Short Stories by Lola Nation - Make it Short

The shower was running, Parker could see steam come from underneath the door. She had to pee. “Sam, hurry up, I gotta pee.” “Just a minute.” The shower droned on. She went to the kitchen and smoked a cigarette. Her window faced the west. She was watching the traffic go by, inevitably from the beach or to the beach, on this warm day. The cigarette was out. She got up and changed shirts into a tank top.  She was done waiting for Sam to get out of the bathroom. “Sam! Goddamnit! I have to pee!” When he didn’t reply she pounded on the door. Nothing. Well, he’d been in there long enough to drown. She waited a few more minutes while smoking another cigarette. The urgency of needing to urinate won and she knocked on the door again.  Nothing. He had looked sweaty when he came over and the racing gloves in 80 degree weather was a little ridiculous for driving a 1970s BMW around, its alternator was out and he had to constantly rev the engine and use the brake at the ...

Rehab’s Protégé Carol had been out of rehab one month; she’d been in for one year. Carol was addicted to speed and loved to swallow capfuls of GHB. She’d hit another car, her second DUI and we'd paid for her lawyer. She would’ve been locked up for five years had we not gotten her off with a rehab term. We paid over thirty thousand to get her out and we were pretty much broke after that but Carol was like a little sister to us and we felt the necessity to take care of our own. After she was released, she immediately hit the streets and met up with this guy Luis Zapata. Luis was a manufacturer with three meth factories buried in the valley. Within the month, she’d managed to rack up a bill of $3,000. Given that she probably did the full amount of drugs instead of selling them as she’d hustled him for initially to get back on her feet, it was no surprise that on the fourth week, she’d gotten into a car wreck again, this time killing someone. We paid for another lawyer. We could...