Her hand stayed for a second, Tris’s eyes intently on it, waiting eagerly to see what the clenched fist would do next.
“Then BOOM! Just like that!” Fendi screamed, punching the air sideways with the suspended hand.
Tris’s mouth gaped; I (the narrator) am still trying to find out whether it was a sarcastic expression or actual surprise coming from our protagonist.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me” She said, even though Tris knew she wasn’t.
“Oh no Tris, I’m actually a human being so technically when I reproduce it’s called birthing” She snorted, “I know right, and yet we call our offspring kids”
Tris slapped her face in face-palming disbelief.
Fendi was an idiot. She was meant to be at the local night comedy clubs, not in a wide prison cell with a devout criminal like her.
“So you did all that,” Tris gestured to all the displays she’d been putting on for her, “In their hotel room?”
“Uh-huh” Fendi lifted her chest with pride.
Tris went back to pointlessly untangling her dreadlocks. Apart from rapping that was the only creative thing she could do while spending her life sentence in that stinking, cruelly wide box with bars.
She rarely did it now though, since they’d thrown in some green eyed, light cream colored, straight-haired, blonde clown in her cherished privacy.
She wondered why they put her in with her. She could easily impale the klutz with the metallic hand of their ‘dung’ bucket at the edge of the box.
She hadn’t even asked what she was in for.
“YO TRIS!” Fendi was still standing, pacing two millimeters to Tris’s left, and then back to her right.
She looked up, expecting her black pupils to incite fear in Fendi’s green ones, just so she could know that they were not some giant jacks-in-the-box preparing for a circus stunt.
“I want you to rap” Fendi said, throwing a ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ sign in her face.
“What?”
Fendi screamed, “Woo! That’s it”
The prison warden sighed unbelievably, “You know, you really need to shut up” He said.
Tris almost felt anger; she was her jack-in-the-box, only she could tell her to shut up. Get that Mr. Jailer Man.
“You know Tri, you look cute when you’re being boring” Fendi said mindlessly, still pacing.
“Okay do you not realize that we are convicts, in cells reserved for the very notorious criminals?” Tris spread her hands in a ‘why?’ position.
“Forget that crap” Fendi reached out and twisted one of Tris’s dreadlocks.
She slapped her hand, “Don’t. Touch. My. Hair” Tris eyed her with deadliness.
“Ooooooh,” Fendi raised her hands in surrender, “My bad, forgot that’s kinda a rule for the homeys. Yáll are gonna make it a slogan by next year. Big social awareness programme” She said.
Tris raised a brow.
“I said rap” Fendi clapped her hands.
“Okay so what? Ludacris or Nicki Minaj?” Tris said sarcastically, but of course Fendi wouldn’t get that hint.
“I think I prefer Cardi”
Tris rolled her eyes.
“Seriously? Why not Adele? Or Mariah?” Tris flashed her teeth.
“Wait a minute Tri, they’re not – oh! HAHA!” she laughed, “I see what you’re doing there”
“What’re you in for?” Tris asked, interrupting her laughter.
” Who, me?” Fendi looked around.
“No, your shadow.”
“BWAHAHA!” Fendi rolled, “You know Tris, you’ll break my laughing box someday.”
If it was anything like the one they were in, she would absolutely love to break it.
“Trump’s running for President” Fendi said again.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Tris didn’t even bother to argue.
“Who cares?”
It was her fifth year behind bars, and she’d already become i-don’t-care-ish and near-suicidal. She guessed she should’ve been grateful for company like Fendi, but she talked a lot of rubbish.
Like when she said,
“Can’t wait for 2020, when we’ll stop school, stay away from each other and wear face masks to go out, if we go at all! BWAHAHA!”
Or when she said,
“What’s on the news, Mr. Jailer Man? Have California’s forests been set on fire yet?”
She and Mr. Jailer Man had always thought that Fendi was a dangerous, mentally deranged person that had escaped from the asylum.
But Tris thought what she said was really strange. Like when she said something early last week about a famous rapper who shared their prison yard, ‘licking freedom’ very soon. Just the day before Mr. Jailer Man said he had been released.
“What are you in for Tris?”
“Why are you throwing the question back at me?” Tris eyed her defensively.
Mr. Jailer Man moaned.
“I’m going to need you to shut up, Fendi”
“STOP CALLING ME A PRISONERRRR!” Fendi screamed.
Tris wanted to laugh, that was a line from jazz singer Asa’s song, ‘Jailer’. Fendi sang it often.
“I killed someone important… apparently” She flared her nails as if it were some huge accomplishment.
“He was a very influential person, so I got heat. Pleaded not guilty, of course” Tris and Mr. Jailer Man snorted at the same time.
“Cool,” Fendi went over to the dung bucket.
“Why’d you kill him though?”
“Sexual assault”
“Whaaaat?” Fendi looked at her, wide-mouthed.
“Yeah effing system”
“So it was self defense then” She waved on top of the bucket
Tris smirked, “More like revenge.”
“Radical” Fendi walked back over to her.
There was a short silence, and the usualness of their setting irritated Tris. Everyday déjà vu.
“Imagine Chinese people naming an app with clock sounds. Tik…..tok, AHAHA!” Fendi said
Tris groaned. She was used to this Fendi’s senseless ranting about stupid, unimaginable and unbelievable things.
Every thirty minutes or so, she’d say something new and relatively on a higher idiot frequency than the last.
When she spent her first night in the cell she said,
“The world’s ending, yah, Best us stay in here and watch it crumble”
That made more sense than anything she’d said after.
“What are you in for?” Tris asked again, resting her back on the grey walls of the box.
Fendi went and held the bars.
“I dunno”
“Hey Mr. Jailer Man, why’s the delusional clown here?”
Tris had given up on any sense coming out of Fendi.
“My name’s Dick. Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Fendi snorted when he said his name.
“I said something in front of the press and then bam, I’m sent to the prison for most dangerous criminals.” She blurted, her orange overalls seeming fluorescent.
Not a very wise choice putting a blabber in with a murderer.
“What did you say?”
Fendi went quiet for a moment.
“I won’t wanna be Japanese come the 2018 heatwave. Oof! Imma need popsicles all day. EHAHA!”
Mr. Jailer Man pretended not to hear anything, burying his face in a newspaper that had 2015 Times written on it.
“Something about the government. I think I exposed them or something. I was a threat.” She waved her hands like it didn’t matter much, “Then they put me here, on a life sentence, of course” She smiled.
Tris didn’t blame the government for slamming Fendi in with the most dangerous for blabbing, she’d have thrown her in a shark pit.
“But they put me with you Tris, so it’s not so bad” She beamed, and then stretched her hand to touch one of Tris’s locs again.
“Don’t -“
“Touch. My. Hair.” Fendi mimicked.
“BWAHAHA!”
Tris seethed, trying so hard to control herself because Mr. Jailer Man was still there.
“Bah! The world won’t last long enough for people to start living on Mars. They don’t realize how near the end is! Scientists are stupid.” Fendi touched her ear and blew a kiss to the bars.
Tris wondered why this ‘nonsense’ came too close to the last; it wasn’t up to forty five minutes yet.
Mr. Jailer man got up and walked out, leaving his newspaper behind.
Fendi suddenly got serious, dead serious, like all her crazy laughter and unbelievable predictions didn’t just happen, and went to the wall at the back.
“Hey Tri,”
Tris turned backward to see what crazy stunt she would pull off now. She was her only source of entertainment.
Fendi tapped the wall on the left side, and then moved to the right end.
What the hell is she doing now?
She tip toed and tapped the top of the walls and then crouched and tapped the bottom.
Tris wanted to talk when the tapped areas began to glow.
“What the - ?”
The rectangular wall left in the middle edged in and became a large hologram.
Tris got up and moved to the bars, frightened.
There was a short silence and she studied the hologram; it was the world map, every country’s capital was highlighted and there were these strange red dots everywhere, everywhere except from a large part of the northern hemisphere that Tris couldn’t make out, Asia maybe.
Fendi turned from her static position in front of the hologram and bore into Tris’s eyes , the green in her pupils a strikingly darker shade.
She heard it in her head and she knew it was her,
Tri, can you keep a secret?
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69 comments
Those two do have a lot of potential. I'm with the people who are asking you to turn these stories into a series ;) Fendi is adorably crazy, we need more of her. I also like all the current events references you've chosen to include, as well as the musical commentary and the parts about the hair! Well done!
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THANK YOUUUUU!!!!!😋😘 I am.SO glad you love it! And I'm actually still deciding on the series thing. Hmm..... Oh well, I guess I'll eventually have to give the people what they want😜
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Wow!!! This was beautiful! I love your writings! Great job! P.S. Do you like acting? I read your bio!!!
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Thank you!!! And Y.E.S, acting is literally my LIFE. My mom teases me about constantly 'soliloquising' 😂 I absolutely love it and it's something I aspire to be established in, along with me being a writer,slam poet and rapper (all of which I already am😋 .You can see my works and videos on my page😁) Yup, why'd you ask Avery?
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You're welcome!!! Well, I really love acting too. I haven't been in any "professional plays". I did a few musicals, and I absolutely LOVE IT! I auditioned for parts and I got them!!! It was really fun. So...yeah!
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Oh that's cool! I have been in ONE professional one, a local TV show, I acted the evil stepmother😂 I've acted in some other school plays too that I personally wrote the scripts for, since primary school. Yeah, it's really LIT, I absolutely love it and hope to become a Hollywood based actress someday soon. It's really AMAZING😁 Most ALL of my write ups and novels sound like movies amd i take it like that, you know, hope they become movie adaptations and with me as a main character😁 I just really LOVE acting😂
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You were in a local TV show?!?! You are sooo lucky. I homeschool, so I don't really have any "school plays" lol. I really want to be an actress SOOOOO BAD. I actually was going to do a play that I pleaded to my mom for...but then this whole covid thing happened:(:(:(:(. Yeah, when I went to universal studios in hollywood, I was in awe! They had movie sets and everything!!
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Woaw, you went to universal studios??? Wow. I would LOVE to go there... Love is an understatement. And ME TOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!😭😭😭😭😭😭 My desperation for becoming an actress is unbecoming😵 I shine myself in blockbuster movies all the time,on the red carpet, interviews, with famous stars😂😂😂 I actually started a screenwriting course because o have a TON of movie ideas but don't know how to put it in movie form, and I guess if I sell screenplays and adaptations I could get closer to producers and maybe even get a chance to audition or eve...
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OMDS!!! Chimamaka!!! This was so amazing! Loved all the predictions😂. It was a really creative take on the prompt and I’m so happy I read this. I thought some parts of it were really funny! I also loved how it was narrated. So... I definitely enjoyed it! Like all your other stories. Few suggestions... since there’s time to edit, I thought to point some things out: “homeys“ should be homies I think, honestly have no idea. It could be what you were going for. “Cool” Fendi went over to the dung bucket. I think that should be “Cool,”...
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THANKS DOUBRA!!!!!!!!!!! Glad you loved it! I'll go make those corrections too I actually don't have my phone right now but once I do, I'll message you back!!!! Again, thanks for loving it!!!!! 💜💜💜💜
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It was my pleasure!!!😁💜💜
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😁💜💜
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DONE!!!! Although homeys didn't have a red line under it so I think it's quite correct. THANKS AGAIN DOUBRA!!
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I guess it was. Sorry 😂! And it was my pleasure!
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:D
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Hey! You told me to notify you when I got a wattpad, and I just did! My username is @sunnydaysz224
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I tried to add you but your username didn’t come up.
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Huh, I don't know why. Here's a link to my profile: https://www.wattpad.com/user/sunnydayz224
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Ah the good old days, when face masks were nothing more than a cool prop. I love seeing how confused Tris is when Frendi talks about 2020 and the near future, it's crazy!
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Haha I know right. No one wouldve ever dreamed of a year like this. Crazy...
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This is a very interesting and story. I like that you added references of future events I never would've thought to do that. You need to get better at your punctuation, but don't worry. Keep working hard and never stop writing! P.S. Part 2 Of The New Girl is coming out tomorrow!
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Thank you!!! And Oh gooodyyy!!!! I will most definitely read it! (I've been promising this so much but I promise I'll fulfil😭😭)
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Wow, this was a really wild story, I mean that in a good way. But woah, was I in for a wild ride today! Fendi is such an unpredictable character and those future predictions were very original! I would advise though that you perfect your punctuation, mainly your quotation punctuation. Also, some of the dialogue was hard to follow. But all in all, I could tell you put some great effort into this story so keep up the great work!
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THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! And I will most definitely look into my punctuation💙
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Wooooow!!!! Wonderful story about the life of prisoners. I love the expression bwahaha. Great job. Would you mind reading my new story "The adventurous tragedy?"
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Thanks so much Keerthnan!!! And of course I'll read your story, I love your works!!
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A unique take on the prompt, written with nicely flowing dialogues. I enjoyed this story, Chimamaka! P.S: would you mind checking my recent story out, "Yellow Light"? Thank you :D
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Thanks Deborah? Glad you liked it. And of course, soon as I have time I'll.go check "Yellow Light" 😁
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Omg beautiful and unique story. I've never read a story about two people in jail. And omg my sister used to play that song EVERY. DAY. I'm so surprised its in here! I loved the twist at the end. It was all just really surprising to me, and like I said super unique! Great Job!!
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THANKSSS UGO!!!!! I'm so glad you liked it! And yeahhhhh, I love Asa's songs! decided to add a Nigerian touch (like in all my stories). Thank you! wanted to get real creative with this prompt. Im hoping to actually write a part two (if the readers dont mind ( ;
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THANKS AGAIN!
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Your welcome! Can't wait for part two!!
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Okie dokie!
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OMGGGG!! BEFORE I EVEN READ YOUR STORY! You have such a beautiful name!! "God is Beautiful" I literally understood it the moment I saw it..Ah I'm literally so happy someone well "like" me is on Reedsy! Like OMG!! I'm gonna put my feelings about your story below this one, sorry about that☝😂
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THANKSSS!! I saw your name too and I was immediately taken! Nice to have Nigerian friends on Reedsy! :D
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Yeah I feel the same way!!
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Nice story! Keep writing! I appreciate if you can take some time to read my stories and offer your comments!
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Thank you! And of course! I'll check out your stories as soon as I have the time!
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Great job on this! I absolutely loved every single part of this! Keep writing :)
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Thank you!!!
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So, why is some time-traveler or alien in a jail cell? The dialogue moves everything along. Te reader misses that it's just a talking story until the end, when it stops being a talking story and turns into an alien/time-traveler invasion scenario. The twist transforms it from funny but forgettable to memorable. Well done.
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Thank you so MUCH!!!! I'm glad you enjoyed it :D I've seen a lot of your critique in other comment sections and would absolutely love if you'd also take time to critique my other stories too! Thanks!
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Awesome dialogue! The characters were lovable and the tone fit perfectly. I love this upbeat take on the prompt.
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Thank you!! :D
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Haha this story is crazy. I love the language you use. Very well done and I also enjoyed all the dialogue .well done
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THANK YOUUU! Have you read "Sister..."???? If you love this you'll love a good plot twist there! Again, THANKS FOR ENJOYING MY STORY!!!! :D
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Yes! Yes! Yes!!!! I absolutely loved this story! Why are you so good at writing?? I loved how you put the prompt at the end instead of the beginning. I put it at the beginning and it's nice to see what it sounds like the other way around. Overall this was a great story! I thought you used a lot of great describing words that pulled it all together! Great job and nicely written!
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THANK YOU EVELYN!!!! Try reading some of my others in your spare time (I recommend "Sister.." you'll love a nice plot twist! "Summer Was Warm", teenage life! and "Kaima"!!) Glad you liked the story!!!
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Wonderful job -- you amazing person! Watch the punctuation for your dialogue: “You’ve gotta be kidding me” She said, even though Tris knew she wasn’t. Correct: "You've gotta be kidding me," she said, even thought Tris knew she wasn't. “Uh-huh” Fendi lifted her chest with pride. Better: “Uh-huh,”replied, lifting her chest with pride.
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Wonderful job -- you amazing person! Watch the punctuation for your dialogue: “You’ve gotta be kidding me” She said, even though Tris knew she wasn’t. Correct: "You've gotta be kidding me," she said, even thought Tris knew she wasn't. “Uh-huh” Fendi lifted her chest with pride. Better: “Uh-huh,”replied, lifting her chest with pride.
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THANKS DEI! What would I do without beautiful people like you???? I'll go make those corrections STRAIGHTAWAY.
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DONE!!! Thanks AGAIN Dei!!! I'm sososososossosooooo grateful!
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YOU ARE THE QUEEN :)
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Awwwwwwww, lil' old ME? 😁💜💜
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Oh wow! I really enjoyed this! I loved all of Fendi's fortune-telling and it's interesting to think how crazy someone would sound talking about 2020 to someone in 2015. I love the names as well! How'd you think of them? Oh, and I always love it when the narrator is some mysterious first-person character... Great job! Keep writing :) ~Armani :D
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THANKS ARMANI!!! To be honest, I do not know how I thought of it, just took a look at the prompt, put my pen on the book and God knows it just went! Glad you liked it!!! :D
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No problem! Haha, I get what you mean! :) I think I need a nickname for you too...I'll be thinking...
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I'll be waiting.....
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I loved the unique characters and nicely flowing dialogue! Some of them were pretty amusing, actually. Perhaps next time you can include more narration, because the story is mostly told by dialogue.
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Thank you! I'll look into that if I do a part two (which I'm planning on). Thanks for your most appreciated comment!
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