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Saturday, June 21, 2014

Bastille Short







 Ecape from Bastille
short story by: Nellie Tobey
edit #5: 12-26-18


 By the roadside, on an overused stretch of county blacktop, she walked. She was early-twenties, tall and thick.  She was large and intimidating, like a frontier woman that split her own wood, and knocked her own cattle.
  She was not sure when her long walk had begun, and if she turned around and walked the other way, she was quite convinced that she would spend a long while walking and forget that she had turned around. She knew she was called Brit or Brittney, but that was all that would stick to the tephlon in her mind.
  An old beat up rusty thing of a Ford passed in a hurry, carrying behind it a a rickety, clattering old trailer.
  Brit had an annoying habit of envisioning terrible things that would happen out of random, un-linked chains of events occurring around her.
  She imagined the truck driving by once again but this time it would hit the large pothole behind her, and the trailer would plow vertically toward her un-yeilding waist and crush her pieces and bits into the ditch.
  Sometimes the images would catch her mortal side's attention and she would be disgusted by her own train of thought.
  Other times her mortal side stayed silent and let her believe it would be a simple, painless, forgiving way to exit the world.
  After walking another mile, the clouds thickened in the sky and rain felt imminent.  A large freshly painted wood billboard sat two or so feet off the ground in an overgrown patch of weeds. Weeds that had been allowed to germinate and populate the area around the sign for a negligent amount of time. A thought crossed into Brit’s silent mind. Maybe the sign was important, the weeds seemed to think so.
  When Brit got closer, she inspected the sign.  At that moment she could not recall seeing a single road sign, speed limit sign, or any sort of milestones indicating a town.
  Granted she could not remember what had occurred five minutes ago on some occasions, but this felt more profound.
  Brit did what she was good at doing when abnormalities in her reality rose-up and squashed them down with "Does it really matter?"
  Standing in front of the billboard, she inspected it. In large white letters against a red and black background, 'Welcome to Bastille'.  Below that, smaller letters "leave all or leave nothing" and in even more subscript "Mayor A. Albert : 2003"
  Brit took a step out and looked for houses, lights, signals, some marker of civilization, but could see none.
  She imagined the town was either very far ahead, or off the main road like some hidden tree fort in the woods.
  Brit decided to keep walking forward.  After a few nice cars passed her going in what seemed to be the direction of the town, Brit had once again the strange feeling there was no direction she could choose that would lead her to where she needed to be.
Buildings started to take form in the distance after she crested a steep hill.
  The town ahead was hazy from the fine mist of water invading the sky.  It appeared to be some modern version of an old west town.  Large blocky buildings with large grand fronts declared: "Penny Store" or "Tools and Sundry".
There was even what looked to be an old time movie theater complete with defective marquee, and rotary doors.  It appeared to be the most dated structure along the boardwalk.
  Something Brit would notice and disregard would be that all the buildings were built of concrete cinder-blocks. It was built to look old, but most construction was not aged beyond two decades.
  There were nice cars, newer cars, and cars that belonged in the junk yard lining the sides of the street.
  They looked as if they had not moved in some time, and as slow fat rain drops plopped onto them, dust gathered in muddy streaks in the culvets.
  There were people who were bustling in and out, some like beautiful people from the movies ignoring her presence as if she were invisible.  Other people regarded her with curiosity, which left a disturbing coldness in Brit. She stopped looking around and watched the ground move beneath her.
  Brit did not think she deserved curiosity.  She was not an alien or a particular foreign looking person.  She wasn't dressed in any extreme.  She was in a plain white sweatshirt hoodie with a logo on it she did not know, and worn out jeans. She didn’t remember her reflection, but she was certain it had no qualities of consequence.
  Brit pushed the thought aside and kept walking. Maybe there was a public Bathroom.  She couldn't remember when last, or how she had urinated but at the moment her bladder strained inside her like an over-inflated balloon.
  She noticed too that no one got in or out of those cars even though  it was beginning to rain more heavily.  Brit watched her feet for a bit, focusing to keeping the strangers out of her thoughts.  A moment of confusion and she looked up from the now puddled sidewalk and the people had seemed to clear the town.  A couple large blue umbrellas lingered far ahead of her, and a red one with a rushing patron was too her right across the street.
  A plump white haired, gentle man stuck his neatly fuzzed face out of a door in front of her nearly smacking her in the nose with it’s clean clear surface.
  Small fast drops drizzled on his bald patch from the header of the door. He snorted a little, then apologized to Brit. "Oh I'm so sorry!"
  He did not however get out of the way and go back in to the store closing the door, but stood there blinking, "Would you like to come in?"
  Brit figured that with his invitation might come a bathroom pass of some sort.
  Brit shook her head like a floppy eared dog.  Her shoulder length waves shook about.  She realized that he might think she meant 'no', then as if she hadn't used her own voice in a long time, which she suspected was true, she said "Oh yes, yes please. I need a restroom."
  The man stepped out of the way then, letting her into the tiny little store.  It was full of non-essentials and souvenirs with "Bastille" on them.
  The man pointed to the back of the shop.  A straw hatted scarecrow man hung from one door and the other had a flower adorned scarecrow with large pouty eyes.
  She walked in and was assaulted by the smell of disinfectant.
  It was scented with something like lavender.  But to say such would be an insult to lavender. Pulling her pants to her ankles and opening the floodgates, Brit for a moment remembered dizzy sleepy nights wandering into the dark bathroom in the middle of the night to pee. The warm sleepiness of it conflicted with the room she now squatted in. The thought flittered away before she could latch on to anything meaningful.
  Sometimes the things in her mind were like bits of movie you see when channel surfing.  There's a tiny bit of recognition in the character or the scene, but it ends with a 'click' and the T.V. moves on to the next channel.
  Adjusting her pants so that they wouldn't so easily meander down her waist, she flushed the toilet and exited the smell ridden restroom and walked out to see the mid-sized gray and stern faced man still standing by the front door.  As if he was waiting for something, he just stood looking out.
  Brit pretended to look at some of the memorabilia; strange little forts, knights, jousters, and a bumper sticker that said "Now leaving asylum!"
  Brit didn't want to startle the old fellow but he still blocked the door.  Although Brit didn't like the idea of getting soaking wet in the rain, the thought of standing still made her skin crawl unreasonably.
She cleared her throat. "Um, thank you sir."
  The man turned to look at Brit.  He seemed like he was studying her for a moment, then said, "I'm Andrew Albert, and you are?"
  "Brittney"  She tried to walk around him to the door, but he fortified his position.
  "You staying long?"
  Brittney could feel panicky agitation creeping in, "No sir, excuse me."
  He looked at her again quizzically then moved out of the way.
  Brit stepped out.  The 'BEE--BOO" of the door sensor almost sounded like "get out".
  The rain was passing quickly, but now it was considerably colder outside.
  Brit walked.   She could not remember in which direction she had entered the store.
  Brit looked down.  When had she lost her shoes?
  She looked back up and continued.
  A pretty blue buick skylark pulled up to her near the edge of the town.  It honked and a towering older lady with her graying hair neatly atop her head spoke out to her. "Are you sure you won't stay? I have a perfectly empty room that you could borrow for a spell."
  Brit could feel her feet burning.  Had they been fine up until now? She thought she remembered the hurting but could not nail it down.  When did she remove her shoes?
  The woman had stepped out and opened the back seat door.  Brit smiled, thanked the woman and decided that maybe a good nap and she could head out once again when she woke.
   The car did a u-turn and headed back to the town and the old man's shop.  Magically a parking spot had opened up. Or it had been parked there and this woman had stole the car from it's inanimate slumber. Brit pictured this tall elegant woman pulling on a ski mask and holding a Slim Jim.
  Andrew stuck his head out the door again.  This time dodging and flinching from the water leaking above him.
  "Over here dear."  He pulled a large assortment of keys from his pocket and opened a tall thin door that looked squeezed between the two shops.
  It still had not occurred to Brit that the people were regarding her as if they knew her. She would have sluffed off that thought too, had it occurred to her.
  The woman led her up to the small immaculately clean apartment at the top of the narrow, long staircase.
  The woman pointed, "That's the bathroom."  Pointing another way, "that is the bedroom."   She nodded when she thought Brit acknowledged her.
  "I'll be down there, or Andrew will, let us know if you need anything."
  The woman had to duck when she exited into the stairwell.
  Brit walked over to the bed.  A plain set of baby blue sheets, and two layers of a knitted wool blanket.  One white, one less-white.
  Brit climbed in and closed her eyes. Briefly she worried about getting the whiter blanket dirty and decided to take it off the bed.  She whipped it to the side, onto the floor, and proceeded to sleep.
  She dreamed in the clicky channel surfing way.  Nothing ever sticking or making contact for long.
  She startled herself to wake with her own voice. "They didn't even notice I was gone."
  And when she looked out the window next to the bed it was dusk. Things were growing dark quickly.  A fire truck siren roared somewhere in the distance. Brit imagined a gas line somewhere below was leaking rapidly and would soon ignite sending her in tiny fleshy units against the ceiling, and the wall. Maybe some bits would escape when her femur struck the window by the bed.
  It was time to go.
  Quietly she padded to the door.  No lights had been turned on. Faint street lights spilled in the cracks around the door to the outside.
  She made it to the bottom step only stopping to once again imagine her body tumbling down the stairs, her head making an echoy 'conk' and her neck twisting and creeking on the way.
  It struck her that if she did not fully die from the fall that poor lady would find her there, and someone would realize she was gone.
  Brit shoved the thoughts aside and pushed out and on her way.
  A sudden and quick idea crossed through the rubble in her head, but it would not solidify and make itself known to her.  Maybe she couldn't remember things because she was constantly having to throw things away. Maybe the good stuff got caught with all the garbage and was dispensed without her knowledge....  That thought also scampered away as did all the others.
  Brit shivered when the warm air inside the apartment hall escaped out the door she had just opened.
  One foot after another, she made her way out of the community, away from it’s lights.
  Nothing seemed familiar. She thought maybe nothing ever did. Brit decided to go vertically instead of horizontally.  She crossed the street.
  Some had noticed she had left, but did not resent her for it, or think about her again for a long while.
  Brit made her way down the long dark road. It was country and it was creepy.  She should be scared, but was not.
  She walked.
  She forgot about the town of Bastille and walked.
  Miles of darkness to go.  Did they know she had left?
  As quickly as the thought appeared, it disappeared and she imagined a herd of deer, doe's, bucks and fawns alike startled by some predatory misstep.  They were sent stampeding toward her through the woods  and shoved their pointy cloven feet through her eye ball socket and into her squishy brain.


  Across the street was a sign.... "Welcome to Bastille"   Below that, "Leave all or leave nothing"  and in even smaller letters, "Mayor A. Albert : 2004".   She didn't remember a town,  but she was hungry, maybe she should turn around and look for some food.
A pair of worn blue and white tennis shoes lay at it’s base in patches of thriving wildflowers.








 




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