stories

Just A Day in the Life of a Villain, Volume 1

“I’m sorry Mason, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate you. You just don’t have what it takes.”

Mason stared at the dank, dripping wall of the cave, in shock. It couldn’t possibly the last time he’d see the inside of this place. His job had been his life.

“But sir…” he began.

“I’m sorry,” Master Humpsmadinck repeated.

Mason stood. He stared at the man who had been his boss – his savior.

“You may as well just take the bicycle.” Master Humpsmadinck said.

Mason’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Seriously? You’re going to let me just… take it?”

“You may as well,” Master glared at him through lowered eyebrows and his upper lip curled. “I can’t exactly use it now, can I?”

Mason thought of the Master, with his cape flying behind him, riding the bike and he let out a little giggle. He jumped when his superior slammed his palm down on the desk.

“I don’t understand what you thought you were doing!” Humpsmadinck’s face nearly glowed as his colour rose in his cheeks. Mason had never seen him this angry before.

“But sir… you told me to bring him back here.”

“Mason, how many times do I have to tell you? You DON’T carry a dead body on a ten speed!”

“But it was wrapped in a black garbage bag…”

“And that’s supposed to hide the fact that it’s a 200 pound dead man? What if the cops had followed you back here?”

“I didn’t think of that…”

“Exactly!” Master screamed, his voice cracking. “You don’t think! Now I’m going to have to reanimate the man you brought back here to do your job. Do you know how much work that is?”

“I can help you!” Mason said hopefully. He was genuinely shocked when Master began to laugh.

“You have to be joking! You? Help me reanimate a man you just brought back to the office in a garbage bag on a push bike? Puhlease!

“Get out of my sight.”

Mason’s jaw dropped. “That’s it? You’re just going to let me go?”

Master smiled. “That’s right. Thank you for reminding me. I said you would be terminated, didn’t I?” And with that he pulled a gun out of his desk drawer and shot Mason in the chest.

Out of the Frying Pan – Flash Fiction Challenge: Bad Parents

Sturgis peeked out from the closet and watched the faint line of light between his bedroom door and its jam flicker as the bodies passed back and forth. The fishy smell of his own pee, puddled and dried and puddled again on the shag carpet underneath him filled his nose. He’d tried to go in his shoe but it leaked. At least the screaming had stopped.

The men with the black coats with POLICE came in a while ago. Some of them spoke in low voices, while others laughed and said bad words. Sturgis wondered when they would finally leave.

It started the way it always did. Mom dressed up in her shiny silver pants that showed all her lumps and creases, and shoes that made her almost as tall as a man. She piled her hair on top of her head and painted her eyes so many different colours that it was hard to tell what colour they were supposed to be. Then she bounced him out the door in her tight sparkly top, her bosom patting him on his head, and into the car for the long, boring drive to Auntie Bambi’s house. The car radio was broken, so Mom sang. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,”  over and over. He’d never heard the song on the radio before, but Mom seemed to know it. She always kissed him on his forehead and told him she’d be back in three days. Sturgis didn’t know why it was always three days, but it was.

Today was only day one.

Sturgis loved Auntie Bambi the best. She called him Fishie hugged him a lot and told him he was handsome. She always felt soft, and sometimes in the winter she would warm him up by opening her shirt so he could get closer. She said her own little boy, Ralfie, had been just like him before Ralf got scooped up by the cops. Auntie Bambie had given Sturgis Ralfie’s room and told Mom to drop him off any time. He thought Auntie Bambi loved him more than his mom, who told him she hated the city he was named after.

This time wasn’t any different from any other time. After Auntie Bambi was done hugging Sturgis, she always got on the phone and invited a man over. While she waited for the man, she told Sturgis that when he was bigger she’d invite him over all for herself, just like the men. Then she’d send Sturgis to his room, even if it was early. Sometimes she forgot to feed him, but most of the time she called him out to the kitchen and sat him down in front of a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while she and the man went out on the veranda and hid in the corner behind the big piece of wood that was nailed up between the house and the house next door. Once, Sturgis peeked out; he never told anyone what he saw. He just really wanted to forget all that soft white flesh bouncing like Mom bounced, but when Auntie Bambi held him, he remembered what it looked like all over again. Only then it wasn’t so bad.

Sturgis thought about getting out of the closet and telling the POLICE he was there. He almost got up once. But then he thought about all the questions they would ask him, just like on TV. They’d take him to the COP SHOP and interragade him. Mom told him that people who got interragaded got Gatorade, but he thought Mom was just joshing him. Even though Sturgis was pretty thirsty, he didn’t want to leave Auntie Bambi’s house. He thought maybe Auntie Bambi didn’t want the POLICE to know he was there either. Maybe that’s why she’d been keeping so quiet.

The other reason Sturgis didn’t want to be interragaded was because he didn’t want to have to tell the POLICE what he heard. The shouting started before dinner time. He didn’t know the man who came over but the man seemed to know Sturgis. The man kept asking about Mom, and wanted to know where he could find her. He said some very very bad words about Auntie Bambi–even worse than the words the POLICE said when they were joking–and then he started looking for Sturgis. That’s when Sturgis hid in the closet.

Then the big sounds, like firecrakers on Canada Day, went off. And then the sirens brought the POLICE.

Sturgis hoped the POLICE would leave soon. He needed to pee again, and Mom would be mad already that he’d gone in his pants. Usually when he had an accident at Auntie Bambi’s house, she washed his pants and didn’t tell Mom. But mostly he wanted a hug from Auntie Bambi. Her softness would make everything better, like always.

 

Find the Flash Fiction Challenge at Chuck Wendig’s site: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/06/27/flash-fiction-challenge-bad-parents/

 

Shadows

I stand here on the porch in the lowering gloom of dusk and I look upon my creations, pondering on what will become of them when I’m gone. I am the last of my generation. My children have passed, stricken before me by the cancer that now takes my air and presents me with fire in its stead. Fire like that which has recently vanished from the western sky, only blacker – poisoned.

I have one grandchild, too young to understand the ramblings of an old man. My notes and journals – they are part of my creations. They are dinosaurs awaiting an excavation that may never come to pass.

I close my eyes and wonder if they will ever again open. My eyelids are tugged by an uncontrollable weight. It’s all right though. My creations will linger here for me. They will see the light of another day, perhaps without the gentle touch of their creator.

SoCS – Read, Read, Red.

The red phone rang nervously – or maybe it was Jeff who was nervous. He’d read somewhere that when the red phone rings, it meant disaster. Perhaps it was the reading of the seer, the fortune teller but he knew the red phone would ring.

Many nights he’d lain awake but now the day had come. He picked it up and said hello into the receiver.

“Jeff? It’s your mother. Why did you wait so long to pick up the phone?”

“Mother? Why are you calling me on the red phone?”

“Jeff… you were never born.”

____________________________________________________________________________________

This week’s prompt will be slightly more of a challenge, should you choose to accept. Your prompt is to include the word read (present tense), read (past tense) or red. The extra challenge? Publish without reading. Just do your best while you write, then make a really squinty face and pluck up the courage to hit that button. If you’re brave enough to do it, make sure you tell us you’re going to at the end of your post.

Find SoCS here, http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-1414/ and write your own Stream of Consciousness Saturday post!

Portrait of the Perpetually Lonely

Romance is in the air. It’s what my horoscope keeps tellin’ me. An’ I keep lookin’, keepin’ on searchin’ for that perfect other. The One.

I see him in ever’ face. Ever’ darn word I read here on these internets. But this one’s gone married, an’ that one’s too darn young. Some of ’em are even the gay. Damn shame that is.

I can only write poetry when I’m done drunk. Well not done done, but you know what I mean. Hafta have some of that wine in me. Not the high falutin’ stuff, jes’ the cheapo crap you get down there at the liquor store. The kind with the twist cap. Don’t take much to get my skinny ass plastered. I get a ragin’ headache goin’ on nex’ mornin’ though I tell ya.

So I was talkin’ to my pal Phil t’other day, an’ I tol’ him I was lookin’ for the The One. An’ he says, well damn, Nessie, I got one! So I cuff’d him right ’round the ear an’ I tol’ him where he could stick his one an’ it wa’n’t gonna be in me. Damn Phil. Hehe. Always gettin’ in a good joke.

Yep. The One. Always searchin’.

Entranced – Stream of Consciousness Saturday (Entrance)

You stepped through the door and it was like a bolt of lightning to my soul. Your eyes hypnotised me and your arms as they drew me in, felt protective and yet…

The knife in your hand as it stabbed me in the spine…

I died, still entranced by your eyes.

This post is part of SoCS: http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-1014/ 

A Life Lived

She started with a salty goodbye. A sayonara of oceanic proportions, in which ships sank and seashells shattered.

And around she went in the arena of ago, an archipelago amass in aromatic ages.

Until at last she settled, safe within the enclosure of a promised land of epic proportions.

And there she landed a lover, who loved her lonely ass.

Years yonder, she yearns for her yesteryear land.

For her lover forgot, and found a flagrant floozy to fuck.

So she dreams, and connects her current conditions, completely crushed

By sorrowful sayonaras, and restless regrets.

On Loyalty

I don’t even remember how it started. Well, okay, I do remember our first meeting – how could I possibly forget? The way she elongated my name when she whispered it in my ear was enough to drive me wild.

“Jaaaack.” As smooth as an ice cube, she chilled me to the roots of my hair.

She called herself Diamond, but it was her softer parts I was concentrated on that night as she writhed and jiggled in my face. Ned had his own lap dance to keep him busy, but when the song ended and the ladies departed, it was Diamond’s ass he commented on.

“I tell ya, my man Jack,” my best friend said, “if I wasn’t married…”

I smiled and held up the yellow post-it note she’d slipped into the front pocket of my trousers. “Fortunately, I’m not.” The paper had her number on it, a little heart dotting the “I” in her name.

Ironic that she stole mine. All I ever got in return was a post-it and broken promise. Oh, and a year of soul-splitting debauchery.

***
I waited in a small cafe of her choosing. Outside the January sun hung high in the sky. Undaunted, it traversed the window and reflected off the spoon beside my coffee cup and into my eyes. I traced the check on the tablecloth with my finger, wondering if it was possible to have a normal conversation with a beautiful woman whose body I had already seen entirely unclothed. When she walked through the door I felt the tension leave my shoulders. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but I suppose it wasn’t surprising that when I’d imagined her over the course of the week since I met her, she hadn’t been wearing a duffel coat.

I waved to her and she smiled. In her hands were several shopping bags from higher end clothing stores. She sat opposite me and shook my hand.

“Hello, Jack.”

My heart thumped a little harder in my chest. “Glad you could come.”

The waitress came over and Diamond ordered a latte. She took off her coat to reveal a turtleneck sweater. Again, not what I had envisioned. I relaxed a little more.

“So what do you do for a living?”

“I’m an investment banker.”

“Really! Isn’t that interesting. My ex, the asshole, was an investment banker. All the long hours… but that’s not why we broke up. He was just a cheating bastard.

“So tell me more about you. What do you do for fun when you’re not going to strip clubs?”

Diamond had a way of making people feel comfortable. We talked for over an hour. She lit up when I told her about my love for working with my hands – carpentry and the like, and for gardening. She said she missed the huge spread of land she’d shared with her ex-boyfriend. I offered to let her dig up a corner of my garden I’d been meaning to get to in the spring and she was delighted.

I confided that I, too had been a victim of infidelity in my last relationship, and she pointed out, with a warm hand on mine, that we had much in common. She commiserated when I told her about my ailing mother, and she agreed that I was lucky to earn enough money to keep her in a retirement home.

By the time we walked out into the freezing cold, I was convinced that it was kismet; that our meeting had been ordained by a higher presence. Afterwards, we went back to my place and there she refreshed my memory of our first meeting. I was pleased to note my imagination hadn’t gone far astray.

***
It was a month later, as we lay in bed in each other’s arms, that the topic of investing in her hobby came up.

“It might not be a big moneymaker at first,” she said, pausing to draw on her cigarette, “but just think of the fun we’ll have until it really gets underway.”

“But… it’s my basement.”

“Yeah, so? You’ve got tons of room.” Her voice was reassuring. “And like I explained, there’s no way we can get commercial space to run a dungeon. This town is too fuckin’ stuck up. It’s a wonder they haven’t been able to close the club down.” She was referring to the establishment where we’d first met.

“There’s a huge demand – I hear it all the time at the club. Both the guys that come in and the bitches I work with want somewhere they can go to safely dominate and submit. I can give them safety.”

She had disclosed early on that she had been a dominatrix. We’d played around with that unique style of sexual behaviour on occasion and I had to admit, I enjoyed it far more than I’d thought I would.

“Ever since that stupid book came out, everyone and his cousin want to try BDSM,” she went on.

“But, it’s my basement,” I repeated. “What will my friends think?”

She sat up and looked me square in the face. “I thought we had something here.” Tears came to her eyes that she didn’t bother to try to hide. “I thought we were soulmates.”

“We are, it’s just…”

She flung back the sheets and launched herself off the bed. “I don’t believe you don’t care about me enough not to worry about what your friends might say. I thought you loved me more than that.”

“I do, Diamond.” I was up on my knees, ready to beg her not to go, confused by her sudden reaction. “Can’t we just talk about this?”

She stopped, bra in hand, and looked at me. Her eyes went to my manhood and I began to twitch, despite myself.

“Do you really love me?”

“More than anything.”

The subject was dropped, and for a few weeks there was no mention of it. With Diamond I could never know if I was playing my cards right.

***
Every other weekend I went to pick my mother up from the home. She stayed at my house on Saturday night and I took her back after dinner on Sunday. The staff would wave goodbye to her as she gingerly eased herself into my car, complaining it was too low to the ground.

“What ever happened to that birch tree, Jack?” she asked every time we pulled into my driveway.

“The birch tree was in your front yard, Ma.” I answered the same way every Saturday morning.

“Oh, right,” she would say.

Then one weekend it all came out differently.

“What every happened to that birch tree, Jack?”

I told her the birch tree was in her front yard, at home where I grew up.

“No it wasn’t!” she said this time.

“Sure it was, Ma.”

“No, it was here, at your house. Just last year. I remember.”

“No… You remember how it bent over the year we had the ice storm?”

“Yes it was here! Are you trying to make me think I’m going crazy?” She was clearly agitated.

After that, when she asked me what happened to the birch tree, I told her I had chopped it down since her last visit.

***
Diamond hated it that I dedicated half of my weekends to my mother, but once I assured her that it wasn’t because I didn’t love her, she claimed to manage without me. She worked at the club from Thursday to Saturday anyway. Three days a week was enough for her to make almost as much as my salary.

On her insistence I started looking into the cost of supplies to finish my basement. When I met Diamond, all that was really down there was a card table I carted up to the living room once a week for a game of poker with Ned and the guys from work. I thought, even if it didn’t end up transformed into a dungeon for the depraved and sex-hungry, pain-seeking clientele she had uncovered, it would at least make the space more livable. When I decided I couldn’t afford it, she promised to help financially. And besides, she assured me, it would pay for itself.

By Easter I had moved past lumber and paint and we were shopping for whips and anal beads.

***
Work started on my basement in June. I had the tools to do some of it myself, but Diamond knew people who had designed and built a dungeon before, and I was forced to accept that I didn’t really know what I was doing anyway. I picked up some insurance sales work on the side to supplement my income – an entire month’s wages went into extra plumbing, lighting, and the walls – so I saw even less of Diamond. She didn’t seem to mind.

Although I couldn’t really afford it, I offered to support her so she could quit her job. The thought of other men ogling and groping her aggravated me. She refused, stating she made loads of money and it was a way to attract clients once the dungeon was up and running. I couldn’t argue on that account. I also couldn’t stand to be without her, so I spent every evening I could at the club, pretending not to squirm with discomfort while she danced on other guys’ laps.

***

By the end of July I had run out of money and was putting the finishing touches on the basement myself. I was in the nail aisle of the hardware store when someone came up and slapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey Jack, long time no see.”

“Ned! Yeah, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, not a lot. Since the baby was born we haven’t been out much.”

Guilt coloured my cheeks. I had promised Ned I would be his first child’s Godfather, but Diamond’s demands had kept me so absent from his life that he had asked someone else.

“I heard you’re opening some kind of business in your basement?”

“Really? Where’d you hear that from?”

He dropped his voice and put the back of his hand up to his mouth, even though we were alone. “I went to the club last week. One of the girls was telling me about it.”

“You should come and see it. Maybe bring the wife.”

He laughed. “I don’t think she’d be into that shit. But all the best to you.” He patted me on the back and left me there to cook in the stew of my own making.

***
The opening night of the dungeon was an eye-opener for me. There was surprisingly little sex between the girls who had come over from the club to work for Diamond, and the men and women who came in as clients. But amongst the couples who paid for the pleasure to simply observe the fun, there seemed to be no limit to what they would do. Exhibitionism was the main theme for some – the pain was secondary.

A month later when business was in full swing, Ned showed up. At first I thought he was there to partake, but he had a message for me. The retirement home had contacted him–he was the second and only other person on their list of who to call, since I didn’t have any extended family–to say my mother had taken a turn for the worse. She had been taken to the hospital.

I rushed out to see her, even though it was almost midnight. She had broken her hip on the way to the washroom. The next day the home called to say my last cheque had bounced and I had to find other accommodations for her.

***
Diamond was livid when I told her the news. “But we just started. You can’t have your mother come and live with you now!”

“I have no choice, Diamond. She needs me. I’m all she’s got.”

“Tell her to go to hell. Tell her you don’t have room. Put her in a nursing home! There’s an idea.”

“She’ll die in a nursing home.”

“That’s not your fault. You didn’t ask to be born and you shouldn’t have to take care of your mother. Your job is done when you come out of the womb. You’re her responsibility, not the other way around.”

“Diamond, I can’t.”

“You never fucking cared about me did you? It’s always been about you. ‘Oh, Diamond, I’m running out of money, I’ll do the renovations myself,’ or ‘Stop working at the club and stay with me at home,’ or ‘Stop paying more attention to those other guys.’ It’s all ‘me me me’ with you. Now it’s, ‘Close the dungeon down because mommy wants to come and live with me.’ Well fuck you. I’m outta here! I can’t believe you’d betray me like this!”

I was aghast. “That makes no sense! How can you possibly say I don’t love you? All of this is for you.”

“If it was, you wouldn’t be asking your mother to come and live with you. Keep your dungeon. Run it yourself with your mother upstairs asking where the screaming is coming from. See how you do without me. I’m gone.”

***
In my stupidity, in my utter need to keep Diamond happy, in my addiction for her love, I sent my mother to a nursing home where her health continued to suffer. I got so desperate that I asked for Ned to help; I asked him to put my mother up for a while. He basically told me to go fuck myself. I hadn’t as much as talked to him in months, why would he? It took me another five weeks to finally say goodbye to the woman I loved. Diamond, that is.

In retrospect I think she knew the end was coming. She stopped pretending she wasn’t screwing other guys; she rubbed it in my face. She tortured me, making me watch while she spread her legs for other men, smiling at me all the while. I had enough. Now I’m the bastard ex-boyfriend, I’m quite sure of it.

***
My mother is in the other room, asking where the birch tree went, that was never on my front yard, my ex best friend wants nothing to do with me, and I have an abandoned, dusty dungeon in my basement.

If life is a game of cards, I lost, in spades.

Sunny, With a Slim Chance

Your day began sunny, with a slim chance of showers. You took your umbrella from the stand just inside the door as you left for work, just in case.

Your morning coffee spilled on your white shirt when your secretary bumped into you, while attempting to remove herself from the path of the courier with the large box.

When you returned from the washroom, after rubbing the stain with a paper towel only to spread it farther, you found the box on your desk.

It said open with care.

Annoyed though cautious, you took a knife to the tape, gently slicing it from end to end.

Inside was a package with a note. From me.

Dear you,

On your way home tonight after work you will encounter an Angel. The Angel will walk by your side and tell you to raise your umbrella above your head. When you look up, there will be not a cloud in the sky. But you should nevertheless take heed of the Angel’s words.

Sincerely,

Me.

After a reasonably uneventful afternoon, during which you went out and bought a new shirt and a tie as well, just for the hell of it, you left the office to make your way home.

Along the way, you met an Angel. He wasn’t a conventional Angel. His wings were rather dusty and his face, though swathed in a sheen of beauty, seemed tired.

He asked you to raise your umbrella and you looked up to the blue sky. And then you saw it. The piano, getting closer to the ground as it fell from the 35th storey window of the building you were walking by.

You stepped out of the way just in time.

You don’t know me, but I am he, your guardian Angel.

Tomorrow, when you go to work, please wear a suit of armor.

Smell

“Do you smell that?”

“What?”

“I think something’s burning.”

“You always say that this time of night.”

“What do you mean? What time is it?”

“It’s 11:06.”

“I do?”

“Yes dear.”

“…but, I still smell it.”

“No you don’t.”

“How do you know? You haven’t even sniffed.”

“I don’t need to. I know what it is you’re smelling.”

“Okaaay, so what am I smelling if it’s not something burning?”

“I farted.”

“Your farts do NOT smell like burning. Oh look! There’s smoke coming out of the kitchen!”

“No there’s not.”

“Yes there is!!”

“It’s your imagination. You know what you’re like at this time every night.”

“Fuck you! It’s not me! The kitchen is on fire!”

“No it isn’t.”

“Then what the hell is the light in the kitchen!? You won’t even turn around and look for God sake!”

“I don’t need to. It’s just the cat.”

“What do you mean, ‘just the cat’?!?”

“The cat just came in from outside. You know what the radiation is like out there. So the cat glows a little. Big deal.”

“….”

“Just go back to watching the news. Look, they’re talking about the radiation now.”

“…why is there a bear shaking hands with a fish?”

“….”

“The radiation. Right. Well then, I’m going to bed.”

“Okay dear. I’ll be there soon. Just have to put the cat out.”