Easy Money

Everybody knows somebody who works in a store, right?



That's all you have to do. Pluck a job out of thin air and slap it in their face and before you know it you'll have them convinced their Aunty Maud has crossed the velvet curtain. It's called shot gunning.You can throw anything at them and they'll make it fit. You just provide the match and they'll set fire to the mailbox.


'Somebody is giving me a nursing badge. So who works with medicines? Who looks after old folk? Who works in the pharmacy? Who takes all the pills?'


You see how it works? It's easy money. You give them a triangle and they'll turn it into a circle. There's no magic involved. They do it all for you.



When I was kid I used to have a lemonade stall in front of our house but I soon realised that by the time you bought all the lemons and squeezed the life out of them all you had left was a bruised ego and enough change to buy a can of Seven Up.





So now I don't have to squeeze any lemons. I just squeeze as much money as I can out of the bastards.


'I'm getting a pair of black boots so who was in the army? In the navy? In the police? Who worked in the shoe shop?'




They fall for it every time. I can convince anybody that their dog is nipping at my ankles. That their Nan loved the funeral service and that, yes, sometimes you can smell their perfume, their favourite flower or their Lambert and Butler Superkings. They'll believe everything you tell them because they want to believe there's a better place out there beyond the thunderdome.  That's there's an Emerald City at the end of the yellow brick road.



A place where you don't have to squeeze the lemons or the apples that life throws at you just so that you can buy a can of Dandelion and Burdock.





                     



                                                         (C) Ally Atherton 2015











336 Words for the Light & Shade Challenge and the A to Z Blog Challenge

April

                                         Art work by Moolikesskittles








I am the only person that sees her.




April. With her ridiculous costume and her lob-sided smile that looks like it has been painted by a four year old with a broken crayon. For everybody else she is nothing but a corner of the eye illusion. An ocular event as sinister as the wagging tail of a dog. As devastating as a microscopic particle of dust landing on the carpet.


But she's there all the same. And I see her. And sometimes she sees me



and when she does her face drops to the floor and she will stick out her tongue or blow a raspberry across the room at me. And I know then that she is about to do something. Somebody is about to trip over their own feet on the sidewalk.


Somebody is about to piss themselves in the middle of a very important meeting.






Somebody is about to declare their love to somebody who is going to spit every single ounce of their love straight back



at their face like a two day old piece of gum.







                                               
                                                            (C) Ally Atherton  2015







 


Written for the Light and Shade Challenge and Day One

          of the A to Z blog challenge.