This is the first couple pages of a short story I am working on. Hopefully posting this will motivate the completion of it. Enjoy and I'd love to hear your feedback.
Jeff McMannis pulled into his driveway the same way he does everyday after putting in his eight hours at the office. He noticed several dark smudges coupled with indents covering his newly installed garage door that his son David had obviously been using as a backstop for his baseball.
The remnants of a mid-afternoon tea party scattered across his lawn, compliments of his daughter Sarah…“Jesus Christ”, He thought to himself.
As he stood and stared at the front door of his depreciating asset he thought of how he once had dreamed of being a famed musician. Traveling the planet doing the thing he loves most, meeting interesting people, and dining in five star restaurants. Maybe wrap up a show in Tokyo then jet down to Thailand for the weekend with his new flavor of the week that he met while checking in his bag at the airport. On the beach they’d talk and nap all day, then drink and fuck all night. He would fall for her, just a little, then realize it could never be. She would beg him to stay, but he would resist. As his jet leaves for Sydney from a private air strip in Tokyo he waves goodbye through the window at his flavor of last week, but all she can do is cry. He gets a feeling in the pit of his stomach like he is going to puke. Just then his flavor of this week approached from the left and asked if he would like anything to drink. The feeling in his stomach is gone and he is happy. This is the life he had always wanted…
“Hey Jeff! Jeff’s neighbor Steve yelled from his front lawn.
Jeff had always hated that son of a bitch. He hated Steve’s perfectly trimmed lawn that he could afford to have tended to every other day, especially at 8 am on Saturday while Jeff was trying to rest after the work week. He hated Steve and his wife Kiki’s matching Mercedes-Benze’s that read HIS and HER’S on the license plates. He hated the fact that Steve never stopped smiling…ever. It was creepy at some points and led Jeff to imagine Steve as being not of this Earth. Then again maybe Jeff would never stop smiling if he had the millions that Steve had accumulated from his stupid fucking “Self Help” program he created called “Love Thy Self”. He convinced people to sit in front of a mirror for an hour a day and talk to themselves. It stated that the only way to true success was through focused forms of self vanity. People ate this shit up because who do Americans love most in the world?...Themselves of course. This guy was benefiting substantially on the stupidity and narcissism of our fair country. And he could not stop smiling. Jeff had always hated that son of a bitch.
“Hey Steve!” Jeff smiled and waved as if they were childhood friends. Steve walks over to the fence dividing their property.
“Kiki and I are heading up the neighborhood watch meeting tonight if you and Vicky want to stop by. Afterward we’re gonna crack open a few bottles of red I picked up last year on our trip to Africa. Should be just about ready to open. Had to slip the customs guy a few hundred to let us through with it, but it was definitely worth it. This shit will change your life.”
Jeff can’t stand when people make such absurd statements. He did his best not to cringe when the garbage spewed from the annoying neighbors mouth but still flinched a little.
“You okay man?”
“Yeah, just had some bad Thai for lunch.”
The prick began to size Jeff up.
“You’re starting to put on a little weight, buddy. If you want, I can give you the number of my personal trainer and of course throw in a free copy of my seminar. You’ll be loving yourself in no time. So you comin’ tonight or what?”
Jeff had a quick vision of bashing Steve’s head in with his stainless steal coffee mug that he was holding in his right hand. He would just let him lie there in his perfect stupid fucking rose bush finally making his existence useful as fertilizer. Just then he snapped back to reality.
“I’m sorry… what are you having tonight? Oh, wait. The neighborhood watch thing. Yeah, we’ll try to stop by.
“Losers try Jeff. Winners do. Know what I mean? We’ll see ya at eight. I’ll have that trainers number and the DVD set of my seminar ready for you.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“I’ll see ya there Slugger and don’t forget that foxy wife of yours.”
There was nothing more on planet Earth that Jeff despised more than being called condescending names like “slugger” or “tiger”. But this paled in comparison to Steve’s comment about his wife. Even though she was a vicious, lifeless excuse for a woman who could suck the Y chromosomes out of a man, he still couldn’t stand the way Steve flirted with her. It was the principal of the matter.
“I’ll be sure to do that. Thanks for the invite and the DVD’s and everything. We’ll see ya there.”
“Hey, love thy neighbor right?” Steve said with a stupid shit-eating grin.
Jeff had never hated someone so much in his life.
“Right.”
Jeff turned and headed up the cobblestone path to his front door. He stepped up on his front porch and reached for the door handle but paused. He paused the same way he always does before he enters his house and contemplates what it would be like to never have to walk through that door again. He took his usual deep breaths and counted to five. One, two, three, four…five. He wrapped his hand around the knob and entered his depreciating asset.
To be continued.....
By: Jordan Ramay
