"Oh, the Places You Won't Go"

Got a bag almost ready for C2E2! An 'Infamous' bag, no less!

Alex knew what she risked by running in the store, and she saw the look the old man in the "World History" section gave her, but she couldn't afford to be late. She turned so quickly down the hallway where the bathrooms were that she was running with her body at an angle. Only when she came to the spot between the door marked "Women" and the door marked "Men" did she stop. She stood in front of a third door, which appeared only once every month, tapped a precise and musical rhythm on its surface, and entered when it opened. Inside, next to a swirling, pulsing purple vortex, the gate agent sat behind his table.

Alex approached the table and emptied the contents of her backpack. Dried flowers, a picture of her house, a letter opener, a set of keys that worked with no lock that she could find, and one of her little brother's baby teeth came out of the main pouch. A towel, a bottle of water, a pair of socks, and a change of underwear came from the front. The gate agent almost looked amused, though it was difficult for Alex to tell for certain, as he appeared to be have been carved from onyx.

"I brought everything I need," Alex said to him. "Please let me through before it closes."

Was the gate agent still amused, Alex wondered, or had he turned sad? "I'm sorry," he told her, "but this isn't what I need to see. I can't admit you at this time. Please collect your belongings and move to the side."

Alex couldn't speak, even though her mouth was open. The gate agent tipped his head toward the stuff cluttering his table, and Alex, bewildered, swept it back into her bag with a huff. As she stepped away, she saw the old man from "World History" enter the room, an enormous hardcover in his hands.

He saw her, of course, but in the light of the portal his raised eyebrow looked to Alex no longer dismissive, but mischievous. "Had to go shopping before I came here," he said. "I mean, whoever heard of traveling without a book?"

The old man winked at her and faced the gate agent, spreading his book open in his hands, leaving her to run, run, faster than a whisper, back into the store with the hope that, this time, she could go somewhere.

"Askew"

 

"That streetlamp over there," the man said, pointing at a decorative lighting fixture on the other side of the road, "is leaning way too far over, don't you think?"

Its metal body jutted a few feet into the roadway space, like a thrillseeker seeing how far she could lean over a cliff, whereas normally it stood a few feet taller and vertical, like a poet enjoying the view. "That could be an issue," the woman acknowledged.

"Someone should probably be called about that," the man said. He took his phone with him into another room but returned twenty minutes later, banging the phone against his forehead.

"I was on hold for, like, fifteen minutes," he informed her. "I finally got someone who connected me to another department, who said they'd place the request for repair in the appropriate crew's work queue, but I could expedite the request if I came in and filled out form jay-one-six-I-don't-freaking-know."

The woman nodded in response and went outside. The man looked on as she lay on her belly on the path leading to their porch, with her head close to the stones that filled in their landscaping. "If you could talk to your friends underneath, please?" she said.

"Not a problem," said a voice that came from the cluster of stones. Instantly the earth below them gave a shudder, and the shudder rippled across the street like a wave in the pond. The man and the woman watched as the ground around the streetlamp churned, pushing the pole upright.

The woman sat up on the walkway and the man came outside to sit next to her. "Sometimes it's just a matter of knowing how you can best make change happen," she said. "I mean, to be fair, that office you called is really good with the water bills." They saw a utility truck drive by them, zipping past the decorative lamp that the earth had stood straight.