenger seat. As I sat behind the wheel I saw her staring at me and I couldn't help but smile.
"Mother," she said with a slur. "What are you doing here? I thought you were staying home tonight."
"I was," I pulled her body upright because she was leaning on the dashboard and I adjusted the seat so she could rest her head back instead. "Don called me up and told me you were puking all over the place. He figured your mom wouldn't be too pleased."
"You aren't too pissed, I see."
"You're real mom, stupid." I started up the car and drove my way to Angela's house.
"I maybe drunk, Mary, but you were supposed to make a left in the last intersection to get to your house faster."
"I'm not going home yet, Angel," I said softly. "You want me to call your mom first and cover for you?"
Angela grunted.
"Hell no. I'm sleeping on your gorgeous Italian blue satin sofa."
"Hell no," I mimicked. "Stepfather, remember? The house isn't like back in your preggy days. Note that the gorgeous Italian blue satin sofa you're referring to is the same sofa stepfather bought for my mother's birthday. Also note that said sofa does not easily withstand puke stains should the possibility arrive. You're the possibility, darling, I'm sorry to say. You're going home tonight to sleep on the mat next to your doorway. Like any other drunken brute."
"You'll admit that I'm a very attractive drunken brute." This made me laugh.
"I see that the alcohol didn't affect your love affair with witty banter."
"As sobriety doesn't affect yours with your already lacking sense of humor," she leaned towards me and watched me behind a waterfall of russet hair that had fallen to her face. "Why are you always mature, Mary? Sane? Why do you always need to take responsibility for everything you and I do?"
"I like it. It's a form of security for me," I said this, squinting my eyes as I tried looking to the distance when I turned another left to that narrow street that lead to Angela's house. I began to drive slowly from the other side of the street and finally spotted the house with a green roof, green shutters and a dimly lit porch. "You're home."
I sat back on my seat and turned off the engine. Angela groaned, observing the house through the fogged up passenger window. Her eyes dilated for a moment as she glared in my direction. She purposely drove her weight towards me so her head would collapse upon my lap. She spun around, which took great effort, so she could look up at me and this made me speechless. It was just her flushed face-Oh, how it glowed in the darkness of my sedan!-the comforting smell of vodka and her limousine eyelashes. I pulled her hair away so I could see her lips, ajar slightly and showing her teeth. She was so beautiful and I found myself stroking the side of her left arm. Later my hand finally rested on her nape, her flesh, I felt was this confusion of hot blood rushing and cold fish. It was hard to tell them apart.
"I have a confession," she whispered in a hoarse voice and this broke the silence. "I hate getting drunk."
"Then why do you drink?"
She closed her eyes tightly and answered in clenched teeth, "Because it drowns the pain."
"You're just digging a deeper hole," I said, enraged at what she said but I try to hide it when I replied. "Before you know you've dug up your own grave." Or someone else's, I almost said. Angela's miscarriage lingered like a sting and when she was reminded, it was as though the pain was played all over again in her head.
"I'd rather be dead, you know."
"Never say that."
"I will, mother," she spat. "And I'll keep on saying it."
"I don't like it when you talk like that."
I was silent for more than half-an-hour while I listened to Angela curse in German and other languages. She was a brilliant thing and I was never sure when she was serious. So it was a must for me to keep a close look all the time to catch up. I listened to the most mundane and boring things she tells me because they usually mean something. And she would listen to me when I was on one of my soliloquies.
That is why when I spoke out at last, she bit her tongue.
"I will drown your pain, Angel," I told her. "That's my job."
After I said this she struggled to sit up. She did about enough that she rested herself against me. She clung to me and she touched my cheek with the back of her fingers and before I noticed, she held up my face and kissed me in the mouth. Her tongue slid out and licked my bottom lip. I was too dumbfounded to not respond. I ran my hands down the back of her ribs and gripped at both sides of her hips as she straddled me and kissed me and reached for my skin frantically beneath my sweater. She held on to my left breast for a while as she breathed on my face. We were literally eye-to-eye and I looked at her, my head pounding, like an aneurysm was about to take place any second.
It seemed forever when she took her hand off my breast and stumbled back to her seat, her face against the window again.
"That never happened." She said to me and I nodded.
"Never," I turned my back to her, wanting to fall asleep. "It never happened."
I could hear Angela move a bit and then the radio blared. There was an eery quality about Manilow's voice that turned movies with songs like "Mandy" into overromanticized versions of suburban life. Lovelorn. Stuck in a Cadillac. Stormy nights. High school reunions. Stuff like that, the types that irked me. But here we were and Manilow's voice was the only thing that enveloped us together. And for the meantime, maybe Manilow wasn't that bad.
I fell asleep.
And then the next morning I woke up in the car and Angela was still asleep.
Angel, you may not be made of my womb, but you were borne of my heart!
A/N: Worth pursuing? I think I've done a build-up somewhere. Somewhere.
Oh well, that's fine with me, so does that mean I get a free frappe? *smirks*
Anyway, here's a piece of fiction I've written at late. Which you don't have to read but if you do, tell me if it deserves a following chapter.
Schandenfreude.
(Pleasure in the misery of others.)
They started calling me mother in the summer when I was fifteen and I wasn't fond of it at first. It was because Angela ran away from home upon learning she was pregnant and I let her stay in my house until her miscarriage two months later over Margaritas and what she later reckons was probably fatigue.
While it lasted, I was glad Angela got pregnant. See, I live in a large two-storey house with six bedrooms plus the servant's quarters. My own mother, who is dead in her own way, works as an Archeologist for a private research firm in South Africa and this means she is rarely home. Every year, she pays for the nanny who basically ignores me unless I needed feeding, the gardener, the gardener's nephew (they obviously tend the garden) and the chef. They're there to make sure that I exist and make it appear that I coexist healthily with other human beings in my house. This is of course a complete faux pas as far as my intellect and sanity is concerned. In truth, it was Angela who was doing me a big favor.
In the whole duration she was crashing at my place I never really got the details of her whole pregnancy ordeal save for (I) the father, (II) the fact that the father had no idea, (III) the fact that her parents have no idea and (IV) the fact that she wanted to have the kid. I wasn't sure what was going through her mind that time and why she didn't tell the people who should have been the first to know. And I never attempted to confirm it. One thing I knew for certain was that she took comfort in my not asking too many questions. I wasn't intending to anyway.
At seventeen, they still call me mother though now on an entirely different context. My stepfather, who owns the largest company in our little town of Blue Heights, controls more than half the town people's salary. I had a severe clash with an imbecilic cheerleader the previous year when she flattened the tires of my friend Irene's Mustang. The immature reason behind this unnecessary muddle was due to the said cheerleader's ex-boyfriend dating my not too often noticed girlfriend. The next day I told my stepfather to fire her father and he agreed to do it under some terms and conditions on my part, which weren't really that hard to deal with. They were driven out of town and Irene and her new boyfriend Greg lived happily ever after. And they call me mother still, because of this I think. Godfather wasn't fit gender-wise and Godmother sounded too obvious. Drop the God and you've got me. Excuse the ego inflation. Monologues do that to you.
***
Don called me up around 23:08 just when I was about to go to sleep and insisted I took care of my drunken teenagers. I agreed.
Why I take care of people, I don't know but I do it. There are many things I cannot explain about myself although I try to present things in a logical train of thought. Like how I turned off the car radio when I drove my way to Don's place so I wouldn't miss it. The music usually dies down around two in the morning and I was sure that the band wouldn't stop playing until midnight. As usual, I was right.
***
"Where's Angela?"
Don lead me to the backyard and he pointed at some people gathered around in a circle somewhere near the pool. I could hear a mixture of laughter and shell-shocked gasps coming from them. As I walked towards the crowd I saw Angela lying still on the wet grass, a spilled drink on one hand and her face on the palm of the other. Next to her was a guy named Cameron, kneeling in front of her and caressing her knees, her thighs, finding all this very amusing as he progressed his hand beneath her skirt. I stood in front of him and I grabbed him by the collar before he could take off Angela's underwear.
"Hey! What the f-," Cameron quickly retrieved his hand when he saw me and let go of the panty. "I'm drunk, really, I am. I don't know what I'm doing."
"You seem pretty conscious to me," I pulled my fist back and punched Cameron in the face. His nose bled instantly. "Were you not, that should've helped."
Cameron stood up and wiped the blood off his nose with the back of his hand. He looked at me pathetically and slowly turned to walk away.
I grabbed Angela by her deadweight arm and placed it around my neck so I could drag her to my car. Don was watching from the other side of the pool and he nodded nervously when I saw him. I gave him a wink because I could handle it myself.
The minute we got to the car Angela woke up and I settled her on the passenger seat. As I sat behind the wheel I saw her staring at me and I couldn't help but smile.
"Mother," she said with a slur. "What are you doing here? I thought you were staying home tonight."
"I was," I pulled her body upright because she was leaning on the dashboard and I adjusted the seat so she could rest her head back instead. "Don called me up and told me you were puking all over the place. He figured your mom wouldn't be too pleased."
"You aren't too pissed, I see."
"You're real mom, stupid." I started up the car and drove my way to Angela's house.
"I maybe drunk, Mary, but you were supposed to make a left in the last intersection to get to your house faster."
"I'm not going home yet, Angel," I said softly. "You want me to call your mom first and cover for you?"
Angela grunted.
"Hell no. I'm sleeping on your gorgeous Italian blue satin sofa."
"Hell no," I mimicked. "Stepfather, remember? The house isn't like back in your preggy days. Note that the gorgeous Italian blue satin sofa you're referring to is the same sofa stepfather bought for my mother's birthday. Also note that said sofa does not easily withstand puke stains should the possibility arrive. You're the possibility, darling, I'm sorry to say. You're going home tonight to sleep on the mat next to your doorway. Like any other drunken brute."
"You'll admit that I'm a very attractive drunken brute." This made me laugh.
"I see that the alcohol didn't affect your love affair with witty banter."
"As sobriety doesn't affect yours with your already lacking sense of humor," she leaned towards me and watched me behind a waterfall of russet hair that had fallen to her face. "Why are you always mature, Mary? Sane? Why do you always need to take responsibility for everything you and I do?"
"I like it. It's a form of security for me," I said this, squinting my eyes as I tried looking to the distance when I turned another left to that narrow street that lead to Angela's house. I began to drive slowly from the other side of the street and finally spotted the house with a green roof, green shutters and a dimly lit porch. "You're home."
I sat back on my seat and turned off the engine. Angela groaned, observing the house through the fogged up passenger window. Her eyes dilated for a moment as she glared in my direction. She purposely drove her weight towards me so her head would collapse upon my lap. She spun around, which took great effort, so she could look up at me and this made me speechless. It was just her flushed face-Oh, how it glowed in the darkness of my sedan!-the comforting smell of vodka and her limousine eyelashes. I pulled her hair away so I could see her lips, ajar slightly and showing her teeth. She was so beautiful and I found myself stroking the side of her left arm. Later my hand finally rested on her nape, her flesh, I felt was this confusion of hot blood rushing and cold fish. It was hard to tell them apart.
"I have a confession," she whispered in a hoarse voice and this broke the silence. "I hate getting drunk."
"Then why do you drink?"
She closed her eyes tightly and answered in clenched teeth, "Because it drowns the pain."
"You're just digging a deeper hole," I said, enraged at what she said but I try to hide it when I replied. "Before you know you've dug up your own grave." Or someone else's, I almost said. Angela's miscarriage lingered like a sting and when she was reminded, it was as though the pain was played all over again in her head.
"I'd rather be dead, you know."
"Never say that."
"I will, mother," she spat. "And I'll keep on saying it."
"I don't like it when you talk like that."
I was silent for more than half-an-hour while I listened to Angela curse in German and other languages. She was a brilliant thing and I was never sure when she was serious. So it was a must for me to keep a close look all the time to catch up. I listened to the most mundane and boring things she tells me because they usually mean something. And she would listen to me when I was on one of my soliloquies.
That is why when I spoke out at last, she bit her tongue.
"I will drown your pain, Angel," I told her. "That's my job."
After I said this she struggled to sit up. She did about enough that she rested herself against me. She clung to me and she touched my cheek with the back of her fingers and before I noticed, she held up my face and kissed me in the mouth. Her tongue slid out and licked my bottom lip. I was too dumbfounded to not respond. I ran my hands down the back of her ribs and gripped at both sides of her hips as she straddled me and kissed me and reached for my skin frantically beneath my sweater. She held on to my left breast for a while as she breathed on my face. We were literally eye-to-eye and I looked at her, my head pounding, like an aneurysm was about to take place any second.
It seemed forever when she took her hand off my breast and stumbled back to her seat, her face against the window again.
"That never happened." She said to me and I nodded.
"Never," I turned my back to her, wanting to fall asleep. "It never happened."
I could hear Angela move a bit and then the radio blared. There was an eery quality about Manilow's voice that turned movies with songs like "Mandy" into overromanticized versions of suburban life. Lovelorn. Stuck in a Cadillac. Stormy nights. High school reunions. Stuff like that, the types that irked me. But here we were and Manilow's voice was the only thing that enveloped us together. And for the meantime, maybe Manilow wasn't that bad.
I fell asleep.
And then the next morning I woke up in the car and Angela was still asleep.
Angel, you may not be made of my womb, but you were borne of my heart!
A/N: Worth pursuing? I think I've done a build-up somewhere. Somewhere.