Bouncer
Chapter 1
Home
By Morgan Kauffman
Steve hands his badge over to Jim and heads for his car in the parking lot. He gets into a blue, busted up, old, rusty and small car and reaches for the keys in his pocket.
Steve takes out his keys and fumbles for the correct one and struggles to open his door. He sits in the seat of his car and pinches the top area of his nose and between his eyes and squints. He reaches under his seat and pulls out a contact lens case. He squints again, and looks into his mirror above his head. While looking into the mirror, he removes each contact from his eye and places them neatly into the case.
He reaches again under the seat and puts back the contact case, but takes out another case for glasses. Steve opens the case and takes out a pair of glasses with very large and thick lenses on them. He tosses the case on the passenger seat and gets his keys out. He puts them to the ignition and struggles to start his car. The car finally starts, but putters and pops. Steve slowly steps on his gas pedal and he begins to drive home. As his car pulls out of the space, you can see his bumper with two stickers stuck to the bottom; one with a picture of Yoda on it and a statement saying; "Learn you must to be a good driver and get off my ass you must if reading this you are." The other bumper sticker simply states; "Star Wars fanatic".
Steve pulls into his driveway to a small house with doilies hanging in lacy windows. A cat with a bonnet on it's head stares at him angrily through the window as he gets out of his car and walks to the front door. He opens the door to the cat meowing at him in an effort to get Steve to pick him up. He picks up the cat; a white cat with black spots and removes the cat's bonnet with some effort and the cat hissing at him and mostly the tightly tied bonnet. The cat jumped; now free from his cloth prison and sprints toward the back of the house and disappears around a corner as his mom; a small and hunched over woman, with pajamas and matching pink slippers on with pictures of cats all over them approaches. She peers at Steve with large bifocal glasses and grins a large toothed smile. "Finally, my boy is home.", she says ending the sentence with a smoker's cough and gag. "Mom, did you try to dress Spots again?", Steve asks his mom in a frustrated manner and his mom waves it over like he didn't say anything. "I made meatloaf, your favorite!", his mom shouts and gags as she shuffles away in her slippered feet. The shuffling of her feet now attracting Spots back to play with them as she struggles now to step forward.
Steve makes his way to the kitchen and grabs a porcelain plate with painted cats on it. He grabs some meatloaf from the pan with his hand and slabs it onto the plate. He passes a bowl filled with cooked spinach and goes straight to another dish set out with fresh key lime pie on it. He grabs a knife with plastic cats holding it and cuts himself a slice and puts it next to his piece of meatloaf. Steve sits on a white whicker chair in front of a glass table with doilies on it and two sets of salt and pepper shakers; one set is a pair of cats with hungry expressions on their faces and the other set is of birds with feared expressions on their faces. Steve grabs the cat shaker with the "P" on it and shakes the pepper onto his meatloaf. He puts the shaker down on the other side of the other cat shaker with the "S" on it and the cat is now looking hungrily at the other cat. Steve chuckles slightly at the realization of what he just did and scarfs down his meatloaf and pie. He hacks and gags as the massive amount of meatloaf and pie begin burning his mouth. "Mom! What did you put in this meatloaf?!", he shouts. "Do you like it?", he hears his mom shout from the other room, "I thought a little spice with some jalapeno peppers and hot sauce would add a little kick!".
Steve continues to cough a little and heads for the kitchen with his plate and dumps the rest of his food into the garbage disposal and turns it on. "I think I'm going to skip dinner. If you need me, I'll be in the basement.", Steve heads over to the basement and starts heading down the stairs.
