I got this idea for a short story, but it turned out to be really short, so it's a flash story. I'm thinking of expanding it. This is a rough draft. Constructive feedback is appreciated! -A.
Nora Bell woke up on Tuesday with a question. A question mark, really. On the back of her left
hand. The mark looked like someone had
scratched it into her skin with a bent-out safety pin.
“Odd,” thought Nora. “That wasn’t there last night.” She
would have seen it while washing her hands before she took out her contact
lenses. Every night, she took her
contact lenses out and used this cleaning solution whose label claimed you
didn’t have to rub the lenses to get them cleaned and disinfected. She rubbed them a few times before putting
them into the case anyway.
Nora’s next thought was to show the question mark to Paul,
but he wasn’t there.
Nora walked down the hall to the bathroom, her thoughts of
work that day interrupted by a knock on her apartment door. “7:30. Who can that
be?” she said to herself. Nora always
spoke to herself aloud when she was home alone.
Barefoot, she tiptoed toward the door. If it wasn’t anyone she wanted to see, or a
stranger, she didn’t want them to hear her approaching so she could pretend the
apartment was empty. Paul always said
that the other person could see the light through the peep-hole get interrupted
by your head in between the door and the window anyway, so why bother
tiptoeing?
It was Billy the super. She opened the door.
“Hey, Billy. Kinda early, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, Nora. No water.
Main broke down the street.
Should be fixed by lunchtime.”
“Crap. Thanks for the
heads up, Billy.”
“Sorry, kiddo.”
Nora closed the door as Billy turned to knock on the door
across the hall. The lady there had 3 kids. They moved in 3 months ago. No water till noon
and they were probably going to have to boil it for a while after the main was
fixed. That wasn’t going to be easy for
her. Nora made a mental note to get a gallon
of water to leave there when she got home after work. She could hear Paul ask why she would do
something like that for a woman she didn’t even know.
Nora went right to the fridge to get her Brita pitcher
before heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Nora and Paul saw this commercial one time
for a super water filter pitcher. The
guy showed a pitcher with water filled with dust. He poured it through the
filter and the water came out clean. Nora
wondered aloud if they should get one.
Paul asked her if she usually had a problem with dusty water.
Nora got ready for work and went to the kitchen to get some
breakfast. There was Paul’s box of Froot
Loops, unopened and staring at her. She
reached for her box of Special K with berries.
The bag inside had some flakes and a bunch of freeze-dried strawberry
dust and seeds that would get stuck in her teeth. Paul had eaten the Special K again. She ate the flakes and dust with some skim
milk and a Greek yogurt and looked again at the back of her left hand. Her question mark was to the right of the
tendons from her ring finger to her wrist.
Her mark was the only thing on her hand.
Nora looked at the clock on the oven and stood up. She put her bowl in the sink and went to turn
on the faucet to wash it out but nothing came out. “Forgot. No water. I’ll need
a sandblaster to clean this when I get home.”
Nora walked a few blocks to her job as a receptionist at the
fourth-largest personal injury law firm in the state. The attorneys were
generally too busy and the clients in too much pain (mostly real, sometimes
imagined) to really notice her, which was just fine with Nora. She liked to
blend in and observe people. She fancied
herself a good judge of character.
Nora arrived at her desk at 8:55. She checked to see if her voicemail light was
on (it never was), unlocked her drawer to get her three pens out (you wouldn’t
believe how many pens just walk away from her desk), and was ready to answer
the phone if it started ringing. The
office manager didn’t feel that Nora needed a computer, so Nora didn’t have to
check email. Nora took her pens with her
as she unlocked the door for the clients and opposing attorneys who would soon
begin to dribble in.
Nora looked at her question mark again. She thought it couldn’t be that unusual to
wake up with a scratch you didn’t remember getting, but a question mark-shaped
one? That was unusual. Once she saw a picture of a woman who had
this port wine mark on her skin that looked like the Hawaiian Islands. Nora guessed that people wanted to make all
sorts of things look like something else.
We are creatures of relationship, she thought to herself. We’re always looking for faces in faceless
things-like the Man in the Moon.
“Excuse me.”
Nora started and looked up.
A bike messenger was standing in front of her.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s OK. How can I
help you?”
“This is my first
time delivering to this firm and I don’t know where I can take this envelope
for Joe Harvey.”
“Mr. Harvey is on the third floor. Off the elevator and go right. His secretary is right there.”
“Thanks. Can I leave
my bike here?”
“Sure.”
“Be right back.”
People tended to walk right past Nora to read the directory
on the wall opposite her. Or they
already knew where they were going. She
was glad the messenger interrupted her. Paul always told her she walked around
with her head in the clouds. She was trying to daydream less.
“I’m back. Thanks for keeping an eye on my bike. I’m Paul,” said the bike messenger as he
extended his hand.
“Paul? Oh. I’m Nora.
Nice to meet you.”
“Nora. Have you been
here long?”
“Since five till nine.”
Paul’s eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. “Um. I
meant, ah, how long have you worked here?”
“Oh. Duh.” She ran her hand through her hair. “Three years.”
“Did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“On your hand.”
“No. I woke up with that this morning. Isn’t that weird?”
“Yeah. And cool.”
“Yeah. Kind of cool.”
“Well, see you later. ‘Bye Nora.”
“’Bye, Paul.”
At 5:05, Nora locked her three pens in her desk, got her
purse, and walked outside. She looked up at the puffy clouds. The sun was getting low in the sky, making
the sky a brilliant blue and the puffy clouds a rosy pink with blue edges. She
walked and searched for shapes: a dragon here, a turtle there. She nearly walked past her building.
Nora walked up to her apartment. She passed Billy the super on the steps. “Water’s
back on, Nora. We have a boil order for
three days.” Water! Nora walked back
downstairs and went into the convenience store around the corner. She picked up the last gallon of bottled
water in the neighborhood (said the clerk) and took it back upstairs to her
neighbor’s door. She stood on the
doormat, unsure if she should ring the bell or not. She could hear a cartoon on
the TV inside and a couple of fighting kid voices. Nora could smell…Hamburger
Helper? She rang the doorbell.
