Kai’s Very Bad Day

The day before the second round of the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2020 was to commence, I received the results of round one as well as feedback from the judges. Out of 30 participants, I placed 7th. This earned me nine points (15 for 1st, 14 for 2nd, etc.).

I was pretty pleased with the result. My genre (spy novel) was certainly out of my comfort zone. I’ve never written anything for it, nor do I really read it (outside of the any on the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die list). I took a chance and made it more comedic. Still spy novel, but comedic along the lines of “Fletch” (yes, it was a book before it was a Chevy Chase movie).

The gamble paid off, much to my relief. The judges hands down praised me for the comedy in the story, saying my humor was spot on and the inner monologue of my character was hilarious and refreshing. Since I consider humor one of my strong points in writing, this naturally made me feel great!

Then, at midnight Friday going into Saturday, I received my next assignment for round #2 – with 48 hours to write less than 1000 words:

Genre: Comedy
Location: a Ferry
Object: a smoothie

You’d think I’d be thrilled to have Comedy as a genre. It actually intimidated me, in a way. With praise from the judges for my comedy in the spy novel genre, I felt even more pressure to ‘be funny’ for this one. I know, logically, that the judging is done anonymously – they won’t know it’s the same author – and it might not even be the same judges. But the pressure was still there.

I think I did well with this one. My Caz gave me excellent advice. She said that this genre totally fits in the type of fanfiction I write, so I should just ignore that it’s for NYC Midnight and write it like I’d write anything I’d write for my ships. So, I did. I had quite a few ideas for it and settled on what’s below, and I’m actually pretty proud of this.

Hope you enjoy!

Kai’s Very Bad Day

Kai was having a bad day. 

‘Kai’s No-good, Rotten, Horrible, Crap Day’.  Whatever that damn movie was?  Even if he could’ve been bothered to look it up, he couldn’t.  His phone was dead.

He scowled at the floor of the ferry, slowly chugging it’s way through the water, brooding over this awful day, and trying to ignore the sounds and smells around him.

Kai’s Bad Day started this morning, waking up late in the muggy heat of his tiny, shoebox apartment, to the sound of his stuttering hundred-year-old air conditioner stuttering its last stutter.  His phone, supposedly charging on his dumpster-dive side table, hadn’t charged.  Something – he didn’t want to know what – had chewed through his charging cable and his phone was dead.  Hence, no alarm.

The lukewarm water of the shower did nothing to fix his mood.  He was out of soap, so shampoo would have to do.  The small amount of steam added to the already damp atmosphere of his place, and whoop-de-doo!…the bread was moldy, so there went breakfast. 

The subway was packed, of course, and he didn’t even have the solace of music from his phone because, yeah, phone still dead.

Oh, that paper he thought was due today?  The one he’d worked on until three am as he plied himself with Monster Energy until his eyes crossed?  Yeah, it was due next Tuesday.  Not today.

He’d found out about it when he stumbled late into class, mumbling apologies to a professor who probably couldn’t care less.  He sat, sweating in the stuffy room, breathing in the stale apathy of the other students.  Or was that his clothes?  The ones he pulled from the dirty pile because the laundry machine in his building was broken and he hadn’t made it to the laundromat.

The day got worse.  He’d thought a mundane job collecting tickets at the movie theater would be easy.  A few extra dollars to add to his scholarship so he could afford his own place.  Except for the kid who threw up half-digested popcorn on his shoes, the Marvel fan who yelled at him for not knowing when the next film was supposed to come out, and the middle-aged woman with ‘speak-to-the-manager’ hair asking to ‘speak-to-the-manager’ because Brian gave her diet soda when she clearly asked for regular and how dare he insinuate she should lose weight!

So, after that long day, Kai was ready to return to his hot, stuffy apartment, make some ramen, and…he didn’t know what. Maybe he had a book somewhere.

He couldn’t stomach the thought of the subway.  He’d headed, instead, for the ferry.  It would take longer, but at least he’d have the breeze off the water.  Plus, it was free.

Except.  The ferry was just as crowded, just as smelly, and just as disgusting as the subway.  Rush hour passengers packed it like sardines, and Kai sat in the middle of a bench, crushed between some cute guy his age with his (working) phone, and a heavily-sweating, older man who smelled like all the worst smells of summer combined.  Kai could almost taste his body odor.

The cute guy was annoying; his leg, pressed against Kai’s, kept bouncing.  Both hands occupied, he scrolled through Twitter on his (working) phone with one, while the other held the brightest pink smoothie Kai had ever seen.  Beads of condensation from the plastic cup dripped onto the guy’s bouncing leg, creating a huge wet spot on his cargo shorts.

The worst was the sound.  He kept chewing on the straw, stuck through the plastic lid, and every bite moved it up or down, creating a high-pitched squeak that shot into Kai’s ear and onto his last nerve.  They were barely out of the harbor and Kai had to hold back from dumping the pink monstrosity on this idiot’s backwards baseball cap and shoving that straw somewhere where it would stop squeaking.

A flurry of thumb movements drew Kai’s gaze to the guy’s phone.  He was now on the text app, and, since Kai was bored, he glanced at the words rapidly appearing on the screen.

L:  OMG u wouldn’t believe how hot this guy is next to me

H:  Oh?  Cute hot or temp hot?

L:  C.U.T.E!  Srsly.  I’m so nervous.  I wanna say hi

H:  Give him ur number

L:  I can’t do that.  He’d think I’m a freak.

What?  Kai jerked his eyes away from the phone.  Did that mean him?  There was a woman on the other side of the guy.  It had to mean him.  This cute guy thought he, Kai, was hot?  Looking as down, dirty, and defeated as he did?  With unwashed clothes, sweaty hair, and the don’t-even-go-there stains on his shoes?

So the leg bouncing and straw chewing was nerves?  What should he do?  If he said something, the guy would know he’d seen his phone, but he couldn’t let this opportunity pass.  In a split decision (because what the heck?  If this went wrong, it would be par for the course today), Kai yanked his backpack from between his feet and dug through it.  He turned up a receipt from CVS and scribbled his name, number, and ‘text me’ on it.

The boat had barely stopped when he shoved the receipt onto the guy’s lap (ignoring his surprised exclamation), jumped up, and dashed away to the off-ramp.  At least Kai wouldn’t have to see the guy’s face if he was mistaken.

A quick trip to the nearest convenience store to spend the last of his money for the week on a new charger and a fast run to his hole-in-the-wall apartment later, he held his phone in shaking hands waiting for it to charge.  Kai’s heart beat fast, and not only from his run.  Come on, come on.  Power up already.  A moment later, he yelled as a notification popped up on the screen.

            Hey cutie from the ferry…

Kai was having a great day.