Snippet Saturday is the brainchild of author Lauren Dane, wherein a group of authors selects thematic excerpts from their work and shares them on Saturday mornings. This Saturday's snippet is characters at work or at play (Livin' It Up). Here's an excerpt from a little-known gem I wrote a couple years ago as Ellie Marvel called "Behind the Mask". It was a shared-world piece, wherein 4 authors and I wrote stories set in the same location and time frame. All 5 stories were about the same thing: the tale(s) of 5 friends who had adored a specific band in high school and reunited when the band went on a Retro Rewind style tour.
My heroine was the pill of the bunch, if that shocks anyone. Here she is Livin' It Up at the company picnic near the beginning of the story. This excerpt contains salty language and violence.
You have been warned.
***
While the crowds around her cheered and gabbed, Arliss slumped on the bench in silence, awaiting her turn at bat. Company picnics were a torture to be endured, and August in Arkansas was the punishment of the damned and blessed alike. Basically it punished everybody who happened to be in Arkansas, whether or not they deserved it. Arliss knew she deserved it, but that didn't mean she suffered gladly.
Jerkass Thompson, beside her, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Quit swinging at those bombs and take the walk, you idiot!" His elbow connected painfully with Arliss's arm, but he didn't apologize.
Arliss smiled tightly and clapped her hands to encourage the idiot at bat and keep herself from strangling the idiot beside her. Their team was trailing behind the other firm's team, four to two, and it was the top of the third with two outs. She would never have played, but her boss insisted she round out the numbers since she wasn't exactly busy with family or anything.
Thompson had guffawed at that and adjusted the fit of his spandex bike shorts around his nonexistent package.
So here she sat, in a sticky, unflattering T-shirt with the company logo and a pair of even less flattering athletic shorts, Eau de Stinky Coworker tantalizing her nostrils, wishing she were anywhere but here.
Maybe in Harrisburg. Would August in Harrisburg be any cooler? She could barely remember. She still hadn't decided whether she was going to the Blue Silver concert. Georgie had called twice, each time more passionate than the last, as if Arliss's absence would somehow skew the dynamics of the whole event.
None of the Silverettes had contacted her since high school, and suddenly her presence was essential to their wellbeing? Arliss alternated between fantasies of bonding with the other women so well they cried when she left, promised to write, and actually did; and dark images of herself trampled by teeny boppers who forcibly body surfed her to the front of the stage, where the cameras zoomed in on her flailing, beached whale body and she became a national "don't" in all the tabloids. Not only that, but her sordid past was revealed, leading to the loss of her job, the loss of her apartment, and her gradual descent into madness like her mother.
Then, too, occasional rational thoughts crossed her mind of what the experience would be like, and those were the most horrifying of all. She'd arrive in Harrisburg to discover her four friends had wonderful, fulfilling lives--and unnaturally toned asses--but insisted on constant reminiscences about high school and Blue Silver. Now, as then, Arliss would be forced to smile and nod and agree and suck it all up so she wouldn't ruin anyone's good time. Make any waves.
The real Arliss? She would horrify them, just as she had her former therapist when she finally made her feelings clear about yoga, relaxation tapes, feng shui's efficacy, and St. John's freaking hairy wart.
Well, the balding schmuck had encouraged her to let it all out.
The things she had to do to keep everyone in the world from detesting her. Like agree to play baseball during the company picnic, even though the August sun was pounding down on everyone like sledgehammers of magma.
The crack of a bat and the cheers of the crowd jerked Arliss from her heat-induced near coma.
"Run, Thompson!" somebody screamed, and Arliss realized her nemesis was no longer beside her.
That meant Arliss would be next up for bat if Thompson didn't get tagged out. Which Thompson, of course, didn't.
"Next up, Arliss Edgeworth for the T&A Titans," shouted the announcer with more enthusiasm than Arliss thought the situation merited. From a hot, annoying inconvenience, her enforced participation in baseball took on the potential for great humiliation. With hangdog reluctance, Arliss dragged herself to the plate.
The pitcher, the other firm's owner, took one look at Arliss, her dishwater blonde hair in sweaty tendrils, her round white legs dusted by red Arkansas dirt from her stint in far, far right field, and called out, "Softie on bat. Everybody move up!"
Arliss gritted her teeth. She knew she was unimpressive visually, but how could they be sure she was a softie? Maybe she was a hardie. A real hardass. That's what she'd always wanted to be, like Cassie. Or a genuinely nice person, like Georgie. Or cute and funny, like Marci. Or passionate and straight up, like Faith.
Instead, she was...
"Crap on a stick, it's Arliss," Thompson cursed.
She heard it all the way from second, where he bounced beside the base. Was her own team supposed to heckle her? Gretchen, on third, crossed her arms over her chest and frowned.
Her boss trotted to her side as the opposing team adjusted. "Arlie, just walk it," her boss ordered.
"Arliss," she corrected. Her dad had called her Arlie, like he couldn't bear to mouth the name he himself had saddled her with. She never trusted people who tried to turn her given name into something more palatable. She wore it like a badge of courage. Her only one, really.
Deep creases formed beside her boss's mouth as he grimaced. "David will be up next and he'll bring you home. You just have to get on first." The two firms' rivalry extended far beyond their business practices, and this annual game was a matter of great import to certain individuals.
Arliss was not one of them.
"Yes, sir," she said anyway. She accepted the bat with another of her patented tight smiles. The cool, smooth wood slid between her palms like déjà vu, and she rolled her shoulders and extended it experimentally. Not too heavy, not too light. She preferred aluminum, but not a bad bat at all.
As she squinted at the pitcher, the opposing team catcalled and yelled. Arliss tried one of those scorned relaxation techniques to slow her racing heartbeat. Deep breathing and happy thoughts. What would make her happy right now? Ah, she had it--sweating so much today she lost ten pounds with no additional effort.
The pitcher smirked and threw the ball, so wide the catcher had to dive for it. For some reason, Arliss's arms twitched, tilting the bat into the strike zone, though she'd had no chance of a connection.
"Strike one!" hollered the umpire.
Her boss swore in the background. The pitcher, his middle-aged belly jiggling in his snug T-shirt, laughed out loud and wound up for a second pitch.
The ball flew at her like an accusation. Arliss tensed and her arms jerked, again of their own accord. She had a bat in her hands. It's what you did with a bat, right? She missed again, and her stomach leapt into her throat like vomit.
"Strike two!" gloated the umpire.
"Don't swing, Edgeworth!" yelled her boss. "You can't hit the ball."
"Don't be a moron!" Thompson yelled.
"Batta-batta-batta, swing, batta!" chanted the opposing team.
Arliss felt a surge of all too familiar rage build inside her. It reddened her already heated face, tightened her muscles, buzzed in her ears. A scream bubbled on the back of her tongue, and she had no convenient lumbar cushion.
All she had was her anger. And her body. And this bat.
This nice, solid bat.
She didn't even breathe when the next ball sailed across the plate, she just lashed out with every bit of frustration inside her. The ball and bat connected so hard, she felt the vibration in her spine. At lightning speed, the ball zinged straight back at the pitcher and struck him in his forehead.
He dropped like a brick.
Nobody uttered a peep until the left fielder, his wife, screeched and dashed toward her husband as fast as her short little Arkansas legs would carry her. Then the catcher and umpire ran toward the fallen man as well.
Arliss dropped the bat and wondered if she should get her ass onto first, but neither Gretchen nor Thompson had budged, so instead she flapped her tingling hands. Something broke open inside her, something as tingly as her hands and as satisfied as she knew damn well she shouldn't be.
She'd hit the ball. Big time.
Through the sudden activity, she heard several cell phones being dialed, and somebody requested an ambulance. Her boss, still in earshot, muttered to himself. "We'll have to take a fucking forfeit. Stupid female."
The wounded pitcher groaned and lifted a hand to his head, while his wife clucked over him. "Bring me ice!" she shrieked. "Honey, are you okay?"
A mass of strange anticipation pinned her in place. Arliss watched while everyone on both teams, from both companies, skittered around like ants. There was no difference between them from this angle. Nobody so much as glanced at her, so there was no need to explain how Loser Arliss, the softie, the early bird, the ever-compliant, had managed to hit that ball, and hit it hard.
Truth was, she'd been seeing a new therapist the past two months. One she'd picked out herself, not that asshat the court had chosen. The new woman recommended Arliss take up martial arts or whack baseballs around to relieve stress. The batting cage visits led to the purchase of her own bat, and that to some therapeutic trips to a local junkyard, where you could pay a small fee to destroy old tvs and washing machines. The geezer who ran the place looked at her funny, but Arliss, for once, didn't try to hide her true self behind a mask, the true self who wanted to rail against life. Scream out her hate. Smash up some shit.
It was much more rewarding than manicures.
Maybe if her mother had destroyed more inanimate objects when Arliss had been in high school, she wouldn't be in the institution in Little Rock and Arliss wouldn't be...where she was.
It also helped that Thompson had been severely reprimanded two months ago for opening another email virus and infecting the company servers. What a bonehead. He froze on second base like a pillar of salt, only he, unlike anyone else in the park, was watching Arliss. Studying her.
She wasn't sure, but she thought she saw a glimmer of fear in his beady eyes.
***
That meant Arliss would be next up for bat if Thompson didn't get tagged out. Which Thompson, of course, didn't.
"Next up, Arliss Edgeworth for the T&A Titans," shouted the announcer with more enthusiasm than Arliss thought the situation merited. From a hot, annoying inconvenience, her enforced participation in baseball took on the potential for great humiliation. With hangdog reluctance, Arliss dragged herself to the plate.
The pitcher, the other firm's owner, took one look at Arliss, her dishwater blonde hair in sweaty tendrils, her round white legs dusted by red Arkansas dirt from her stint in far, far right field, and called out, "Softie on bat. Everybody move up!"
Arliss gritted her teeth. She knew she was unimpressive visually, but how could they be sure she was a softie? Maybe she was a hardie. A real hardass. That's what she'd always wanted to be, like Cassie. Or a genuinely nice person, like Georgie. Or cute and funny, like Marci. Or passionate and straight up, like Faith.
Instead, she was...
"Crap on a stick, it's Arliss," Thompson cursed.
She heard it all the way from second, where he bounced beside the base. Was her own team supposed to heckle her? Gretchen, on third, crossed her arms over her chest and frowned.
Her boss trotted to her side as the opposing team adjusted. "Arlie, just walk it," her boss ordered.
"Arliss," she corrected. Her dad had called her Arlie, like he couldn't bear to mouth the name he himself had saddled her with. She never trusted people who tried to turn her given name into something more palatable. She wore it like a badge of courage. Her only one, really.
Deep creases formed beside her boss's mouth as he grimaced. "David will be up next and he'll bring you home. You just have to get on first." The two firms' rivalry extended far beyond their business practices, and this annual game was a matter of great import to certain individuals.
Arliss was not one of them.
"Yes, sir," she said anyway. She accepted the bat with another of her patented tight smiles. The cool, smooth wood slid between her palms like déjà vu, and she rolled her shoulders and extended it experimentally. Not too heavy, not too light. She preferred aluminum, but not a bad bat at all.
As she squinted at the pitcher, the opposing team catcalled and yelled. Arliss tried one of those scorned relaxation techniques to slow her racing heartbeat. Deep breathing and happy thoughts. What would make her happy right now? Ah, she had it--sweating so much today she lost ten pounds with no additional effort.
The pitcher smirked and threw the ball, so wide the catcher had to dive for it. For some reason, Arliss's arms twitched, tilting the bat into the strike zone, though she'd had no chance of a connection.
"Strike one!" hollered the umpire.
Her boss swore in the background. The pitcher, his middle-aged belly jiggling in his snug T-shirt, laughed out loud and wound up for a second pitch.
The ball flew at her like an accusation. Arliss tensed and her arms jerked, again of their own accord. She had a bat in her hands. It's what you did with a bat, right? She missed again, and her stomach leapt into her throat like vomit.
"Strike two!" gloated the umpire.
"Don't swing, Edgeworth!" yelled her boss. "You can't hit the ball."
"Don't be a moron!" Thompson yelled.
"Batta-batta-batta, swing, batta!" chanted the opposing team.
Arliss felt a surge of all too familiar rage build inside her. It reddened her already heated face, tightened her muscles, buzzed in her ears. A scream bubbled on the back of her tongue, and she had no convenient lumbar cushion.
All she had was her anger. And her body. And this bat.
This nice, solid bat.
She didn't even breathe when the next ball sailed across the plate, she just lashed out with every bit of frustration inside her. The ball and bat connected so hard, she felt the vibration in her spine. At lightning speed, the ball zinged straight back at the pitcher and struck him in his forehead.
He dropped like a brick.
Nobody uttered a peep until the left fielder, his wife, screeched and dashed toward her husband as fast as her short little Arkansas legs would carry her. Then the catcher and umpire ran toward the fallen man as well.
Arliss dropped the bat and wondered if she should get her ass onto first, but neither Gretchen nor Thompson had budged, so instead she flapped her tingling hands. Something broke open inside her, something as tingly as her hands and as satisfied as she knew damn well she shouldn't be.
She'd hit the ball. Big time.
Through the sudden activity, she heard several cell phones being dialed, and somebody requested an ambulance. Her boss, still in earshot, muttered to himself. "We'll have to take a fucking forfeit. Stupid female."
The wounded pitcher groaned and lifted a hand to his head, while his wife clucked over him. "Bring me ice!" she shrieked. "Honey, are you okay?"
A mass of strange anticipation pinned her in place. Arliss watched while everyone on both teams, from both companies, skittered around like ants. There was no difference between them from this angle. Nobody so much as glanced at her, so there was no need to explain how Loser Arliss, the softie, the early bird, the ever-compliant, had managed to hit that ball, and hit it hard.
Truth was, she'd been seeing a new therapist the past two months. One she'd picked out herself, not that asshat the court had chosen. The new woman recommended Arliss take up martial arts or whack baseballs around to relieve stress. The batting cage visits led to the purchase of her own bat, and that to some therapeutic trips to a local junkyard, where you could pay a small fee to destroy old tvs and washing machines. The geezer who ran the place looked at her funny, but Arliss, for once, didn't try to hide her true self behind a mask, the true self who wanted to rail against life. Scream out her hate. Smash up some shit.
It was much more rewarding than manicures.
Maybe if her mother had destroyed more inanimate objects when Arliss had been in high school, she wouldn't be in the institution in Little Rock and Arliss wouldn't be...where she was.
It also helped that Thompson had been severely reprimanded two months ago for opening another email virus and infecting the company servers. What a bonehead. He froze on second base like a pillar of salt, only he, unlike anyone else in the park, was watching Arliss. Studying her.
She wasn't sure, but she thought she saw a glimmer of fear in his beady eyes.
***
For more excerpts you can visit:
Eliza Gayle
Jody Wallace
Kelly Maher
McKenna Jeffries
Michelle M Pillow
Moira Rogers
S. J. Day
Sasha White
Shelley Munro
Taige Crenshaw
Vivian Arend
Lauren Dane
Eliza Gayle
Jody Wallace
Kelly Maher
McKenna Jeffries
Michelle M Pillow
Moira Rogers
S. J. Day
Sasha White
Shelley Munro
Taige Crenshaw
Vivian Arend
Lauren Dane
For more Arliss you can buy: http://www.amberquill.com/AmberHeat/BlueSilverBehindMask.html If you get all the Blue Silver stories, you get a discount, btw. They are erotic romance, so 18+ only.
Jody W.
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