#VisDare 110 : Repel

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Nuri woke to the gentle chime of her alarm.She got a shower to make sure she was clean, then dressed as required. Every detail had to be right, every bracelet, ring, and arm band had to be right. The headdress was most important, it had to be positioned properly. The massive three heart belt around her waist had to rest properly on her hips to hold the bottom, and the veils up.

As always, the sandals were last.

She knelt before the small altar, drank the required black tea, and waited. In the minutes before the dawn, she left her home, walked across the village square, and stood by the edge of the lake.

It was time.

Nuri danced the dance of light, as had her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, to repel the evil and darkness of the world from the valley, and the lake.

146 Words
@LurchMunster

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Another story idea, triggered by Angela Goff’s Visual Dare, Week 110. Please read the other entries in this week’s Visual Dare challenge. Be amazed at the magic people can put into 150 words or less.

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#FlashMobWrites 1×26 : Baby Was The Devil

I was watching the rain fall from the gray sheet of clouds in the sky. There were no gaps, no details, no distinction between clouds; just a long sheet of gray hanging in the sky as far as I could see.

The mountain was my escape, my release, the place my soul breathed and my heart beat. I scaled it every chance I got, stood on its peak, looked at the world, the trees, the clouds, the sky. It was my home. My secret place. My haven.

“You have 24 hours. We’ll see you when you return.” 24 hours of freedom from the violence, the destruction, the death. A single day of escape, of life, of remembering. For me, that meant a trip to the mountain. That mean a chance to feel the air flow through my fingers and across my palms. To feel myself breathe, my lungs expanding and contracting. To feel the ground beneath my feet. To remember the gift of being alive, and how precious, how priceless that gift was.

I held my hands before me, palms to the sky, closed my eyes, and felt the rain as it fell.

There was no forgiveness for me. No plans, no dreams, no hopes. Tomorrow would bring the truth back to my life. Tomorrow I’d don my armor again, and walk through the darkness of the world. Tomorrow I’d once more be part of the solution to the problems people couldn’t solve by peaceful means.

As the rain fell, buried memories floated to the surface of my mind. It had been a decade since Cynthia had died. All I remembered was searing pain, agony, as if my beating heart got ripped from chest. The day I learned of her death was the day I lost my ability to love. I had not cared for anyone since.

Three years later, I died. I took a katana, razor-sharp, and tracked down the man who took Cynthia from my world. He’d raped her. Violated her. Abused her. And got away with it. He was rich. She was nobody.

I hacked him to bits with the katana. I lost count of how many times the blade sliced into his body. That was the deal. I kill the man who took the only person I ever loved from my life, and instead of jail for murder, I became an Armor.

I left a suicide note and the katana with his remains, took my car, drove too fast on a mountain road, didn’t make that turn, and sailed, car and all, into the abyss. They found some of the car’s remains. They never found any of me.

As the rain fell, I wondered my heart would ever feel anything again. I knew the truth. I was Armor 17. My heart was on its own. I could feel the rain, the breeze. All the things a body feels, physically.

Nothing else mattered.

Except the violence.

486 Words
@LurchMunster

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This is my entry into #FlashMobWrites 1×26, hosted by Ruth Long and Cara Michaels. Please, go read all the stories in for #FlashMobWrites 1×22. You might find something you like. But if you don’t read them, how will you ever know?

#MWBB 3.13 : Call Me Satan

The Old Dominion University football game had not gone well for the home team. ODU lost by three touchdowns. If that wasn’t enough, their season became a lost cause when their quarterback got sacked, and wound up with a separated shoulder, and their best wide receiver went down with a torn ACL.

I sighed, “Gonna be a rough night.” I had the heads up display run pictures of 31 girlfriends and wives across the screen. I could have had the system pick one by random number, or I could have picked by closest to the social security number of the dead person I supposedly was, or the one matching the day of the month.

I looked at the eyes of each picture. One set caught my attention, “There’s my starting point.”

The armor plotted the shortest path to her residence. I didn’t bother with her name. According to the Norfolk Police Department’s computer records she was a domestic violence victim. That’s all I needed to know.

The car was waiting where I’d left it, in the parking lot, surrounded by countless others. It looked normal, like an old, cheap Toyota. The door would only open for me, and even then, only when my hand pulled the handle, and only if my hand still had a pulse. If someone borrowed my hand, the door wouldn’t open.

The computers managed the car’s audio system so it sounded like an old, cheap Toyota. I drove the car to the home of the victim, parked on the street a block away, and waited until I saw his car. Once he’d driven past, I exited my car, and walked into the shadows beside one of the buildings which lined the street. “Activate.”

I walked out of the shadows, knowing no one could see me, no one could hear me, my breathing, my footsteps, my pulse, were all silenced by the armor.

She lived in a one bedroom apartment on the third floor. The lights in the stairway, and hall were eyeball searing bright. “Security by illumination.” I waved at the video cameras in the hallway as I walked toward the victim’s apartment, then giggled at my joke. The video cameras couldn’t detect the armor. I could have stood in front of the camera and danced a jig, and no one would have known.

Of course, someone might wonder how an apartment door opened and closed by itself, but that wasn’t my problem. I stopped at the door, and used the sensors to see the apartments contents. The victim was prone on the apartment floor, the sensors recorded her physical condition. He’d struck her several times, according to the heat signature, her pulse, and blood flow. “Her condition?”

“Recommend requesting medical assistance.”

“Place the call.”

The armor called 911, reported our address, and requested medical assistance for the victim.

I didn’t bother opening the door. I went through it. No bruises for me, the armor took the beating. The male raced toward the door, then stopped when he realized no one was there. I kicked him in the groin, hard enough to lift him off the floor. He formed a little ball on the floor, so I rolled him into the nearest wall. By the time I finished, I’d added a concussion, three broken ribs, a separated shoulder, a broken arm, and four broken fingers on his right hand, to his list of injuries.

The armor reported the male was in a great deal of pain, but not at risk of death.

You can call me Satan. Call me evil. Call me violent, heartless, soulless, uncivilized. Call me whatever you want. I don’t care. I was there to fix things. Things the law, reason, the courts, the police, and society weren’t able to fix.

Invisible, I whispered in the male’s ear, “I’m Armor 17. I am the violence. And I’m watching you.”

When the medical assistance for the victim arrived, I walked away, back into the shadows of the building I’d started my walk from. “Off.” I walked out of the shadows, got into my car, and drove off, knowing there would be more violence in the days ahead.

Much more violence.

693 Words
@LurchMunster

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And so goes year 3, week 13 (Week 3.13) of Jeff Tsuruoka‘s Mid-Week Blues-Buster flash fiction challenge. This week the prompt is the song, “Call Me Satan” by Omnia. Please, go read the other stories in this week’s challenge.

#MidweekMusings 1×14 : Way Down We Go

“If Heaven and Hell exist, if God and Satan exist, then I know I am going to burn for the life I’ve lead, the things I’ve done, and what I will do before my time ends. Down is where we’re going. Way down.”

Carson O’Leary’s head rested on his desk, leaking blood and brains on the expensive hardwood. I’d shot him, killed him dead, in cold blood, eye-to-eye. “Nice to know I’ll see you there.” I left the same way I’d arrived. I waited for the door to open, and walked through. Unseen. Undetectable.

I am Armor 17. And O’Leary deserved far more than death.

The trail started in Peru, in the mountains East of Cedropampa, with a cell of the Shining Path. The cell received a special arms shipment from a man named Rafael Smith. Rafael received the four cases of AR-15 rifles from a shipping company in Bonaire. “Thor Shipping. Not even the worst storm can stop us.” Great saying. Always made me smile.

Thor Shipping received the cases from Amos Black’s Merchandise in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, where everything and everyone was going bankrupt, and you took money where you could find it. Amos Black’s received the cases from a couple of cigarette boats that headed south from Miami, through tourist stops in The Bahamas, Turks and Caico, and The Dominican Republic.

The cases were packed on the cigarettes in Miami at 0300 hours on a Sunday morning. A Ryder truck dropped them off. That truck picked up the guns near Carrizo Springs, Texas. Several Mexican Police near Piedras Negras, Mexico borrowed the guns from the evidence lockers of the police station.

Everyone along the way got paid. The police officers made enough cash to pay the ransom for their daughters. That cash came from a man named Thomas Champlain. Champlain got orders from a burner cell phone he received in the mail, from the US Postal Service, in Del Rio, Texas. A man named Sal Houston mailed the phone from Froid, Montana. Sal received orders to mail the phone, with instructions for its use, from a letter mailed from a post office box in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania.

An administrative assistant named Cynthia Armstrong, mailed the instructions. She’d received a phone call from Kevin Holmes, in New York, New York, who’d received his instructions verbally from Carson O’Leary’s best friend, Owen Clark.

The money from the sale of the arms followed a reverse trail, ending at Carson O’Leary’s bank.

I was Armor. For us, there is no law. I followed the trail, verified who did what, who played what part. I documented everything with photographs on old-fashioned film. Film still worked in the US legal system. It couldn’t be faked as easily as digital images could. Of course I remained invisible, undetectable, contained in my armor during the entire search. I looked over Owen Clark’s shoulder as Carson O’Leary as he gave Kevin the orders about the guns. I watched Owen tell Kevin Holmes what to do, then watched Kevin call Cynthia Armstrong. I watched Cynthia write and mail the instructions to Sal Houston, and Sal place the order for the guns. I traced each step of the deal, from top to bottom. I did it twice, to make certain I knew every player involved.

Carson O’Leary was the head of the snake. To kill the snake, start with the head.

I watched him sit at his desk, smoking Cuban cigars all afternoon. I watched him fuck his secretary, who hated it, but liked the pay. I watched him plan his trip out that night, to the golf club, where two girl caddies would take care of him.

When he got ready to leave, I disengaged the armor’s cloak, and suddenly popped into existence. I can’t imagine what he thought, looking at a human shaped hole in the universe. The armor wasn’t black. It had no color. It reflected no light, like a black hole. And then, I spoke, and he got angry.

“Carson O’Leary. You’re guilty of arms shipments to Shining Path rebels in Peru. I also have evidence you’ve shipped arms to drug cartel units in Mexico, arranged the kidnapping for ransom, of multiple Mexican police officers as part of your weapons shipment process.”

“Who are you? What are you doing in my office!” He pounded on the alarm beneath his desk. “You’ve got some nerve coming here!”

I didn’t respond to his comments. I placed a packet of pictures on his desk, sealed in a brown, manilla envelope.

“What’s that?”

“You’re going down, Carson.” I shot him. In the face. “We’ll meet again, in Hell.”

It only took 20 seconds for the security forces of the bank to arrive at his office. The door swung open, and I calmly walked out, past four armed guards, and Carson O’Leary’s secretary.

All hell broke loose, of course. After all, the bank president’s brains were leaking out of his face on to his desk, and no one knew who killed him, or how. And then, there was the envelope full of pictures, which the police happily took into custody.

Another day on the job. Another dead body. Of course I still had to take out the rest of the players in the chain. I’d spare the Mexican officers, it wasn’t really their fault.

“It’s what I do. I’m Armor 17. I am the violence.”

892 Words
@LurchMunster

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For week 1×14 of #MidweekMusings, a flash fiction adventure hosted by #FlashMobWrites (Ruth Long and Cara Michaels). Please, go read all the stories for this week’s prompt.

#VisDare 108 : I See The Violence

#VisDare 108 Image – Photo Source

My innocence died when I was a boy, and saw my father punch my mother in the face the second time. My sorrow was born when the prettiest girl in high school couldn’t live with the shame of three football players having raped her, so she took an entire bottle of sleeping pills one night, and never woke up. My rage ignited in college, when the only girl I ever loved got shot by a guy with a gun because she wouldn’t sleep with him.

I saw the violence in life as I grew up.

I see the violence in life now.

Now, I answer that violence.

I have no name. I’m officially, legally dead. I can show you where I’m buried. Mother cried as they buried me.

I am Armor 17, one of many. An invisible, lawless, untraceable weapon. I am the violence, and these are my stories.

148 Words
@LurchMunster

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Another story I pieced together for Angela Goff’s Visual Dare, Week 108. Time to let a hidden demon out of me. Please read the other entries in this week’s Visual Dare challenge. Be amazed at the magic people can put into 150 words or less.

#MidweekMusings 1×13 : Freedom

I sat in my recliner, watching the TV. Some stupid show about how aliens had visited Earth in the past, and shared science and technology with us, and that’s how we started advancing as humans. I’m sure it all made sense to some people, but to me, it was flat silly.

As I watched, I thought about everything. My job. My art. My life. I was old enough, the kids had grown up, and left the house. I wasn’t sure if I was proud of them standing on their own, as a sign I’d been a successful parent. Or if I was sad at the struggles they faced daily, a sign of my failures as a parent. It was one of those questions you ask yourself, but can never find an answer too. Always, you wonder how you did, and what that means about you, what that says about you.

I doodled. I did. I drew things on paper. Stupid things. Fairies with butterfly wings, bugs with big eyes and stupid grins. I even had this idea for a bug civilization, where big bugs were busses, with advertisements on the sides, and windows, filled with little bugs looking out. And bug traffic everywhere, with bug street races, and bug old people. I know. Silly, right? It wasn’t a serious thing, just something I did, something fun.

I must have had three dozen notebooks of doodles, sketches, drawings. It was a hobby for me. I’d never taken it seriously, never thought of selling any of my sketches. Hell, I’d never thought of finishing any of them, cleaning them up, making them worth looking at.

I doodled. That’s what it was. Something fun, something to pass the time, something to help me relax. It wasn’t real, after all, I wasn’t doing that for a living.

What I did for a living was work. Full time, like a grown up’s supposed to. Work a full-time job, be responsible, be grown up, be professional. All that stuff you learn in school. That’s what school was for, wasn’t it? You went to school to learn how to get a job, and earn a living. A decent living. Where you could buy a house, get married, have a family, send the kids to college. So they could do the same thing.

I suppose my work defined me. Or, you know, maybe I let my work define me. I let what I did at work define me. That old question, “And what do you do for a living?”

I worked. I worked for a good company. They paid me well, gave me medical insurance, two weeks of vacation every year, five days of sick leave if I needed them. It was good money, a good deal. We’d done well with my work, we had cars (three of them), a roomy house, and all the trappings. TVs everywhere, computers, smartphones. All that crap.

My reflection in the TV screen spoke volumes when I noticed it. And I tried not to notice it. The tubby, balding white guy sitting on his lazy ass, drinking a zillion calorie soda, eating peanut butter fudge cookies, watching some stupid TV show in the middle of the night. The old white guy at the end of his life.

I didn’t want to see that, didn’t like my reflection in the TV screen. I grabbed the remote, and started surfing the channels, mindlessly clicking through them, until I stopped at the music video channels. I figured I’d watch some of the women sing. You know, one of two of the girl bands, where they dress in skin-tight outfits, with barely present skirts, and push up tops that make their boobs look bigger than they are. And they shimmy their hips, and shake their boobs lots while they sing and dance around. That was always fun to watch, right?

But that night, it wasn’t. I kept thinking how I was probably older than their parents were, or at least as old as their parents. About how my daughter might be older than the girls in the group. How those girls dressed up, and shook it, for money. How they took advantage of the truth of men spending money to watch them, and have fantasies about them.

Hell, I hadn’t had any sex with anyone in ages. I couldn’t remember the last time I had, and it didn’t matter. I wasn’t really interested in that anymore. I was too tired, too old. I’d outgrown it, I supposed. But, it was everywhere on that music channel. The ads between the videos were for women’s sexy underwear, bras and panties, always lacy. And the models had big tits, and big asses. The kind of woman a twenty something guy wants to get naked with.

All those reminded me of was my daughter being older than the models.

I changed channels, and stopped at one where a guy in jeans was singing. Lots of scene changes, of course, it was a music video. But he was singing something about freedom. And that got me thinking.

Yeah, my reflection was still there, in the TV screen. My fat, lazy ass was still there, collecting dust. Hell, if I was a car, I’d have been a Junker in the back field somewhere, with weeds growing out of my front end, where my hood was gone, and the engine too.

That’s when I kept hearing that damn song echo in my head. That word, freedom.

I started drawing that night. And for once I finished a picture. Maybe that was where I’d find the freedom the guy in the song kept singing about. And that got me thinking. And thinking would change everything.

950 words
@LurchMunster

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For week 1×13 of #MidweekMusings, a flash fiction adventure hosted by #FlashMobWrites (Ruth Long and Cara Michaels). Please, go read all the stories for this week’s prompt.

#FlashMobWrites 1×23 : Carrion Flowers

I turn the volume up and listen,
As the music screams inside my head,
“Criminal
The Suffering
It makes me think like a
Criminal
When we’re alone.”

And I am alone.
I’m always alone.
I walk, in silence.
One mile down.
Two to go.
I embrace my isolation.
It’s all I truly have.

Gray clouds fill the sky.
There is anger in them.
Bottled up.
Trapped.
Seeking a way out.
An escape.
Release.

I can taste the water in the air.
Feel it on my skin.
Thick.
Clinging.
It would push most people indoors.
Not me.

I feel the grin on my face.
The gleam in my eyes.
“Bring it!
Bring the pain!”

The music changes,
Then changes again,
And again.
Never ending.
I hear the words once more.
I more than hear them.
I feel them.

“This is where I redeem myself
When I show that I’m not blind.
Can’t follow the cattle people.
Not one of the Kine.”
The beat,
The rhythm,
Drives each step.

Who cares how many steps.
Who cares how long it takes.
Who cares what I have to do.
What the day brings.
Work.
Life.
It all falls away.

And I feel.
Escape.

The second mile falls.
With it, the damage in my shoulder
Begins to talk to me.
Another would take the five-pound weight
Hanging on his wrist
Off.

I’m not another.
I hold on to the pain.
I know what it means.
Why it’s there.
And I know,
Like the walk.
The pain is all I have.

I focus on the music,
The rhythm,
The beat.
Walk to the beat.
To the beat.
To the beat.

I hold on to the pain.
Knowing the truth.
It won’t kill me.
Unless I let it.

And come the next day,
As I walk once more,
That pain will be gone.
All that will remain is a memory
Of what it took,
What I had to endure,
To survive.

In a life
On a world
I never made.

333 Words
@LurchMunster

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This is my entry into #FlashMobWrites 1×23, hosted by Ruth Long and Cara Michaels. Please, go read all the stories in for #FlashMobWrites 1×23. You might find something you like. But if you don’t read them, how will you ever know?