Short Story Saturday (Nov. 23, 2013)

Welcome to the second Short Story Saturday. Each week I post prompts for you to create something: a short story, a poem, a journal entry, etc. I won't tell you to do something I don't do. So Short Story Saturday is to share a piece I wrote based on a prompt.

If you've written a piece from one of the Friday prompts, share it in the comments.

Here's another from 2010. This has a lot of promise as something larger. It's not a complete short story, more of a scene that really intrigues me although the prompt initially had me scratching my head wondering where to go with it.

What do you think?

Prompt:  Your character kept the secret in his toolbox

 

“Calling Clarence”

 

     From the first, Jamie knew the answer wouldn’t be in the house. Clarence would no more keep his secrets in his home than a crackhead would leave a rock with a friend. That left his car, his locker and his garage. The car she wouldn’t be able to search until he got home from working the double shift he’d signed on for. Jamie suspected the double’s name was LaToya, the counter clerk who worked midnights at the Zippi Mart.

Jamie worked first shift at the plant, and knew she could check his locker for the evidence in the morning. That just left one place for her to begin her search.

She grabbed a Mag-Lite and headed to the garage.

Three hours later, she stood in the middle of the concrete floor and cussed.

She’d looked in the cabinets, under the counter, under and in the workbench, through the shelves and behind the exercise equipment he never used. In the process, she’d found a baggie of high-grade marijuana, a First United credit union envelope with $640 in twenty-dollar bills and a box of condoms in a brand he never used with her.

Calling Clarence everything but a child of God, she stomped back to the house. She dropped the flashlight in the kitchen drawer where it belonged, then headed to the bathroom to shower off the grime, dust and cobwebs of her garage foray.

She turned on the shower and adjusted both the head and the water flow. It always took a minute for the hot water to warm up, so she pulled her shirt over her head. When the fabric cleared she turned to toss it in the hamper.

And there he was -- sitting on the toilet pointing a .22-caliber pistol at her heart.

“Is this what you were looking for?” he asked.

He had one booted foot propped on a toolbox jammed with screwdrivers and wrenches and nails and whatnot.

Jamie didn’t even blink. “How did you get in here?”

A small smile tilted the corner of his mouth. “The same way as always.”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want?” he said.

She folded her arms across her chest, ignoring the water now pooling at her feet and the shower curtain flapping outside platform.

“Yeah, I know what you want. And guess what, you’re not getting it,” Jamie said.

This time, his smile was amused, sardonic.

He cocked the gun, “Oh, I think I am, Jamie.”