The inspiration:
A story:
Shadow always got his older brother’s hand-me-downs. He was second in being served dinner. Brother, summer baby, got the lavish birthday parties while Shadow, born 12/26, got combo gifts. Brother got a new car at 16, which he took to University, while Shadow drove mom’s gasping Rambler to junior college.
Then Brother swept away and married the girl Shadow had been dating.
The years of seething secondhood flooded through his clenched teeth at a pale and trembling Brother on the other side of Shadow’s revolver.
“Now, at least, I’ll be first at something!” Shadow shouted and pulled the trigger.
Click.
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Now, your turn.
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Some excellent stories in the comments plus Smitty, Jimmy and Gator.
“A big lunk.” That’s what they called him. A little too tall, socially awkward, and shy. The farm boy, living in the burbs now, now that the ranch had gone under, sold to a developer to be parceled up into designer homes on – ironically — horse-acre lots.
“Hayseed.” Another popular one. He didn’t have a use for a lot of words. He mostly just kept to himself, another face in the halls.
But not to her. She saw beyond the faded jeans and care-worn flannels. “My cowboy,” she would whisper, during their tip-toe kisses.
That one he didn’t mind at all.
“Oh my goodness i shot him,” said Shadow, to nobody in particular. He dropped the gun and looked at it worriedly.
He felt panicky and slightly nauseous.
“This is how people get in trouble,” he thought to himself in a flash of insight. “They panic….
ok don’t panic don’t panic don’t panic.”
He picked the gun up and put it in the adorable little gridit case a friend had sent him earlier that week.
It had all of what he called his “necessaries” in it, and he was thinking about getting another one maybe.
Shadow had a lot of necessaries.
Steve B captured what I thought when I saw the picture, as far as what was happening.
Big Brother didn’t waste time berating Shadow for thinking he could put one bullet in the chamber of an uncocked revolver, directly under the hammer, and shoot someone with it.
Instead he lashed out, took the gun from his astonished little brother, and threw him down on the ground.
Neighbors had already dialed 911; the police found Big Brother sitting on his assailant, holding him down; the still unfired gun lay yards away on the grass where he’d thrown it. Both men were in tears.
“He’s off his meds again,” the older man told officers. “He needs to be institutionalized for his own safety.”
The police, though sympathetic, had few options.
[…] have to say, this was slightly more challenging by using Darleen Click’s image. Her story was really dark, and so that motivated me to do a more light-hearted and uplifting one. […]
Greetings: (and in violation of what you seem to hold sacred)
Back in the Bronx of my youth, “Cons” were the “sneakers” of choice for the basketball afficionados. They were about three times as expensive as the more ordinary sneakers like “Keds” and competed against “Spauldings” (better for the hardwoods) and “Pro Keds”.
When I decided to commit my body and soul to basketball, the second hurdle I had to get over was getting a pair of Cons. My mother, our family’s financial comptroller, was having none of it based on the cost factor. I worked on my father for about two weeks, even bringing him down to the schoolyard to let him see that all the good players wore them. The only commitment I could get from him was a “We’ll see.”
That night, at dinner, we were all recapping the day’s events. I offered that father had come down to the schoolyard to watch me play basketball and that I was the only player without Cons. My mother immediately went into speech suppression mode and said that they were too expensive and that my Keds would do just fine.
My father interrupted our meal by putting down his utensils and addressing my mother, “You know, Mary, seeing the boy play, I’m thinking he’s going to need the best equipment for him to succeed.”
The next Saturday, my father and I got my Cons.
[…] Fiction picked up this week from Darleen at protein wisdom and Gator from […]
” This is the picture? ”
” Yes. ”
“How did you even take that? ”
” I dropped the camera in shock when the pain hit. ”
” That’s like some circus freak stuff right there. Good Lord. ”
” It hurt real bad. I expect my grand kids will feel it if I ever have any. ”
” That looks like some Chuck Norris level pain.”
” My pelvis was totally destroyed. I couldn’t even fall over. ”
“And that’s when you bought the floating chair? ”
” That’s an illusion there are 3d tires under the rim . ”
” 3d tires? ”
” Spherical. Like ball bearings with grippy rubber coating.”
” Damn. ”
” Good picture though. ”
” Uh huh. “
It’s a good thing that wasn’t a triple action revolver. With that shoulder thing that goes up.
And a bayonet lug. Everyone for blocks around would have been killed if it had a bayonet lug, bullets or no bullets.
Greetings, McGehee: ( @ May 23, 2015 at 6:40 am )
Again with the bayonets ??? Well here’s your medicine.
It was back during my military daze that I had my first attack of bayonetophobia. When our Drill Sergeants would force march us draftees out to the bayonet training area, have us affix a not very long knifey-looking thingy to the business end of a perfectly good shooting iron, and then run us full-speed at a bunch of used tires into which we were to stick the pointy end of the aforementioned underdeveloped knifey thingy all the while shouting at the top of our already overworked lungs, “The purpose of the bayonet is to kill”, I couldn’t help but think that these almost-adult supervisors of ours were out of their ever loving one-track minds. So, being a fairly autonomous Private from the Bronx of the day, I decided to offer the nearest individual whose sleeves had more stripes that mine ever would, my take on our current endeavor. So, I says, “Hey Sargey baby, how’s about we change our explication to something along the lines of, “The purpose of the bayonet is to remind all of us to bring plenty of ammo.” ? “Wouldn’t that be less labor intensive and saving all that carbon dioxide that we would be exhaling would probably give us a headstart on that global warming problem that will be showing up in about 30 years ?”
Well, it turns out that the aforementioned Sargey baby was uninterested in either the global environment or my own personal mental health. Thus, my bayonetophobia took hold of every fiber of my being (and upon my return to civilian life, it morphed into the even more crippling kitchenophbia, but that’s a bit off-topic if you know what I mean). Things progressed steadily downhill from there, especially when I started my all-expense-paid vacation (they told me) tour of somewhat sunny Southeast Asia where there were, in lieu of cabana boys, an awful lot of misguided miscreants with, instead of drink trays, these gunny looking thingies with perpetually attached bayonety thingies that still haunt me to this day (and especially when I’m wanted on the kitchen). It was just so much longer than ours, that, if it wasn’t for my already established phobia, it would certainly have given me a severe case of bayonet-envy. It was way long, with a tapered triangular shaft and instead of ending in a pointy point, it ended in a tip like a regular screwdriver. (Those little devils were multitasking when Bill Gates was not yet a gleam in his father’s eye.)
So, things were looking kind of grim for my mother’s favorite and only son. But then, one day not long after, a (pre-DADT) man came into my life to lead me through and out of the darkness. He was long and tall, much like my self, and always spoke the truth, not so much like myself. All his sleeves were be-striped. His first name was Platoon and his last name was Sergeant and thus he spaketh unto me, “The basic combat load is 22 magazines; we hump 29.”
You should know by now that my name and avatar on a comment are all the trigger warning anybody needs. ;-)
True dat — but nobody with stripes is gonna let you tell the enemy a state secret.
“Her name is Donna.”
Steve-o (that is what he was called back then, and thought of himself in that way as he looked into his much younger face) continued to stare, amusedly, at his older face, wanting to believe that the person who snuck into his room was really himself from 2015. At age 10, however, he was smart enough to know better. At least, he thought so.
“Tell me how you got here again?” Steve-o said
“As I already said – ” and Steve thought, again, how getting the Adderall prescription would really improve his focus in high school – “you’re good at math and study engineering in college. Your roommate is in the physics department studying quantum mechanics and he has a theory for time travel. He asks me – us, really – to help build a device. It fucking works, kid.
You need to find Donna, and make sure her dad does not hurt her again.”
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It’s late and 59 words over, so I presume at least a grade point will be deducted.
Hey, is “Click” part of the story, or your signature?
That reminds me.
I blame Donna.
[…] Steve B wrote an excellent story last time. I eagerly await what he’ll offer […]