Marie Writes

Fiction addict. Every story here is fictional, and every one will keep you hooked. Just a storyteller ✍️📚

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@jani42643 At least he drove it back. She wouldn’t even leave the bumper.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

Last Tuesday, a woman blocked my car at the grocery store and called the police on me.

I’m 52. I drive a silver Camry. So does half of America, apparently.

My mother is 81 and doesn’t like waiting in the car alone, so she had come in with me for bread and bananas.

I had just buckled her into the passenger seat and started the engine when a woman knocked on my window.

“You’re in my car.”

I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.

She pulled on my door handle twice. When I didn’t get out, she planted herself in front of my bumper and called 911.

My mother asked if we should just go. I told her we couldn’t, not without running the woman over.

Twelve minutes later, a police cruiser pulled up next to us.

The woman met the officer before he was all the way out of it.

She pointed at me through the windshield.

“That’s my car. She’s sitting in it with her mother like she owns it.”

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@BlackRose0607 Checking the plate. That’s all she had to do.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@partners_id Your kids figured it out faster than the woman with the police.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@pushytherapist You checked inside before blaming anyone. That already puts you ahead.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@Wired2Jam At least she wanted a ride. Mine wanted the whole car.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@2apatriotJohn The maroon seats saved you. She had a whole conversation with a cop first.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@Perry14e You apologized and left a Red Bull. She called 911.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@janvbear Her son was the only one who knew where her car was.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@haysdb Ten minutes, engine running. He had to walk over and remind her.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@nurseangel777 My mom’s solution is a yellow smiley ball on the antenna. Much cheaper than a Tesla.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@JlyLarkspur At least you didn’t call 911 on them.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

@idaho_karen Silver Camry was my mistake. There’s one in every row.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

The attendant opened the dryer door and looked at the display.

Twelve minutes left. Paused.

He looked at her.

“Ma’am, how did you get the door open with twelve minutes left?”

She said you just hold the stop button down for three seconds. Everybody knows that.

Then she stopped.

The attendant took her towels out, put my clothes back in, and pressed start.

He didn’t charge me for the extra time.

She carried her towels to the dryer at the end of the row without saying anything.

Twenty minutes later, she walked over to my chair.

She asked if I would watch her basket while she went to get more quarters.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

Last Wednesday, a woman pulled my wet clothes out of a dryer that was still running.

I’m 31. I’m a waitress. I had just worked a double, and my only clean uniform was in that dryer. I needed it for a 6 a.m. shift.

I had put in $3.75 for forty-five minutes. Then I went next door for a sandwich. I was gone twenty-five minutes.

When I came back, my clothes were in a wet pile on the folding table. My apron was on top of the pile.

A woman was loading her towels into my dryer.

I told her it still had time on it.

She said it was sitting there done, and she waits for nobody.

The attendant came out from behind the counter. He’s an older man who’s there every night.

She talked to him, not me.

“She left it for an hour. Rules are rules. I pull people’s stuff out every week, and they always come back late and cry about it.”

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

I opened the rental app and pulled up the listing. Photo 7 of 22 was the living room.

Same couch. Same pillow. And just under the corner of the pillow, the same brown stain.

I called the app’s support line on speaker while he stood there.

The woman on the line pulled up the listing.

“Sir, when was photo seven taken?”

Dale said that was before he flipped the cushion. Then he said it was a different cushion.

Then he didn’t say anything.

She told him the claim was closed and the full $500 would go back to my card.

Before she hung up, she asked him if this was the same couch from his last three damage claims.

He walked out to his truck.

His niece put the pillow back on the stain.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

Last Monday, our cabin rental host tried to keep $300 of my deposit over a couch.

I’m 41. I’m a single dad. I took my boys, 9 and 12, to a cabin in the mountains for four nights. The deposit was $500.

I’m strict about rentals. No food on the couch. Shoes off at the door. We stripped the beds before we left.

The host, Dale, showed up for the checkout walk-through with his niece, who does his cleaning. She’s maybe 17.

He went straight to the couch and lifted a throw pillow.

There was a brown stain on the cushion, about the size of a hand.

He said that was $300, and he would take it out of the deposit.

I told him we never ate in the living room.

He said it was there now, and it wasn’t there Friday.

His niece looked at the stain, then at him.

“Uncle Dale, isn’t that the stain you told me to put the pillow on?”

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

The deputy asked to see the deed. She said it was in the house.

He looked at the two signs for a while. Then he looked at the water.

“Ma’am, where does your property line end?”

She said at the dune grass. Then she said the signs were just to keep people from getting too close, and she puts them out every morning and takes them in at night.

The dune grass was about forty feet behind us.

The deputy told her the sand below the dune grass was public and asked her to take the signs in now.

She pulled them out of the sand and carried them up the stairs without saying anything.

Grandma didn’t look up from her book.

Around four, she folded her chair and asked me to help her mark the spot with a seashell, so she could find it tomorrow.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

Last Sunday, a woman called the sheriff because my grandmother was sitting on her beach.

I’m 20. I spend a week every summer with my grandma in the beach town where she grew up.

She’s 81. She has set up her chair at the same spot by the water since 1962.

This year there was a new house behind that spot. Big glass deck. Two signs stuck in the sand. PRIVATE BEACH. NO TRESPASSING.

Grandma read them and set her chair up anyway, ten feet from the water.

Twenty minutes later, the owner came down her stairs in a sun hat and told us to leave.

Grandma said she had been coming here longer than the house had.

The woman went back up and called the sheriff’s office.

A deputy walked down the public access path about half an hour later. The woman met him at the bottom of her stairs.

“I want them removed. Everything from my deck to the water is mine. It’s in my deed.”

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

I showed the manager my two pictures. Full tank, then a quarter tank. 38 miles in between.

Then I started the car.

The screen on the dashboard lit up.

“Tyler’s iPhone connected.”

Music I had never heard before started playing.

The restaurant manager looked at the screen, then at the supervisor.

“Who’s Tyler?”

The supervisor said Tyler wasn’t supposed to be driving customer cars anymore.

Then he stopped talking and walked back to his stand.

The manager refunded the $45 and gave me $60 for gas.

While I was buckling my seatbelt, a kid in a valet vest jogged up to my window.

He asked if he could grab his phone charger out of my console.

[Marie Writes @Hayato_ett]

Last Saturday, a valet put 38 miles on my car while my wife and I ate dinner.

I’m 58. It was our 30th anniversary. We went to the steakhouse downtown where I proposed to her.

I drive a red Mustang I bought myself when I turned 50. Valet was $45. I handed the kid my keys.

I have a habit I’ve had since my first car. I take a picture of the dashboard when I hand over my keys. Mileage and gas.

Two hours later, the car came back with a quarter tank. It had been full.

The odometer had gone up 38 miles. The valet lot is four blocks from the steakhouse.

I asked for the manager. The restaurant manager came out, and the valet supervisor walked over from his stand.

The supervisor didn’t look at my picture.

He looked at the restaurant manager instead.

“Every guy with a nice car thinks we take it for a ride. I’ve had his keys in my pocket all night. That car never left the lot.”