Short Story : III

Project Orange: Chapter 9 (Scene 1)

Linda sat down with her friends at the coffee table, with a ball of nerves deep inside her stomach from recognizing the man with the scar under his right eye who stared at the coffee shop from across the street. The noise of her friends joking and laughing about a recent date her friend Charlie had, broke her attention from the man across the street. 

Charlie shares how this college boy tried forcing himself on her to have sex, and the girls stop laughing, with shocked looks on their faces, each pupil became a black hole of attention. 

Linda drifts off into thought not stunned by Charlie’s story, knowing that she lead him on and then left him with blue balls as a strategy to play hard to get. The screen behind Linda’s forehead cast a scene of the phone calls she received on the drive to the coffee shop of the deep scary voice, “You’re NEXT!” out of her head. 

Linda, pushes her chair back, and grabs her purse, interrupting Charlie, turning her attention to Linda, “You leaving already?” tucking her red hair behind her shoulders. 

Linda turns to her group of friends, “To be honest, I’m just not all there today,” she said, “I want to head home and take a nap before my shift tonight.” She gets up and shimmy’s her way around the table to give her friends a hug, “I’ll talk with you all later.”

Linda, turns and walks out the exit door, noticing the man isn’t across the street anymore, she exhales a sigh of relief, only to scan the area and find him walking towards her from the crosswalk. His grey peppered hair was still pulled back into a ponytail from the other night and her stomach drop as she knew he was the man from the bar.

Linda rushes to get into the truck. She starts fumbling with her keys and drops them between her feet on the street, reaching down to grab her keys, she looks for his footsteps and he is gone. Her heart speeds ups, beating hard against her chest as if she sprinting eight hundred meters for time. 

Scrambling to grab her keys, she hits the unlock button on the key fob of her Ford Ranger door, unlocking the truck door, with a violence of action, she pulls open the latch, and yanks open the door, chucking her purse into the passenger seat. She jumps in and scans left and right with eyes searching for the man with the scar. She inserts the key into the ignition and turns the truck on, pressing down on the clutch and brake simultaneously shifting her truck into reverse. 

Without looking behind her, she hits the gas pedal, bolting out of her parking spot into two-way traffic; cars behind her slam on the brakes making a long screeching sound. Linda looks back slamming on the brakes, pressing her right foot down on the gas pedal to propel the truck forward. She speeds down the road driving right past him who now is walking north away from the coffee shop. Her heartbeat is now in her throat and ears, sending vibrations across her nerves. 

Thanks for reading this small part of a bigger story and project that I am chipping away at.