The Beginning of the Story

Note: Typically, I'm a non-fiction writer - I write about my life and about things I know.  I have never dabbled in fiction, but a few months ago, I had a sudden urge (aren't all urges sudden?) to write a fiction story.  I scribbled it down feverishly in my journal before the urge evaded me.  The story is by no means finished, but I thought I would start to post some of it here, piece by piece. This is the beginning.


This bath rug is dirty, he realized.

In his 4:30 a.m. must-get-out-the-door-before-the-dog-wakes-Molly haze, he never would have noticed how the dirt clings to the rubber corners of the sage green mat.  Nor, how if you really looked at it, the sage color had dissipated into a desert brownish - a dying cactus color, if you will.

But he now finds himself face-to-face with the mat.  He can't remember the last time he lay on the bathroom floor.  He wasn't a boozer in college.  He hung out with the library crowd, and if he drank, it was never to extremes.  The fetal position was one he only reserved for the flu or a really cold night when Molly insisted on sticking her icicle-like feet under his legs.  And yet ... here he was.  We need a new bath rug, he thought.

He cracks his right eye, instinctively cringing, as his ears start to ring and his mind makes his body think that he's on a four-star cruise ship minus all of the stars.  A dingy, perhaps.  Through all of the stimuli, he sees Molly's red fleece pajama pants, the ones with the snowflake design that should have been put away long ago, as it was April and the tulips were starting to say hello to the world.

Out of the bottom of her pants peek Molly's feet.  Why am I staring at her feet, he thought.  Did we have wild sex last night and that's why we ended up in different positions on the bed?  He smiled, hoping, and the act made him wince.  There was the rocking boat again.  Must have been one hell of a night, he mused.  And then it dawned on him that he was on the bathroom floor.  And it all made sense.