Non-Drabble: Brief Absence

Just a quick programming note, there will be no Drabbles for at least a couple weeks, while I sort out some stuff, I will return ASAP.

Spirited

I asked for prayer and bowed my head, as did everyone else.

And then I heard it, a tinny little tune, a ringtone.

Uncontrollable tears would have been expected, a badly timed coughing fit would have been understandable, but this was not something I'd let stand.

I looked around, trying to find the guilty party, until my eyes moved and found the source of the ringing phone.

It was coming from the coffin.

I was confused but slowly opened it, and found the phone in his suit pocket. I pulled it out and answered it.

"Hello?"

"I requested no prayers!"

Blow The Deal

Billy Smithson was the trumpet player in the Blue Swamp bar in New Orleans, back when jazz was being born. And he was incredible, almost every night he'd play the best ever jazz that anyone had heard, every night was different but equally brilliant.

Almost every night.

Because on nights when they wanted to record him, or when some important agent was in the audience, he'd play terribly. He told people he just had bad nerves.

The truth was that he'd made a deal for his place with the devil.

Or at least the owner of the bar, same thing. 

Scotched

I turned off the TV just as they were making futile suggestions on what to do to try and survive the asteroid's impact.

I debated beating the rush, but then my eyes fell on the bottle.

It was the last present my father ever bought me, his last attempt to get me interested in what he liked, given that I'd rejected football, The Stones, and home renovation.

After he passed, I'd kept the scotch untouched, but at this point, why not?

I opened it, poured out a glass, and drank it.

I woke up the next morning confused but happy.

Evil Fake Out

I held the gun out, flicking between the two of them, both of whom held their hands up.

"Babe, calm down, just shoot it, it's clearly the shapeshifter!" said the first Jack.

"Honey, don't listen to it, it's the evil thing, shoot it!" said Jack 2.

I switched between the two of them.

"Ok, what's something only Jack would know about me?" I asked.

"You've always thought that idea was fucking stupid!"

As soon as Jack said this, I shot the fake. Jack smiled as he approached, before hugging me tight.

Too tight.

"Why'd you think only one shapeshifter exists?" 

Magic Hands

My Mentor had a habit of going off on tangents. He'd be teaching me about magic circle symbol drawing then suddenly would begin to talk about how to defend yourself against a werelion. It was tiring, but usually it was still useful information.

But today, he got five minutes into talking about proper wand manipulation when he suddenly began talking about succubi, how to identify, how to handle, how to summon and banish, he was focused for the rest of the day.

My confusion was eventually solved when the next day he confessed to me about his ex, a half-succubus.

My Most Important Lesson

The most important lesson i ever learned in school was in music class. Given my inability to hold a tune, this is surprising, but it's true.

See, everyone has to give a short presentation about a song, where the rest of the class would then grade collectively.

I has nothing, so I picked a one hit Wonder I liked, found the bare minimum of info about them I needed, then ripped off an ad campaign to give a comedic talk with no substance.

I got the best marks out of anyone.

Taught me a lot about how easy manipulation is. 

Must See TV

I came downstairs, yawning, to find him on the couch, watching TV.

"The fuck?"

He glanced over at me.

"The spare key in the false rock. I hid it again, don't worry."

I shook my head and gestured at him.

"The fuck?"

He shrugged.

"First bus of the day to here runs at 6am."

I stepped in-between him and the TV.

"The. FUCK?"

"I wanted to check out this new-

Oh, do you mean why aren't I at the barracks?"

I nodded, glaring at him.

"I'm getting discharged-"

There was a knock on the door, and he turned.

"The fuck?"

Wacky Discrimination

Every week, there was another race, in another bizarre, odd locale. But then the racers were bizarre and odd anyway, so it made sense, I guess.

As a fan, I watched every one, and I kept stats, and I noticed that there was one car, driven by a man and his dog, and this car never won. Despite having a car that was fast enough to get ahead enough to allow him to set up traps and such for the other racers.

I eventually noticed that when he seemed to win, they'd find technicalities to invalidate it, hence the cheating. 

My Alien

The moon hung large and bright in the sky, as we stared up at it, her fingers intertwined in mine. I was content to lay there in silence, but she spoke up eventually.

"I gotta head back."

I turned to look at her in confusion.

"To the cottage?"

She turned her head to look at me.

"No, back home."

I blinked a few times.

"Ok. When will you be back?"

"I won't."

I stopped blinking.

"You... Why?"

"I have responsibilities."

I considered my words.

"You could abandon them."

I saw in her eyes that the idea was alien to her.

Cooled Off

I was about to bite into my hamburger when she sat opposite me.

"You didn't wait for me before ordering?"

I looked at her as I tried to formulate a response, before she reached out and took one of my hands in hers, forcing me to put the hamburger down.

"Please. He's following me."

She said this in a whisper. I didn't look around, and instead asked her about what the delay was.

After a few minutes of talking, she suddenly glanced up, muttered a thanks, and walked away. I never saw her again.

The burger wasn't too bad cold. 

Chicken Cave

All seven of the other kids called me chicken and other things, I just flipped them off as I rode home and left them to explore the cave that had appeared deep in the forest behind our neighbourhood.

I went home and played GTA, then that night we got a call asking if I had come home, as none of the others had.

After getting yelled at by Mother, she called the cops and they made me show them the cave.

Turned out to be a portal to a mystical land of magic, ruled by Seven Mages From Elsewhere.

Coincidentally.

Missing Hope

He opened his eyes and then rolled over, hoping that he'd see her lying beside him. But she wasn't, same as the last ten years.

He got up, slowly, and went through his routine, toilet, shower, teeth, coffee, dress, breakfast, gather, leave. At every step, he hoped for a knock on the door, a buzz of his phone. But there were none, same as the last ten years.

The commute, the work, the commute, all were busy enough that he didn't have time to hope.

He came home to find a letter, and hope briefly soared.

Then he read it.

No Today

I know I'm not going to be able to change any minds or console anyone in just 100 words about the actions of around 55% of my fellow countrymen, countrywomen, and countrythem. Ideally I should just do something light and unimportant to just get it done and move on with the fight.

But I can't think of anything else, about how the simplest, easiest, weakest request was asked of us, and a majority of us threw up two middle fingers.

I'm not about to relitigate it. All I can do is accept the mistake, and work to fix it.

Tomorrow.

Dip

 I wiggled the power cord around, trying to find an angle to keep charging my phone properly. But every time I moved it, it caused the call to dip briefly.

"I just ... ink you need ... be more ... tive."

"Hun, I know that, but-"

"No, no ... about this! You ... ter or we're ..."

"Sorry, we're what?"

The groan of anger lasted past three dips.

"That's it, we're ..."

I kept fiddling with the cord, until I realised this dip was rather long, which was because the phone had run out of power and was off.

When I managed to call, she'd dipped, permanently.

Starship Tales

To pass the weeks spent in warpspace between the stars, the crew, among other activities, made a game out of telling the stories their races and cultures told their children, and then tried to find issues and other interpretations.

The game started after I made a passing reference to the boy who cried wolf, and then explained it, and had to deal with a lot of questions about why they'd put a child on such an important duty if they weren't going to believe him.

I finally got them with a shaggy dog story, given the point of such tales. 

M.O.A.D

The prisoner glanced at the cover of the police report on the table in front of him.

"I'm already in here for life, you seriously going to try and pin another robbery on me? I was in here when this happened!"

The cop opened the file.

"You help us catch whoever did this, we might get you outta here before you're dead."

The prisoner snorted, but looked over the file, growing more interested.

"I take it you recognise something?"

The prisoner smiled.

"Yes. And I guess I do get out of here before I die. And finish my time machine."

Smoke Them If You Got Them

The gang began to hang out behind the bike rack at the school, with the weird kid allowed to hang since he had cigarettes he was willing to share.

The gang was like most rebels in high school, they talked shit about the teachers, they made bad taste jokes, and they egged each other on over graffiti and other minor crimes.

Near the end of the school year, they began to talk about the abandoned gas station one block over, and the group dared themselves to enter that night.

The weird kid ate well, then began again a decade later. 

Tomb Borrower

I opened the tomb and shone my light inside. The walls looked as i expected, but then I looked at the floor, and saw four sets of footprints visible in the painted dust the ancient culture used in their tombs.

One would be the head priest, who would have laid the ruler to rest. Another would be the widow, giving her last regards. And the third would be Sir Joseph Visnor, who previously came in to take photos.

So who was the other one? Thieves? Historians? The reanimated corpse of the dead ruler?

No, that's crazy...

My light then died.

Now Broke

So you know that thing about how a butterfly flaps its wings and that causes a hurricane on the other side of the world? Well, that's not the theory. The theory goes that if you could ot the world's climate to the atom, but miss one butterfly's wing flaps, eventually the knock on effect will lead to you missing a hurricane occurring. Not cause and effect, more compounding chaos.

So, do you understand this? You do? Excellent.

I bring this up because a while ago I set up a model of the stock market, and I kinda missed ZZX Inc...

Memory Loss

She threw my hand out of her own and stomped her foot, standing just outside the cave.

"I'm not taking one more step until you tell me why I can't remember anything before this morning!"

I shook my head.

"I told you, you can't know!"

"And I'm not accepting that!"

I sighed and pulled a letter out of my rucksack.

"Look, this is a risk, but before we decided this, you wrote yourself a letter."

I passed it over, and she read it quickly. I was ready to explain why the handwriting looked different to hers, but she was satisfied.

Times New Words

He was on one knee, halfway through the most beautiful speech I'd ever heard when my phone began to ring. We both laughed as I pulled it out and went to turn it off, only for him to suddenly grab at his ear in pain.

I insisted on looking, which is when I found the earbud that was feeding him his lines.

At first I was upset, but when he insisted it was just to make sure he got it right, I asked if he wore it at any other time.

The list was fifteen long when I walked away.

Counting Zs

Day 468- 5 zombies on the west fence, 2 on east wall.

Day 469- 3 zombies in south moat.

Day 470- Raiders from the north. They 'requested' entry. I distracted them long enough.

Day 470- 12 zombies in the north, the 9 raiders and 3 others.

Day 471- Carrot crop harvested.

Day 472- 14 zombies on the west fence, 19 zombies on the east wall, 8 zombies in south moat, 25 zombies in the north. I assume the raiders lured them here. Took out emergency weapon supplies in preparation for killing many zombies tomorrow.

Day 473- Not enough.

Blood burning.

Hired By Al

The team has been hired to break into the Captain's Quarters, on the lead ship of the Generational Convoy to Humanity's new home. Her orders had been consistent, but delivered by the AI, and powerful people wanted to know what was going on.

The four of them worked a plan, and executed it, forcing the Captain's door open just long enough to get in. They entered, and were almost immediately gassed and killed.

A few moments later, the AI annouced that the 4 new Captains had killed the old Captain and were now in charge, their orders pretty much identical.