Saturday, December 12, 2009

Oh Dear - a short story about coffee

This is just an exercise but I think its okay. I had fun writing it!
Oh Dear…
I woke up, my alarm shrilling right into my ear. I groaned. “Five more minutes.” I muttered. Five minutes turned into fifteen minutes.
So when I finally got out of bed, the coffee was all gone. Between mum, dad and big brother Nick, they drink a lot of coffee. Mum, dad and me can’t function properly without a little caffeine banging around our system, but Nick only drinks the last of it to annoy me. Dad has this funny rule about coffee- we’re only allowed to make one batch per day. Of course, he drinks like half of it; Mum drinks most of the rest, leaving me only a cup if I beat Nick to the kitchen. It might not seem like a tragedy to you, but that means, I have to go buy coffee at the local 7-11, where Twitchy James works. I call him twitchy James because his ears always twitch, like some oversized vermin. I got on his bad side once, and now he is always short changing me. Don’t ask me what I did, because I just told his mum about this up-coming assembly where he’d be getting a couple of awards. I meant it as in good will, but I guess he didn’t see it this way.

“Hello Meg.” There it was, Twitchy James. It should show you that I couldn’t manage an insult, let alone a civil-yet-insulting comeback. I just got my double-latte with milk and joined the queue. It was mainly full of grade eights buying slurpees. I shuddered to think of the food colouring. If I had any brains right at that moment, I wouldn’t have spilled the coffee over my uniform. As I ducked into the bathroom, I started worrying about paying double for the spilt coffee. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry about that. I should have been worrying about something more immensely important.
That’s because two robbers just walked into the store when I finally came out.

They had everyone on the floor, but there was no hostage. Twitchy James was also on the floor, while one of them helped themselves to the money.

I screamed.

Needless to say, they shot me in surprise. The shot still rang out after I fell, warping into the shrill sound of my alarm clock. I was awake. That was a dream.

I was tempted to stay in bed longer, but remembering the dream, I shot down to the kitchen. Nick was slurping the last of the coffee, his eyes taunting me to make an outburst. Oh dear...
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