YeahWrite Weekly Challenge #486, nonfiction
Mandatory prompts: superpower fire generation, food mustard
Day Job
Lightning punctuated the dark rain clouds as they sped across
the sky in a menacing veil, threatening to flood the city park with wet warm
drops. The rapid boom of thunder
announced the timing to be imminent. To
most of the park’s occupants this seemed like a simple summer storm, but to the
woman in the window of “Denise’s Ketchup Dogs” food truck, it had a more
ominous purpose. One lock of her
waist-length curly red hair slipped over her shoulder and over her eye as she
gripped the counter edge and leaned forward, tilting her chin skyward. She tapped her long nails, filed to points
and painted with swirling images of flames, and arched a magenta eyebrow with
consternation.
“Excuse me? Excuse me, little lady, might I have a Denise’s special with extra ketchup?”
The elderly gentleman with tufts of gray hair escaping the
sides of his newsboy cap and wide innocent eyes would have no idea what hit
him, she thought, when she finally allowed her eyes to slide slowly towards him. She wordlessly pushed herself up to begin his
order. She rose to her full height and he
involuntarily took a step back, surprised by her height and the sudden heat in
her eyes. She turned her back to the counter,
speared a hot dog with one long red nail, and as her brown irises suddenly
blazed orange and red, flames of the same color rose from her upturned palm and
enveloped the hot dog. She curled the remaining fingers against her
palm to quell the flames, and the golden hot dog released a small puff of steam.
Smiling wryly, she extended the other hand palm up and seared the dog with a
swipe of her nails, the perfect imitation of grill marks.
She slid the hot dog off her fingernail and into a bun,
squeezed the ketchup in one deft movement, and leaned one elbow on the counter
while she pushed it towards him in a paper boat. He regarded the extra ketchup bubbling hotly
and his innocent eyes widened. He tossed
the bills on the counter and hurried away, mumbling “keep the change”, nearly
knocking over the teenage boy standing behind him.
The shaggy-haired teenager ambled towards the counter, AirPods
in place, thumbing through text messages and laughing to himself. He slapped a handful of loose change on the counter
as she slid him a dog, and the corner of her mouth turned up in amusement when
he failed to notice the corner of the paper boat slowly catching fire.
Lightning again sliced through the sky, veins of yellow gold
in the darkening clouds, as the next customer sauntered up to the counter. Their eyes locked, one taking in the ketchup-stained
white apron nearly matching her hair, and the other noting perfectly coifed
blonde hair finished with a string of pearls and a crisp linen blouse. Her
customer had eyes of an uncanny yellow, and she caught the sliding hot dog
without breaking their gaze.
“Mustard, please?”
“Oh, we don’t keep that stuff here,” she shuddered, “can’t
stand it.”
“No worries.” She grinned slyly. “I brought my own.”
With a flick of her wrist she deftly lined the hot dog with
a thick stripe of slick yellow green mustard.
She cocked her elbow smartly on her hip and struck a pose as a trail of
yellow smoke roped through the air to accost her opponent’s nostrils, knocking
her off her feet.
The plastic squeeze bottles of ketchup twisted and melted into themselves in the blaze as she leaped to her feet, jagged flames erupting
from her palms and her hair in a red halo.
“Oh yeah, get ready, it’s ON!”
The contrast between the immense powers of the actors and the ordinariness of the setting was really effective. There's certainly a lot of drama and color in this scene - I can almost picture the comic book page!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I was trying to use the scene details to highlight also the everyday alias of the superhero
DeleteThe abundance of adjectives used to describe both the characters and the background provide very powerful visuals, which also serve to intensify the emotions of the main character toward the end of the piece. I thought it was very entertaining!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! A fun read was definitely my goal!
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