This is a weekly space for creative writing. Please check out the landing page if you're interested in what we've written already, and feel free to comment below (according to the request feedback level) with any comments or suggestions!
Prompt:
Author: Joe
Requested feedback: Eh, keep doing what you've always done. For some: gentle and helpful feedback. For others: ignore, ignore, ignore. Both are valuable in this experience. And ultimately, it doesn't matter all that much. We're almost done here. This is the last time I'll be sitting down and writing something specifically for the A.S.S. Creative Writing Lab, personally. I won't miss it. But maybe I'll be writing an album review one day and get a little itch to frame the criticism in a "creative writing story," and I'll think back to that time in 2024 when we carried the load for a 52-week blog project, and did a pretty damn great job at it, too.
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We used to run this shit.
This fucking town, it was ours. Walk down main street or any of its tributaries to bear witness to our dominion. Every crack in every pavement, a story. I think about it now. I can close my eyes and take that journey once more, Blake St. past Central Ave. all the way to N. Penn, all ours.
See the worn painted wood in front of the bakery, smell its sweet aroma as the teen girls we once knew stand behind the counter and slice butter cake for hungry patrons. The pointed metal fence runs the length of the block toward the daycare, where kids yelp and frolic across sturdy plastic slides. The large corporate water ice stand faces off with the faded orange facade of the smokey tokey. Think of all the mornings we found shade against the church bell tower! How we'd look up and see the gulls as they swerved around the steeple and fly toward attorneys' offices and hair salons and that one little family restaurant that serves the venison you loved so much. Feel how the tar breathes as cars rush over it, but slowly, slowly, slowly during rush hour, the deathly crawl signaling the start of the weekend and all its new life.
See the worn painted wood in front of the bakery, smell its sweet aroma as the teen girls we once knew stand behind the counter and slice butter cake for hungry patrons. The pointed metal fence runs the length of the block toward the daycare, where kids yelp and frolic across sturdy plastic slides. The large corporate water ice stand faces off with the faded orange facade of the smokey tokey. Think of all the mornings we found shade against the church bell tower! How we'd look up and see the gulls as they swerved around the steeple and fly toward attorneys' offices and hair salons and that one little family restaurant that serves the venison you loved so much. Feel how the tar breathes as cars rush over it, but slowly, slowly, slowly during rush hour, the deathly crawl signaling the start of the weekend and all its new life.
This town, man, fuck. We used to be kings in this town. It was all ours.
"We used to run this shit."
"You're damn right we did," he responds, but sounding a bit more unsure than I would've expected. He takes a big swig from the bottle wrapped in brown paper. We're passing it back and forth. I stare out across the moonlit Shady Lane, high above, legs dangling from the old railroad tracks. At ease. Retired from the game, but prone to reminiscing.
"You're damn right we did," he responds, but sounding a bit more unsure than I would've expected. He takes a big swig from the bottle wrapped in brown paper. We're passing it back and forth. I stare out across the moonlit Shady Lane, high above, legs dangling from the old railroad tracks. At ease. Retired from the game, but prone to reminiscing.
"Hey man," I say. I pause for dramatic effect. I take another little nip. The warm liquid burns the back of my throat, but keeps me still. "Hey man."
"Yeah?" He's staring out across the semi-darkness too now, distant, but I pull him back in.
"Hey man, you, uh, do you remember that time," I'm giggling now, "You remember when we made a big deal about those fucking crosswalks?"
He does a spit take, and we're both laughing now as he's mopping spittle off his hoodie. "Oh my god, dude, yes! We were so dizzy."
"So dizzy," I mutter, and sort of trail off.
It's silent for a moment, and then he says, "That situation was unbearable."
"The crosswalks?" I'm confused, because I thought that it was all a lark, back then. Just for kicks.
"No dude. Everything about it. Our whole life back then. Stuck in that small town. Feeling like we would never escape."
I'm slowly shaking my head. "Nah, man, we got out. We eventually did. We grew up and got out and escaped."
"Did we?" He's standing up now, brushing off the leaves and debris. "Did we really, though? I mean, christ, man, look at us. Passing a bottle back and forth on the same damn train tracks, just like always. Pushing 40, and here we are. What have we done? What have we, like, really done here?"
I'm a bit speechless. I literally don't know what to say. And now all of a sudden, he's turning and leaving, walking through the dark, leaving me there on the tracks with the bottle and the moon and the soft hush hush of sporadically passing cars. He gets 100 feet or so, and I suddenly yell out: "But we used to run this shit!"
And out of the darkness, I hear a whisper: "You still do, man. You still do."
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