What’s this? The new challenge story? On a Thursday? Yeah, how about that, huh? Well, I actually managed to not leave writing the story until the last minute this time (yay me). Plus it practically wrote itself, but I’ve a few things I want to say about writing it so I’m going to explain what I mean by that in a follow-up post, probably tomorrow.
However, I have decided that from now on I’m going to include the full restrictions in this post, rather than just a link, to save unnecessary jumping back and forth.
Title: The Window Cleaner
Genre: Romance
Dialogue: “So you just let them get away with it? One rule for them and another for everyone else? Give me a break.”
Technical: Every sentence has to have a number in it.
Just a caveat on the technical restriction, I interpreted it as including ordinal numbers as well (first, second, third etc.).
The Window Cleaner
It was their third date. They went out for breakfast and then to the movies, the local cinema down on Fourth and Main. He couldn’t remember what they went to see, but he did remember that it was in screen ten, the largest screen in the cinema. When they went in they sat right at the back, in the corner to keep out of the glow from the projection booth behind them, and when the movie started they realised the only other people were sitting right at the front, twenty or twenty-five metres away. It was an elderly couple, maybe seventy-year-olds. They left after ten minutes when they realised they had entered the wrong cinema.
No, that’s right, it was The Window Cleaner, that’s the film they went to see – or was it The Window Cleaner 2? No, it was the first one, for sure. They ended up making a trilogy of them, and then a fourth film some fifteen years later with the same cast. Almost the same cast, anyway – there were one or two (dead) missing members. They went to see that one too – funny that he could remember that as well, considering. Different cinema, different country even, same screen ten, ironically, but it was absolute shite. It had tried to capture the magic of its twenty-year-old predecessor and failed miserably.
But where was he – that’s right, their third date in the empty cinema. She was absolutely stunning then – as she was ever after, of course – but back then, she had that glow of youth, a small town gal, nineteen years young, absolutely in love with the luckiest man in the world. She had the most lustrous auburn hair that she always wore in a pair of pigtails tied with two red ribbons. The dress-code was far more conservative back then of course, no ten-inch studded leather miniskirts in sight, but no matter what she wore, she was a heartbreaker. He couldn’t remember a single time where they had gone out together and he hadn’t caught at least one other guy ogling her. But she never gave them a second glance, and somehow that made him love her all the more for it.
After the seventy-year-olds left and they were alone in the cinema, he had considered trying to get frisky with her, but had decided against it. It was their third date, but some feeling had warned him that this was too special to jeopardize. In twenty-two years he had never met a girl like this before, and it both excited and terrified him. These days, he was glad that he hadn’t tried to make a move that day in screen ten, thanks to the life he had shared with her.
Instead, the two of them had sat through the movie, enjoying each other’s company. And then without moving they had sat through the next movie, and the next, and the next, four movies in total. It had been the most magical day of his entire life, sitting alone with her in screen ten. Not a single other customer had entered the cinema the whole time, and just two staff members had entered between the movies. One of them was a manager, and he had seen them but hadn’t asked them to leave. The other one had entered and seen them as well, but he said nothing either.
In more than eighty years he had yet to experience a more perfect day. Spending the time alone, doing nothing but being with each other, the two of them had shared a moment transcendent.
As they left the cinema hand in hand later that night, they had passed the two members of staff that had come in earlier. The first one, the non-manager, had turned to the other and said, “So you just let them get away with it? One rule for them and another for everyone else? Give me a break.”
“Look at them,” the second one, the manager, had replied. “Those two – just look at them.”
“I don’t get it,” said the first.
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” said the second.
He remembered smiling at that, because he got it, and squeezing her hand a little tighter as they made their way out and walked the ten minute walk to her home. That was where his memory failed him, as they walked up the steps to her apartment building where one day soon they would be living together in their shoebox, itself now just another hole in his ever-deteriorating memory.
One solitary tear rolled down his cheek as he realised he couldn’t remember her name. He had lost her face, her smell, even her eyes, the one thing he thought he never could. He couldn’t remember their first date, or their second, or their fourth, fifth, any after. He struggled to recall the first time he saw her, but all he remembered was a smile he couldn’t picture. He had faint memories of a wedding, one beautiful day in June, but when he tried to focus on it it was all a blur.
Sometimes he even forgot that she was gone, and one of their children had to remind him. It terrified him, the thought that at any moment he might call for her, hoping she would answer only to relive that one heartbreaking moment when he realised she never would. His tears flowed unashamedly now, one for every second he had already lost, and another for every second he knew he was soon to lose.
But fixed in his deteriorating mind, there was one bright constant in the sea of darkness. Their perfect third date was still as clear today as the day it happened. He held onto that like it was life itself, knowing that so long as he kept that one perfect moment, she would never truly be gone.