Find me on Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jsking1.
Purchase a download of Jane's Burning Bright House of Joy at
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/31572
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Racer's tale is available on Kindle
This is a 61-page novella, a light-hearted satire about an evil scientist and his pet hamster.
This book is an e-book, published by Kindle.
Cover art is by Don Robb, WWW.donrobbart.com
How to find my book:
Go to Amazon.com
Go to the Search box
Click on All Departments
From the drop down menu select Kindle Store
Enter B0047DWB94 in the empty box to the right
Click Go
Price: $2.99
Don't have a Kindle? No problem; you can read e-books on your PC with Kindle For PC, a free download. Go here for your copy: www.amazon.com/KindleForPC.
This book is an e-book, published by Kindle.
Cover art is by Don Robb, WWW.donrobbart.com
How to find my book:
Go to Amazon.com
Go to the Search box
Click on All Departments
From the drop down menu select Kindle Store
Enter B0047DWB94 in the empty box to the right
Click Go
Price: $2.99
Don't have a Kindle? No problem; you can read e-books on your PC with Kindle For PC, a free download. Go here for your copy: www.amazon.com/KindleForPC.
Jane's Burning Bright House of Joy
The First Two Pages
1 Jane pounded her fists as quietly as possible on her keyboard, muttering deep and heartfelt curses at the computer gods and all their kin. Once again, the program had frozen up and stymied her attempts at getting home before midnight.
Jane’s boss, Tad-from-hell, wanted this report on his desk by tomorrow morning and Jane was determined to get it there. Not cheerfully mind you, just get it there.
She rebooted the computer for the fourth time that day and while she waited for it to come back to life she drifted off into a favorite daydream. Soft breezes wafted across her cheek, warm sunshine caressed her shoulders; a sun-bronzed youth leaned toward her offering a glistening cold drink from a silver tray. “Just put it down on the table, I’ve got my hands full at the moment,” Jane said. She swung a sledgehammer in a great arc down onto her computer with all the rage that she could muster. Not a hard task, as quite a lot of rage had answered the call.
“Freeze up on me, will you? Lose my report again, will you? I don’t think so, you worthless pile of circuits!” Jane gave the sledgehammer all she had and delivered some well-placed kicks to emphasize her point. “I’ll…”
“Jane! Jane! Are you all right?” The smarmy, oily voice of Ellen, the office tattletale drifted down onto Jane’s head and brought her back to her drab cubicle. Jane jumped back and twitched away from the sudden intrusion, knocking a stack of files into a trashcan.
“Talking to yourself again? And what’s wrong with your hands, twisting them like that? Some sort of nervous twitch?” Ellen smiled slyly, showing a disturbing amount of yellow teeth. “I don’t know what you have to be nervous about, you should be too busy to be nervous, you know what I mean?” She glanced meaningly at the small mountain of work slumped up against the wall. Ellen’s own file was on top, labeled in screaming pink, DO THIS FIRST!!!!!!, still undone.
Jane scrabbled around furiously inside her head, looked for her 'I-love-my-job smile' and plastered it on her face. Pressing her hands hard down on her thighs to stop them from doing something that would land her in jail, she struggled to find a bright and chipper response to this threat in her cubicle.
Cubicles! What weasely low-life sadist had dreamed up that idea? Jane mentally put that unknown fiend on her list of people she was volunteering to colonize Mars.
“Um, nothing, nothing, I’m all right, I’m fine, fine, fine. I was just thinking of my vacation, you know Italy, We’re going to Italy.” She babbled on, trying to find the right combination of words that would make Ellen go away. “You know, you said that you and Harold enjoyed it so much, that I thought we’d go there too.”
“Harold! That worm! That weevil! That toad!” Ellen spat. “Harold and I are over, done with, finito! That swine!” Too late, Jane remembered that Harold had dumped Ellen in a spectacularly nasty breakup. Ooh, now I’ve done it, she winced; she’ll make me pay for that slip up. But Ellen, for reasons known only to the slime mold infesting her brain, moved on to a new subject.
“I’m going out now with Dave in accounting. You know, the tall one with dark hair and nearly all his fingers; now there’s a man with a future I tell you. By the way, has that husband of yours found a job
1 Jane pounded her fists as quietly as possible on her keyboard, muttering deep and heartfelt curses at the computer gods and all their kin. Once again, the program had frozen up and stymied her attempts at getting home before midnight.
Jane’s boss, Tad-from-hell, wanted this report on his desk by tomorrow morning and Jane was determined to get it there. Not cheerfully mind you, just get it there.
She rebooted the computer for the fourth time that day and while she waited for it to come back to life she drifted off into a favorite daydream. Soft breezes wafted across her cheek, warm sunshine caressed her shoulders; a sun-bronzed youth leaned toward her offering a glistening cold drink from a silver tray. “Just put it down on the table, I’ve got my hands full at the moment,” Jane said. She swung a sledgehammer in a great arc down onto her computer with all the rage that she could muster. Not a hard task, as quite a lot of rage had answered the call.
“Freeze up on me, will you? Lose my report again, will you? I don’t think so, you worthless pile of circuits!” Jane gave the sledgehammer all she had and delivered some well-placed kicks to emphasize her point. “I’ll…”
“Jane! Jane! Are you all right?” The smarmy, oily voice of Ellen, the office tattletale drifted down onto Jane’s head and brought her back to her drab cubicle. Jane jumped back and twitched away from the sudden intrusion, knocking a stack of files into a trashcan.
“Talking to yourself again? And what’s wrong with your hands, twisting them like that? Some sort of nervous twitch?” Ellen smiled slyly, showing a disturbing amount of yellow teeth. “I don’t know what you have to be nervous about, you should be too busy to be nervous, you know what I mean?” She glanced meaningly at the small mountain of work slumped up against the wall. Ellen’s own file was on top, labeled in screaming pink, DO THIS FIRST!!!!!!, still undone.
Jane scrabbled around furiously inside her head, looked for her 'I-love-my-job smile' and plastered it on her face. Pressing her hands hard down on her thighs to stop them from doing something that would land her in jail, she struggled to find a bright and chipper response to this threat in her cubicle.
Cubicles! What weasely low-life sadist had dreamed up that idea? Jane mentally put that unknown fiend on her list of people she was volunteering to colonize Mars.
“Um, nothing, nothing, I’m all right, I’m fine, fine, fine. I was just thinking of my vacation, you know Italy, We’re going to Italy.” She babbled on, trying to find the right combination of words that would make Ellen go away. “You know, you said that you and Harold enjoyed it so much, that I thought we’d go there too.”
“Harold! That worm! That weevil! That toad!” Ellen spat. “Harold and I are over, done with, finito! That swine!” Too late, Jane remembered that Harold had dumped Ellen in a spectacularly nasty breakup. Ooh, now I’ve done it, she winced; she’ll make me pay for that slip up. But Ellen, for reasons known only to the slime mold infesting her brain, moved on to a new subject.
“I’m going out now with Dave in accounting. You know, the tall one with dark hair and nearly all his fingers; now there’s a man with a future I tell you. By the way, has that husband of yours found a job
Racer, A Hamster's Tale
The First Two Chapters
Prologue
Once upon a time, in a green and beautiful land, there lived an evil scientist and he had a pet hamster. His name was Racer. The hamster, that is. Not that it’s important, just in case you wanted to know.
Chapter 1
Racer ran round and round, round and round, round and round, flying down the pathway to heaven. At least, that’s the way he saw it. To anyone else it looked like a hamster’s exercise wheel, but to Racer it was his outlet for stress. It’s not easy being the beloved pet of a mad scientist.
Lefter wandered into the room looking around for a clue as to why he was there. He was sure there was something he was supposed to be doing, but he couldn’t remember what. But memory lapse wasn’t what Lefter was known for. Lefter had a genetic quirk that urged him to turn to the left whenever he was going somewhere. Lefter wasn’t his real name, of course. No one could remember what his original name was. He was just Lefter. He spent a lot of his life going in circles.
Finally, Lefter’s eyes landed on the box of hamster food and he remembered, feed Racer! That’s what Dr. Cutter had told him to do. Dr. Cutter was Lefter’s uncle and had no patience for his nephew’s mistakes, or anyone else’s. Lefter filled Racer’s food dish, gave him fresh water and a piece of advice: ‘Take a break pal. You’re going to wear yourself out on that thing.’
Racer understood him, but he couldn’t stop. He had a genetic quirk too, and that was to run in circles for hours on end. He had what Dr. Cutter called ‘the round and round gene.’ When other hamsters would knock off for a nap and a smoke, Racer would keep on going. Among the other hamsters he was known as something of an oddball. Across the room, large golden eyes watched the cage on the counter. Squeaker Cat had long had plans to get her claws on that uppity good-for-nothing rodent. Sooner or later someone was going to make a mistake and leave that cage door open; she could wait. She settled herself down into her basket where she could keep an eye on the cage and purred quietly to herself.
~~~~~~~~~
In another part of the building, Dr. Helga Lindstrom and Dr. Linda Lapp slumped their shoulders and stared at each other. Ever since their attempt to clone Alan Greenspan had failed, their stock had fallen in their boss’s eyes.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with those Greenspan cells, Helga” complained Dr. Linda. “Why can’t they multiply in a regular sequence like ordinary cells? Is that too much to ask? After all, all those other people we cloned turned out fine.”
“It’s not that they can’t multiply,” replied Dr. Helga. “They don’t want to; they’re using some obscure formula that no one else can understand, not surprising, considering the source. But what about us? If we get the axe, can we take some of this stuff with us? Anthrax, plague, Ricin; what do you think would look good on a resume?” They shuffled their lab notes and checked the wall clock for lunchtime.
“Come on, Linda, if we get sacked, we can at least do it on a full stomach. I hear that it’s chicken pot pie today.” Dr. Linda straightened up and smiled. Maybe there was hope after all.
~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Cutter, the head of Plastic Genetics Laboratory, had been scowling at them in the hallway lately and rumors of layoffs and budget cuts had been flying faster than you could blink. Racer Rumors they were called. Dr. Cutter would be seen petting and talking to his pet hamster and afterwards would be heard talking aloud to himself about “incompetent associates” and “things around here have to change”. No one was sure if the hamster was giving suggestions to his owner or not; however, no one held any grudges against Racer. He was a friendly, outgoing hamster and the lab staff liked him.
Located in the beautiful river hills of Lancaster County, the Plastic Genetics Laboratory-LLC- was cutting-edge medical technology. Dr. Cutter, despite his name, was not a surgeon. No! No cut-and-stitch monsters would be coming out of this laboratory; Dr. Cutter was a geneticist. The mixing and matching of DNA from far and wide was his magic wand, his alchemy. Okay, so the kudzu-piranha creature hadn’t worked out so well. After it had escaped from the lab and eaten a small child, there was no end of trouble hushing the incident up. But Dr. Cutter didn’t allow himself to be deterred by setbacks. There was always another day, always another pairing to try-especially when he had customers with deep pockets to fund his work. Governments too were a steady source of income. Foreign or domestic, Dr. Cutter didn’t care. His mission statement was: Ethics are for sissies!
Chapter 2
At the corner of Park Ave and East 41st St., Manhattan, in a stuffy, opulent study, business leaders were doing what business leaders do best: drinking, smoking and plotting how to transfer money from your pocket to theirs. The Tobacco Overlords, American Division, (T.O.A.D.) meeting had ended and joy had not been dispensed. No matter how you tried to explain it or disguise it, sales were down. Their archenemy, the American Lung Association, was having great success helping people quit smoking. Their latest announcement was a contest to create a vaccine against nicotine.
Burlington Chesterfield leaned back in his chair and eyed his companions with no enthusiasm. They were good enough for drinking and poker parties, but they had no vision, no creativity, he thought.
“It’s not like the old days, Barclay,” intoned Chesterfield. “We can’t go around putting our hands into people’s pockets and taking money blatantly like the IRS does. That would be sweet. What a set-up those guys have! We need something new, Barclay, something so subtle that people won’t even realize that they’re being robbed. No, we have to come up with a new angle.”
Barclay frowned with unaccustomed mental effort. “What about using the candy cigarettes idea, with some real cigarettes mixed in?” he asked. “We could give away free samples at kindergartens, day-care centers and playgrounds. It’s amazing how many parents don’t notice what their kids are doing.”
“We tried that five years ago and the ALA jumped all over us. We need to move into an area that they aren’t watching. I mean, people are going to die anyway, why shouldn’t they have a nice smoke while they’re doing it?” He drummed his fingers on the table and surveyed the blank I-don’t-have-any-ideas faces turned toward him. He sighed; it looked like he was going to have to think up of a new tacitc to pull the company out of its slump.
But he didn’t feel good, not at all. A dull pressure started forming around his heart, growing in intensity. He tried to push the tingling pain out of his mind. Suddenly he grasped his heart, lurching forward onto the long mahogany table with a loud, gasping groan.
“No! No! Not again,” he begged an unknown power. “Why? Why? We only want to make money, is that a crime?”
“Chesterfield, what’s wrong? Should I call an ambulance?” Barclay looked anxiously at his C.E.O. and froze in indecision. Should he reach for the phone or seize his chance and finish the old buzzard off? But Barclay hesitated a little too long and Burlington pulled himself back into his chair and forced his features into a mask of calm control.
“No, no, it’s not a heart attack, another person just quit smoking! It always gets to me like that. What are we going to do? If these damn health people convince the public that tobacco’s bad for them, we’re goners! Call the lawyers! Ever since we tried that marketing campaign aimed at kids, we need to be careful. Damn shame, too; that was going so well.”
~~~~~~~~~
It is at this point, if there are any tobacco lawyers reading this, that they should put down their swords and their cell phones and go back to doing whatever it is that tobacco lawyers do all day long. Possibly working to make the world a better place.
Prologue
Once upon a time, in a green and beautiful land, there lived an evil scientist and he had a pet hamster. His name was Racer. The hamster, that is. Not that it’s important, just in case you wanted to know.
Chapter 1
Racer ran round and round, round and round, round and round, flying down the pathway to heaven. At least, that’s the way he saw it. To anyone else it looked like a hamster’s exercise wheel, but to Racer it was his outlet for stress. It’s not easy being the beloved pet of a mad scientist.
Lefter wandered into the room looking around for a clue as to why he was there. He was sure there was something he was supposed to be doing, but he couldn’t remember what. But memory lapse wasn’t what Lefter was known for. Lefter had a genetic quirk that urged him to turn to the left whenever he was going somewhere. Lefter wasn’t his real name, of course. No one could remember what his original name was. He was just Lefter. He spent a lot of his life going in circles.
Finally, Lefter’s eyes landed on the box of hamster food and he remembered, feed Racer! That’s what Dr. Cutter had told him to do. Dr. Cutter was Lefter’s uncle and had no patience for his nephew’s mistakes, or anyone else’s. Lefter filled Racer’s food dish, gave him fresh water and a piece of advice: ‘Take a break pal. You’re going to wear yourself out on that thing.’
Racer understood him, but he couldn’t stop. He had a genetic quirk too, and that was to run in circles for hours on end. He had what Dr. Cutter called ‘the round and round gene.’ When other hamsters would knock off for a nap and a smoke, Racer would keep on going. Among the other hamsters he was known as something of an oddball. Across the room, large golden eyes watched the cage on the counter. Squeaker Cat had long had plans to get her claws on that uppity good-for-nothing rodent. Sooner or later someone was going to make a mistake and leave that cage door open; she could wait. She settled herself down into her basket where she could keep an eye on the cage and purred quietly to herself.
~~~~~~~~~
In another part of the building, Dr. Helga Lindstrom and Dr. Linda Lapp slumped their shoulders and stared at each other. Ever since their attempt to clone Alan Greenspan had failed, their stock had fallen in their boss’s eyes.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with those Greenspan cells, Helga” complained Dr. Linda. “Why can’t they multiply in a regular sequence like ordinary cells? Is that too much to ask? After all, all those other people we cloned turned out fine.”
“It’s not that they can’t multiply,” replied Dr. Helga. “They don’t want to; they’re using some obscure formula that no one else can understand, not surprising, considering the source. But what about us? If we get the axe, can we take some of this stuff with us? Anthrax, plague, Ricin; what do you think would look good on a resume?” They shuffled their lab notes and checked the wall clock for lunchtime.
“Come on, Linda, if we get sacked, we can at least do it on a full stomach. I hear that it’s chicken pot pie today.” Dr. Linda straightened up and smiled. Maybe there was hope after all.
~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Cutter, the head of Plastic Genetics Laboratory, had been scowling at them in the hallway lately and rumors of layoffs and budget cuts had been flying faster than you could blink. Racer Rumors they were called. Dr. Cutter would be seen petting and talking to his pet hamster and afterwards would be heard talking aloud to himself about “incompetent associates” and “things around here have to change”. No one was sure if the hamster was giving suggestions to his owner or not; however, no one held any grudges against Racer. He was a friendly, outgoing hamster and the lab staff liked him.
Located in the beautiful river hills of Lancaster County, the Plastic Genetics Laboratory-LLC- was cutting-edge medical technology. Dr. Cutter, despite his name, was not a surgeon. No! No cut-and-stitch monsters would be coming out of this laboratory; Dr. Cutter was a geneticist. The mixing and matching of DNA from far and wide was his magic wand, his alchemy. Okay, so the kudzu-piranha creature hadn’t worked out so well. After it had escaped from the lab and eaten a small child, there was no end of trouble hushing the incident up. But Dr. Cutter didn’t allow himself to be deterred by setbacks. There was always another day, always another pairing to try-especially when he had customers with deep pockets to fund his work. Governments too were a steady source of income. Foreign or domestic, Dr. Cutter didn’t care. His mission statement was: Ethics are for sissies!
Chapter 2
At the corner of Park Ave and East 41st St., Manhattan, in a stuffy, opulent study, business leaders were doing what business leaders do best: drinking, smoking and plotting how to transfer money from your pocket to theirs. The Tobacco Overlords, American Division, (T.O.A.D.) meeting had ended and joy had not been dispensed. No matter how you tried to explain it or disguise it, sales were down. Their archenemy, the American Lung Association, was having great success helping people quit smoking. Their latest announcement was a contest to create a vaccine against nicotine.
Burlington Chesterfield leaned back in his chair and eyed his companions with no enthusiasm. They were good enough for drinking and poker parties, but they had no vision, no creativity, he thought.
“It’s not like the old days, Barclay,” intoned Chesterfield. “We can’t go around putting our hands into people’s pockets and taking money blatantly like the IRS does. That would be sweet. What a set-up those guys have! We need something new, Barclay, something so subtle that people won’t even realize that they’re being robbed. No, we have to come up with a new angle.”
Barclay frowned with unaccustomed mental effort. “What about using the candy cigarettes idea, with some real cigarettes mixed in?” he asked. “We could give away free samples at kindergartens, day-care centers and playgrounds. It’s amazing how many parents don’t notice what their kids are doing.”
“We tried that five years ago and the ALA jumped all over us. We need to move into an area that they aren’t watching. I mean, people are going to die anyway, why shouldn’t they have a nice smoke while they’re doing it?” He drummed his fingers on the table and surveyed the blank I-don’t-have-any-ideas faces turned toward him. He sighed; it looked like he was going to have to think up of a new tacitc to pull the company out of its slump.
But he didn’t feel good, not at all. A dull pressure started forming around his heart, growing in intensity. He tried to push the tingling pain out of his mind. Suddenly he grasped his heart, lurching forward onto the long mahogany table with a loud, gasping groan.
“No! No! Not again,” he begged an unknown power. “Why? Why? We only want to make money, is that a crime?”
“Chesterfield, what’s wrong? Should I call an ambulance?” Barclay looked anxiously at his C.E.O. and froze in indecision. Should he reach for the phone or seize his chance and finish the old buzzard off? But Barclay hesitated a little too long and Burlington pulled himself back into his chair and forced his features into a mask of calm control.
“No, no, it’s not a heart attack, another person just quit smoking! It always gets to me like that. What are we going to do? If these damn health people convince the public that tobacco’s bad for them, we’re goners! Call the lawyers! Ever since we tried that marketing campaign aimed at kids, we need to be careful. Damn shame, too; that was going so well.”
~~~~~~~~~
It is at this point, if there are any tobacco lawyers reading this, that they should put down their swords and their cell phones and go back to doing whatever it is that tobacco lawyers do all day long. Possibly working to make the world a better place.
Friday, February 5, 2010
What's Your Sign?
What's Your Sign?
J. S. King
Amber Alice drove at a steady rate down Rte. 272 on her way to work at the Glorious Cat Meat Canning Facility, talking quietly to herself. "And then I'll say," she told herself, "you can take this job and can it, get it? can it and…and…" She sighed as she replayed her favorite daydream.
The sun was shining and it was another beautiful day in Willow Street. The speed limit was posted 45 mph and Amber Alice was keeping her car to a mere 55 mph, to show her respect for authority.
Up ahead, on the right, a battered green pickup truck pulled up and rested at the stop sign on Shiprock Rd. Soon, though, the truck edged forward a little, the driver leaning forward and peering in her direction.
Amber Alice glanced at him casually, dismissed him from the front of her mind and returned to her fantasy of quitting her day job and making her living as a writer. If only editors didn't have such an aversion to schlock, she mourned, her fortune would be certain! She approached closer to the side road, closer, closer, and almost past it. A sudden flash of motion brought Amber Alice out of her daydream into harsh reality. The truck had pulled out in front of her and was moving sluggishly across her forward bow.
Amber Alice slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel sideways. There was no time to curse or pray; time only to grunt and heave the car off the road into a ditch. Down, down, down, how deep was this ditch? Then a muddy splash and she was thrown back as the car started up the other side.
"Uhngh," she grunted and struggled to take a deep breath, then another and another. She looked around in a daze and saw shrubs pressed tightly against the car windows and her hands still doing a white-knuckle death-grip on the steering wheel. She drew another deep breath, uttered a long stream of words that she knew her mother wouldn't approve of and struggled out of the car.
She turned around and around, throwing her hands up and down wildly and addressed the heavens. "Why?" she demanded of the world. "Why, why, why? Why does every yo-yo in the world want to pull out in front of me? What is it about me that attracts every suicidal pinhead for miles around? Why do they pick me? It's like I have a sign over my head!"
She turned towards her car at that point in her monologue and stared at the vehicle in astonishment. There was indeed a sign, not over her head exactly, but over the car. There, hanging patiently in the air, was a large, neon sign. A border of white lights blinked off and on and a large arrow pointed down towards the car. Bright red letters spelled its message to the world: PULL OUT IN FRONT OF ME! it declared.
"Well, I'll be damned," Amber Alice allowed, "look at that! There is a sign over me! No wonder everyone's pulling out in front of me; they're just doing what they're told. I'm not happy about it, but at least there's an explanation for it."
She shook her head at the random cruelness of the world and called the tow truck.
J. S. King
Amber Alice drove at a steady rate down Rte. 272 on her way to work at the Glorious Cat Meat Canning Facility, talking quietly to herself. "And then I'll say," she told herself, "you can take this job and can it, get it? can it and…and…" She sighed as she replayed her favorite daydream.
The sun was shining and it was another beautiful day in Willow Street. The speed limit was posted 45 mph and Amber Alice was keeping her car to a mere 55 mph, to show her respect for authority.
Up ahead, on the right, a battered green pickup truck pulled up and rested at the stop sign on Shiprock Rd. Soon, though, the truck edged forward a little, the driver leaning forward and peering in her direction.
Amber Alice glanced at him casually, dismissed him from the front of her mind and returned to her fantasy of quitting her day job and making her living as a writer. If only editors didn't have such an aversion to schlock, she mourned, her fortune would be certain! She approached closer to the side road, closer, closer, and almost past it. A sudden flash of motion brought Amber Alice out of her daydream into harsh reality. The truck had pulled out in front of her and was moving sluggishly across her forward bow.
Amber Alice slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel sideways. There was no time to curse or pray; time only to grunt and heave the car off the road into a ditch. Down, down, down, how deep was this ditch? Then a muddy splash and she was thrown back as the car started up the other side.
"Uhngh," she grunted and struggled to take a deep breath, then another and another. She looked around in a daze and saw shrubs pressed tightly against the car windows and her hands still doing a white-knuckle death-grip on the steering wheel. She drew another deep breath, uttered a long stream of words that she knew her mother wouldn't approve of and struggled out of the car.
She turned around and around, throwing her hands up and down wildly and addressed the heavens. "Why?" she demanded of the world. "Why, why, why? Why does every yo-yo in the world want to pull out in front of me? What is it about me that attracts every suicidal pinhead for miles around? Why do they pick me? It's like I have a sign over my head!"
She turned towards her car at that point in her monologue and stared at the vehicle in astonishment. There was indeed a sign, not over her head exactly, but over the car. There, hanging patiently in the air, was a large, neon sign. A border of white lights blinked off and on and a large arrow pointed down towards the car. Bright red letters spelled its message to the world: PULL OUT IN FRONT OF ME! it declared.
"Well, I'll be damned," Amber Alice allowed, "look at that! There is a sign over me! No wonder everyone's pulling out in front of me; they're just doing what they're told. I'm not happy about it, but at least there's an explanation for it."
She shook her head at the random cruelness of the world and called the tow truck.
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