Patty Revere Pt. 1

(Trying my hand at fiction. First installment below.)

Patty empties her ashtray into the coffee pot to give it some flavor. One part coffee to one part sour Irish Creamer; Patty knows it's good till the last drop. She imagines herself in the Folgers commercial, as the sprightly ballet dancer who awakes looking radiant in a pink bathrobe to prepare her morning joe. Patty sports a moth-eaten baby blue nightshirt, draped across her large frame like a tarp over a swimming pool. After taking the first sip of her coffee, Patty sighs with relief like the dancer. Unlike the dancer she's barely able to get a breath out without four or five wet coughs. Hacking a wad of phlegm into the sink, Patty retires to the sofa in front of the TV to smoke three Newports before the last segment of "The View" has ended.

45-year-old Patty Revere doesn't leave her north side Pittsburgh one-bedroom very often. She never feels the need to. She's more comfortable watching the people on Full House or Family Matters. Nothing much seems to happen outside in those programs; if it does it's usually a special episode and seeing it disturbs Patty. When she was a child her father watched a show with her on the public access channel. Unlike her usual programs, it took place completely outdoors. The ground was made of dust and Jay told her it was the beach,

"Bleach?"

"No, Patty. Beach."

and that you could walk on it for hours and not reach the end. Patty thought about all the debris that fell off her rugs when she shook them off, all the dust she'd swept out her back door. All of it had to go someplace. Maybe that's where beaches come from. All the dust bunnies and rug debris of the world combined to create a vast tan landscape, where people could walk all day.

A strange-looking red bug appeared, crawling on the dusty tundra. An invisible man called it a "hermit crab."

"Decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea fashion their own habitats in a novel way.

'One beast's trash is another's treasure for the hermit crab: a discarded sea shell makes for a cozy home."

Patty awakes with a start when the cherry at the end of her cigarette falls on her thigh. She yelps and flicks it into the shag rug at her feet. The pain helps bring her out of the thick snooze brought on by too much spoiled milkfat. The doorbell rings and Patty realizes with a bolt of fear that it is the second time.