New Story Day!

Hooray! Good news everyone! I have new short story to share with you. Isn't that exciting? Eh, maybe a little. I'm curious to see what you all think of this one. I had the idea for this story back when the Las Vegas shooting happened last October. The thought just kind of hit me like a slap in the face (as most strong ideas do), and I wondered What was going through that guys head at the time. So, the gears started to turn.

It wasn't until months after that I actually started writing the story, but it was always in the back of my head. I wanted it to be right. I don't know if it is, but it's complete. I finished it a couple weeks ago, and was just letting it settle before giving it a look through. So, I hope you all find it interesting and thought-provoking. Also, it doesn't have a title, so get over it.

            9:45AM, already 82 and sunny on that cloudless Thursday morning. Dozens and dozens of busy-bodies in their sundresses and business suits, buttoned shut despite the beating heat, make their way across the radiating cement to start their days brain-dead and sitting in a cubicle. Trapped in one, more like. Deafening sounds echo for many blocks-honking cabs, yelling pedestrians, sirens from god knows where-but from the thirty-fourth floor of the Grand Hollaway Hotel all Andy could hear was the gentle chirping of his friend, Polly, perched on the twiggy bamboo tree in the corner of his balcony.

            Andy liked Polly. He didn’t feed the small gull, but for some reason Polly always came around to check on him in the morning. Make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. Andy named him Polly after the third day of seeing him; he figured if the bird was going to stay around he might as well have a name. Also, because it made the bird seem more like a person when Andy spoke to him. Polly sat with the man, kept his opinions to himself, but would sometimes squawk when he needed to make his point. Polly always came around to Andy’s side of the argument eventually, Andy thought. Then, once the sun began its slide, he would fly off. Free and with no care in the world. Andy liked to watch his bird buddy flap away for a long as he thought of his upcoming plans.

            For the most part, Andy’s schedule was simple: wake up, room service breakfast, Irish coffee, then sitting on the hotel balcony and watching the suited zombies make their paths. This day was different than most for the out-of-work and out-of-weight 46-year-old. Andy was feeling more perturbed than his usual brooding self. He had come to this grand hotel half a week ago after losing his job. Twenty-two years with Target & Hunting Supplies (“Where customer satisfaction is our #1 priority!”) flushed down the swirling toilet water that is the American economy. Unfortunately, the suits were so worried with satisfying the customers that the employees were left out in the rain to turn the gears and keep the engine running.

            It was all bullshit, and he had wanted to quit for the last five years. That, or compile a gun with all the spare kits and parts that assembled and do something that most people would regret. Most people, but he’d bet all he had that every slave of labor had the same thoughts every single day.

Luckily for the employers (and potential victims), new gun laws and a rapid hiring of younger employees, Andy was let go from his position. He didn’t mind. He didn’t know what he would do for work, but he was happy to be gone.

            For now, Andy would let all that melt away as he relaxed on the padded chair of the spacious balcony with his less-than-talkative bird friend looking over the busy street-overpopulated with small-minded college degrees charging toward the slow death of capitalism that they’ve asked for all their lives.

            Andy took a cautious sip of his steaming coffee. He turned his ear toward the open glass door to hear the news playing on the TV inside. He leaned back and stared at Polly with shared annoyance. Jacqueline McCormick had a way of talking in that horrible, ear-cringing southern drawl that just made you want to jump from a fifty-story skyscraper. Maybe even a thirty-fourth. He had thought about it, but now was not the time. Still much to do before anything radical like that. He listened to Jacqueline as she spoke about the most recent presidential debate from the night before.

            Degenerates, Andy thought. Thought that way about most politicians. And these two jagoffs really took the cake in his recipe book. The first one; democratic, promised to raise minimum wage, and add some stronger gun laws. But, if this shmuck wasn’t the biggest pushover on the planet. That’s what bugged Andy the most about most democrats; always turning on to their backs at the first sign of anger. Everyone is included. Everyone is special. Everyone gets a damn trophy just for showing up. That kind of stuff makes people lazy, and gives them the mindset that they can get away with anything if they know how to beg for it.

            And, that second candidate. The Republican douchebag. It was in Andy’s own opinion (and the opinion of most everyone in the country) that this man was a lying, misogynistic, Nazi. But he was still filling up those football stadiums with loud and angry fans. Shouting on and on about immigration problems, global warming being a hoax, and making abortion illegal once and for all. That last one is what made Andy grind his teeth.

            Make abortion illegal. Sounds like a great idea. Let’s get a bunch of men in the government rounded up, and have them outvote their women colleagues (what few there are) to ban a practice that men can’t even participate in. That’s where Andy stood on the issue when forced to express his views. He couldn’t get pregnant, so it wasn’t his right, as a man, to have an opinion. If women decided one day that abortion should be illegal then there it is. But, until that day he would keep the snake between his legs out of it. The only straw he had was that no abortion meant more people, and that meant less space on this blue planet. The billions of people now are already doing a wonderful job burning our home to a crisp. Add another billion, and that’s just overkill in Andy’s mind.

            He took another sip from his beige mug and sat up. He grabbed the small paperback book lying open and face down while his thigh kept the page. Andy inspected the cover, Mein Kampf. He closed the book with one hand and smelt the sweet, musky waft of history as it blew onto his face. He set the book down on the small table beside his mug. He glanced at Polly, who was already giving him a quizzical stare. Andy could see that a defense needed to be made.

            “Mein Kampf,” he started, “I don’t know if you can read English, Pol, but either way… That’s what it says.” He leaned forward in his chair, but not too fast so he didn’t scare away his good pal. “It was written by Adolf Hitler. Well, not really, no… He spoke the words, and somebody else jotted them down. Y’see, Polly, the first half of the book is written down while Hitler was in prison back in his twenties. Before he became Hitler, I guess you could say.” Andy chuckled to himself a little at that. 

            Polly cocked his head to the side as if to say, “So, what’s the big deal, bud?”

“Hitler talks about his struggles growing up in a crumbling Germany. Too many poor, too little shits given from the corrupt officials. Stuff like that. Then he goes on about his move to Venice to pursue art, and failing, and then how he slowly learned about Europe’s overall hatred of Jews. Y’know Polly, Hitler didn’t hate Jews right up front. In fact, when he saw anti-Semitic posters on the walls or articles in the newspaper he’d throw it in the trash. It was everyone else in Venice that was racist; he just became used to the idea.

“Hitler was a smart guy, and a lot of people don’t realize that for some reason. Probably because we’re trained to think he was a mass-murdering lunatic, and I’m not saying he was a good guy. I’m just saying that people need to open their eyes a little wider and look through all the bullshit.” He chugged the remainder of his cold coffee. The liquor finally showed itself and stung his throat on the way down.

Polly lost interest when a butterfly landed on the small table beside the man. He made a sharp squawk at it.

            “Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that most of the people that do horrible things aren’t born with that much hatred in them. No, people are made that way. Back when they’re heads are still growing. Their brain is still malleable enough to be formed into something nasty and lifelong. A father with a stiff belt and a strong fist, or one too many cigarette burns singeing your skin. I remember back when I was maybe six or seven. My old man liked to drink and then beat me and my two older sisters.

Polly cocked his head again and made a look that said, “What’s a few beatings? My mother pushed me out of the nest when I was still learning how to fly.”

“It was just how our generation was raised. Some people can get over that stuff. Some can’t.”

“There was this one day, Polly, I got kicked out of school for hammering this other kid’s face in. Turned out to be the son of some city councilman or something. When I got home that bastard of a father grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me in real close. God, I can still remember the smell of cheap whiskey on his hot breath. Makes me want to puke even now. He pulled me in real close, almost nose to nose, and he said, “You think you’re a tough little shit don’t ya? Well, I got news for ya. You’re nothing but the shit on the bottom of God’s shoe, and you’ll always be nothing more. Our lot don’t do anything worth remembering. Not with all those greedy bastards running our lives every step of the way. All they want us to do is fuck like rabbits, stand in line, and keep our heads down. That’s the way of the world, boy. And believe me when I say that you do NOT want to get in their fucking way or they will end you.”  Then he threw me to the ground and beat me, and beat me, and beat me until I was coughing up blood. The last thing I heard before blacking out was his scruffy voice, “Stick to your guns, boy, but be smart enough to know where to aim.””

Polly’s head lowered and he squawked at the balding fat man.

Andy was staring at the blue sky, he stood up and glared at his feathered friend. “Yeah, well, what do you know anyway.” He made a small brushing gesture in Polly’s direction, and the bird recognized that. It’s what men do when it’s time to fuck off and leave, so he did just that. He unfurled his wings and took to the sky. Andy went up to the railing and watched just like he always did.

As Polly flew further from the hotel, Andy could only find him with his magnified scope. He followed Polly’s swooping path as he flew up, down, and around the other birds. Once Polly was finally too far off for even the scope, Andy moved to the building across the street. Eyeing it down floor after floor until he was at the street. He moved between the hurrying people. Keeping the white, circular reticle on each person for a second or two before moving to the next. His free hand gripped the cocking handle and pulled it back. His breathing slowed as the old training began coming back to him. Like riding a bike.

He slid from one target to another; choosing carefully. He didn’t have a specific type of person in mind. Maybe his father if he saw him. That’d be a lucky find. If that S.O.B. showed his ugly mug right now maybe Andy’s face wouldn’t be flashing across every news station. But, unfortunately, Andy’s father did not happen to be walking around the busy street at that time. In fact, Old Barry Phillips was sitting in his moth-eaten La-Z-Boy, passed out with a bottle of cheap whiskey dripping amber onto the rotting wood floor. Lucky in a way, that he decided to stick with his usual schedule and drink himself under the table.

Andy continued to float over the busy people below him. Hurrying to the bus, or to grab a taxi. Looking down at the mass media on their phones instead of looking up for the potential danger above them. Andy imagined himself, above the ignorant pigs trying to survive against all odds. He felt a little like God. High above the moving world. He imagined the big man looking down at the squirming ants as they destroyed what he had worked so hard to make. God knew there was one solution above all else. One quick fix that nobody would bat an eye at for very long. Andy got to be God today.

Andy’s index finger slid slowly up and down the smooth curve of the trigger. He thought about the different times when men tried to follow in God’s footsteps. The Euthanasia scientists; experimenting on and executing the disabled to ensure mankind only carried the best genes, the Nazi’s did the same experiments, and they even found some pretty good cures in the process, EO Wilson and his book Half Earth; explaining that half of the Earth’s land needs to be made into natural reserves to preserve the biodiversity. But, Andy didn’t have the time for Earth to heal itself, and Euthanasia had somewhat of the right idea, but that pesky little business of “human rights” got in the way and stopped them in their tracks. More pushovers and their endless “Everyone is Special” campaign.

For Andy, the only thing that can be done is simple. A total extermination of half the population. No racism, no prejudices. Just good old-fashioned randomness. The only option left that can’t be seen as being unfair. Nobody is safe from the flip of a coin. And Andy was ready to toss it up.

He took in a cold breath; let it fill his lungs and still his muscles. Finally, Andy settled his scope on a hunched over elderly woman struggling to just walk across the street. The old bag was far past useful to anyone. He exhaled slow and squeezed the trigger.

The first feeling wasn’t what he had expected. After years of rifle training in the army, Andy was familiar with the recoil after a shot is made. Only, what he felt wasn’t the punch near the shoulder, it was a sick pinching in his stomach. Like when you haven’t eaten all day and your stomach twists and cries in empty pain. He wasn’t ready for a pinch of disgust to occur after his first step toward saving the world. He watched as the old woman fell forward as the bullet dug into the back of her yellow-flowered dress. The cloud of blood sprayed onto the white Mercedes waiting for the green light. Andy pulled his eye from the scope in horror. Horror for what he had done.

He blinked the stinging from his eyes and watched the chaos unfold below him. The shirt and ties on the street hurrying to work now moved faster to avoid the same fate as the old woman. Even from this height, Andy could see the horrified expressions of the people. He looked at the rifle in front of him like it was some sort of alien weapon. He imagined the police storming his room; guns drawn. He’d killed people before, but this wasn’t a war zone. That woman was doing nothing that provoked Andy’s trigger finger. She was most likely going to the pharmacy for a refill of arthritis meds, or to visit a grandchild. That latter thought give his stomach another twist. Wherever she was heading, she would never reach the end.

Andy’s head spun in confusion. Why did I do that? What was I thinking? Stick to my guns but be smart enough to know where to aim! He sat back in his chair as the cries of innocents erupted below him. Behind the screams Andy could hear police sirens getting louder. He peered over the edge and spotted where the old lady still laid. A growing puddle of blood began spilling to the tires of the now vacant Mercedes. There were people hiding behind cars and light poles. A few of them were looking up at where Andy sat. He stood from his chair and ran inside. The sirens seemed louder now, as if they were blasting from speakers in his head. He paced around his room, but not really. It was more like stepping in every direction without moving anywhere. His stomach flipped as he searched for something to do. Something to fix what he’d broken. Nothing in this room but boxes of ammunition and the matching guns leaning on them. Andy had made quite the collection in preparation for this exact moment. It was borderline hoarding. five rifles (not including the one he’d used), a few different shotguns, and dozens and dozens of handguns from six-shooters to automatics. He grabbed one of the handguns and ran to the door. He turned the deadlock to the frame and leaned against the wall. Waiting for the inevitable push inside.

After a few seconds went by with no disturbance, Andy strode back to the ledge outside. On the street, the old lady was gone, and beside her puddle idled an ambulance. A police cruiser flashed red and blue in front of the hotel. An officer stood beside the car with a bullhorn. “Put your weapons down, or we will enter the building and take you down!” he screamed up to the crazed killer.

Andy paid him no attention. He hadn’t expected himself to stop after one shot, but the police barging in he did know how to handle. He had prepped for that longer than he could even remember. He assumed it would be the hardest part for him to complete, but now… it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to do. He walked into the bedroom, grabbed the pre-written note off the desk, and duct taped it to his chest. Andy felt calmer as he rolled the desk chair to the center of the room. He lowered himself down and let himself sink into the thin cushion.

All his life, Andy had been told that he was nothing but shit tuck to the bottom of God’s shoe, and that he could never do anything that was worth squat. He finally had the chance to prove to everyone that he was somebody that could save mankind from its own destruction, or at least change the world’s thinking. He was going to get out his own way.

People were going to look back at him through time and say that he was the spark that started a revolution. But, he failed again. The only thing he proved was that everyone was right about him all along. He truly was worthless. Unable to finish anything he started. Andy rubbed away the warm tear running down his cheek. He rose the pistol to his face. He looked down the dark tunnel holding his only chance to do something right. He wrapped his lips around the cold metal, just to be sure he wouldn’t miss.

Andy wanted to wait. Wait for the police to bust in the door, so they could see his work. But that could lead to someone stopping him. Stopping him from finishing yet another thing. He wouldn’t let that happen. Not this time. This time he would prove that he could do it. That would show them. He pulled the trigger, and the last thing he heard was the explosion of gunpowder.

           

--

At 11AM, Barry Phillips woke up with a stage five hangover and a growling stomach. He sat up in his recliner; making the same I’ll-never-drink-again promises he made every morning. He cursed out loud as his right sock was soaked in spilled whiskey. Not much in this world boils the blood faster than a wet sock. He turned up the TV volume as he removed the soiled sock. He must’ve fallen asleep watching Rosanne reruns again, and now some newswoman was telling him about an old woman that got shot by some coward in a hotel. The TV flashed a picture of the scum as Barry lit a cigar and took a hearty puff. He was so shocked by the image of his son he nearly coughed up a yellowed lung.

            The newswoman then informed the audience at home that the next picture is graphic, and parents should be warned (it was like she knew who was watching). The TV then went to a picture of Andrew Phillips, AKA the Hollaway killer, AKA Barry Phillips’ son. On Andy’s shirt, stained with bloody lines, was a note written in large, black letters.

DO NOT WEEP FOR THE FALLEN.

THE ONE’S LEFTOVER WILL SUFFER GREATER.

Let me know what you all think about this story. I'll see you tomorrow.

Buh-bye.