August 9, 2022 ~ Tuesday afternoon (hiding out in the dining room with the window a/c cranked up as it’s a sunny and roasty 95° outside … hotter tomorrow!)
I’m still organizing. Filing. Sorting. Purging. Setting things aside to “look at later”. Funny how big that pile is getting!
In going through my office piles and files, I came upon this story. It is the 1000-word story that I wrote for a short-story challenge last Fall. I advanced to the second round with this and then had to write another story in a 24 hour period. I put off writing the next one til the night it was due (typical) but … that was the night that Annie bit Bea (she/we ended up traumatized but fine) and well, story #2 never materialized before the deadline. Too bad as I love these challenges.
There were four requirements for this challenge: maximum word count of 1000 words … it must include a dam as the location, there must be a lizard in it, and the genre was romance/suspense. Hope you enjoy.
The Honeymoon …
“Damn!” he hissed.
His words sounded more like water escaping a tea kettle than an expletive. Exasperation, expectation, exhaustion were all wrapped up in that one word.
We stood there gawking. We’d come to the end of the road … well, metaphorically speaking. We had been making our way through forest undergrowth and now stood atop a high cliff – the only road in sight was the one we needed to get to. Below us was nothing but pine trees, rocky soil and a huge body of water; to our left was the road and the dam’s concrete structure – gray and foreboding. It reminded me of the witch’s castle in The Wizard of Oz. We’d fended off a wild pig earlier … I was in no mood for flying monkeys.
“You mean DAM!” I quipped, as I pointed at the massive walls. “At least I can take as many dam pictures as I want. Right?” I smiled, hoping to lighten the moment.
I am a Film Studies teacher and had watched so many movies in my lifetime. How many of those had dams in them? Life imitates art and everybody lives happily ever after, right? No jail cells?
I needed to clear my head – so, I did what I thought would help … I pulled on Liam’s shirt and drew him in close and kissed him. Not a peck on the cheek, but a slow, soft, lingering kiss. It didn’t help with my head, but it was good. Damn good. Or should I say … dam good.
“Whatta we do now, Butch?” I asked him when our lips parted.
His name is Liam but I’d been calling him Butch. The name on my birth certificate is Loretta but my folks, being the hippies that they are, have always called me Sundance. His nickname seemed to fit our situation.
You can understand why visions of Redford and Newman were running through my head. Butch and Sundance at the top of a cliff – nowhere to go … I was hoping this pairing didn’t have to resort to jumping.
I checked the small cage I was carrying – the lizard was fine. She had no idea what danger we were in or how important she was. You lucky innocent bitch, I thought.
What were we doing? We had come all this way to get married and somehow got embroiled in an international smuggling scheme that involved, of all things, a rare lizard! Who does this?
Apparently, we do. Or I should say, I do … as I did … but my husband-to-be didn’t. He dumped me at the altar. I needed to get away and so went on what was to be our honeymoon with some guy from the Save the Lizards group. They needed a woman … the pieces fell into place, and here we are.
“We get to the dam, do some acting, and then hand over Sheila.” he looked at me with those big, chocolate pudding eyes. I could get lost in those, I thought. Along the way he had named the contraband reptile, Sheila. She’s a Shelia as much as I’m a Loretta. He, however, fits his names nicely.
He shrugged off his pack – a regular Sherpa. We wanted the officials to think … a crazy, pregnant couple on a hiking babymoon. What wasn’t normal about that? Everything! We weren’t a couple, I wasn’t pregnant, and we were helping smuggle an endangered, highly valuable reptile out of a foreign country … under a specially padded shirt! I just hoped my acting skills were up to feigning labor and that the ambulance would arrive before the police. Our hand-off contact was the delivery doctor at the hospital. I was rather proud of myself for coming up with this part of the plan – after Fools Rush In. If Salma Hayek could go into labor atop a dam – why couldn’t I?
Liam was Macgyvering our ropes for the descent. His given name fit better now. It was more serious. And this was serious.
I secured the cage and we roped together. Rappelling would come back to me, right? Thanks, Mr. T. for the climbing wall and ropes course in PE! I took a deep breath.
Liam went first and I followed. I supposed if I fell then he’d catch me … or I’d knock him over and we’d both go down the mountainside. I pushed off the rocks but there were so many overhangs and tree limbs. For a moment, I felt like we were in the tree in Jurassic Park. Thankfully the lizard we were harboring was a bit smaller than the ones in that film. Stealthily we lowered ourselves adjacent to the dam road.
We sat, going over the plan as we watched the sky turn from blue to pink. I hoped it was a good omen – a cotton candy sky – but what did I know about omens? More than I knew about rare lizards, that was for sure!
I tucked the cage into my shirt as we set off towards the dam wall – rocks skittering under our feet. There was no one around as he pushed me up onto the ledge of the wall; with a slight thud, I landed on the other side. Scaling a wall with a valuable lizard on your belly is no small feat! Liam jumped against the wall and climbed to reach the ledge. Mr. Parkour scrambled up like he’d been doing this all his life. Who was this guy?
We strolled along as tourists would do and then gave an Oscar-worthy performance. The ambulance whisked us to the hospital. As soon as the doctor entered the delivery room, I handed over Sheila. Liam and I stood beaming as if I’d actually given birth to her.
The doctor looked inside the cage and back at us and asked, “What the hell is this?”