{"id":63,"date":"2024-09-07T13:15:53","date_gmt":"2024-09-07T13:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/?p=63"},"modified":"2024-09-07T13:18:33","modified_gmt":"2024-09-07T13:18:33","slug":"the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/2024\/09\/07\/the-line\/","title":{"rendered":"The Line"},"content":{"rendered":"
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George stepped out of the car and laid one foot down before stopping to see the throng already at the doors, and he was parked several hundred feet away. He let the other foot emerge from the car and hit the ground.<\/p>\n

Several other people whisked by without a word, clutching purses, pushing carts, holding babies, but one thing was common: everyone had their hands full. No one strolled up to the back of the mob like George, hands in his pockets, feeling each foot hit the cold ground silently. Except for that tiny squeak in his left foot. He\u2019d have to get that fixed, maybe.<\/p>\n

He stood behind a couple of unfortunate shorter customers jumping up and down to see the doors. They finally gave up and one jumped on the shoulders of the other, tottering in the crowd and bumping others who were none to happy about the interruption to their single focus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatch it!\u201d They barked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d Asked George.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fluffy puff is going on sale this morning. First edition! Limited run!\u201d The one on the shoulder yelled.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could you not know that?\u201d Said the other, and she rolled her eyes.<\/p>\n

George shrugged and walked around the left. It might take a while to get there as the people kept pouring in. He heard titles screech and horns honk. A few obscenities in the distance. Crying babies.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoor kid,\u201d Thought George. \u201cHe think this is some kind for war zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

A group of young teenagers rolled right past him, two pushing and two someone crammed inside a shopping cart. All of them also had big reuseable shopping bags and look that should be reserved for hungry animals. They got up to the back to the crowd and yelled a triumphant \u201cWOOOOOOO!\u201d<\/p>\n

Another man tried shoving his way through the crowd. George heard something about \u201cI have reservations\u201d and \u201cI know the manager.\u201d No excuse me or such. The crowd didn\u2019t tried pushing back but he was big enough that most didn\u2019t want to bother. He saw the man flaring a wad of cash like a fan in front of him, showing his biceps that looked like he was hiding a small watermelon in his shirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh,\u201d said George. What in the world does he want these things for?<\/p>\n

As George made it to edge of the tapering crowd, he slowly glided his way down the living edge of people, some on their phones distracting themselves, others talking about how many they were going to buy and how much they\u2019d get reselling them on eBay.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh,\u201d said George.<\/p>\n

He made it up to the door level, and to the side of the building. But it didn\u2019t step ward. He went to the side of the building. Took out his keys and opened up metal door and slid inside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George stepped out of the car and laid one foot down before stopping to see the throng already at the doors, and he was parked several hundred feet away. He let the other foot emerge from the car and hit the ground. Several other people whisked by without a word, clutching purses, pushing carts, holding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"Free writing from a prompt","bgseo_description":"From a writing prompt, freely write for 10 minutes. Light to no editing.","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/create\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}