PRESENTING THE WINNING ENTRY FOR OUR FEBRUARY 2002 WRITING CHALLENGE!

TANGLED UP IN PINK
Jayni Therkildsen Copyright © 2002

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Between the gap-toothed grin of the crooked mountain mouth gleamed a tiny town. A town with white porcelain houses, shingled vertically along the mountain sides, implanted in gummy red soil. In the cavity of downtown stood a lone clapboard house of turquoise with poison pink lips as the front entrance. Its roof was gunmetal grey glistening with visual symbols decoded only by the sun. The roof bore a flock of weather vanes that spanned the world geese, storks, nightingales, ostriches all swirling in carnival colors. The windows were cross-hatched with mullions of neon eyes in salmon pink and emerald green. The little building was a cubic chorus of colored grace in an otherwise quietly desolate Western town.

The day Annie came, her stagecoach stopped at the turquoise jewel. She hopped down, with a gun in one hand and a petticoat in the other. She marched up the walkway, one pointed black boot following the other voraciously. A white glove clanged the brass knocker in the center of the pink lip doors. Annie was searching for a night's lodging. This place looked like an inn, but her hopes cascaded when the lips parted and revealed a hungry, haunted little store of futuristic antiques.

The gnomes of nuance danced circles in the foyer. Behind them were walls covered with chrome bumpers; pink tail fins with tiny red dimple lights; Naugahyde stool tops; airplane propellers; rusted mufflers with catacomb interiors. Bouquets of plastic flowers in Dixie cups adorned every open space. Along the counters queued legions of plastic Indians and cowboys and soldiers of khaki and olive drab. Piles of road maps were stacked beside bowls brimming with keys. Racks of tattersall trousers formed a curtain on the side window. Shelves of pink and black piggy banks and ceramic cookie jars looked like giant charm bracelets. And glass jars filled with marbles looked like gumballs ready to eat.

As Annie stared at the menagerie, the four gnomes jumped into the psychedelic tie-dyed bean bag chairs and laughed crystal bell cackles at this living antique from a land of lore dressed in layers of skirts, a ruffled bonnet framing blue lollipop eyes; yellow carousel curls and a cartoon mouth. They laughed until their dwarfed bodies curled into stone. Then Annie gathered her skirts and pranced around the store. She peered in the bins; cast open the drawers; shook the glass display cases until the electric trains ignited their engines. Around and around she whirled until she stood face-to-face with the plastic pink flamingo couple, nesting in the amphitheater of a giant sea shell. Their paradise was painted in soft aqua and pastel cherry blossom. Gentle creatures of sinewy grace that attracted Annie to adopt them for the journey. She'd never seen colored birds before. She couldn't imagine where they'd come from, but she was determined to find their home and live in it.

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She tossed a counterfeit bill at the feet of the gnomes and left the store with the flamingoes safely wrapped in her pink pinafore. She mounted the stagecoach, locked her dreams in and let the horses ride eastward, content to sleep on the bench this night.

Annie dreamed of a world of color and plastic tunes. When she awakened, the driver was hitching up to a guesthouse on the Oklahoma grasslands. He carried in her bag; she carried in her treasure. On the dresser she set the flamingoes and fell back upon the bed. Crazy dreams clamped her heart in the night. In the morning she awoke to the caramel sunlight pouring through the window and a commotion in the field below. Singing white and magenta; fuchsia and lemony lilac. Annie glanced at the dresser; at the abalone amphitheater and found the flamingo couplet missing. Her morning eyes searched the room and then the world outside. It could hardly be true, but it was the pink birds--they had swelled to full-size and were perched amid the cosmos meadow. Their colors blending and swaying in the soft breeze.

Annie wondered: Had she kissed the pink prison of time? Untangled its skein?

Was this home?

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JAYNI THERKILDSEN is a bead artist who practices stringing together colored beads and painted words. She lives in Santa Fe, NM with her husband, chinchilla and collection of plastic pink flamingoes.