Character in need of a story

• Status: Sketch
• Category: Fiction
• Created: February 15, 2004
• Last update: August 10, 2013
• # of commits: 1

I walked into the high school innocently enough. But soon madness broke out in every direction. “That’s four dollars a woman says behind a table, the basketball game programs nicely bundled into a magazine rack.

I tell her I’m writing about the game, trying to give these small town fans some reason to get up and read the paper in the morning. Lord knows they’ll get more from their own two eyes – especially with the space I get, but there’s something to be said about clipping out newsprint and letting it yellow in some shoebox in the basement. Keeps me in business.

She eyes me up and down.

“Got a press pass?”

“It’s in the car.” Shit, I usually always bring it but this is the place I grew up.

I used to play in this gym. I held onto that girl’s hand for hours one night after a football game with the hopes she might let my hand wander up her shirt. I didn’t tell the ticket lady this. She might get suspicious.

Then I see Earl the janitor. This guy knows me. I loved his daughter once. Surely he’ll let me in.

So it was there I sat to watch the game, next to a driver’s ed teacher who says he now teaches his students to drive at breakneck speed towards trees and bridge abutments.

“Screw the insurance companies,” I say taking another pull from my bag of over-salted popcorn.

“Insurance companies. Hell, I want the bastards gone,” he says. “It’s population control.”

Commits