Under the Mango Tree: 101 Tales (5)

WATCHING

Challenge No.97 - Characters in a Crunch.

Write a scene or story that includes a character eating cereal. What does a character's favourite cereal say about their personality? Do they carefully pick the marshmallows out of their Lucky Charms, or do they eat Aldi bagged cereal by the handful straight out of the container? Or, perhaps your character prefers a healthy oatmeal with no added sugar.

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"Morning, Sis." Aiden Smythe grabbed the cup of coffee on the kitchen counter and got a slap on his hand for his action. "OW!"

"That one's mine. Go pour your own." Xavier Hamilton never raised her head from the electronic device in her hand. She was reading The Voice Newspaper.

Aiden returned to the kitchen counter with his own cup of coffee. "What you up to today?"

As she sipped, Xavier put the device down and focused on her brother. "Same as yesterday. Wait for the sun to rise, then head for the Polyclinic. You?"

"I hear that SABINE-ANDRÉ may be hiring."

"Hiring what?" Her lip curled at the sound of the company's name.

"Really!" His sister read the 'papers' constantly but half the time she had not a clue of what was really happening on the island. "SABINE-ANDRÉ needs Technicians for the Vision Screen."

Her jaw hardened and through the clenched teeth managed, "Vision Screen." In disgust she pushed the stool she had been sitting on, away from the kitchen counter and the stately thirty-five-year-old widow moved to the window and looked out into the fore day gloom.

Aiden and Xavier lived in the one-thousand-year-old zone called the CDC. It was a rundown, crumbling collection of despair with as many broken dreams as dilapidated edifices. It had always been so. Even the Old Timers could not remember a time when the CDC was not in need of a good coat of paint. Established in 1951 by the British Colonial Development Council, after the Great Castries Fire of 1948, the place had been flattened and rebuilt numerous times, yet it just seemed to always slip back into a state of broken windows and faded, peeling paint.

"We need to leave this place," she said out loud to no one in particular.

"Uh-huh," Aiden, as per the ritual, returned the automatic yet absentminded response, continued with his coffee and used his phone to connect with friends.

She turned to face her twin. "I'm serious!"

"Sure."

"AIDEN!"

"Huh?" He was listening at last.

"I do not want to be on the Vision Screen!!! SABINE-ANDRÉ is going too far!"

"Whaaaat!!!" He could not wrap his brain around this. "Saint Lucia is one of the last places to get it and with Castries as the hind end to nowhere it will be ages before we come online."

"I'm not that clueless." She knew his concerns, "But the fact remains that in twelve months Saint Lucia is going to join the rest of the world on the Vision Screen where everyone can monitor everyone. It's bad enough the constant pop-ups on my various devices about celebrities I care nothing about. Do I really want to know about who is stealing whose husband?"

"So, what're you going to do? In twelve months, this thing will be here... everywhere."

"I doh know." She turned to look out the window again, "I doh know." She picked up her workbag and marched out the door.

© September 2018

US Copyright Registration No. TXu 2-133-118

Taken from a larger unpublished work THE ASSIGNMENT