I'm not special.
Nobody likes bills. Everyone gets
annoyed when they come in the mail. Most people get frustrated when the amount
is wrong. I dare say most people call the number at the bottom to fix the
problem. Most everyone wants to yell at the person, but, I think, almost nobody
really does. I didn't, because I'm not special. I did call though.
Everyone loves a sexy voice on the other
end of the phone. We start to imagine. All the features become physical. The
full bodied laugh turns into eyes you can fall into. The sexy burr in the voice
grows into that one part of the body, whatever it is, that you want thick when
the rest is slim. For me it's the breasts, if I was a girl I bet it would be
the penis. Like I said, not special. We fantasize our way through life, and
phone calls are no different.
I even started off by telling Samantha,
but you can call me Sam, that I didn't think I was special. She assured me that
I was though. They're paid to say that you see. Part of their job is making
customers feel important.
Anyway... she fixed my problem. So sorry
Mr. Smith, this was a problem with our computer, and I have corrected it. I fell
in love while she did it. I may not be special, but I'm not a moron. She was
flirting with me. So I screwed up my courage and asked her out.
Sam must be something pretty special,
because she said yes. We set the time and place. She gets off work in an hour
and I'm supposed to meet her for drinks. She even offered to buy. So, now I'm
sitting here thinking.
How ugly is this bitch? I mean, to say
yes to a date with some loser on the phone who has billing problems? The Trumps
of the world don't get miss-billed. If they do they don't even notice. How
repugnant is her personality, when she's not hiding behind a phone, that she
has to resort to turning her legitimate job into an escort service? I bet she's
a goddamned serial killer and she's planning on selling my organs on the black
market. Her breath probably smells like that fermented fish the old Scandinavians
are so in love with.
I'm sitting here terrified. What if all
of that is true? Well, maybe not the killer part, but I bet she has armpit hair
and feminist-forest legs. What if all of that is true and I show up to be disappointed
my her snaggle-toothed personality and Quasimodo looks? I'm not going.
I'm terrified. Worse than that? What if
none of it's true? What if she is the perfect goddess I met on the phone? What
if she's everything I imagined. Then she couldn't help but be disappointed by
me.
I'm not going, and you can't make me.
Don't judge me, because I'm not special.
You wouldn't go either.
I just want to say, for those confused by the title. If you don't know it, before comic books and RPGs co-opted the term as a synonym for dark hero, antiheroes were a literary device. The term literally meant, not a hero. Stories about them were stories about the common man. They weren't brave, or skilled, or stuck in great adventures. They were workaday people living workaday lives. This is something of a tribute, and a remembrance of words that have been stolen from us. If you didn't know that, well now you do. I just wish I could remember the style they were common in. I want to say Gothic, but I'm relatively sure that's wrong. If anyone knows, please comment below. If not, guess it's off to the library for me soon, since the interwebs have failed me.
#shortstory #author #Awethors #writer #writing #writingprompt
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