Highest Office In A Low Land

I don't know if you knew this, but Australia has had three Prime Ministers who died in office. Two of them died of natural causes, while the third one we can only assume died, as he went swimming one day in the sea and never came back.

Now sure, we're a small nation, not super important, so I suppose it makes sense that we've not had any assassinations, compared to other nations.

Or, you know, maybe our assassins are just a little better at making it look like natural causes.

Well, mostly. I wouldn't begrudge an aquatic shortcut if needed.

A Man's Tough Choice

I am tired.

And sore.

And so over feeling that way.

I know others have it worse. I know others face worse pain, have more on their shoulders.

But fuck it, I'm allowed to want to end this. I'm allowed to not want to feel like this any more.

There's no easy fix, no silver bullet. A normal bullet would end It, I suppose, but I do still care about some other people.

So I'm not taking that route. So I guess it's just the one thing left to do.

But you know, it's so embarrassing to visit the doctor...

The Artist And The Empress

The Empress needed an official portrait, obviously. And he was well respected and popular as an artist, so he was approached to paint it. He accepted, and they had some sittings, and it all seemed to be going well.

Until she saw the final work, which portrayed her in a clearly sexualized fashion. He was arrested, executed, what you'd expect. His property would have been seized, but his wife seemed to have fled the country when he'd started work on the portrait, with all his work that was now valuable to the Empress' enemies.

I guess she was just psychic.

The Chance

There was a slim chance that it would set me up for life.

There was no room for error, if a half dozen unrelated things didn't go exactly right, I was dead. But if the robbery attempt happened at the right time, and there was an inexperienced guard, with little traffic, a stolen bike that was quick enough and a few more small things, I could be in and out in the middle of a firefight with a few million in bearer bonds in thirty seconds.

The odds were slim, but I had to take the shot.

Too slim, unfortunately.

Laying In Landscape

He spent thirty years as a trader sailing up and down the seven seas with the painting hanging in his cabin. He'd gotten it on his first ever voyage on board his own ship, a native canoe off the coast of Africa had been sinking, and when his vessel pulled up beside, the sole occupant was insistent on it being taken, before willingly drowning.

It wasn't very good, a generic European landscape. He assumed it was some sort of superstitious nonsense from backwards people.

Of course, he never bothered to actually ask anyone else what they saw in the frame.

Feeling The Rope

She was caught after the first stagecoach she robbed, but had the luck to be put up to be hung with the McBlack brothers, and she was cut down by their gang at the same time.

Unlike them, she chose to keep the noose as a souvenir, wearing it around her neck at all times. When asked, she would say it was a reminder to her how little she cared for feeling the rope once, and that she wouldn't feel it again.

She never did. But only because the Sheriff's bullet that took her down missed the rope by inches.

Not A Good Night

He pulled up to the curb, the sound of parking brake engaging filling the silence the two of them had been sitting in.

He tried to think of something to say, but couldn't think of anything that wasn't a blatant lie or just wildly inappropriate. Eventually he managed to mumble something about calling it a night. He meant it as a goodnight.

Instead she looked at him, and then recapped every moment from the date that had embarrassed him. At the end of it, she asked him up to her place.

He explained that wasn't his kink, which confused her.

The Boiling Equations

The Stowaway was dragged up to the bridge and roughly pushed into a chair. The Captain took their time performing a traditional Japanese tea ceremony before them, not bothering to look up.

"So you're gonna flush me out an airlock now, right?" The Stowaway asked, staring at the tea in confusion.

"Not at all. I want to know how you got on board, certainly, how you bypassed the security protocols, but you shall not be harmed, beyond the fact that our supplies are limited."

"But you have enough for tea?"

"It is the proper greeting ceremony." The AI Captain replied.

Professionalism

Some muggers would approach from the front, allowing the target to see them first. Very unprofessional. Some muggers would try and get clever with insults, threats. Very unprofessional. And some muggers would hesitate to kill someone. Very unprofessional.

He thought of himself as very professional. Approach from behind, knife to throat, demand payment, kill if they don't do one of a few different actions.

A target laughing was not one of the approved actions, so he dragged his knife across their throat.

The knife breaking did at least satisfy his professional curiosity, albeit at the cost of a perfect record.

Crossmatch

His planet had 6,861 species of creatures. Ignoring the 1, he tried each combination in turn, looking for the right splice that would create the perfect slave race. Some of them proved useful as meat sources, or filling certain niches in different environments.

But none of them proved right. Thankfully, they discovered another planet's worth of creatures, so he took each in turn, and tried them against almost all the others.

But still nothing useful. Eventually he was left with the choice of trying his own race or not.

He finally decided not to. He wasn't a monster after all.

The Treaty

The Treaty held for seventy years.

So much bloodshed, so much destruction, it had to end in a victory, a treaty, or mutual annihilation. Both sides were sure they could triumph, but both were also sure they couldn't afford the chance of loss.

With The Treaty, peace was guarded, cold. At first. But then as the years passed, it warmed, as each side grew accustomed to peace, and began to work together.

But after seventy years, a generation without war, both sides decided they could win a war, and the treaty broke.

This time round, mutual annihilation was the result.

Payment In Kind

The supplier finished unloading the final crate of the product. The buyer's assistant flicked open a switchblade and sampled three bags at random, pouring the powder into three vials, all of them turning blue.

"So you got the cash in a duffle as I requested?"

The buyer didn't answer immediately, instead placing his hands on the supplier's shoulders.

"You are forgiven. Truly forgiven."

Usually this would lead to the person suffering a mental collapse as the weight of all their sins being removed in one go, hence saving on overheads.

But usually the person involved wasn't convinced of their righteousness.

The Girl Of His Dreams

There was no end to the list of reasons why he wasn't ever going to find love. He didn't have a stable income, he wasn't too attractive, slightly overweight, he was lazy, selfish, he preferred being alone, he could list them all day. And he did, to himself, to convince himself he preferred to be alone, that it was fine. And most of the time it worked, he genuinely believed it.

Then, in a rare moment of alcohol fuelled courage, he was open to a relationship.

The girl of his dreams came along long past that point, far too late.

Objects In Motion

There is a point of no return for everything. A point where whatever you've set in motion can only play out to its inevitable conclusion.

Sometimes it's surprisingly early, the players and the board such that after only a few moves, the endgame is set.

Sometimes it's surprisingly late, the cost high, the results chaotic, but things can be changed.

Often, people mistake one for the other, and either blindly let changeable futures play out, or make futile attempts to avoid what has been set in stone.

But not me. I can change things.

I can save them.

I must.

Thoughts Of A Supposed Criminal

-she brought it on herself you know it was her fault that I did it because she never let up and never stopped nagging me to give her a better life and what is a better life anyway is it just money or is there such a thing as happiness in the world of my life was fine before her and now it sucks obviously since I got locked up here they treat me like an animal here and it sucks and I want to go home and she was real not just in my head like the doctors say-

Smoked Out

As the oldest slavewife, it was her job, whenever the chieftain conquered a tribe, to guide any new slavewifes in their new duties.

She was explaining the ritual around dawnrise when the new girl pointed at some smoke in the distance, saying something in her native tongue.

"That's the tribe's way of sending messages quickly over long distances. That's saying they've found a specific tribe and are about to attack. Very fast communication. Only way quicker is to have someone somewhere told to do something if something else happens."

She picked up an axe to go and assassinate her husbandmaster.

Good And Evil And Other And Neither

There were three types of thinking about good and evil that would lead someone to make a credible attempt to take over and/or destroy the world.

Well, one of them is to not understand the concept, to not comprehend either. Your natural disasters, your plagues, your other dimensional beings. So two, I guess.

One is to think you are Good, and that the world is Evil. The other is to think you're beyond mere labels such as Good and Evil.

Because people who realise they are Evil? They are smart enough to learn that stopping the above pays better.

Love Add

Her dating profile said 'no augments', but everything else we seemed compatible on, so I gave it a shot and messaged her.

We talked for a bit, then met up. She was charming, and witty, and she overlooked my arm, as she said she as focusing on my mind.

We were together for 50 years, I respected her right to remain pure, she tolerated my new augments, since my mind remained unchanged, that was what she loved. Not my body mods.

Thankfully she died before I was forced to tell her my mind was the first thing I had augmented.

Call Of Addiction

He grabbed a bottle of scotch and a glass, then after a moment put the glass back. He ripped it open, tossing the lid behind him. As he lifted the bottle to his lips, the phone rang.

He assumed that it was her. That she'd heard the news, and that she would assume he'd be in this exact position.

He didn't have the guts to talk to her, not now. But worse, he knew he didn't have the guts to face up to her later if he did give in. So he didn't.

She actually called a few hours later.

A King, Post Rebellion

Had the rebellion's leaders asked him what they should do with him, he'd tell them to lock him up in the dungeon, since he'd hardly tell them his honest opinion, which would be to kill him.

But instead of either of those options, they led him through the city, as anarchy exploded around them, and to the docks, where they shoved him onto a one man sailboat and told to never return.

He was back leading an army in six months, only to find a dead city state, and a letter from the leaders explaining the prophecy, and their loyalty.

Coming Out Right

Every time he sat down to start, he would get a few words in then grow discouraged, delete them all and then go do something, anything else.

It was because he knew how important this was that he kept delaying it. It had to be perfect, and thus he could keep putting it off until it was perfect, whenever that was. Some point far in the future, probably.

Then came the party, several drinks, a drunken update on social media, then a friend 'hilariously' 'hacking' it to say he was gay.

No-one reacted badly so he just ran with it.

No Drabble Today

Hello?

Can anyone hear me?

Or read these words, I guess?

I think the transmission program is working, but maybe this is all Greta Garbo to you.

Not sure how much time there is before there is no more time left. Very important, you need to listen.

Soon, there will be a greeting from another planet, in the sky, on this biggish network, all over, all people, all languages.

It will say peace, say it want to help.

My power run out.

You

Must not

The attack will be swift

Launched by

Femhfognrhr

#########

BELIEVE THEM.

Humans attack, will die.

In Search Of An X-Axis

Correlation doesn’t equal causality.

The fact that it was raining each time she left me does not mean I could blame it on the rain, whatever those lip-syncers claim. Likewise, her walking out on me doesn’t mean the skies were crying on me behalf.

No, instead it had to be something I did, or didn’t do, something that drove her away, every time she left, I improved myself to win her back, and things would be good for a while, then she’d leave me again.

Eventually I realised that there was no pattern, just her whims.

Causality didn’t equal correlation.

The Cause Of This Specific End Of Everything

To understand how this happened, you have to understand that some beings have emotions that can break almost any rule. Plenty of people have lived for years powered by anger, or ruined empires by greed.

And the love these two souls had kept them coming back together, no matter what. I’d name them, but they both had so many, every time one died, the other would soon follow, and then they’d meet up again somewhere else, no matter what separated them.

This was fine, until one ended up as an Angel, the other a Demon.

Their love wouldn’t be denied.