Riley sat in one of the large, cushiony chairs at the entrance of the department store. He watched the many people file past him to buy overpriced items. He had been watching now for two hours and was getting bored. When he was bored he would begin making up stories for the people as they walked by.
Like the older lady with the black hair and gold metallic shirt who placed her drink from one of the food court vendors on the table next to him, he figured she was a complete bitch. She didn’t even try to find a trashcan. She merely put it on the table and walked away.
“She probably thought: Ugh, this is gross. Now it’s someone else problem,” Riley said as he flipped his phone open to check the time.
“Three more hours. Nothing ever happens in these places.”
Nice characterization of the lady with the drink. I had a writing group I went out with once that visited a mall, among other places, as a kind of group writing exercise. It was enlightening as the end result was a group critique of our most favorite snippet. As for that afternoon, I ended up with a couple of short stories and a poem. The latter is the one I think of most fondly.
ReplyDeleteAll said, are you coming to PWSA on Monday? We're setting our "collective" goals for the year. It's all about networking with other writers, yo'.