Little Old Mary Keller (449 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.81 on 13 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by QuinnTheEskimo (View user info) at 2007-09-04 04:47:03 EDT
It took her nearly all morning to get ready on Friday. Mostly it took so long because of how old she was, seventy-seven. Most people thought she was older though because she used to smoke, but no one knew that.
She woke up earlier than usual, at 4:45, because she had farther to drive then she used to. It was getting harder and to find good stores these days. Times were changing. She hated being stared at by the fat women at the Wal-Mart, or that pimply cretin at the mall. But she had found a place a few towns over that seemed like the places she had shopped at as a girl. An easy going sort of place.
She curled her hair and put on her "good" dress. She slowly gathered all her possessions into her purse, her pocket book and a stick of lipstick and the cellphone her grandson had bought for her. Mary had no idea that the phone was dead, and had been for almost two months. If you told her the phone was broken, she wouldn't have cared anyway. She had no idea how to use it or what it was worth.
She took her keys from the tree-shaped key holder by the door, and stepped outside. It was still only seven-thirty as she stepped into her ancient pick-up, a remnant from when her husband was alive. He'd been dead for fifteen years now.
The drive took forever, but only because she drove 35 miles per hour the whole way. The store wasn't open yet so she shuffled the way that grandma's do over to a coffee shop. It was the kind of coffee shop where you can only order a triple-mocha-double-latte, so she bought a muffin and ate it slowly.
After Mary finished her muffin she took a look around the coffee shop, the big-nosed girl behind the counter stared frankly at her. Mary knew why they stared, but that didn't make it bother her any less. Finally, the girl spoke up, "Hey, ma'am? You need to leave."
And so Mary left, angry, and went to her new store. She was the first person in the store, so she sneaked to the back, as far away from the clerk as possible, and went to work. She opened her deep purse, a plastic coffee mug that she had snatched from the coffee shop gleamed under the florescent light. She lifted a shirt off of the rack and shoved it inside, obscuring the mug and her pocket book.
She continued shuffling around the store, shoving things into her bag for nearly an hour. When she finally couldn't fit even one more pair of socks into the purse the grabbed a shirt at random and walked to the counter.
"How much is this?" She asked, trying to emphasize her age and weakness.
"Lemme check," The clerk said. He was young and good-looking, but Mary hated him anyway, because eventually every clerk caught her, ratted her out, and made it impossible for her to return. The clerk ran the shirt under a scanner, then said, "Six seventy-five."
"Thank you," Mary said, and left without buying it.
She dropped the purse into the passenger seat, and turned on the pick-up. When she got home she took the clothes out of her purse and organized them in her garage by sex and size. Come tomorrow she'd open the garage door, put the sign at the end of her driveway that read "SALE."
It was an easy way to make a living for a little old lady like Mary Keller.
User Reviews
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-05 10:29:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i liked this well enough but it seemed a rather abrupt ending.
Submitted by Empathetic (user info) at 2007-09-04 20:03:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck Uniter.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-09-04 19:44:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-09-04 16:40:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Bwahahaha! My nefarious plan succeeded, for I am NEITHER.
Dammit. Ok, I'm a woman. But I'm bloody well not an Australian!
Submitted by SgtHartman (user info) at 2007-09-04 15:08:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
crotchety and curmudgeonly kleptomania
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2007-09-04 13:17:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I got the idea in my head that Mary was somehow horribly disfigured or possibly undead, seeing as everyone stared, I was pleasantly surprised that she was just another old lady making ends meet.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-09-04 13:04:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Cowman +2
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-09-04 12:23:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by sir_cowman (user info) at 2007-09-04 03:35:32 PDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Proofreading is for women and Australians.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-09-04 03:12:52 PDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Proof read. I like your stuff.
=======
OWNED.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-09-04 10:46:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yay for twist endings.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2007-09-04 09:27:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sir_cowman (user info) at 2007-09-04 06:35:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Proofreading is for women and Australians.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-09-04 06:12:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Proof read. I like your stuff.
Submitted by Jester_and_Traxx (user info) at 2007-09-04 05:15:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
JESTER: Suprisingly I found this story to be of perfect length. I wish there was more because I enjoyed it, yet at the same time it was exactly as long as it should have been. Well written and beautiful closing. Excellent job sir, I commend you.
TRAXX: so teh old lady goes around scamming newbs? y dont they call teh adminz on her? lol she pwnz.
JESTER: I hate you for your simplistic 1 dimensional personality.
TRAXX: n i hate u 2 fag
JESTER: +2?
TRAXX: ya cuz n00bz got pwnt lolz.
JESTER: *sigh*