Keepsakes

I should give up the paper. I really should. I'm probably one of five people in the city that still has the damn thing delivered. It's a risk, an affectation. Still, I can't give it up. I step over my guests to pick it up and bring it back in. I look over to their still forms again and smile. At least I didn't disturb them.

The front page is the same old crap. Russia is tired of our garbage, and we'll end up irradiating the world between the two of us. The big egos yelling at each other. The companies sponsoring them trying to convince us we should care. Tired of it, I turn to the local section.

High school sports, local art (if you can call it that,) and stuff to do on the weekend. Boring, who needs that in their life? Like I can't entertain myself.

So, I look at the police blotter. Damn it. Sometimes the universe leads us to the right place at just the right time. I've never had a day go bad, not after I brought guests home. This is terrible though. Have you ever looked into the paper and saw your name associated with a crime you didn't commit? I never thought I would.

Right there, in black and white, it says I robbed a bank. I read between the lines and realize they're be coming for me. I look over at the guests and realize my luck is just getting worse. I really can't let them be found here.

Wouldn't you know it? That's the moment the cops decide to knock on my door. "Police, open up!" Yeah, yeah. Okay. I can figure this out. Where did I leave my bag?

"Just a moment! I'm not decent. Oh... and I didn't rob any bank!"

I look around, where is it? I speak from the center of the room. It's the only way this is going to work after all. There it is. The cop is shouting his lack of concern at my assurances.

I kind of figured he would.

Just like I expected him to tell me to come out or he'll break down the door. I hope there are only two of them. I stand next to the door, knowing they expect me to be in the middle of the room. True to his words, the door shatters inward.

Two of those big cops rush through. You know, the kind that eat too much red meat and spend hours at the gym? None of it on the treadmill. Guys that will leave muscled corpses before fifty. Anyway, they storm in.

As I slide in behind them, the brains of the outfit spots my guests. They both aim guns, but it's the brains that speaks. "They're de..."

I slide a needle into each of their steroid enhanced necks and depress the plungers. Thanking god there are only two of them. Look, I never said I didn't commit any crime, just not some low rent bank job.

I hate unexpected company.

#shortstory #author #Awethors #writer #writing #writingprompt

One Eyed Men

Don't blame me. Blame the #muse and the #writingprompt

it is the day after the world went blind

the last man who could see gave in and bought a tablet

i am as blind as anyone

my screen

my virtual reality

my all i see

if i looked around i would see that they are all like me

if i peered up i would see them all in the worlds orbiting mine

walking i repost stolen memes of political bigots and idolaters

if i pause i might see her the girl so lonely that she surfs the singles sites

i might ask her our because she is just my type

she might not slice into crimson chords that spill her lifes painting on white porcelain tonight

i dont and she will

i might see the man in blue as he watches the computer and aims the gun at the transient

it could happen that the bum would turn from the darkness of the news in the store window

i could step in and stop the bullet one way or another

there is a chance

just one chance

that i would see the boy playing a game on his phone

scoop him up before he enters the road

some small hope i could wave down the bus driver reading the electronic map

if any of us could see we might stop the travesty of a child buried under moving steel

if any of us could see we would see it is the screens that make us blind

if we took off our three dimensional glasses we might notice the darkness

we might understand it replaced the truth they were meant to bring

we might just might find a one eyed man to stop us from setting the world on fire

we dont though

we stay blind

the child screams and the world becomes tinder

ashes in our mouths

if only it was taste we lost

instead of vision

#shortstory #art #artiss #author #Awethors #commentary #experimentations #surreal #writer #writing

That Girl

I've always wanted to be a badass, a successful badass. Failing that, and I have been for about half a life time, I've always wanted to pretend to be someone is. Part of that always required an audience that believed though.

The girl sitting next to me, no, the woman, was French and twenty-something. Say what you will about the older man, younger woman taboo, but here's a truth about it the media doesn't consider. When you're basing a relationship on lies, it's the best way to go. If she was older I never could have gotten away with it. The life story I told was two parts Heff, one part King, one part Lemmy, and a dash of Connery. A woman my age would have seen through some of all of it.

She wasn't.

I watched my worldly stories take her breath away. I saw the interesting things that did to her chest. Yeah, at first it was just physical. No, at first it was the badass thing. Second it was just physical. I don't want you to think I'm a predator, but that second part, the one where I noticed her body... Well, I don't know if I need to thank the king of porn or the sexiest Brit ever, but Frenchy and I ended up taking a trip to the bathroom.

Nearing fifty and joining the mile high club. It was hot. It didn't last long. I'm fifty-five percent sure she wasn't faking how much she liked.

Third came her talking. Telling me wild stories. Tales like my own youth, except brought forward. Propelled to a time when girls were free and morals were looser. I started falling in love. The looks she gave me... Well, I knew she could get past the age thing. I wondered if she could get over the lies. Then I wondered if I could keep them up forever.

I mean, hell I had a little more than thirty years left, if I met the average. Looking her over, thinking of a decade of wild sex with her I was betting I would be lucky to make twenty more if I got involved with her. Especially if her stories were true and her wild days were still going. Probably less, young girls suck life and money out of old men.

Everyone that chases the young ones knows that.

I decided I could keep up the lie, just as I felt a sting at the side of my neck. I slumped towards her, wondering how she smuggled so much liquid on board, as she slid the needle back into her purse. Her wicked smile curved her lips as she whispered to me.

"The men you pretend to be were all heroes of my father. If you were younger you might have recognized the women I chose for my persona. Every one of them would be proud of me, removing another pervert from the gene-pool. Sleep the sleep of damned, predator."

I swear she giggled as everything went black.

#shortstory #author #Awethors #commentary #France #writer #writing

No One to Save

It's an old story that is no less true for us than it was in the past No one thought they would actually do it. How many times have you heard it? Even if we only think of the last two hundred years or so?

No one thought they would put Hitler into power. No one thought they would drop those two bombs on Japan. No one thought they would napalm villages full of innocent people. No one thought those tanks would keep going over the students. No one thought the towers would fall. No one thought Trump would actually get the nomination.

Now, fifty years after that last one, add one more. No one thought they would actually push the button. No one thought they would drop the bombs.

When purifying flames fell from the sky, well, it was, oddly enough, mostly nonagenarians like myself who survived it. Upper-middle class old men who inherited houses from grandparents that were almost rich during the red scare. Men with forgotten fallout shelters hidden beneath our family homes. Some of us added some upgrades in the months before the end though.

When my monitor told me it was safe to go outside... well, I was, to say the least, surprised. How could the air be pure after only a year? I checked the instruments though, and they read true. So I unsealed my subterranean domicile and went outside.

It is amazing how nature, absent the cancerous influence of man, can take care of herself. She burned off all that crap we were using to kill her, and she did it using our own flames. When we set fire to the planet she used it to turn that pollution into choking smoke.

Then the plants took over, and I could see how they had grown. With no human hands to cut them down the trees were giant. Even the rose bushes were overgrown, taking in all the toxic smoke and creating clean air. With so much to filter out they overwhelmed the land.

The herbivores had grown to match the plants, and they wandered the land with almost no fear. The predators were mostly the same size, but they were faster, meaner. Their teeth and claws were sharper, they hunted in packs and killed without mercy. Huh, Darwin was right, and sometimes he worked fast.

So, that was what I stepped into. A world from the past, brought into the future by our own careless callousness. This was our planet now. I wondered if there was anyone left to share it with. Not that there would be any repopulating, not at my age. Someone would be around for that though, right?

I was wondering about such things when I heard a report. It was loud, especially in a world with no freeways. Then I felt the pain spread through my chest, the blood oozing down my chest. I looked over my shoulder, to see the twenty something that ended my life.

No one thought humans would stay the same after we ended the world.

#author #Awethors #shortsotry

Classics

It was a week after Toby's funeral and I thought I was out of tears.

Then that stupid bike arrived.

Once upon a time a bicycle built for two was a romantic thing. That was before insanely high divorce rates and children that had more rights than their parents. Children that were too safe, but in Toby's case, not safe enough.

Staring at that bike, with the half a smaller bike on its ass end, I discovered I had more tears after all. I cried myself empty and I went to bed. No Nancy there to comfort me, she was at her mother's. Our relationship was shaky before. After Toby... well, she blamed me for him, and to be fair she might have been right.

After tossing and turning I fell into a fitful sleep. I dreamed the dreams of the damned. Images and racial memories of better times. Of days when wives didn't leave you. Dreams of an era where we didn't make the world too safe for children and yet very few of them died.

When I got up the next morning, I went through my routine. I woke up, smacking the alarm to shut it up, and cursing work for making me get out of bed. I brushed my teeth, packed my computer bag, exited the door and drove to work on auto-pilot. All very robotic and mundane.

All very normal.

Toby was never far from my mind as I entered the building. I figured that was why the color drained from the world. I'd never been one to have vivid fantasies. So I guessed this might be a hallucination brought on by the misery. Maybe it was the receptionist's classic look though.

I opened my mouth to say good morning. My world went blank. No words came out, but she reacted like they had. Then she said hello.

In front of my face I saw one of those old speech cards from silent movies. The curly cues surrounded the words 'Good morning, sir!'

I stopped in my tracks and shook my head. 'Just like an old time movie,' I muttered under my breath, 'If only life still worked this way.'

Still nothing came out, but she saw my words and rage etched across her face. I knew I was in for a speech, and one that I was going to do a lot of eye rolling through. This time the card that flashed wasn't exactly words.

~The woman droned on for an interminable length about how terrible those times were for women, minorities, transsexuals and the like. A speech that even those who agreed with it were tired of hearing.~

I moved towards the elevator and muttered under my breath. I don't know if she saw what I did not hear. 'It must have sucked to live in a time when people didn't have to make up causes. When people knew you could love a thing without wanting every little bit of it.'

#shortstory #Awethors