Welcome back to Unfinished Stories.  We have a new writer with us, Esdras Tirado.  He finished Laurel’s latest entry this week.  Hope you enjoy!  And check back tomorrow for another entry!

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Morgan and I went to The Field after school. We often did. It was different and isolated, a place to get away I guess. It wasn’t a secret spot or anything; I think most people didn’t really like it there. Honestly, if Morgan weren’t there, I don’t know if I’d really like it either. 

Basically it was overgrown grass and foxtails, just a field behind this broken down fence. Like a chainlink fence; someone had cut through it decades ago I guess, and no one bothered to fix it up. It was green and sort of out of control and then a ways away, through another set of fences, was the Yoo-hoo factory. 

Morgan thought this place was awesome: “Isn’t it awesome! I mean in the true sense of the word. I mean here you have this oppressive structure—this factory pumping out chocolate milk…” she held up her hands and made quotation marks out of her fingers. “Then you have these wild flowers… In this field no one will touch!” She had to yell because she wandered away from me through The Field.

She was right, there were flowers. I hadn’t noticed them before.  I liked when she talked like this. I mean it was sort of stupid, sometimes I felt like she wanted to feel more grown-up, but mostly she was excited. 

If she got excited enough when she was talking like that, she’d come up to me and put her hands on my shoulders and shake me around. You know, like she was going to wake me up with her words and I’d see things her way. 

Honestly, I wish I could, but mostly I just saw her. 

When she shook me like that, I always wanted to shake her back. Or something. I wanted to grab onto her. In some way I thought it might be like completing a circuit. Like if I touched her while she was shaking me then she’d know how I felt, and I’d know how she felt. For a moment we could feel the same. 

I never did though. I never grabbed her back. I was afraid to I guess. 

Morgan turned away from me, toward the factory, and held her hands up high and wide. Then she spun around laughing, the length of her skirt trying to keep up with her rotations. 

It was so pretty.

I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her that the factory and the flowers, The Field wasn’t awesome. It was her, in it, she had it all wrong. It sort of hurt how wrong she was.

“Cut it out Sid!” She had stopped spinning and barreled toward me.

“What?” I looked at her, then I realized I was looking a little too hard, then looked away. She was still running hard at me. 

She wasn’t slowing down. I didn’t move. 

“You’re getting that sad look again!” 

Then SMACK.

When I came to, I was laying head first on the ground. Morgan was hunched over me. Her small, lean muscular arms were wrapped around me. “She was yelling stop! Stop! Like a bird protecting her chicks she was flailing her arms up and down. “Clyde, go away! You ruin. Everything!” She yelled. I looked up and right above me  beyond Morgan’s firm, resolute body stood Clyde. He was Morgan’s ex boyfriend. Morgan had gone out with Clyde twice two summers ago. Ever since then, even after being rejected over and over again he had a disturbing obsession with her. I wouldn’t blame him. She was absolutely marvelous in everything she did. Morgan was the type of girl you’d want to marry, the type of girl who’d drive a man crazy. In this case the latter was a closer representation of the situation I was in.

Except instead of me protecting her she was the one huddled over me pushing back the assault and standing up for me.

My head hurt like a mother fucker. My head was throbbing, I reached to assess the damage and to my suspicion I was welcomed with a bloody hand from a gapping gash on my forehead.

He stood there. I got up.

You should have seen it.  The scene was like it’d been pulled straight out of the bible. Me, Syd Carson, standing 5’5″ on a good day. And Clyde Thomas all 6’7″ inches of him, towering over me like Goliath.

“What do you want? I told you we were just friends. Why the fuck you do that? I’m not trying to fight.”

“No, you’re trying to fuck my girl…”

“Clyde”, said Morgan softly, she raised both her hands and stood between the both of us.” You know I’m not interested in you. Clyde.  This is exactly why I left you…” She looked at me with her clear blue eyes, she had the kind of eyes that only a few people have, perpetual innocence and eternity all at once.

Clyde gave me a stinging stare dead and full of anger. I don’t know what I was thinking. I still don’t till this day. All I know is I ran toward him. His lumbering body now one on my shoulders all I could do was push. I kept moving my legs. Then suddenly I couldn’t move. I heard a screech from behind me. Clyde fell impaled on the chain link fence that’d been there for so long. Blood ran down his chest. He was hemmoreaging, his eyes rolled back. His head sunk in.

I stepped back. Shock took over my body and Morgan took my hand.  “Let’s go.” She said. “No one has to know.”

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Laurel Degutis – oscarordinary.com

Esdras Tirado – Instagram Food Blog