#ThursThreads Week 498 : He Spoke The Truth

I could see Frank was disturbed. “You OK with everything?” It was polite to ask, but I knew he wasn’t OK.

Frank never looked up from where he was staring at the space between his feet, at the floor of the metro car. “No.”

“What’s up?” I tried to sound positive, something that’s not easy to do after you had to shoot someone in the back of the head while they were blindfolded, and on their knees. “You thinking about the job?”

He still didn’t look up. “He spoke the truth, you know.”

“Yeah, Frank. I know. So do the people who sent us to take care of him.” I patted him on the shoulder. “He spoke the truth, and that’s why they had to get rid of him.”

“It’s not right.”

“Frank. It’s a bit late to worry about right and wrong. It’s just a job. It’s what we do. We take orders, and we follow them. That’s all.” I had to sigh. I already knew Frank wasn’t going to be around long. A guilty conscience was a death sentence in our line of work.

“Let’s get you home, Frank. So you can have a stiff drink, and sleep it off.”

I’d do what I could to keep him in line, but sooner or later, he’d try to get out of the business. No one got out of the business. One in, it was for life.

“It’s just a job, Frank. That’s all. Just a job.”

247 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 498 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

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#ThursThreads Week 492 : Any Volunteers To Put Him Out Of His Misery?

There I was, standing in my backyard, reciprocating saw with a nine inch wood cutting blade in my hands. I’d plugged it into the 200 foot long extension cord that ran from the house.

It started 27 years ago, when the tree sprouted from the ground. She told me not to cut it. “Wait and see what it does.” Six months later, she declared it was a mimosa tree, and she liked it, and we were going to let it grow.

The years went by, and it grew like a weed. Must have reached 30 feet tall. Had three main branches from the trunk, and those had several branches of their own. For the first twenty years, it grew, and each year, it leafed out, and it filled the back yard with pink mimosa flowers, and hundreds of seed pods.

Until the year it stopped. That’s it. It just stopped. No leaves. No flowers. No seed pods. Nothing. The leaves all fell off for the winter, and they never came back.

I left it alone for years, because she’d told me not to cut it down all those years ago. But, finally, she decided it was dead, and needed to go.

Which was why I was standing there. Looking at that dead tree. And why I looked at the saw in my hands, and asked, “Any volunteers to put him out of his misery?”

The saw happily ripped that dead tree down.

243 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 492 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 491 : They’d Become Like Stone

“Their hearts. They’d become like stone.” It was depressing to admit that, though it was true. “Can you understand why? Or at least partially why?”

My daughter shook her head, “No. I can’t. I can’t understand why anyone would do that. Turn their hearts to stone. It’s like they’re not alive anymore.”

“It’s their response to confusion. To complexity. To the feeling they have no control over anything.”

I could see the rage in her eyes, the fire that burned in her blood. The same fire I had. “Then explain their stupidity!”

“I can’t explain it all. It’s too broad, too deep. But I can hint at it. I can illustrate some of what I’ve learned of them, and the way they live in lies, believing they live in the truth, no longer knowing one from the other.”

She glared at me.

“Start with this news headline. ‘A Massive 8-year effort finds that much cancer research can’t be replicated.’”

She didn’t say anything.

“You know how people interpret that. The simple way. Without reading beyond the headline, simply declaring cancer research is useless.” I wondered if she understood, or if her anger had overwhelmed her ability to hear me, “They never get to the part that explains the complexities of the research, and how unique humans are. You can’t repeat specific, detailed tests with different starting points.” I was certain she was too angry to understand. “They’re two different tests.”

She did respond. “People are stupid.” I already knew that.

250 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 491 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 487 : I Can’t Abandon Them.

After my shower, and my pain pills, I sat down at the kitchen table, and Deborah put a plate of bacon, scrambled eggs, toast with jelly, and a glass of straight whiskey in front of me. “You need it.” She rested her hand on my shoulder, “Harvey. It’s not your fault, what happened to me.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It’s not your fault I’m broken inside.”

I tried to eat something. Failed. Grabbed the whiskey, downed it, trying to wash away everything I felt. Failed. Again.

“You got me out.”

“I wasn’t soon enough.”

“You got me out.”

I poked at the eggs with my fork. “Is she broken already?”

Deborah didn’t say a word.

“I’m already too late again, aren’t I.”

“Please, Harvey. Eat something.”

I shoveled in a bite of the eggs, then a slice of the bacon. Then, I looked at her.

“You already know. Why are you asking me?” Sometimes, I swear she could look right through me, straight to my soul. “You already know.”

“Sometimes, I think I have enough scars, and maybe I should stop. Forget everything. Go somewhere, and drink myself dead.”

Those empty eyes she had. Me knowing she couldn’t care about anyone, or anything, that she was empty inside, as she looked through me. Her empathy reading me like a book. “You won’t.”

“I won’t.” I finished the eggs. “I can’t abandon them. Other hidden ones.” I even tried to smile, “Her.”

“You’ll save her, Harvey. Like you saved me.”

249 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 487 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 485 : That’s Not Why I’m Here.

I started with the first thing on the list, “Figure out what I do know.” That took me back to where the building had been. They’d been fast, it was already nothing but a concrete slab on the ground, blocked off by a cheap chain link fence, the kind with posts stuck into cinder blocks filled with concrete, and a razor wire attachment that ran along its top.

“No entry permitted, go away.” I shook my head. “Go away? That’s not why I’m here.”

I took out my cell phone, and added the zoom lens attachment. It worked really well for looking where I wasn’t allowed to go. Brought such places right up close. I looked over the walls of the adjacent buildings. I looked at the concrete slab that was left.

“What do I know?” I set the phone to record.

“I knew this building was important. I knew something was going to happen at this building. Why this building?”

That’s when I started to break that first list item into smaller items.

1a. Who owned the building?
1b. Did anyone want the building gone?
1c. Did that anyone make an offer for the building?
1d. Did the owner say no?

From those questions, I knew why this building. I didn’t know who. But I knew, finding out who owned it, and who made the offer, would fill in more details. And might well answer item 2 on my list, “Figure out what I don’t know.”

247 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 485 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Looks like Harvey and Deborah have returned. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 468 : It Takes Me Back

The streets were always swarming with traffic. Honking horns, racing engines, screaming tires, and all the rest. No one walked. Walking got you killed. Yet, there I was, walking. One block this way, three blocks that way, then a block back on the other side of the street.

It was all I could do to find her, the one who was calling for help. I didn’t have a name, or a description. Didn’t know her size, race, hair color. I didn’t know anything, except she was one of the hidden.

Like me.

The only way I had to find her was to sleep, and hope I found her in a dream, or to walk everywhere, and hope I  wound up where she needed me to be. It was the same way I’d found Deborah, and so many others. Some strange, hidden ability to know where to be, where to go, to help someone who needed help.

“It takes me back to think about it.” And it did. Back to my past, like the first time I wound up somewhere I needed to be. I didn’t know it was a gift, then. Didn’t know I was one of the hidden. I’d done what felt right, followed my instincts, let my emotions guide me. And I wound up finding someone who’d been shot, and dumped in an alley, hidden from sight, and left there to die.

That was the first time I’d helped someone.

242 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 468 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. The prompt told me to write this. It didn’t ask. It ordered. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 464 : And I Can’t Do That

Deborah was true to her word, like always. After I banged on my piano keys for a while, my head started to clear, and I started doing the math about what happened. “Maybe it wasn’t an electromagnetic field.”

“It wasn’t,” she sat in her chair, next to my piano, with my dinner on a tray in her lap. “It was one of us. One of the hidden.”

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t need to. She was an empath, a complete empath, one of the hidden herself. She knew everything I felt, and used that to piece together a lot of what I thought. She handed me the tray of food.

After I half emptied the can of soda she’d got me, I picked up the sandwich, looked at it, then at her. “One of us, huh?”

She nodded, “I felt so afraid. So desperate.”

“We need to find them, don’t we. Stop them before they do this again, and maybe kill someone.”

“No. You need to,” I could count, on one hand, how many times she’d said no to me, and have fingers left. “She needs help. And I can’t do that.”

“She?”

Deborah had one of those looks that said, “Yes,” and at the same time told me she was done talking about it. “How did you know which building to be in?”

She knew I couldn’t answer, that it was hidden, even from me. Something I felt, but never understood. “She’s calling for help, isn’t she.”

“Yes.”

250 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 464 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. The prompt told me to write this. It didn’t ask. It ordered. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 460 : What Did You Want Him To Do?

“He was too limited to figure out the truth, you know that.”

I shuffled my feet, “Apparently.”

“I told you to take no actions. Let me handle it.”

I nodded, “Yeah, you did.”

“So you acted anyway.”

I shrugged.

“What did you want him to do?”

“You know damn well what I wanted him to do. I wanted him to learn. To wake the fuck up. To see that reality doesn’t work in the black and white way he thinks it does.” I was angry. I’d grown tired of the insanity of people, of their inability to accept the truth, their insistence on believing what they wanted to believe.

“He’s not grown up enough to understand.”

“Maybe we should just kill his stupid ass, and make the world a better place!” I was really angry.

“You’d commit murder of another because they are trapped emotionally, and mentally, in a maze they can’t even see?”

I looked at the picture of the doctor I’d all but killed. “Apparently.”

I sighed, and kicked the ground, “I know. I’m no more grown up than he is.”

“You have made a mistake. They happen. Learn from the experience.”

I nodded. “I should undo the damage, shouldn’t I?”

“I will undo the damage. You will resume your studies on Earth.”

That was better than I’d  expected. After all, injecting a biological weapon into a human to demonstrate to them that chronic pain is real, by leaving them in chronic, permanent pain, was judging someone else.

250 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 460 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. The prompt told me to write this. It didn’t ask. It ordered. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 459 : Can You Give Me An Example?

Once the police learned I was conscious, of course they had questions, mostly about, “Why were you there? What were you looking for? Did you find an explosive device?” The idiots kept asking that same set of questions, endlessly, like some robocall message on an answering machine that repeated all day, every day.

“She had a feeling.” I kept explaining that. They kept ignoring that.

After an hour of answering the same questions over and over again, they finally shut up. That’s when Deborah spoke, “You guys don’t know what happened, do you.”

“A building got bombed. You two were inside. Maybe you set the bomb up, and didn’t make it out.”

I’d have laughed, but laughing hurt too much right then.

She’d laughed in their faces. “It wasn’t a bomb.” She nodded to me. It was my turn to speak.

“It was a wall of air. Crushed the entire front of the building. No damage to anything around it. Just the building.”

“Explain to us how that works. Can you give me an example?”

“Works like crushing a can with your foot.”

“Seriously? Crushing a building with air?”

Everybody looked at Deborah. They knew she felt things, sensed things, they couldn’t. I did what I always did. Protected her. “Yeah. Air. Probably used an electromagnetic field to make it.”

They left, with the always expected, “We’ll be watching you. Don’t leave town.”

“I see they’re as silly as they always have been.”

Deborah nodded, “Some things never change.”

249 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 459 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. And I have no clue what the heck is writing itself. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 457 : Did You Feel It?

“Did you feel it?”

I looked at Deborah and shook my head, “There you go again. Asking me if I felt something that’s invisible, not the wind, not the air pressure, not the temperature, not the ground shaking.” I shook my head, “I didn’t feel a damn thing, and you know it.”

“I…”

I cut her off. “You know I have you around to feel all the stuff I can’t. ‘Cause I can’t ever feel it.”

“I know.”

“Crap.” I’d have hugged her, and told her I was sorry, but I knew it wasn’t that time, or we didn’t have that kind of time. “What’s coming?” I did the simplest thing I could, and put my hand on top of hers. “What do we need to get ready for?”

She was quiet. Too quiet. I knew from her eyes, and the way her jaw was clenched, she was thinking, trying to figure something out. “This is new.”

“Crap may be too weak of a word?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never felt this.”

There were times I wished I was an empath, and could feel what she felt. But I knew, if she couldn’t identify what it was, didn’t know what it was, it couldn’t be good.

“I’m not taking any chances.” I stood up, and started to the door, dragging her with me. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Too late! It’s here!”

The sky went black, the building shook, the windows exploded, the wind screamed.

I woke up days later.

250 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 457 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Trying to break the ice that’s encased my writing. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.