Fluke by David Elliott, Bart Hopkins Read Free Book Online

shirtless top half, her head resting on my shoulder, her fingers laced together over my midsection.   My hair was shifted around crazily, warped would have been the best word to describe it. My pale chest had about a dozen little hairs scattered across the center.   My eyes had large, puffy black bags beneath them, and I saw a developing pimple on my left shoulder.   Sara’s face looked as beautiful as it had when we stood beside my car, making small talk, which seemed like forever ago.
    My God, was that really just ten hours ago?   It hardly seemed possible.
    Her long brown hair hung off to the side, draped over my right shoulder, her green eyes looked alive and focused on me.   What I noticed most about her face, though, was that it was looking right back into mine, our eyes meeting in the mirror.
    “We look good, right?” she asked.   It was probably a rhetorical question, but I answered, “Yes, we do.”
    It was true, we did.
    I yanked my head up at the sound of the launderette door flying open and hitting a metal trash can, which was followed by the sound of kids yelling at each other, playing what sounded like some sort of space-ranger-versus-evil-alien game.
    “You are a Zargonian and you will pay for what you did to my people!” screamed the space ranger.
    “Never!   You will die like the rest of them!” yelled back the Zargonian .
    Shit .   Relaxation time was over.
    I got up from my chair, eager to finish the laundry, before the Zargonian decided that I should die like the rest of them.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    5.
     
    It was a couple minutes past 10 when I parked right at the front door of Perry’s Pizza Palace, across three spaces (a big no-no for employees), and climbed out of my car.   I said another silent prayer to myself that Perry wouldn’t be in today, something I had done a half dozen times already on the drive over.   I walked around to the trunk, opened it up, and began loading items crazily into my arms.   I came up with two “Palace” T-shirts (unwashed), a matching ball cap, one pizza bag (keeps your pizzas oven fresh!), money bag jingling with the change it held, and, finally, the magnetized sign for the car door.   The heap in my arms was balanced precariously, but I thought I could make it without dropping anything.   I glanced one last time at how I was parked and thought of what Perry would say if he saw this.   I had tried to explain to him that nobody ordered pizzas at 10am, but this little fact wouldn’t deter him from hollering at me about parking in the front spaces, much less three of them at once.   I could just hear him saying, “The front spaces are for customers, Fluke…how many times do I have to tell you that?”  
    I walked over to the door slowly with my heap of things, hooked my pinky—my only free finger—into the front door handle and was able to open it just enough for me to squeeze through.   I was concentrating deeply on the task at hand, though I was aware of the fact that Heather was at the counter smiling a greeting at me, while I jumped through the doorway.
    And, as I should have expected, in one not-so-fluid movement, the corner of the sign caught the frame of the door, and I immediately lost control of everything and watched it fall to the floor.   Coins from within the money bag rolled across the floor in each direction, and I looked up at Heather and just shook my head.
    She giggled and said, “Well, hello, Adam.   Does the root of all evil lack even the most basic form of motor skills?”   She giggled harder as she said this, and held up a cigarette with her left hand.   “Smoke?”
    I darted my eyes back and forth, a silent question: Is Perry here?
    “Nah, he went to the district office today.   Probably to kiss up to Mike some more, in hopes of a raise.”   A sigh of relief escaped me.   That meant he was going to be out of the Palace for most of the day, if not all of it.   Mike was the district manager, and his