[stylist] Quick bit/Re: Changes writing prompt

[Brad Dunsé]

Very off cuff draft. Sort of "sentence to 
sentence where do I go from this one" kind of thing. haha
. More of an idea flush than proper grammar and 
etc. as there were some format/font issues I ran into.

Pete Wilkerson, a middle-aged, slightly graying, 
business cut, Robin-egg blue collar worker, stood 
at the early morning gas pump with stiffened arms 
plunged into the pockets of his black Columbia 
ski jacket zipped to the neck. The near zero 
temperatures on this frigid January morning left 
his freshly groomed mustache and beard fair game 
for the tiny droplets of moisture bursting from 
his mouth to attach themselves, adding a little 
extra touch of salt to his peppered whiskers, 
temporary as it might be. The frigid gas pump 
churned out a labored noise sounding a bit like 
negach 
 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 
Negach 
. He daydreamed how the pump almost 
sounded like it was chanting to him in a frigid 
rhythmic pain of complaint as it creaked gas from its belly into his truck.



Pete’s job for the last ten years was working as 
an electrician at the local campus in Superior, 
Wisconsin. Graduating as an Electrical Engineer 
after attending night classes for the past 
8-years at the local university, he finally felt 
like he was coming into his own now working as a 
part-timer at the local power plant. That’s why 
he considered himself as Robin-egg blue collar. A 
little bit engineer, a little bit electrician 
 
not quite white, not quite blue.



With shoulders hunched as much as he could to 
cover the bare skin of his neck, blowing into his 
cupped hands, giving a slight palm to 
back-of-hand circular rub, like you do when 
washing your hands, he began to bounce up and 
down on his toes trying to work up just a little 
heat while his thirsty super-cab Ford pick-up 
drank in dual tanks of go-go juice and the pump 
continued its complaint, Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
.



Hanging up the nozzle, snatching his credit card 
out of the pump, and pushing the receipt button 
gave an Out of paper message. “Yeah right,” he 
muttered under his breath, “like I believe you 
guys actually put paper inn those things in this 
weather. And the little extra crap people buy 
once they get in your store looking for their 
receipt doesn’t hurt either does it fellas?”



Flipping the tank-fill door shut on his truck he 
headed for the store to get his receipt. Jumping 
up onto the pump island on his way inside, he 
stopped with a shiver, but not from the cold 
weather this time.  He couldn’t help but feel 
that same feeling he’s had on-and-off all week. 
Almost like he was being watched. Taking a quick 
look over his shoulders walking as he continued 
hesitantly , and yet another quick  scan around 
the parking lot as he  reached for the door, 
proved nothing abnormal. Still, he couldn’t help but feel something was off.



Sometimes the feeling was quite strong, and other 
times just an inkling of a feeling. Sort of like 
when you’re camping out doors and you find a 
spider on the sleeve of your sweat-shirt, you 
flick it off in a reflex and shudder your 
shoulders creepily, and a minute later you swore 
you felt one under your shirt just a little 
trickle down the skin of your shoulder blade, but 
a shoulder wince and shirt adjustment, you 
realize it’s just a wrinkle in your sweat-shirt. 
That’s how it was with this feeling of being 
watched, or whatever it was well, he wasn’t sure 
exactly what it was he felt for sure.



Standing in line a few minutes, somewhat troubled 
by this feeling, he suddenly chuckled to himself 
as he stared at his hands. A king size Snicker 
bar in one hand and a five-dollar bill in the 
other. Smiling to himself he thought, “Ok boys, you got me 
 this time.”



Paying for his stick of chocolate bliss, he 
refused the bag, dropped the bar in his chest 
pocket, shoved two dollar bills, the gas receipt, 
and some coin into his left Levi pocket, and headed for the truck.



Reaching for the handle of his pick-up door, he 
stopped for a moment. Again, something seemed 
off, He could hear one of the pumps on the island 
with its Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 
Negach 
 Negach 
, but as he glanced over, he 
realized there was no one at the pumps; he was 
all alone at the island. Turning his broad 
shoulders towards the rear of the truck with his 
head slightly cocked forward to take a better 
listen. He got half way to the tank fill of his 
truck and the noise stopped with a clunk. He 
stood there a moment listening but the pump held 
its silence. Turning back for the driver’s door 
he took a quick squint towards the station and 
realized the attendant had been staring at him. 
He stood there a second looking at the 
20-something man, “boy really” he thought, “just 
passed his last crop of zits,” and the man began 
to smile. But not like an “Oh did you drop your 
keys back there and you found them” kind of 
smile, it was more like a, “you can’t see me but 
I know something about you” smile. Still staring 
at Pete with an odd grin, the attendant picked up 
the phone next to him, never taking his eyes off 
Pete, lifted the phone to his ear, and with a 
trance-like beam into Pete’s eyes from 30-feet 
away. started talking to the caller.



Pete smiled back as if a “hey, it’s all good 
dude,” kind of smile and headed for his truck. 
Now he really felt like he was being watched. 
“Little creep,” he muttered as he hopped in his 
truck. Turning the key, the trucks idiot lights 
and radio came on; you know the multiple red 
warning lights that come on when hitting the 
ignition? But the truck didn’t turn over. Holding 
the key all the way over for a full ten-seconds, 
suddenly the truck gave a, buzz sound, a quick 
little clunk, and then it fired over. “I know 
Hun,” he said, “I hate this cold weather too”. He 
dropped the shift into drive and headed towards 
the street. In the frozen exhaust from Pete’s 
truck, pump #2 began its Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 

 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 As he drove off.



After putting in a half day at campus and the 
other half at the power plant office, Pete pulled 
in the garage, hit the automatic door opener to 
shut the overhead door, and walked into the house 
where he was greeted with a gush of pleasant warm 
air and the smell of fresh cheese-garlic bread in 
the oven next to a pan of lasagna. His wife Trudy 
was at the kitchen counter fixing smoothie 
desserts as he leaned over and dove his cold face in the nape of her neck.



“Oh, you’re cold,” she whimpered  lifting her shoulders to lock him out.



Kissing her quick on the cheek and tossing his 
keys on the counter top as he walked taking off 
his jacket, he asked her “So, how was your day?”

  she began to tell him “Oh, Mackenzie was up to 
her old tricks again, getting everyone  a good 
bout of the grumps, but she’ll 
” she stopped 
when she realized he wasn’t even in the room now.



Realizing she stopped talking,  Pete yelled, Oh. 
Sorry Hun, I’ll be right there.”



Pete hung up his jacket in his office closet. 
Their kids Amber and Michael were out on their 
own now and their bedrooms now became his and her 
offices. Pete reached in his front left pocket of 
his jeans, taking out the money to put in his 
glass jar, his vacation stash he called it, and 
stopped to remove a sheet metal screw he knew was 
in with the coin. He began to get that damned 
feeling again, like something was watching him or 
well he just couldn’t say what the feeling was 
like something was unsettled. As he fingered 
through the coin for the sheet metal screw, he 
noticed one of the quarters he’d gotten from the 
gas station attendant that morning. Pete looked 
at it with a peculiar interest. He flipped it 
over and back again and all seemed right, but 
then he noticed the date. Staring at it he wasn’t 
sure what to think of it. The date on the coin 
was 2014, but today was only January 13, Friday 
actually, January 13, 2012. A whole two years 
before any 2014 coin would be circulated and 
6-months at least before they’d even start to bee 
minted. But it was real, the markings, the 
president, the tails and knurling on its edge 
were all normal. He palmed that one in his right 
hand and fingered the other coins. He stood open 
mouthed. All the coin in his pocket were dated 
2014. The two bills he’d gotten though, they were 
dated 2001 and 2005. He wasn’t sure what that 
meant so tossed them aside. He set the coin down 
on the corner of his desk, grabbed the huge glass 
jug that held an inch of various coin since just 
before Christmas when he cashed in the previous 
year’s loot. Pouring out a few coins he   nearly 
dropped the jug. Every single coin he poured out 
was dated 2014. But the dollars that were stuffed 
in there, they were all various odd dates, all 
past dates he noted. Only the coin was dated two years from this year.



He recalled the smug smirk on that pimply 
attendant’s face this morning at the gas station 
before he got in his truck. And that pump with 
its Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 Negach 
 
Negach 
. When just before he saw the attendant 
staring at him through the window. That pump, 
with that almost chant. It sounded like it was 
saying Negach 
, he thought to himself. He heard 
his wife call out that it was almost time to eat.



“I’ll be right there Hun!” he yelled from his office.



He stood there with a finger rubbing over the 
coin, images of that attendant, and the pump with 
its complaint of cold, Or was it a chant of cold? 
He thought to himself, “Was it actually saying 
Negach 
? over and over and over? What is a 
Negach 
 and what is up with these coins and their date. Why 2014?”



He set the coin down, pulled up his office chair, 
sat down with a pen and paper and wrote out 
phonetically what sound or word or chant he 
thought the pump had sounded out. Negach 




Spelling It out he was perplexed, and yet 
something seemed oddly familiar about it. Staring 
at it he got an idea; he grabbed his pen and 
began writing more. Stopping his pen, his cheeks 
nearly to the corners of his mouth in disbelief, 
he looked at his paper, looked over at the coin 
lying on his desk, all dated 2014. His face turned fish-belly white.



Writers note: *I had to use that one Donna. big laugh*



He looked to the coin 
 and back to the paper, 
then back to the coin, or more appropriately, the 
change. That’s what we call loose coin isn’t it? 
he asked himself.  He stared down at his paper that had the below words on it:



Negach

Enach

Angech

Chenga

Change



Is that what the pump at the gas station was 
chanting? Change 
 change 
 change 
 change? And 
all these coins, all this change dated 2014, what 
does that mean? Is something going to happen to me in 2014?









Brad Dunsé

"The key to change is to let go of fear." --Roseanne Cash

http://www.braddunsemusic.com

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