A Rot's All It's Worth
Title: A Rot's All It's Worth
Fandom: Original
Prompt: tamingthemuse #91, rusting
Wordcount: 501
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Summary: Coe can't find what he's looking for, so he goes out in search of another clue.
Comments: Something of a freewrite. I haven't actually written anything in something like a year, so this is a first attempt at getting back into it. Any and all comments/crits are welcome!
The photograph was rusted through. Chips of cinnamon and sulfur dappled Coe's pale fingers, mocking the graywashed smiles and watery dresses spinning between the tendrils. There were still traces of purple cloth, of silver and blonde hair, curled loose and imperfect in the Louisiana summer. He scrunched his nose, lifted the flaky page to the lamplight, pressed rimmed glasses closer to his face. There was a child, here, trapped and hidden, frightened of the creeping red veins. He squinted and squinched and purred under his breath, but still, the only eyes that laughed out at him were those of his permed mother. She mocked him, even now.
"Nothing." Coe's tongue writhed bitterly behind closed lips, and the offending photograph lilted onto a pile of frayed art-history books stuffed with lined paper and obscenities. His hands, splintered with rust, rubbed coarse under his glasses, through his hair. For a full minute, he entertained the thought of having the poisoned memory restored at the local shop, then promptly swept the photograph into a drawer and slammed it. Puff the bearded dragon sprinted into his plastic cave. Coe was going out for a burger.
This particular McDonald's at this particular corner was blasphemously shadowed and empty at four in the morning. So, he settled for the Waffle House and Mary the waitress' endless ball of stringy accomplishments and half-wit husbands. At husband number three -- who had had chronic indigestion and Quasimodo eyes -- Coe slipped a ten under the syrup and stepped out into the damp morning, chewing the last of his hash browns, hands deep in corduroy pockets. The frozen shopfronts and crumble-brick apartments wore the shadows like a black-market coat. He rolled up his sleeves and strode across the dead street with a careless hop over a broken possum.
His angled face grinned amiably out of the opaque shop windows as he passed; they were full of shoes and dresses in daylight, now nothing but pools of black and reflection. The antique shop door yielded lazily to a chink of the lock, and it creaked to a close behind him.
Coe craned his neck over the stuffed animal skins and silent clocks and snow globes half-empty. He stooped to squint under elf-footed tables and swung his hips to avoid the essential cigar Indian, ghastly in the entrails of the streetlight outside. He scrowled his nose at the abomination, stumbled over a saucer-eyed doll and stopped short of a wall of glass ornaments. Someone was watching him. The photograph laughed and pointed out of a dream and delusion. The Desire hung playfully from a hook by his ear, glinting and winking like a silver virgin. It was cool in his pocket. No one came to arrest him.
At six in the morning, Coe rested his chair against the window of the motel room, watching the silver locket spin on a string from his hand. The dawning sunlight gleamed on his grandfather's initials and chickenpeck code. The tarnish bled, slowly, to rusting veins.
Fandom: Original
Prompt: tamingthemuse #91, rusting
Wordcount: 501
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Summary: Coe can't find what he's looking for, so he goes out in search of another clue.
Comments: Something of a freewrite. I haven't actually written anything in something like a year, so this is a first attempt at getting back into it. Any and all comments/crits are welcome!
The photograph was rusted through. Chips of cinnamon and sulfur dappled Coe's pale fingers, mocking the graywashed smiles and watery dresses spinning between the tendrils. There were still traces of purple cloth, of silver and blonde hair, curled loose and imperfect in the Louisiana summer. He scrunched his nose, lifted the flaky page to the lamplight, pressed rimmed glasses closer to his face. There was a child, here, trapped and hidden, frightened of the creeping red veins. He squinted and squinched and purred under his breath, but still, the only eyes that laughed out at him were those of his permed mother. She mocked him, even now.
"Nothing." Coe's tongue writhed bitterly behind closed lips, and the offending photograph lilted onto a pile of frayed art-history books stuffed with lined paper and obscenities. His hands, splintered with rust, rubbed coarse under his glasses, through his hair. For a full minute, he entertained the thought of having the poisoned memory restored at the local shop, then promptly swept the photograph into a drawer and slammed it. Puff the bearded dragon sprinted into his plastic cave. Coe was going out for a burger.
This particular McDonald's at this particular corner was blasphemously shadowed and empty at four in the morning. So, he settled for the Waffle House and Mary the waitress' endless ball of stringy accomplishments and half-wit husbands. At husband number three -- who had had chronic indigestion and Quasimodo eyes -- Coe slipped a ten under the syrup and stepped out into the damp morning, chewing the last of his hash browns, hands deep in corduroy pockets. The frozen shopfronts and crumble-brick apartments wore the shadows like a black-market coat. He rolled up his sleeves and strode across the dead street with a careless hop over a broken possum.
His angled face grinned amiably out of the opaque shop windows as he passed; they were full of shoes and dresses in daylight, now nothing but pools of black and reflection. The antique shop door yielded lazily to a chink of the lock, and it creaked to a close behind him.
Coe craned his neck over the stuffed animal skins and silent clocks and snow globes half-empty. He stooped to squint under elf-footed tables and swung his hips to avoid the essential cigar Indian, ghastly in the entrails of the streetlight outside. He scrowled his nose at the abomination, stumbled over a saucer-eyed doll and stopped short of a wall of glass ornaments. Someone was watching him. The photograph laughed and pointed out of a dream and delusion. The Desire hung playfully from a hook by his ear, glinting and winking like a silver virgin. It was cool in his pocket. No one came to arrest him.
At six in the morning, Coe rested his chair against the window of the motel room, watching the silver locket spin on a string from his hand. The dawning sunlight gleamed on his grandfather's initials and chickenpeck code. The tarnish bled, slowly, to rusting veins.