Wilma & Betty (a short). Episode I
The Further Adventures of Wilma & Betty
Episode I: Start the Revolution
It started one day because Wilma just got fed up with cleaning up Dino’s dino droppings that were always springing up on Fred’s favorite Saber-toothed rug. And when she wasn’t trying to get that smell out of the rug she was cleaning up whatever mess Pebbles and Bam-Bam had managed to make. Jesus Christ, that damned Bam-Bam was always breaking the bamboo dishes or the granite coffee mugs or putting cracks on the marble coffee table that Fred bought with his Christmas bonus.
“Dammit Betty, can’t you keep that kid of yours home sometimes? Let him bam-bam and break up your fine China set hand made and imported from the Yangtze Rock delta.”
“Don’t talk to me, Wilma. My house is already broken up. I can’t do a damned thing about that boy. Barney’s got him spoiled rotten. He thinks Bam-Bam’s gonna be some big time Slateball star and make it to the major leagues the way he never did. Damned men, always trying to cling to some glory they never even had.”
“Tell me about it. It’s the same thing with Fred. ‘I coulda’ been a football star! I coulda been a football star.’ Yeah, and I coulda been married to Brad Pittstone but it just didn’t work out that way. I coulda been a lot of things if I’d been given half a chance and a set of stones between my legs, but you don’t see me clinging to that, do you? Do you hear me whining?”
“So, Wilma, what’s the solution?”
“We pick up and leave. Fuck Fred, Barney, the two little love struck brats and that damned dog. I say we blow out of here on the next Pterodactyl shrieking out of JFK.”
“And go where, Wilma?”
“Anywhere. Rock Vegas, Granite Francisco, Rio de Janeristone. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere’s gotta be better than here. I swear, if Fred comes waddling his stocky ass through that door one more times screaming ‘Wilma, where’s my dinner?’ I’m gonna stick an electric eel in his bathwater.”
Betty had some trouble with the thought of leaving Barney until Wilma told her how he’d grabbed her ass at the big New Year’s Eve party two years ago. Then she was all for it. She wanted herself a tall man for a change. A man with shoulders or, at least, a man with a neck.
So Betty and Wilma packed up their sleekest leopard print dresses, loaded up in Fred’s car, dropped the kids off at Barney’s job and set fire to both their houses. Sure, the stone walls didn’t burn, but everything else did and a plume of black smoke stretched to the sky and blocked out the sun and seemed as good an omen as any to make an escape.
They drove all day and all night and all of another day. They pedaled until their feet bled and never looked back. They made it to Rock Vegas where Wilma met a man named Maurice that loved to dance so they danced along the strip until the sun peeked over the purple horizon and Maurice dipped Wilma into the sunrise and called her beautiful while Betty drank herself unconscious on Jack Danielstone whiskey. She passed out on a casino floor and nobody bothered to move her. The world just stepped over her on its way to the slot machines.
In Granite Francisco the girls met a merchant from China and Wilma replaced the dishes that Bam-Bam had broke for a fraction of what the set had cost her at the department store. She gave the leftover money to Betty who bought a sheer silk dress with flowered stitching across the nipples because the merchant from China had a friend with shoulders and a neck and a voice smoother and softer than her new silk dress. Then Wilma & Betty rode the white horse for a week because the merchant from China was a man of the world game for anything and Fred and Barney were men of stone, game for nothing.
When it was over, when the money ran out and the white horse had had its way with them and the merchant from China sailed away with his friend and Wilma’s dishes were broken again and Betty’s silk dressed was soiled, stained and ripped to shreds, they hitchhiked all the way back to Bedrock meeting no one of interest along the way.
The stone walls of their houses were still standing, covered in black smut an inch thick. Fred and Barney waited in the doorway. Barney wrestling with Bam-Bam, Fred coddling Pebbles and that damned Dino yapping in the background.
“Wilma, where have you been? Fred shouted.”
“The other side, Wilma said.”
She walked past Fred, the kid and that damned Dino. She fixed a bucket of soapy water and began scrubbing the smut from the white stone walls. Most of it came off, but fire and sudden escape tend to leave stains so now the house is about two shades less than white and every times she notices it Wilma remembers Maurice and the merchant from China and the world out west and what it felt like to have a man dip her into a purple sunrise and call her beautiful and she finds herself thinking about slipping that eel into Fred’s bathwater.
Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.