Write a story!

Just to keep things moving and so the page doesn't look quite so empty. Here is another swap-bot writing challenge. The task ws pretty much: just sit down and write a short story. Here is what I came up with:

Bette sat with her legs apart to make room for the tiny kitten. He batted at her fingers that she wriggled in front of his face before suddenly darting away to chase something more interesting in the garden.
“Betty” Bette didn’t turn around. She knew who it was. Even if she didn’t recognise the irritating voice; there was only one person she knew who thought it was funny to call her Betty (with a very significant emphasis on the final sound), even though he knew darn well her name was Bette.
“Hello Sebastian.” She still wouldn’t turn around.
“I’ve brought someone who wants to meet you.” Overcome by curiosity, Bette finally turned her upper body around to greet her visitors. “This is Damian Ruecastle. He’s a Doctor.” Doctor Damian Ruecastle was a very tall man of about 40 years old. Where does Sebastian meet these people, she wondered.
“Nice to meet you Betty.” Damian extended his arm towards where Bette sat on the ground.
“It’s Bette – as in Midler.” Bette explained as she reached up and shook the extended arm.
Damian had a subtle accent, which combined with his dark skin, failed to belie his Sudanese heritage, although Bette simply guessed generalised African.
“Oh, sorry, Bette, I thought Sebastian said…”
“Sebastian is obnoxious.” She interrupted, as if that explained everything.
Damian laughed and Sebastian simply shrugged.
“May we join you?”
“Sure,” Bette shrugged.
Damian and Sebastian joined Bette on the grass, forming a rough circle. Bette wriggled her fingers in front of her again and the kitten returned, ready to pounce on the blade of grass she had torn out to entertain it.

Bette laid back looking up at the sky, watching the clouds drift past.
“How do you know Sebastian, Dr. Ruecastle?” She asked, projecting her voice to be sure he could hear her.
“Please, Bette, call me Damian… Well, I don’t really know Sebastian, so to speak. We met the other day – on the bus.
“It was quite a coincidence, actually. My car had broken down, I don’t usually catch the bus, you see, and Sebastian had been visiting his grandmother at…”
Bette snorted, interrupting Damian. She knew Sebastian had one remaining Grandmother who lived in Russia. It was unlikely (though not impossible, knowing Sebastian) that they had met each other on a bus in Russia.
“Coincidence my butt.”
“Listen,” Sebastian jumped up “I just remembered I told my Mum I’d help her wash the dog – you two have a chat and I’ll be back in a bit.” Sebastian jogged off in the direction of his house (who knows where he’s really going, thought Bette, probably to con his way onto some space mission, or something).
“So, if you don’t know Seb, how did he convince you to come and visit me?” She asked, sitting up again. “Oh,” she exclaimed, rather embarrassedly when she saw the kitten had been gnawing at her toes, “Shoo, kitty, come up here and play with this yummy grass.”
“Well, he has a way with words, doesn’t he?”
“Practice makes perfect, they say.”
Damian laughed.
“So, he does this a lot?”
“What? Invite random strangers into my yard to ‘meet’ me? Yeah, he does it at least every fortnight.”
“Hmmm, so you probably know what the chances…”
“Well, when I say ‘random strangers’, I mean doctors, surgeons, specialists, faith healers etcetera who he has thoroughly researched, tracked down, stalked – um, probably sabotaged their cars.” She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Oh, so I am…”
“Probably very good at your job, I’m sure you’ve saved many people’s lives, were you in the paper recently or something?”
“Yeah. I separated a pair of conjoined twins – well, I helped.”
“Had they been hit by a train?”
“No, and they were also 2 years old – I dare say after – how long has it been?”
“Eight years.”
“After that long, bones, tissue and nerve endings become less adaptable to…”
“I know that, Damian, so does Sebastian. I am so sorry you came all this way for nothing – wherever it is you’ve come from. I have come to terms with knowing I will never walk again – I don’t think Sebastian realises how hard it is for me to talk to all these people all the time… I mean, I’ve asked him to stop… but…”
Damian furrowed his brow and gazed at her.
“Why don’t you have toenails?”
“I pulled them out so many times; some of them stopped growing back.” She replied, matter-of-factly.
“Why did you do that?”
“To see if it would hurt… then a couple of times, I thought I might have felt something, so I kept doing it to see if I could feel it again.”
Damian gazed at her, not showing any pity, or sympathy, or disgust, as so many others sometimes did (yes, even ‘professionals’). He looked thoughtful, as if he were looking directly into her spine and trying to rearrange the internal parts of it with his mind.
“Surely you have a theory, though?” he asked, suddenly.
“On?”
“Why he does it?”
“You mean, bring strangers to my house all the time? Because he’s obnoxious, irritating, and he’s good at it. He likes to have hobbies, he fixes bikes and computers and model planes – not trains though, he hates model trains… he wants to fix me and he doesn’t know how.”
“But why?”
“I guess he thinks it is his fault for some reason… it’s not.”
“How long’s he been doing it for?”
“About three years. Ever since I stopped needing surgeries,”
Damian gestured towards Bette’s feet. “Do you mind?’ He asked.
She shook her head and he held her limp feet in his hands. Of course, she couldn’t feel a thing, although the angle of it meant that she had to place her hands behind her to keep from tipping backwards. As Damian massaged her feet, Bette felt more relaxed; she closed her eyes and imagined that she could feel the pressure along her soles, or that he were rubbing her shoulders. She smiled.
“How long have you known Sebastian?”
“My whole life. We were born in the same hospital on the same weekend. We went to the same school, until I got behind on my work and had to repeat after my accident.”
“Eight years ago.”
“Yep.”
“And you’re what? Eighteen?”
“Yep. Seb’s off to uni after Christmas, and I’ll be in year eleven.”
“You have plenty of friends, though, right?”
“None who know me as well as he does. None who are interested in knowing me any better.”
“I have a theory.”
“Oh no! Don’t say you want me to have x-rays or MRI scans, or to meet with a magic healer – I like my body, I like my wheelchair, I like my funny little nail-less, toes, I really do, its kinda creepy, I know, but it’s me. Sebastian’s the one who can’t stand looking at me, who hates my disfigured body, who needs me to function like everyone else.”
“That’s not true.” Bette’s eyes shot open. She hadn’t realised Sebastian had come back and was listening to her rant.
“I didn’t think you were here, Seb. You were umm… unusually quiet.”
“You know why I do this Bette.”
“It’s not your fault.” She whispered.
Damian put her feet back in the grass and gave the kitten a rub on the tummy, before shaking both their hands and excusing himself.
“It was nice to meet both of you – if you ever want to contact me…”
“Sebastian will know where to find you.” Bette grinned cheekily. Damian walked away (presumably to his car, that Bette assumed was parked at Sebastian’s house, but who the heck knew with these people Seb found, maybe he was heading back to his spaceship).
“Bette. I’m sorry, if I have been upsetting you. I don’t want to fix you.”
“I don’t need people coming here week, after week telling me I’m unfixable, I know that, I don’t need them to tell me all the time. It does upset me sometimes – and the thought that you need to build a better friend.” She smiled at him to show she was joking, but it was a sad kind of smile, he didn’t believe her for a minute.
“When I broke your t.v…”
“I told to put the Wii strap on.” She teased.
“You said, you break it, you fix it…. When I broke Mum’s wall unit…”
“I don’t know why you were playing golf inside.”
“I had to fix it.”
“Sebastian! Stop!” She shouted. “Listen to me very carefully, Sebastian O’Connell. You. Did not. Break me. A freaking train broke me – and the train can’t fix me, because they don’t have opposable thumbs.” He smiled a little at her attempt at a joke. “It was an accident – and I told you. I am fine with my body, I just hate the way other people look at it” She took a deep breath and continued “especially you.” Sebastian went red and looked down at the grass.
“Bette.” He spoke quietly and steadily for fear his voice may start to tremble. “If I have ever looked at your body with anything other than admiration, it was with guilt. Not disgust, or pity, or anything else – your body is an extension of your mind and your soul and I ruined any chance of it fulfilling its potential…”
“Sebastian.” She warned.
“Ok. Your body is beautiful and wonderful, just like the rest of you. I… I love your body.”
“Sebastian.”
“Just like the rest of you. And when I finish my medical degree.”
“You will not try to fix me.”
“No. But I will marry you and we will adopt ten babies and I will be the head of spinal surgery…”
“…Because you have done more research on spinal surgery than any spinal surgeon in history.”
“Exactly.” He smiled and leaned in to kiss her.
“No.”
“What?” He leaned back. “How embarrassing.”
“Get back here, you idiot, I meant ‘no – you will not make me wait that long.’ How long is a medical degree? Eight years – plus specialist training? No way. You are not making me wait that long to marry you.”
Sebastian pulled a ring out of his pocket and Bette laughed. “How long have you had that?”
“About six weeks, I always keep it in my pocket.” He replied shyly as he slid it on her ring finger. “Have you thought of a name for the cat yet?”
“I was thinking ‘Rue’.”
Finally, Sebastian leaned back towards Bette and they kissed.