Work in Progress

Gina was having a shitty day, and it did not appear to be improving. Cursing silently she slowed to a halt at the 5th consecutive red light on Marshall Boulevard. She checked her cell phone, still no signal.

“I hate driving through the valley,” she mumbled to noone in particular as the light changed back to green. She slammed on the gas, perhaps a bit too forcefully, and began enumerating everything that had gone wrong since she woke up that morning.

Thanks to a power failure that had occurred approximately 10 minutes before her alarm would have gone off, she had overslept by nearly an hour. There was just enough hot water in her shower so as not to qualify as cold, but not enough to qualify as hot either. There was no milk for her coffee. She stubbed her toe on the rollerblades Mark had left lying in her hallway. She tripped over thin air and spilled just enough coffee on her white blouse to merit a change of shirt, which morphed into a complete change of outfit, which resulted in her being even later than she already had been. Of course, she hadn’t thought to call her boss until she’d already driven into the valley where cell reception is completely impossible. And now these damned red lights… GAH!

“I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried…” she mused grimly to herself as the light in front of her shifted to yellow.

She felt a subtle click deep in her abdomen. Her foot hovered over the break for a fraction of a second, and then she gunned the engine, sailing through the light just before it switched to red.

Her momentary elation was stifled by the prompt arrival of unmitigated panic and she began to scan the surrounding area for cops, cameras, or any other entity with the power to invoke a moving violation. A few moments of frantic searching revealed nothing, and she relaxed. No cops. Not a single witness to her vehicular indiscretion. Just those two hippos in the parking lot of St. Ignatius.

Wait… what?

She looked back. She was not mistaken. There were, in fact, two hippopotami munching grass by the walkway leading to the gym.

She began blinking rapidly, as if the resultant strobe effect would transform the intruding gray masses into something less incongruous. Trash cans, perhaps, or a couple of old Chevy Novas. She shook her head as though her brain were an etch-a-sketch, but to no avail.

The hippos regarded her with a heightened degree of disinterest.

Her car began to shake.

Thwack! Tsssss… thubba-thubba-thubba-CRACK!

(to be continued…)