Two shorts slightly based on reality.

May was damned busy. I got virtually no writing done aside from a few tottering steps forward in my actual novel. So to kick of June, here's two short pieces that aren't very well written and reflect how rust I've gotten from months of inactivity.

When Words Like "Socioeconomic Status" Suddenly Mean Something
Staying in this house is unsettling to me. It's not for any of the reasons you'd expect - unfamiliarity, homesickness, loneliness, boredom. Rather, wandering the vast spaces of their opulent home is overwhelming. I spend my time like a savage cast unexpectedly into civilization. Their modern luxuries are alien technology: twin showerheads you can individually engage by turning a knob, a microwave that detects when the popcorn is ready, a clock radio that produces soothing nature sounds and - at five o'clock every morning, regardless of my attempts to disable it - an alarm that starts as slow, hesitant beeping and rises to an urgent, high-pitched wail. Their dogs have nicer beds than many children. Their cupboards are stocked with foods I could only justify affording for special occasions.

They have an alarm system. A code to enter the garage. Floodlights. Deadbolts. Neighboring homes looming close. My house has no security system. The garage door's lock broke years ago. A tiny lightbulb that often burns out casts its glow only as far as my front stoop. Our old locks and windows can be overwhelmed easily with a sufficient ammount of prodding. Tall trees hide us from neighbors that don't even smile in acknowledgement when we briefly meet at the edge of the road, fetching bills and court dates from our mailboxes.

Yet every night, I sit huddled on the couch between two dogs, mace within arm's reach, jumping at every tiny noise and fleeting shadow. The TV's indifferent glow somehow offers reassurance as if darkness and silence were prerequisites of violence, as if home invasions couldn't happen with a studio audience laugh track filling the room.

I'm frightened because these people aren't like me. They have things worth stealing.

The Reality Check
Our clothes were so drenched that my seats had the perfect imprints of human bodies damply etched into upholstery, and the entire car reeked like wet hair. I felt a certain glimmer of hope, a skipping rythm in my chest, when you suggested with a grin that we take them off. How many stupid girls had fallen for that dazzling smile, thinking that an eccentric intellectual would somehow be the moral superior of a man who pants down the front of your shirt with alcohol on his breath at the club? A college career doesn't neuter a man.

Afterwards, when you'd promptly found an excuse to leave, I foolishly laid in that tangle of sheets still stinking of sex and smiled. I'd fallen prey to the same idiotic mentality of every woman shafted (literally) before me; I'd allowed myself to get excited by the notion that we were now lovers. Yet as the sheets cooled in the absence of your body, I came to realize the reality of the situation. I was a lover. You were just a fucker.