Cache Assignment One - Part 1

I used an opening line to get an idea started, and then quickly wrote a page of the story. Opening line isn’t my usual method of beginning a story, but I overheard a variation of this line and never forgot it.

To further develop the story would be based on telling the story from two POVs – maybe alternating chapters. It begins with a young girl given the name Charm. She was discovered in the back seat of an older model Mustang by a woman who has just been fired from her waitress job at a truck stop in a small town. The woman, already down on her luck, discovers the baby in a cardboard box and five hundred dollars. The woman decides the baby is her lucky charm and raises her to the best of ability and at times very unconventional.

Charm believes the woman is her aunt until Delia is sent to prison. Now she is being contacted by people who claim to be her living relatives who have been searching for her. One even claims to be her mother who wants her back. Or is it because they know she is a lucky charm?

Opening Line

I have to pick up Aunt Delia from prison on Tuesday. She wants me to bring her something pretty to wear when she leaves the prison, as well as, a pair of lady shoes, preferably with an open toe. Oh, and would I bring a pecan pie, the kind she loves so much. Life has been so hard since she is serving time for beating up Tattoo Tony with a hammer.

Tattoo Tony won a $10,000 scratch-off lottery ticket and wouldn’t share it with Aunt Delia, so after drinking a six-pack of Budweiser and probably a few shots of Wild Turkey, she again asked – or more likely demanded her share of the money. When he told her to “piss-off”, Auntie went to the shed, smoked a cigarette, thought it over, and went back into the house she shared with Tattoo Tony and whacked him in the back of his head with a ball-peen hammer while he sat at the kitchen table eating meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy that Auntie had prepared for their dinner.

I guess there was a moment of stunned silence before he slumped over, face first, into the potatoes and gravy. Satisfied, Auntie took the envelope of money and the keys to Tattoo Tony’s old pick-up that he used for his sometimes work as a house painter and drove to Two John’s tavern for a nighttime cocktail.

The police barged in sometime later and hand-cuffed Auntie after she scuffled with the arresting officer.

It seems Spiff came by to see Tattoo Tony still face down in his potatoes and called an ambulance. Tattoo Tony suffered a mild concussion and pressed charges against Auntie.

But, that’s not all. She broke probation for a DUI violation, stealing money, roughing up an officer, and of course, aggravated battery. The judge said he was being lenient with her by giving her a two year sentence and if she gave the money back she could be out in far less time with good behavior. Much to my chagrin, Auntie stood hand-cuffed in front of the judge and with bravado announced; “Tattoo Tony is a cheap bastard and I would do it all over again.” I think she even spit afterwards.

That evening a guard drives the 300 miles in a prison bus to a godforsaken place where Auntie has lived ever since.

So here I am with her black cat, Strumpet, and her dog Grouch.