Admittedly, three days before an election isn’t the time to be caught killing a hooker.
Still, life happens, detectives burst in and dead woman drape across beds.
His lawyers had him released immediately, but the damage was done. The press was having a field day.
So there was nothing else to do.
Lights bore down during that first press conference post “incident”, and he felt the reporters’ eyes deconstructing him. But he stood his ground, this was his only chance to seize the narrative. He braced himself, and spoke.
“You can see,” he began, “how tough I am on crime…”
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Shrink (based on a prompt from 100 word stories)
...by the way, I've officially joined in on isfullofcrap's podcast, "100 word stories". Why have I done this? Because I enjoy the podcast in question very well, I'd not contributed this far, and I like opportunities to write stories short enough that I can write/record them in an afternoon. Thus, I'm IN so far as the weekly story prompt goes. My first went up today, and if you don't subscribe to the cast you ought. If you don't subscribe, here's the link...
http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2011/08/28/weekly-challenge-279-shrink/
...if you STILL won't subscribe, here's the text of my own story:
Shrink
By Munsi
I’m having panic attacks again.
I can’t seem to shake the notion I’m becoming… smaller?
If that makes any sense.
I know, I know, of course I’m not. It’s just anxiety and the feeling I’m not properly respected in my work and home life. But in spite of that understanding I can’t shake the feeling that as more and more of my decisions are taken out of my control I’m actually… shrinking.
It’s crazy, isn’t it Doctor?
Doctor?
Can you even hear me?
No?
No, I suppose you wouldn’t be able to hear me, from all the way up there…
http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2011/08/28/weekly-challenge-279-shrink/
...if you STILL won't subscribe, here's the text of my own story:
Shrink
By Munsi
I’m having panic attacks again.
I can’t seem to shake the notion I’m becoming… smaller?
If that makes any sense.
I know, I know, of course I’m not. It’s just anxiety and the feeling I’m not properly respected in my work and home life. But in spite of that understanding I can’t shake the feeling that as more and more of my decisions are taken out of my control I’m actually… shrinking.
It’s crazy, isn’t it Doctor?
Doctor?
Can you even hear me?
No?
No, I suppose you wouldn’t be able to hear me, from all the way up there…
Friday, August 26, 2011
Not Another Ghost Story
Timmy already knew, standing in the front yard of the old place, that he never should have agreed to it.
All the kids in the neighborhood knew the house was haunted. Nobody’d lived in it for as long as Timmy’d been alive, and the yard was overgrown with weeds, as nobody cared enough to tend to it. The windows, long since smashed open wide, had allowed decades worth of rainwater into the building, causing the framework of the place to sag. Everyone on the block kept a wide berth, and even the neighborhood’s parents warned their kids to stay away.
Oh, they never called the place haunted, or even admitted there were such things as ghosts, but they did warn their kids to stay away. And that, for the neighborhood kids, was proof enough.
Timmy had known all of this earlier in the day, when on the playground Andy had dared him to go up and into the house after dark to meet the ghost. He knew it, and he knew that nobody he knew of had ever gone into the house and come back out. Nobody had ever gone in at all. And yes, he was terrified by what he might find in there. But he was much more terrified of being called a chicken, there on the playground, in front of everyone he knew. It was a name that could never be lived down once he had it, and one he would go to any length to avoid.
So he claimed that Andy was being stupid, that there were no such things as ghosts, and that he’d be happy to prove it.
And that was how he came to be in the front yard of a haunted house shortly after sunset, with a handful of witnesses from school waiting behind him to see if he’d really go through with it and a rotted oak door ahead, inviting him to come inside. He desperately wanted to run away, but he knew that he could not.
He breathed as deeply as he could, closed his eyes, counted to five, and made his way up to the door.
The knob was cold in the autumn night and the door creaked loudly as it opened, dashing any hope he may have had that it might be locked. Inside, the darkened hall stretched out farther than he could see, and as he entered moldy floorboards creaked under his feet. He took two steps in and stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then, girding himself, he set off down the hall.
He was inside, after all. The hard part was done with and he’d survived it. All he had to do now was find something to bring back out with him, to prove he’d actually gone all the way in, hadn’t just hidden in the hallway, counted to one hundred and retreated to safety. A plan of action which, had Andy not demanded the souvenir, Timmy almost certainly would have pursued.
Down the hall he went, hand braced against the wall for balance, looking for a promising room to search. But most of the rooms in the old haunted house had been long since stripped bare, and nothing could be found. Still, as he headed deeper into the heart of the place, Timmy could swear he heard sounds from the basement level.
He couldn’t tell what it was, but for reasons unknown even to him he was drawn toward the sounds, perhaps simply because the soul-crushing emptiness of the place made the prospect of something, anything, seem appealing. The knock-knocking grew louder as he made his way through empty halls and gutted rooms, and as he came to the door leading down to the cellar he saw a faint, ghastly light emanating out from under it’s crack.
To go on was madness.
To go back a humiliating admission of defeat.
Thus, there was no choice at all.
He cracked open the door, readjusted his vision to the sudden presence of light, and steeled what little courage he had left. Then, believing himself ready for anything, he made his slow way down the stairs.
He was ready, that is, for anything but what he saw.
A single, rotted mattress lay across unfinished floor, with two threadbare blankets thrown atop it. The room was lit by a few dozen candles, and they illuminated it enough to see… not much. An old looking, battery powered stereo, a faded picture in a frame by the mattress, a few articles of clothing strewn about the floor, and a table with a collection of glass flasks and bags of powder atop it, next to which sat a well used chair. Timmy didn’t understand what the flasks were for, nor what the powder was, but he knew he had to leave the house with something, and if he were to find anything this would be where it was found.
He took a step away from the stairs and into the room as behind and above him a slurred voice cursed and the door slammed shut.
As footsteps echoed down the stairs Timmy realized; in an empty room, there is no place to hide. Not that one can hide from a ghost.
So, cowering, Timmy awaited his fate. Though when the ghost arrived he looked nothing like any Timmy’d ever seen on TV.
His eyes were wide and wild and his hair long and stringy, falling to his shoulders in greasy waves. His too thin body was clad in old, torn jeans and a faded t-shirt, and he was shaking with fury as he arrived at the bottom of the staircase. He took a minute to adjust his own eyes to the light, the left one twitching uncontrollably, and finally fixed them, white-hot with hate, on Timmy.
“Who. The fuck. Are you?” This horrifying stranger nearly screamed as he bore down on Timmy.
So no, the house wasn’t haunted after all.
Though perhaps it soon would be.
All the kids in the neighborhood knew the house was haunted. Nobody’d lived in it for as long as Timmy’d been alive, and the yard was overgrown with weeds, as nobody cared enough to tend to it. The windows, long since smashed open wide, had allowed decades worth of rainwater into the building, causing the framework of the place to sag. Everyone on the block kept a wide berth, and even the neighborhood’s parents warned their kids to stay away.
Oh, they never called the place haunted, or even admitted there were such things as ghosts, but they did warn their kids to stay away. And that, for the neighborhood kids, was proof enough.
Timmy had known all of this earlier in the day, when on the playground Andy had dared him to go up and into the house after dark to meet the ghost. He knew it, and he knew that nobody he knew of had ever gone into the house and come back out. Nobody had ever gone in at all. And yes, he was terrified by what he might find in there. But he was much more terrified of being called a chicken, there on the playground, in front of everyone he knew. It was a name that could never be lived down once he had it, and one he would go to any length to avoid.
So he claimed that Andy was being stupid, that there were no such things as ghosts, and that he’d be happy to prove it.
And that was how he came to be in the front yard of a haunted house shortly after sunset, with a handful of witnesses from school waiting behind him to see if he’d really go through with it and a rotted oak door ahead, inviting him to come inside. He desperately wanted to run away, but he knew that he could not.
He breathed as deeply as he could, closed his eyes, counted to five, and made his way up to the door.
The knob was cold in the autumn night and the door creaked loudly as it opened, dashing any hope he may have had that it might be locked. Inside, the darkened hall stretched out farther than he could see, and as he entered moldy floorboards creaked under his feet. He took two steps in and stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then, girding himself, he set off down the hall.
He was inside, after all. The hard part was done with and he’d survived it. All he had to do now was find something to bring back out with him, to prove he’d actually gone all the way in, hadn’t just hidden in the hallway, counted to one hundred and retreated to safety. A plan of action which, had Andy not demanded the souvenir, Timmy almost certainly would have pursued.
Down the hall he went, hand braced against the wall for balance, looking for a promising room to search. But most of the rooms in the old haunted house had been long since stripped bare, and nothing could be found. Still, as he headed deeper into the heart of the place, Timmy could swear he heard sounds from the basement level.
He couldn’t tell what it was, but for reasons unknown even to him he was drawn toward the sounds, perhaps simply because the soul-crushing emptiness of the place made the prospect of something, anything, seem appealing. The knock-knocking grew louder as he made his way through empty halls and gutted rooms, and as he came to the door leading down to the cellar he saw a faint, ghastly light emanating out from under it’s crack.
To go on was madness.
To go back a humiliating admission of defeat.
Thus, there was no choice at all.
He cracked open the door, readjusted his vision to the sudden presence of light, and steeled what little courage he had left. Then, believing himself ready for anything, he made his slow way down the stairs.
He was ready, that is, for anything but what he saw.
A single, rotted mattress lay across unfinished floor, with two threadbare blankets thrown atop it. The room was lit by a few dozen candles, and they illuminated it enough to see… not much. An old looking, battery powered stereo, a faded picture in a frame by the mattress, a few articles of clothing strewn about the floor, and a table with a collection of glass flasks and bags of powder atop it, next to which sat a well used chair. Timmy didn’t understand what the flasks were for, nor what the powder was, but he knew he had to leave the house with something, and if he were to find anything this would be where it was found.
He took a step away from the stairs and into the room as behind and above him a slurred voice cursed and the door slammed shut.
As footsteps echoed down the stairs Timmy realized; in an empty room, there is no place to hide. Not that one can hide from a ghost.
So, cowering, Timmy awaited his fate. Though when the ghost arrived he looked nothing like any Timmy’d ever seen on TV.
His eyes were wide and wild and his hair long and stringy, falling to his shoulders in greasy waves. His too thin body was clad in old, torn jeans and a faded t-shirt, and he was shaking with fury as he arrived at the bottom of the staircase. He took a minute to adjust his own eyes to the light, the left one twitching uncontrollably, and finally fixed them, white-hot with hate, on Timmy.
“Who. The fuck. Are you?” This horrifying stranger nearly screamed as he bore down on Timmy.
So no, the house wasn’t haunted after all.
Though perhaps it soon would be.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Margaret Atwood
Today I spoke with Margaret Atwood.
She’s asked me to stand for election. She’s unhappy with the Harper government’s treatment of artists, authors particularly, and she’ll stand it no longer.
Thus, she’s organized Canada’s novelists, playwrights, essayists and short fiction writers, to represent the creative class within our government.
She’s hoping to shift focus to the arts and culture of this great nation.
Nobody thinks we’ll form the next government, but in the current political climate we may wind up electing a sizable number of MPs.
And if we do, parliament will learn what it’s like overcoming a writer’s bloc.
She’s asked me to stand for election. She’s unhappy with the Harper government’s treatment of artists, authors particularly, and she’ll stand it no longer.
Thus, she’s organized Canada’s novelists, playwrights, essayists and short fiction writers, to represent the creative class within our government.
She’s hoping to shift focus to the arts and culture of this great nation.
Nobody thinks we’ll form the next government, but in the current political climate we may wind up electing a sizable number of MPs.
And if we do, parliament will learn what it’s like overcoming a writer’s bloc.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Haunting
She loved him. He killed her.
Worse, he got away scot-free.
Every year on the anniversary of her death, her spirit returns to plague her killer. But every year she stops short, unable to face the man she’d so loved in life. Without fail, she turns away.
Instead she winds up visiting me, ethereal, weeping. Saying it’s unfair, how she loved him and how betrayed she feels...
And every year I’m there, listening, wishing I could hold her, wishing she had a body to hold.
I’ll always be there for her.
Because I loved her, and she died on me.
Worse, he got away scot-free.
Every year on the anniversary of her death, her spirit returns to plague her killer. But every year she stops short, unable to face the man she’d so loved in life. Without fail, she turns away.
Instead she winds up visiting me, ethereal, weeping. Saying it’s unfair, how she loved him and how betrayed she feels...
And every year I’m there, listening, wishing I could hold her, wishing she had a body to hold.
I’ll always be there for her.
Because I loved her, and she died on me.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thievery
She was a sorcerer, but also a ninja. Which in a nutshell is where the problem arose.
Because I knew one day she’d come. She wouldn’t be able to resist the treasure to be had.
The ancient tome had been in my family for generations, you see, handed down from father to son, and from it I’d learned my own dark majiks. I’d learned to control the elements, and to shape time and space itself to my liking. I’d learned to prolong my life and to heal the wounded and sick, and I hoped one day to learn mastery over even death itself.
But what I’d not learned was vindictiveness, nor how to maintain a clear conscience were I to punish an innocent for crimes she might one day commit. So, although I knew she would inevitably attempt to steal my rightful prize, I could do nothing until the day she actually tried it. And so, my hands thusly tied, I was simply forced to wait for her to come and make her attempt on what was mine.
And come she did, in the night, as I slept.
And I didn’t even wake up. I had to watch security footage after the fact.
My locks were nothing to her, as she came in through a skylight, and the security alarm I’d paid so much for meant equally little as it’s power had been “mysteriously” cut before she’d even begun scaling my walls. I had guards, but none had any inkling that anything was amiss. I had tripwires, but not one tripped. Protective runes were placed around my stately home’s library, but she knew the counters to each and every spell. She breezed through my security measures as though they were nothing at all.
And yet the cameras kept recording.
Oh, they were no longer being routed to the private security firm I’d hired to maintain continuous surveillance, all they got was a loop from a previous night that implied that all was well. But they were recording, and storing video of her feats of subterfuge that I might view them later. Because she didn’t simply want to take what was mine, she wanted me to know she had it. She wanted me to know she’d beaten me, and that with the knowledge contained in the tome at her disposal there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t enough for her to violate me, to violate my family. I also had to watch.
Humiliating.
As humiliating to me as I imagine it was to her when she got home, opened the book and found that it’s every page was blank, though sadly I have no similar footage of that moment. What I wouldn’t give for THAT video feed.
If I had it, I’d keep it on the laptop onto which I scanned the pages of the tome eighteen months ago.
Because I’m also a sorcerer, and while I’m not a ninja I am a man willing to live in the modern age. And I’ve found a Kindle to be so much easier to carry around…
Because I knew one day she’d come. She wouldn’t be able to resist the treasure to be had.
The ancient tome had been in my family for generations, you see, handed down from father to son, and from it I’d learned my own dark majiks. I’d learned to control the elements, and to shape time and space itself to my liking. I’d learned to prolong my life and to heal the wounded and sick, and I hoped one day to learn mastery over even death itself.
But what I’d not learned was vindictiveness, nor how to maintain a clear conscience were I to punish an innocent for crimes she might one day commit. So, although I knew she would inevitably attempt to steal my rightful prize, I could do nothing until the day she actually tried it. And so, my hands thusly tied, I was simply forced to wait for her to come and make her attempt on what was mine.
And come she did, in the night, as I slept.
And I didn’t even wake up. I had to watch security footage after the fact.
My locks were nothing to her, as she came in through a skylight, and the security alarm I’d paid so much for meant equally little as it’s power had been “mysteriously” cut before she’d even begun scaling my walls. I had guards, but none had any inkling that anything was amiss. I had tripwires, but not one tripped. Protective runes were placed around my stately home’s library, but she knew the counters to each and every spell. She breezed through my security measures as though they were nothing at all.
And yet the cameras kept recording.
Oh, they were no longer being routed to the private security firm I’d hired to maintain continuous surveillance, all they got was a loop from a previous night that implied that all was well. But they were recording, and storing video of her feats of subterfuge that I might view them later. Because she didn’t simply want to take what was mine, she wanted me to know she had it. She wanted me to know she’d beaten me, and that with the knowledge contained in the tome at her disposal there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t enough for her to violate me, to violate my family. I also had to watch.
Humiliating.
As humiliating to me as I imagine it was to her when she got home, opened the book and found that it’s every page was blank, though sadly I have no similar footage of that moment. What I wouldn’t give for THAT video feed.
If I had it, I’d keep it on the laptop onto which I scanned the pages of the tome eighteen months ago.
Because I’m also a sorcerer, and while I’m not a ninja I am a man willing to live in the modern age. And I’ve found a Kindle to be so much easier to carry around…
Monday, August 15, 2011
Yet Another Drabble About Rocket Boots
The wind howls as I stare through the plane’s door into empty sky, exhilarated.
My fucking rocket boots. Eleven years late, but finally arrived.
When Rob told me he’d built a pair, and chartered a plane, I jumped at the opportunity. But now, about to leap into freefall with nothing but boots to protect me, I’m having understandable second thoughts.
“We’re absolutely sure these work?” I scream over the sound of the engines.
“One way to find out!” He calls back.
“A series of clinical tests?” I try to ask, but by the end of the sentence I’m spiraling downward…
My fucking rocket boots. Eleven years late, but finally arrived.
When Rob told me he’d built a pair, and chartered a plane, I jumped at the opportunity. But now, about to leap into freefall with nothing but boots to protect me, I’m having understandable second thoughts.
“We’re absolutely sure these work?” I scream over the sound of the engines.
“One way to find out!” He calls back.
“A series of clinical tests?” I try to ask, but by the end of the sentence I’m spiraling downward…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
