Posts Tagged ‘Customers’
Apr
Leviathan
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
April worked the shop counter, gritting through the arthritis and the insinuations, hoping her obsolete wedding ring would ward off anything worse. Her smile was too often seen as an invitation, but her popularity with the customers meant her paycheck was one less thing she had to fret over. Plus she got free repairs.
In winter, when she was locking up after dark, she noticed the shadows piled up in the corners of the lot despite the reflected fluorescence. Something was out there waiting for her, waiting for her to be buried under debt and trauma, waiting to consume her.
Mar
In The Shadow
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Nighttime, people strode past him in pursuit of merriment at the city’s main square.
In a high rise apartment across the street, flamenco pulsed from an open window. Singing and clapping erupted. Smells of warm foods being prepared at tapas bars flavored the humid, tepid air.
He pulled a quilt over his head when a nearby nightclub closed and rowdy customers zigzagged into the light of a new day.
There’d be coins dropping into the cup by him on a bankrupt store’s doorstep he called ‘home.’
Someone would throw him an empanada. He sometimes found one, after footsteps scurried away.
From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs
Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season, although she prefers spring.
Dec
Requiem For The Unappreciated
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Did’ya hear blah died?” the barman had imparted, rather than asked, punctuation notwithstanding.
“Names don’t stay with me,” I’d admitted, and lifted my pint – eyes pointedly on the telly.
“Used to be regular – face all scarred.” Hint not taken.
I’d shrugged and adjusted my angle to him.
“You know him.” It was a slow day – the other customers had wisely chosen not to sit at the counter.
“Probably,” I’d ceded, thrusting my annoyance deep beneath a façade of affability.
It must have leaked, for the subject was dropped.
Two weeks later I noticed that an acclaimed local poet had died.
From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid
Feb
Supermarket Sleep
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Wednesdays, post-second shift, bone-marrow tired, Kyra grocery-shopped. To stay alert, she categorized customers, itemized their purchases.
First: class, marital status, number of kids, happiness level. Pony-tailed woman opposite Kyra? Pinching pants tight in the crotch? Must be married ten years; barely making do managing odd-lots store; two sucrose-loving preteens; miserable as a mutt, minus flea collar, August.
Cart contents: Pony tail and family down waffles, wings, PB & J, rolls, store-brand sherbet, Bud, Coke.
Kyra’d be sad, eating that.
Pulled leggings, smoothed hair. Double-take: her mirrored reflection! She’d best snap out of this, load check-out counter. Be on her way.
From Guest Contributor Iris N. Schwartz
Iris is a fiction and nonfiction writer, as well as a Pushcart-Prize-nominated poet. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Bindweed Magazine, Connotation Press, The Flash Fiction Press, Jellyfish Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Random Sample Review.
May
Once You Can Get By The Smell, You Have It Licked.”
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Once you can get by the smell, you have it licked.”
This sign was posted on the blue-veined cheeses in Uncle Kenny’s delicatessen. Other signs adorned some of the exotic cheeses and meats in the shop. “Check out our rump,” “Squeeze this pork butt,” and so on. Kenny thought he was a comedian, but he made his customers uncomfortable. He vowed to lighten things up a bit, and quit using the coarser texts. He made some signs and posted them above the cheese: “What happened after an explosion at a French cheese factory? All that was left was de brie.”
From Guest Contributor, Thomas Pitre