Monday, February 16, 2009

The Guest Room Pt. 1 - a short story

It was going to be one of those nights, Joshua could tell already. The weariness he felt in his entire being was crying out for him to lay down and call it a day. Of course the minute he did his mind woke up. Joshua was taking his friend's advice and was determined to lay there, in his bed, and focus all his energy on staring at one stable spot. Supposedly by distracting his mind from all the worries and thoughts racing through his head he would be able to nod off into dreamland. It was not working yet. He was not looking at the clock, so he was not sure how long he had been staring at the broken slat on his window blinds, but it felt like a long time. It was long enough for him to remember the day the slat broke. He and Sarah had moved into this two bedroom house together. It was their first big purchase as a married couple and they were proud of it. It did not matter that it now took 45 minutes to get to work when their apartment had been only ten minutes away. It was their home and that was a very big deal. They had moved in a month before the slat got broke and the room had been sitting bare with only the blinds covering the window. With their most recent paycheck they went out to buy furniture for the room. It was designated the guest room and because of that they needed a bed. They bought a full sized bed on sale but Joshua had still felt a little ripped off by the whole process. Why were mattresses so expensive anyway? Joshua had ranted the whole way home about mattresses being the equivalent of highway robbery and Sarah had repressed her giggles. For some odd reason, watching Joshua get bent out of shape about silly things that were out of his control made Sarah giggle. That giggle of hers was how they first met and started dating. She was working at a juice bar inside the gym Joshua worked out at and had been for weeks. He loved getting a juice drink at the end of a good work out but hated the prices, usually he kept his thoughts to himself. He would just ordered from the cute girl behind the counter and leave. That day was a little different. He went up to order an strawberry orange energy booster smoothie when he noticed a new item, wheat grass. Before he knew it he had started complaining about the price of wheat grass shots and how he couldn't understand how eating lawn clippings could cost so much. He was in full tirade mode when she started laughing. He had never had that reaction before and was a little embarrassed but he figured the worst was already past, so he asked her out. He had loved her the minute he first heard her laugh at him for being retarded. She was a cute girl but that laugh was what drove him to ask her out. Within a year they were married and within 2 they were buying a house.
They had manhandled the box springs out of the truck that he had borrowed from his father and walked it inside the house. Everything was going swimmingly when he tripped while walking into the room backwards. He fell right into the window but managed not to break it. Unfortunately the blinds had not been fully installed yet (his fault) and they came crashing down on his head. Needless to say it hurt and he was upset, so he took the blinds and threw them to the ground. When he calmed down, he picked it all back up but several of the slats were bent and one was broken. After his irritation and anger was over he and Sarah had laughed about the blind incident. So the broken blind was a good memory for him and he couldn't help but smile as he laid there. Unfortunately this memory was multiplying and other thoughts began springing up in his head. He was lost in remembrance and he had to tear his eyes away. He refocused on the wall closest to him. There was a weird pattern in the wall texture and he sat there making shapes out of it until his lids grew heavy and finally closed.

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