When Wishes Deceive, Be Careful of Traveling Genies.

Weekend, fictional freewrite fun with three prompts (in italics). Refer to @mariannewest.

"It is a conspiracy, don't you see it?" She walked away from the table, clenching her fists.
“And, No, I do not have an axe to grind,” she shouted at the oblivious looking bunch of board member’s. Four middle-aged men and a puffed secretary by day woman, three of whom are licking their fingers of glaze from the Safeway donuts someone brought, leftovers from an earlier after-school pool-party.

He was a tall and good-looking guy, at least she thought, the one who he was supposedly dating when all hell broke loose with dreamed up vendetta, loose-cannon idea of his. He was determined to get her back after she asked him to pay more than $330 a month to live in her house, gorge himself on her food, instead of coughing up the cash, making his ingestion's even-Steven, he just continued to refuse to speak to her, shaming and shouting, “This is not a good time.”

Yes, he was going to hurt her after the weekend she finally got mad, asked him to talk or he could leave and so he’d defiantly packed his duffle. Duffied and dim, he set-out to sleep with a new woman within a week-- that would teach her never to treat such a quality man with such hostile disdain!

Well, the new girls, yes, two, offered lots of talk of politics and UFO’s and the three quickly engaged in these weird TV parties at the old St. Mary’s Hospital, now housing for the disabled, in which they hypothesized on the real messages between two squawking screens.

A crazy story of mean rooster and a flock of desperate hens, all of whom the caseworker counselor at the free insurance clinic assured girlfriend one that she did have something in common with these mud-fish women though she couldn’t really image what that could be?

“You are all vulnerable and hurt and he is an opportunist.”

Girlfriend three is the one attempting to get him fired by attending board meetings of his city governed position. Girlfriend one was finally picking up the emotional fall-out herself, while girlfriend two had gone into a blaming hysteria once girlfriend three was revealed and had decided she’d tell the first—too much to comprehend, yes even for the participants it was much worse than drawing the three of swords from Crowley’s deck, more like the Bermuda triangle, a drowning and never-return.

*"Pumpkins can grow everywhere. That is not what I want to discuss with you,” girlfriend three shook her head in exacerbation!

Girlfriend one watched and listened from afar and wondered to herself, what was wrong with this group of toads who just refused to understand she hadn’t asked him for a date that she’d never agreed to go riding off into the sunset with this dork of a man even if everyone else in town was charmed to starry eyes by his split-tongued flattery! She was no Cinderella, a poor, crazy girl who couldn’t wait to be chosen by this man who liked to squash women and call it the best night of his life, but that’s exactly the corner they were attempting to push her into.

I am telling you, he held me down, on the red couch that night after many hours of our talking about exes. Yes, maybe there was some attraction there in the way that minds want to be challenged, but he’s much older than me, pinched lips and a balding head with just wisps of dignity left as far as movie-star looks go.

This is not just a hot case of lunch-man comes into town and wants more than anything with his University of Michigan degree, his reported history of European adventures for government heads in Brussels, or even his last incarnation, a man who’d just evaded LA, porn-filled head in his hands who wants nothing more than to get a job, less than forty hours, less than forty-thousand, working in a Seaside carnival-circus town where the magistrates are minus any cultural knowledge and still use Styrofoam!

What was most likely happening was a temporary blindness caused by their feeling so blessed by the promises of his resume and stories of grandeur that it was easier to put her down as a nowhere-land lunatic than to ask themselves, “Hey, yeah, why would a guy like that want so badly to work with us?”

Because if they did, all of those compliments, them finally being seen by a big-wig from checkered-tiled floors would have to be released, melting, flattening, stale, seafoam and the real acceptance of the boiled-hotdog lunches as being just what they are.

The watch was broken The white-leather one she’d gotten from an ex-boyfriend that summer before leaving Tennessee. How really could it be that she’d been attacked by two such brutes? She took her watch into the Seaside shop, but they only had plastic ones for the oversized rapper-style dials sold at the Nike outlet down the road.

She’d spent most of one night, finally cut and fashioned a piece of paper clip, with a very dull set of wire cutter’s borrowed from old-man-Pete next door. Had finally gotten the band secured again, but now it suddenly dropped off as she turned to step back to seat after her three-minute allotted time in front of the board in which she used her shaky phone camera to video tape their blank faces as she went into her twenty-fourth or so tirade about how she’d been pinned-down by this pumpkin eater, a prince who when the magic wore off, she found was only a grease-licking, disease-spreading, tall rat, but these, heads of city, could still only see a tall, dark stranger dancing up dazzle at their hinterland ball. A crazy woman wearing white visor, yarn-fashioned body cam swinging from her neck, all in a black trench.

She bent over, picked up the pinched white band, tripped around a bit, but couldn’t see the metal clip, so took the opportunity to spit more over her shoulder, because this unfortunate falling-apart allotted her some extra, precious floor time, “He is a sex-pest, an abuser and your organization needs to know! I am only here to help protect the vulnerable, seniors and women who ought to feel safe within your community center’s doors!”

“I wish you could see," she lamented as she stepped out into early night.

Photo Credit: Louis Hansel/unsplash