Random short story thread

[crocoduck]

So this is mostly meant as a "Help CDF with his writing" but can also just be a fun thread.

The idea is to make short, RP-length stories with very different and random scenarios. Those that read this story can comment on it and give suggestions or just say whether or not they like it.

For me, personally, I want people to tell me what to change in my writing style so as to improve it. This is rather important to me and I hope you guys'll help me out.

I'm getting random story ideas from here: www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=storygen

and i'll be posting an example shortly.

[crocoduck]

The sweet tedium of the Copy Corner was unlike anything John had ever encountered before. Although once in a while, there was a break from the drab cycle.

Like any day, it started with the inexplicably obnoxious sound of a broom brushing against the tile floor. Why the housekeeping insisted on using a broom, he never know, but then again, he never knew why they insisted on having housekeeping anyways.

The Copy Corner was very aptly named, being that it was a tiny corner shop that many of the locals still didn't even know existed. The store area couldn't have been larger than 25x25 feet and the back room was less of a room and more of a closet. Most of the space was devoted to the area behind the counter that spanned the width of the room. Even then, the area was packed as tightly as physically possible with computers, scanners, boxes and random merchandise.

The store area itself was the equivalent of a small, uncomfortable hallway. No merchandise was in sight on the other side of the counter except for a tiny stand with a collection of items that had no right being placed together on the same stand. The items ranged from the expected, such as candy bars and gum, to the understandable such as pens and pencils, to the odd, such as compasses and sunglasses to the inexplicable set of binoculars and clown shoes.

Those last two were John's doing. After his first couple of months at working at the Corner, it became quite clear to him that his boss hadn't the faintest clue what went on in her store. She kept a close eye on whether anybody was stealing money and how much money the store was bringing in, of course, but that was the extant of it. This became clear the day John's shift had just ended, and as he was about to leave, he set his cup of coffee on the stand as he tied his shoes and then simply forgot about it and left. He returned two days later for his next shift, and lo and behold, there was his cup. Having absolutely no other source of entertainment in his life, John of course had no choice but to see how long it would remain there.

It took three weeks before cup met its demise. Even then, it was neither at the hands of the owner nor the cleaning crew, but instead of a customer who hated the smell of old coffee. Which revealed the fact that both his manager and the cleaning crew were utterly useless.

Since this discovery, John managed to finally sneak in some entertainment into his drab monotonous life by putting in a new and bizarre item on the stand every month. Once in a while, a customer would grab one of John's items off the stand and, to John's great amusement and his manager's even greater confusion, attempt to buy it. If John was working, he'd simply apologize and say the item didn't belong to the store and that they'd put it in their lost and found. If his manager was working, she'd give a price she found adequate and assume it was just a store item she bought and forgot to price.

Either way, John's items were growing bolder each day. He had started off with little toys, like those plastic green soldier, and had evolved all the way up to binoculars and shoes. Today, John's heart was pumping as he approached his pillar of joy.

As he did every morning, John ducked underneath the counter and shuffled his way to the door. As he did every morning, he turned his key, unlocked the door, and flipped the sign that reliefed the public of it's immense anticipation and informed the world that finally, the grand Copy Center was open. Sadly, the world seemed to be limited to a couple of pigeons on the sidewalk that warily watched the movement beyond the door.

Smiling at the rats-with-wings, John turned and headed back to the counter, as he did every morning. Just as he moved to duck underneath the counter once more, his hand slipped into his back pocket, pulled out an item and placed it clumsily on the bottom shelf of the stand. The thrill of it caused him to lose what little elegance he had, making him rush to cross under the counter, slamming his head as he did so.

Even with the fresh pain coursing through his head, John couldn't contain his grin. He felt so devious that he almost felt like a criminal. He knew there wasn't much logic to the feeling, of course, but he loved feeling it anyways. With a childish grin, John leaned over the counter and peered mischievously at his handy work.

Reluctantly, he peeled his eyes away from the stand to take a look at the source of noise coming from the door. A customer had arrived with a couple of toddlers in tow. Somehow, the children's presence made him feel even more wicked, the thought of the bottle standing there in the stand providing more flame to his feeling of wickedness.

Casting these feelings aside, with a cheerier voice than usual, John greeted the customer.
"Hello there! Welcome to the Copy Corner, how can I help you today?"

The customer proved to be one of the 10% of group 2. John liked to separate his customers into groups and further into percentages. Group 2 were the miserable bastards that usually had to use a Copy Center and knew all the ins and outs and the Jargon required to get the fastest service. These were generally people like secretaries or assistants. The 10% were those that were born with half of their brain in their head and the other half in their rectum. The kind that was not only stupid, but ignorant as well.

Keeping his sighs and his eye rolls hidden, John turned and did as he was commanded (never asked, always commanded). With less than great enthusiasm, he placed paper upon paper into the scanner, watched the light move across them, and pulled out the copied piece at the other end. It was miserable work, no matter how easy it was.

Today, however, he had a little charm to brighten up the day. He could still see it in his minds eye, and he kept imagining this secretary standing right beside it. He wondered what the look on her face would be if she were to disc-

"Lisa? LISA!? LISA!! OH MY GOD"

John's grey world was immediately filled with more colors than he could ever hope or want to see. Noises rose around him too quickly and too loudly for him to understand. Too many things were happening at a speed that John was not even close to accustomed to in the Copy Center.

The stand was crashing against the counter and rolling to the floor, Juan the cleaner was leaping over the counter to the other side, yelling things in spanish that nobody understood. The little boy that had come in had his back pressed tight against the wall and he was wailing louder than John even thought possible for a child that small.

The 2-10 customer was on her knees, screaming frantically towards something on the floor. John was too stunned at first to even wonder what she was screaming at, but he did note the fact that he couldn't see the little girl from before.

Only when he took a third look at where the mother was kneeling did he get an inkling of what was going on. As he inched his head past the counter to take a better look, he remembered the height of the girl that now laid motionless on the floor beside where the stand once stood. She was at eye level with his mischievous gift.

Her mother was beginning to wail almost as loudly as her son as Juan began performing CPR. It occured to John that CPR might not even be relevant, but it was better than nothing. At least Juan was doing something.

All John could do was stare at the now empty bottle of birth control pills rolling across the floor. The cap lay as still within the girls hand as the girl herself laid against the floor.

For some reason, all John could think about was whether his owner would even notice a little girl had died in her store.

[Kuro]

That was an excellent piece.the transition from light-hearted to despair-ish was very jarring - in a good way. The surprise at the end made me say "wow". And of course, the last sentence was a nice touch. I thought it was a great short story with good writing. I my do one of these things soon.