{"id":17028,"date":"2022-02-18T09:21:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T14:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=17028"},"modified":"2024-05-17T07:03:46","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T11:03:46","slug":"sitting-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/sitting-ducks\/","title":{"rendered":"Sitting Ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rain drops slapped against their ground level window. \u201cI can\u2019t hear it yet, can you?\u201d Amber said, lying flat in her bunk, but her eyes on the water flecked glass. \u201cJessie said it was going to turn and hit North of us at the last minute anyway.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does she know?\u201d Glenna said from the bunk above. \u201cFucking idiot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe said North is good. It\u2019ll miss us, and swing back out to sea. Go fuck up like Africa or England or something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you got babies up in Myrtle? You wishing this shit on them?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amber took a deep breath. She thought about her little ones at her mama\u2019s house. About their round cheeks and their big eyes. Her mama\u2019s half of a run-down duplex with its loose shingles, the single pane windows, the draft down the crumbling chimney; the car that rarely started, and never had enough gas to go anywhere, and the pile of bottles in the recycling. She didn\u2019t have anyone to call, neither of their daddies were worth anything, none of her so-called friends had it any better. She bit her lip and hoped her mama was sober enough to get them to the Baptist church, or the high school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Something flashed past the window. Amber told herself it was a bird. Definitely not debris whipped by building winds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t hear anything down here anyway. Not until it\u2019s too late, then you\u2019ll hear all the water rushing down the hall. It\u2019ll be a fucking river.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWater in the hall?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you know nothing? Ms. Hot-Shot High School Diploma. Fuck all it\u2019s doing for you now. This whole place is below sea level, and we\u2019re in the basement. When the water comes we\u2019ll be like fish in an aquarium.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amber sat up. Her eyes on the seal at the bottom of the door. \u201cIf it comes. It\u2019s gonna go North, Jessie says.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The rain splashed dirt up onto their window until they could no longer see out into the yard. Amber paced, her eyes alternating between the window and the bottom of the door. \u201cWhy ain\u2019t you scared?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI gotta plan,\u201d Glenna said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amber snorted. Of course, Glenna had a plan, she always did. Some stupid plan like having Amber distract Selma Banks at lunch while Glenna stole her pork chop, or having Amber risk her sweet job in the laundry to slip Glenna some extra socks. Lord knows what she needed those socks for. Glenna\u2019s plans always included a risk for someone else, for minimal gain.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that secret phone of yours ain\u2019t gonna save you. You can\u2019t call fucking 9-1-1.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Glenna didn\u2019t even turn her head. \u201cI can swim,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amber\u2019s heart sped as she looked from the window to the door, and thought about the one time she\u2019d been in water over her head, a friend\u2019s birthday party at the Holiday Inn. The novelty, she\u2019d never been in a hotel pool, and the cool green of the water, and the proximity of the solid concrete edge had tricked her, lulled her into believing when the other girls called her a chicken, and told her it would be fine to jump in, that it would be. She remembered the seconds of joy as she flew through the air, the crash of the bubbles fizzing their way up her body, but then how the chlorine burned her eyes when she opened them; when she discovered she couldn\u2019t breathe, that she\u2019d somehow got lost on her way back up. How since she didn\u2019t know how to float, she\u2019d sunk almost to the bottom, too buoyant to be able to push off, but too heavy to rise, to breathe, she was stuck in the limbo of the middle where she used up all her air watching the other girls swim above her, before everything went emerald green, and then black. Somebody\u2019s mom\u2019s boyfriend pulled her out and smacked her on the back until she could breathe again. She looked at Glenna and wondered if she would pull her out, or if Amber would watch Glenna swim by.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the water level rose above the window outside, she closed her eyes and tried to remember how to pray. She knew how, at one point, as a child, when the thought of a big man in the sky watching her was comforting and not creepy, back before she knew what men could do, would do, if they had the chance to get her alone. It took prison for her to learn that women would do the same if they had the chance. Back before she knew that no one really cared about anyone else, that everyone was just out for themselves. Praying felt like asking for help and Amber didn\u2019t like doing that. It never ended well. Favors always came with strings and debts bigger than she could pay. Asking for help in school, she\u2019d ended up on her knees behind the Principal\u2019s desk; asking for a place to live where her Mama\u2019s boyfriend wouldn\u2019t hit her, she ended up with a black eye and a broken rib; asking for help feeding her kids ended up with her watching them pull out of her driveway in the back of a police car. She\u2019d ended up inside, because to pay the never-ending list of fines and penalties she sold the last thing that she had, her body, only to find out she wasn\u2019t allowed to do that either.<\/span><\/p>\n

A ripping sound, of seals stretching, of silicone breaking, of something strong finally giving way to something persistent, pulled Amber from her thoughts. She looked toward the sound and saw the paint beneath the window was glossy. She stood and reached her hand out to touch the line of shine that stretched to the floor. Wet. A trickle that she feared would soon be a river. Her stomach was filled with cement. The seal on the window was failing under the pressure of the water. She ran to the door and started banging. \u201cHey! Hey,\u201d she shouted.<\/span><\/p>\n

No one came.<\/span><\/p>\n

She pressed her ear to the door. The normally loud hallway was silent. She slapped the door, the flat of her palm cracking against the metal. \u201cHelen!\u201d she screamed, \u201cHelen!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe you\u2019re thinking about tits right now,\u201d Glenna said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s nice to me. She\u2019ll help us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe likes those blue eyes, and your soft hair. Probably thinking about what it would feel like on her giant thighs. Should I tell her I know?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even through the panic Amber could feel the heat rise to her face. \u201cShe\u2019s our best chance out of here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amber\u2019s feet were wet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAin\u2019t nobody letting us out of here,\u201d Glenna said. \u201cWhat, you think they\u2019re going to put us on a bus? A tin can of convicts stuck on 95 with all those minivans full of families and upright citizens? Can you imagine the television coverage? Nah, girl…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her hands still pressed against the metal, Amber thought about all of the locked doors between her body and outside; there were at least a dozen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAin\u2019t nobody coming to save us,\u201d Glenna hissed into Amber\u2019s ear as she shoved her hands under Amber\u2019s sweatshirt and squeezed her breasts too hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saving herself wasn\u2019t worth it, instead, she closed her eyes and grit her teeth, and begged the ceiling to keep her babies safe. \u201cPlease, please…\u201d she whispered against the steel.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She remembered the seconds of joy as she flew through the air, the crash of the bubbles fizzing their way up her body, but then how the chlorine burned her eyes when she opened them; when she discovered she couldn\u2019t breathe, that she\u2019d somehow got lost on her way back up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-meagan-lucas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17028"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18807,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028\/revisions\/18807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}