Melting

Published on 15 September, 2008 in Micro-Fiction and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , .
This entry is part 1 of 13 in the series Micro-Fiction

The gun was cold in his hands, and he wanted to warm them.

He had been waiting in the alley for nearly four hours.  The moon, once large on the horizon was now just a small dot over his head, the signal it sent him weak but still present.  A newspaper rustled in a sudden breeze, brushing against his foot.  He glanced at it, but he could no longer read the words and all of the pictures seemed alien to him.  He shifted the gun to one hand, reached down and picked up the large wax-paper cup he had reclaimed from the mesh can on the street, sipped the cold ice-melt-still faint with sugary orange flavor-and grinned as the ice shifted.  He felt a kinship to the ice, more than he had ever felt with the dumb animals he shared the world with. He set the cup back down and held the gun with both hands again.

“Soon?” he asked, tilting his head back to see the small silver disk slowly slide across the night.

Soon, it answered.  Be ready.

He heard the clicking of the heels first, followed by the softer thudding of well-made shoes.  He felt a little sorry for them, knowing that they would not understand.  Could not understand.  The firm cold glaciers of their lives moving so slowly and steadily, that they did not recognize change until they dropped off the edge and plunged into an ocean of chaos.

The ice shifted again, making a new pattern as it lost cohesion.

They would not understand.

The gun was cold in his hands, and he wanted to warm them.

A disturbing first piece of Micro-Fiction.  I really thought things would start out with some humor.  I guess the Joke is on me.  – AB

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Confidence Game

Published on 16 September, 2008 in Micro-Fiction and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
This entry is part 2 of 13 in the series Micro-Fiction

“It’s time,” he said as he sat down in front of me.

“Time for?” I asked, lighting another cigarette and wishing to hell that my eye hadn’t started twitching.

He chuckled, momentarily smoothing out the lines in his weathered face.  At that moment, I hated the white-haired son of a bitch more than anyone on the planet.  Hated him more than I hated my ex-wife.

“It’s easy for you to play this game.  To play stupid, or ignorant, or ‘hard-to-get’.  But I do not play.  You will either give me the notebook, or I will have your balls presented to you on a plate and make you eat them.  I will make you savor every bite and you will thank me for it, for the opportunity to eat your own balls. Because by that time, you will have an idea of what other horrors I can present you with.  And if you are very lucky, your education may end there.”

“How do you know I even have the notebook?” I asked, squinting as my smoke drifted into my eyes from the cigarette dangling from my mouth.  The look on his face was the calm frustration of a parent or new dog owner.  “Your man didn’t search me.”

“Where else would it be?” he asked.  “A man like you has nobody he can trust.  Nobody who wouldn’t stab you in the back for the sheer pleasure it would give them to watch you vanish.”

I stubbed the cigarette out on the table.  “You’re right,” I admitted as I reached into my coat, my fingertips brushing the ancient leather cover.  “And that’s why I carry a gun.”

Before his man could move, his forehead crumpled, forcing his brain to squeeze through the new hole in the back of his skull.  My gun swiftly slid towards my host and gave him a slug through his expensive, purple silk shirt and continued through the back of his jacket via his pulverized heart.  I stood up and looked down into his eyes as I replaced the gun with the notebook.

“Overconfident creepy cocksucker,” I smiled. “What the fuck would you have done with the erotic stories of Charles Darwin anyway?”

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The Girl in the Picture

Published on 2 October, 2008 in Micro-Fiction and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
This entry is part 3 of 13 in the series Micro-Fiction

It was the least of his worries, his main concern being getting away from the building before he was discovered, but it gnawed at him deep within: Who was she? He had seen her picture on a desk, she was half-smiling at the photographer as she sat on a small boat dock on a lake.  Familiarity had caused him to pause, even knowing that the bombs he had planted around the building were blipping away towards the destruction of Indigo-Montoya Industries. He had seen her before.

He had seen her before.

He had shaken himself from thought, and began to run towards the stairs.  He had planned on taking the elevator, but had wasted too much time now.  Besides, if any guards were to see him on the stairwell cameras, it was now too late to do anything to stop the bombs.  If they were lucky, they might catch him in the lobby, and hold him long enough so that the collapse of the building would bury him along with them. A hollow victory for the guards, a tragic end for him and the information he carried.

But who was she?

As he hit the third floor, he heard the alarms go off.  He had been seen.  He pulled his gun as he heard stairwell doors opening above and below him, the static hiss and pop of radios and the stomp-clap of overweight heavies in white shirts with tin badges. He aimed his gun at the fire extinguisher on the landing below and waited for the guards to get closer to it.  He pulled the trigger and the extingusiher exploded, catching the guards in a cloud of fire-repressing chemicals as he jumped the railing and landed behind them on the next flight down.  When he hit the exit into the lobby, he crouched low and kept running straight for the doors, firing his gun at the thick glass to weaken it for his exit.  A shotgun blast to his left caused the marble tiled wall to his right to explode.  He dove for the glass just as the first explosions began from the top of the building, working their way down and distracting the guard from firing another round as he sailed through the air.

Who the fuck was she?

He pierced the glass wall and rolled into the courtyard, small jagged balls of safety glass falling around him. He was about to stand up and run, when a large chunk of building landed on him, crushing his spine and causing his organs to burst and begin leaking out of any available exit.

As he lay dying, more pieces of burning building coming down around him, her picture fluttered down to the floor in front of him.  Burned at the edges, but she was still half smiling.

“Who are you?” he whsipered, coughing on his own blood.

And then he remembered.  He knew where he had seen her before.  He owned the same frame once, about ten years ago.  And she was the model in the picture that had come with it.

“Oops,” he coughed as he finally died.

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The Shrink

Published on 12 October, 2008 in Micro-Fiction and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .
This entry is part 4 of 13 in the series Micro-Fiction

Superhero Psychaitry wasn’t something he planned on getting into when he had finished his degree.  He had actually been planning on working with kids or something. This deviation had started when a masked crusader had burst into his office looking for a criminal mastermind.

“He was evicted last week,” he had explained to Captain Sparky.

“Oh. Hmm,” Captain Sparky had said, obviously disappointed. “Well, what is it you’re up to then?”

“I’m a psychiatrist. I plan on working with…”

“Can you tell me something?” Captain Sparky had asked.

“I guess so. What is it you want to know?”

“Why do I do this?” At that, Captain Sparky had broken down crying.

Over the course of the next hour, Captain Sparky had told him all about his childhood.  How his parents had always treated him unfairly, always yelled and punished him, and how they had dragged his dog away after they had accidentally run it over in the driveway.

“I never had a chance to say goodbye to Sparky,” Captain Sparky sobbed through a Kleenex. “And when I asked them about it, they smacked me and locked me in my sisters closet with all of her dance tights.”

“And ever since, you’ve been looking for justice,” he explained to the hero. Justice for Sparky, which is why you took his name, and justice for anyone who is downtrodden by authority.  That’s why most of your targets are public officials with corruption problems.”

“And the tights?”

“Well, what else is a superhero going to wear?”

“Nothing to do with my sister then, right?”

“Not at all,” he lied.

“Thanks doc,” Captain Sparky said.  “I really do feel so much better.” With that, and a flash of pink spandex, Capatin Sparky left through the window.

Within three weeks, he was booked solid with superheroes. And they all had some serious issues to work out. And they never paid him in anything like money.  Well, the few eccentric billionaires did, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the rest of the vigilante circuit.

Two months later, all of the city’s heroes were on all sorts of medication, or had been commited, or had retired because their minds were all fucked up by the twists and turns they had revealed to him.

He found it mildly tragic that while he had become the world’s most effective super villain–calling himself The Shrink–he was also the poorest.

Luckily, he now had openings for children as patients.  And now there were plenty, since seeing their once great heroes do things like break down crying while trying to foil bank robberies, did more to screw them up than their parents usually did.  He supposed he was a success after all.

This weeks micro-fiction is a little lame. But that’s because I forced it. Which is better than not writing at all.

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Walking Into The Wind

Published on 13 October, 2008 in Micro-Fiction, What the...? and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
This entry is part 5 of 13 in the series Micro-Fiction

He chugged another beer, crushed the can and dropped it to the pavement with a hollow clunk.

“How much you ganna drink tonight, baby?” Suzette said, slumped down in the passenger seat of his black 72 Nova, half asleep with her own nights consumption.

“Til I ain’t gotta think about it no more,” he said. “Cuz that shit… That shit just ain’t right!”

“Thaas right!” she said, pumping a fist into the air and punching the roof of the car instead.  “Owww!” She brought her hand to her mouth, sucked a knuckle for a moment and then started looking for a cigarette, shaking each of the dozen cigarette packs in the front of the car until she found one that contained some smokes.

“I see that guy, Suzette,” he said as he cracked open another beer.  “I see that guy, he’s dead!”

“Maybe you should just try and forget about it,” she offered.  “Let’s just go the fuck home.”

He chugged the beer, crushed the can and dropped it to the pavement with a clink-clunk as it deflected off of it’s discarded brother.

“Ain’t right,” he said. He half-turned in a stagger and let out a belch. He looked at Suzette.  She was asleep in the car, head back and breathing the quick, heavy breaths of the intoxicated. He staggered some more, this time towards the car like he meant it.

And he did.

Fucking mimes.

Well, this went nowhere very fast.

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A Regular Realization

Published on 10 December, 2008 in Micro-Fiction and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , .
This entry is part 6 of 13 in the series Micro-Fiction

At some point, between the steady sound of traffic and the silence of sleep, he was hit with the realization that he just wasn’t happy.

The side of the bed that his wife once occupied was empty, and though he was glad to rid of the miserable bitch, the emptiness resonated with an ache.

And he knew that in the morning. He would wake up, drink coffee and shave with a lit cigarette dangling from his lower lip.

He would listen to the news, none of it good these days, and then get in his car and drive to the soul crushing office where he worked. He spent forty hours a week trying to think of ways to get out, or at the very least, get numb enough to not care that he was in a place that he hated.

He would finish his day and make his way home. He would stop at the usual place for his coffee, drink half of it as he finished the ride, and the other half over whatever dinner he had chosen to microwave while he watched mindless television programs.

He looked at the clock by his bed. It was late. Time for sleep. And as he drifted off, he came up with a hundred ideas–some of them new–to make tomorrow different. To make some amazing changes in his life before another year was over.

And like always, the ideas faded with the sound of the traffic as he was wrapped in the silence of sleep, his last thought was that tomorrow was another day.

Always, tomorrow was another day.

Great. I think I bummed myself out. What a way to get back to the Micro-Fiction, eh?

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Of Comets and TP

Published on 22 December, 2008 in Micro-Fiction and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
This entry is part 7 of 13 in the series Micro-Fiction

I was going to write a micro-fiction, but my brain seems to have gone into stand-by mode. I can’t think of a fucking thing that doesn’t involve comets or toilet paper.

What does that say about me? Other than the fact that I need sleep.

Back to work tomorrow. That should be interesting. Whole lot of things to talk about there. Nothing I care to talk about. Or think about. This job is slowly sucking away what I have left in my poor diseased head-meat.

I would like to see my boss come out of the bathroom and say “Hey! There’s no toilet paper!” And then have a small chunk of comet streak out of the sky and smite him down with the wrath of billions of years of momentum and icy-firey doom.

And then I would look down at what was left of him in the crater. And I would throw the toilet paper down in the hole and say: “Well, I don’t think you’ll be needing this anymore.”

See what this has done to me?

Maybe something good tomorrow.

AB

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