What follows is my first attempt at fiction. I don't think I did too bad:
It was a dark and stormy night.
Right? That's usually how these things start, yes?
No, just kidding. It was actually a warm, spring day.
A day that characterized by the kind of heat that still has an edge of winter in it, that seeps into your cold toes as you step out of an overly air conditioned building in your charming sandals and warms you up from the bottom up, the inside out, the way hot water warms your hands through a cool, ceramic cup.
She picked a bench that was fully in the sun, spreading out, purse on one side, feet tucked under her, sandals tucked under the bench, arms spread out, resting across the back, head titled to catch the rays of weak sunlight.
It was the middle of the week, the middle of the day, and she had decided to take a break from work and from people, so she was a bit irritated when she heard footsteps coming up the path toward this little garden oasis surrounded by office buildings. Cracking her eyes open, she spied a man hurrying toward her and decided the best course of action was to pull the book out of her purse and pretend to be engrossed.
The man, unique only because of his speed, raced right by her, glancing behind himself three times that she could see. Clearly, he was being chased, but as she couldn't see any giant radioactive lizards behind him on the horizon, she stayed where she was, intrigued.
The book lay open on her crossed legs, forgotten, as she began constructing a story in her head that would account for this gentleman's strangely hurried behavior.
In the middle of constructing a story of the man's verbally violent altercation with his boss that ended with his unemployment after he told his boss just what he thought about the kind of people who ended up in middle management, a woman appeared, moving even more quickly. Until she stopped, doubling back to stand in front of the figure on the bench, glaring. The woman on the bench glanced up at this displeased woman who seemed to be chasing the harried man, and glanced over her shoulder, hoping the object of this woman's ire was hiding behind her.
Nope, that look was definitely directed at her, but nothing was being said. Instead of engaging with the standing woman, she sat quietly, directing her gaze down at the book in her lap. What seemed like hours later, the harried man from before appeared back in view, his footsteps faltering when he saw the glaring woman. The woman, started, seemed to remember her original pursuit of the man and quickly turned on her heel to take it up again, sending the man rabbiting off back out of sight.
She tilted her head back on the bench again.
"Well, that was weird. Some people are crazy," she muttered under her breath, "The psycho ones make the best characters in the best stories, though."