[stylist] Writing Prompt: Finding the Good in the Villian

[Chris Kuell]

Hi Jewel (and others)--

I'm new here to the Stylist, so I beg pardon if I'm not following proper 
protocol.
I enjoyed your story, especially the differently colored bowls for 
designated meals--signs of a strict disciplinarian. I did have a little 
trouble believing the same woman who could hit her own kids so violently 
would be the 'sought after' special-ed teacher, but I suppose stranger 
things have happened.

Below is my own quick response to the prompt. I don't know how you all work 
with prompts, but I don't take them too literally, prefering to take the 
concept, tumble it around in the old noggin for a while and see what comes 
out.


Lester

Something hard nudged at his shoulder, interrupted his dream. Elizabeth 
Taylor, dressed in a see-through, silk kimono,   was washing his back.

"C'mon, Lester. Time to get up."

The nudge came harder, pushing Elizabeth far away, forcing him to deal with 
the cold, the lights, the noise.

"It's almost seven o'clock," the voice said. "Time most respectable folk are 
at work. Now get up. Move along."

Lester used a dirty finger to smear the sleep glue from his eyes. A dark 
figure stood above him, waving a night stick. He blinked, twice, and he saw 
it was that cop.

 like a freshly hatched moth, unfolding its wings for the first time, Lester 
forced his frozen bones to move, to uncurl from their fetal embrace, shift 
into a sitting position. He blinked a few more times, ran his fingers 
through his ragged, gray beard, picked out a little piece of carrot.

"Ain't you got nothin' better to do?" Lester's voice came out uneven, as if 
one lung had more air than the other.

"Serve and protect," the cop said. "Which means getting bums like you off 
public benches like this."

Slowly, methodically, Lester put his boots on the pavement and slipped his 
mismatched socked feet inside. He took the boots off at night to keep the 
thieves from stealing them. He slept clutching the boots like they were a 
sack of cash. They had no laces; he'd traded them for a few slugs of whiskey 
to the Puerto Rican.

Lester rubbed his gloved hands along his thighs in an attempt to bring about 
feeling. He heard footsteps and rapid breathing, looked up just in time to 
see a young woman wearing headphones and a sports bra run by. The cop turned 
to admire the view.

Lester shut his eyes, slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, past the crust 
of bread wrapped in a napkin, ran the tip of one exposed finger along the 
rosary beads. Sylvia's rosary beads. He saw her auburn hair twisted in a 
braid halfway down her back, eyes bright as new pennies. It gave him the 
will to push himself up, to stand, to shuffle through another day.

--chris kuell