Micro Fiction Monday: Twenty Degrees and Sunny

Twenty degrees. Sunny. Clear blue skies. A breeze that neither slaps you in the face with sticky humidity, nor pricks your skin with goosebumps. It is the absolute perfection of a day.

And I’m stuck in this hellhole.

In this building, air conditioning is nonexistent. I mean, that’s not entirely accurate—the dining room has air conditioning. The dining room, in fact, is quite pleasant. It’s the kitchen that makes you feel like you’re trapped in the depths of the devil’s lair, at his mercy for eight hours on end.

If someone offers you a job as a line cook, turn it down. You’re better off with the waitstaff, with all the screaming babies and picky eaters it comes with.

I’ve worked here for five years now, which is just long enough to realize how much the job sucks, but also long enough to form bonds with the people who are actually tough enough to last this long in a kitchen job. (Kitchen jobs, I’ve learned, are not for the faint of heart.) It’s long enough to adapt to the closing routine like second nature--learning to flip all the switches and wash all the dishes within five minutes of closing time, dragging the last bag of garbage with me on my way out the door.

Now, the sun has already gone down, and the air cooled from its perfect daytime temperature. I pull a sweater over my head and fling the garbage into the dumpster out back. Before I reach my car, I look up.

The moon is shining, and the stars are out. The cool air is a welcome change from the humidity of my day, and the sky remains as clear as it had been during the day.

I sigh. It’s the absolute perfection of an evening.

Perfect (Micro-Fiction Monday)

“Hold still.”

“Wait, my nose is itchy.”

“No! Don’t move!”

“But—“

“No.”

“I just—“

I flicked my paintbrush at him, making him flinch as paint droplets splattered against his face. “I said, don’t move!”

He frowned, but stayed put.

“Smile,” I ordered. He deepened his frown, undoubtedly just to spite me. “Smile,” I repeated, raising my paint brush again. “Blue isn’t exactly your colour.”

“I’m already wearing blue.”

“Which is why I told you to wear the red shirt, instead. Now shut up and smile.”

He grumbled and flashed a toothy, cheesy, definitely fake smile my way. “Happy?” he muttered through gritted teeth.

“Thrilled,” I said drily. His smile loosened.

“If you were this opposed to posing,” I said, running my brush across the canvas, “then why didn’t you let me just take the photograph?”

“Because then I’d just be watching you paint,” he said. “That’s no fun.”

I peered around my work in progress to cock an eyebrow at him. “And standing still as a statue is?”

“Well, yeah. Because now I can do this—“ He waved his arms up, quickly and wildly, before returning them to their assigned positions. “—and you get mad.”

I glared at him.

“See?” he said. His smile was real now. “You’re mad. I’m giddy. Isn’t this fun?”

I rolled my eyes and sent another flick of paint at his face. “An absolute blast.”

It was another couple hours before I finished the painting. It wasn’t my best work—unsurprising, since it was a project for class that I left until the last minute—but still, it was decent.

“You missed a spot,” he said from behind me, peering over my shoulder.

“I did?” I scanned my eyes over the painting, analyzing every shade, every brushstroke. “Where?”

His arm reached around me and grabbed my thinnest brush, dipping it in the blue paint and reaching towards the canvas. Before I can stop him, he dabbed it on lightly, mimicking the paint I had splattered onto his face.

“There,” he said. He looked down at me and dabbed me lightly on the nose. “Perfect.”

~~

Until later,

- Justyne

Perfection

Editing is a pain in the butt.

To be completely honest, I rarely make it to this point. I've been trying to finish a decent novel since the fourth grade, and every time I normally give up before I even finish the first draft. I blame it on my perfectionism, and the whole "EVERY WORD MUST BE PERFECTLY PLACED NO EXCEPTIONS" feeling. I edit as I write, then give up when it's still not coming out absolutely perfectly. One time I restarted a novel four times, and worked on it for a good two years, without even making it to the halfway point.

The biggest problem with this habit of mine is that I end up with countless different projects of varying degrees of completion, with nothing actually done. I've been writing for almost ten years, and I still have yet to actually finish a project to the point that I am satisfied with the final product.

It gets frustrating, sometimes. Sometimes it feels like I've been wasting my time, working for years with nothing solid to show for it. But the one thing that can pick me up when I feel like this is looking through my old writing.

Sure, it's bad. Terrible, even. A good half of it isn't done, and the half that is done is filled with very poor plot points and explanations and little--if any--character development. But honestly...it's cool. It's cool to look back at my thoughts from when I was sixteen, fifteen, fourteen. It's cool to see the ideas I had then; the snippets I wrote when I wasn't paying attention in math class and the piles upon piles of notebooks I filled throughout the course of my high school career.

So even though I have mountains of projects that will probably never be completed, I think the little collection that I've grown over the years proves that I do have something to show for it. And I enjoy taking the time to read and rediscover it. Until I realize just how poorly it was written and cringe in embarrassment, anyway.

But that's cool, too. Because it means that, at the very least, I've improved a little bit. Even though the words may not be perfect, they're at least a little closer.

But editing is still a pain in the butt.

Until later,

- Justyne