Wanting

I don’t want you to think I wanted this.

Why would I want this? I loved you! I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you!

I knew you were a little rough around the edges, I knew you would probably hurt me, that someone loving you would be weird to you, that you wouldn’t know you wanted it.

I want to stay with you, I want to be with you, I want to know that every day I wake up to see you lying beside me, truly.

But I can’t be wanted by the cops with you.

City Turf

It wasn’t quite like clockwork, but there was a certain consistency to it. Every few months, there’d be a threat.

Usually someone from outside the city trying to move in, seeing the low crime rate and thinking there was room for expansion. Sometimes though, it was part of the low crime rate looking to upgrade all by itself.

You’d think people would learn, but there’s always someone who thinks they can succeed where dozens have failed before them. Who think they have it all figured out.

But you can’t fight City Hall. Especially if it also runs a Family Business.

Lack Of Manpower

The holomanager flickered into life, virtual clipboard in their hands.

"Weekly stocktake! Have we collated the receipts for ingoings and/or outgoings?"

There was a period of silence lasting exactly 3.8 seconds.

"This is unacceptable! This is the eighty-sixth week in a row! Why have you been allowed to keep your jobs with this laziness?"

Another 3.8 seconds passed.

"Fine, I'll do it myself.

Working.

None of either? Again? And you couldn't tell me that?"

Given that the robots it was addressing were solar powered and the sky was still full of ash from the meteor collision, no, they couldn't.

The Woman With A Ladder

The walls around his heart may not have been physical, but they were real.

He’d grown up fast, a necessity given his ‘childhood’. He had to step up and help look after his siblings, and that meant he’d had to wall off his emotions.

The walls then grew, as he saw how much of an uphill struggle it would be for him to find a partner, find happiness, so he built the walls to protect himself.

But then she came along, and managed to bypass them all, and get inside.

So he declared her a saboteur, and threw her out.