365 Days (Part 2) | ✓

244. Fight

244. Fight: Write about witnessing two people get in an argument with each other.

It’s out of the corner of my eye; it's a quick rush of awareness. I see the woman and the man in the darkening parking lot from the Dairy Queen window. Inside, there's formica tabletops and fluorescent light. It's also quiet -- the kind of quiet that comes from you and your family being the only customers and you all have said everything you wanted to.

But outside, there's a smattering of cars, and cracking concrete, and the streak of headlights from the passing vehicles. There's also the vague sense of danger lurking I only get from dark parking lots.

The man and the woman were finishing up their meal when we started. They weren't noticeable until I saw them outside, and they faced each other in an empty parking space. They were both around 30 and were both going slightly to seed. They were both furious.

I know fury. I was uncomfortably familiar with what rage looked like. So when I saw them, I knew that same emotion often directed at me coursed through the veins of this couple. The woman was yelling, and the man was glaring, until he too was yelling.

"Look," I said, and everyone looked.

There is a tension in a fight. It tightens your gut and makes your skin prickle with something like coldness. It makes you tremble. I saw this and I felt fear. There was so much anger emanating from their bodies. Every movement blasted it: the hands fisted on the hips, the erect posture, the crossed arms. They were now shouting at each other, advancing closer to each other. I was transfixed, watching this raw human emotion in strangers.

The employees locked behind the counter conferred with each other, glancing anxiously at the fight in their parking lot and debating whether they ought to go break it up. However, they were young teenagers, and unsure of themselves.

Then it was over. No blows were exchanged, nothing more was said. They stalked off to their separate cars and drove away. Their lives exploded in an intersection of mine and that was all. The storywriter in me wanted to know why they argued, but I didn't know them and probably never will. They are mysteries that flash briefly before vanishment.

We resumed our meal.