The air was stifling. The kind of air that sits on you, like a hot blanket made of water. The kind of air that makes you understand that the atmosphere is heavy, in a way your high school science teacher never really conveyed. Big, heavy, hot, wet air.
It engulfed ArcticPrincess, squeezed him from all directions with it’s sticky wetness. He curled up tighter in the strange hexagonal hole he’d found in one of the walls of the airport basement. There was work to do, but he wasn’t going to do it. At least today, the world could keep spiraling towards its populist, capitalist collapse without him.
The Fiji Airways Lounge at Nadi airport, incomplete and abandoned. Once, someone had a dream of what this place could be. An architect somewhere, a vision of this space filled with wealthy travellers, the sub-elites, the smaller masses who could afford slightly better treatment while the larger masses endured the gate-surrounded food court upstairs.
Something had gone wrong. Maybe it had been corruption. Maybe the fickle will of the shareholders. Maybe it had been a boondoggle all along, a scheme for furthering the career of a junior executive who’d already moved on to their next, higher paying position. Whatever the cause, the architect’s dream sat half-built. One half elegant workstations, elegantly curving divisions between contrasting flooring styles, elegant chairs and elegant partitions. One half abandoned construction materials, unassembled couches and unfinished rooms without doors.
The place felt like PrincessYukon’s life, like the lives of all the old friends he’d seen on this trip. Grand dreams in the middle of a slow motion collision with reality. In the centre of it all, a weird hexagon cut into the wall in which you could momentarily try to hide. A retreat for writing fiction in style that had also bloomed and died, for a platform whose dream of freeing social media from corporate dominance was also wilting as quickly as it had blossomed.
PrincessYukon’s phone rang. It looked like he was going to have to help the world collapse today after all.
The security guard’s eyes drinks him in with a glance, eyes fixed on the sweaty sticky wetness that embodies the target.
Another victim of the sky lounge; taken in by sweetly worded false promises of dry air and brutalistic architecture, only to fall prey to the supple curves of some madman’s wet dream of a better tomorrow.
Well not today, bub. Spread those legs, and arms apart. You’ll be flying in a chair soon.
Fuuuuuuck
I’d feed that into a voice ai if I knew how to do it.
Got any more samples like this?
The days were short, cloudy, and freezing as they usually are in February. The sun rises and sets during working hours, so the only time to see it is during lunch break. You can forget about feeling the warmth of sunshine on your skin, though. The Nordic winter sun is pitifully weak, while the wind is brutal. Probably not a relevant detail today, though, because the grey shroud covers the sky again.
Last Sunday, I went shopping, but my favorite tea store was closed. Of course it was. Apparently, I need to try my miserable luck during the weekdays. Porridge was aslo about to run out. I had enough for just one more morning. The mere thought of cramming myself into a crowded sardine can on rubber wheels to make my way to the nearest supermarket filled my heart with disgust and dread. Once in the bus, regret will undoubtedly join the party.
The suffocating atmosphere wasn’t the only reason, though. As all remaining shreds of decency and withered human souls are sacrificed on the altar of capitalism, my hope for the future dwindles like a candle slowly running out of its pale fuel. I never really enjoyed supermarkets or the constant bombardment by intrusive advertisements in all forms: audio, visual, and even olfactory. Even though I don’t endorse or condone acts of violence, living in the city has made me somehow understand where some crazy people are coming from.
I place my hat on the hat-rack and unholster the tea bags and porridge sachets in their usual place - you know - next to my gun and badge.
I crack open the blinds a smidge and squint into the overcast street below, where a cop walks towards a homeless man and offers him food.
I sip on my green tea-oolong fusion mix, as I watch the kind scene unfold. I shake my head. “These streets aren’t what they used to be.”
LOL. I can see you’re having a lot of fun reading these short stories.
My wife and I sat across from each other, eyes heavy with the kind of exhaustion you don’t shake with a good night’s sleep. The school had made its choice—they put our boy in harm’s way, ignored the words on paper that were supposed to protect him. An IEP, they called it. Just another stack of bureaucracy to them. To us, it was supposed to be a shield. But shields don’t work when the people holding them don’t give a damn.
So we made our choice too. He wasn’t going back. Not to that school. Not to a system that saw him as a problem instead of a person. We are taking matters into our own hands—homeschooling.
And Texas? We were done. Finished. Washing our hands of it. This place chews people up and spits them out, and we aren’t waiting around to be next. Somewhere out there, there had to be a place where education means more than lip service, where kids aren’t just numbers on a budget sheet.
Tomorrow, we meet the realtor. Sell the house. Cut the ties. A clean break. A new start. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find a place where they gave a damn.
I size up the family as I walk into their home, the spurs on my texan boots jingling like the winner I am. Another bunch of progressive trashbags leaving our wonderful state, and for what? For a better future in a kinder place? I spit in revulsion.
Well, I’ll be selling their home, so I actually swallow the spit so as not to mess up the floor, and I also take my boots off since I don’t want to scuff the floor either. I hold out my hand like a man, and the guy has the nerve to actually shake it. I tremble with rage, but don’t let it show, so I just blush bashfully and ask him for his number when his wife’s not looking. Us men have ways of settling things. Usually at midnight. In a park. Behind the gents.
He gives me his number like it’s not a big deal, but I catch the twinkle in his eye, and that’s good enough for me. Oh yes, we’ll be seeing each other soon. “We’ll be seeing each other VERY soon” I say, shaking his hand again. He tries to pull away, but I maintain grip and eye contact. Can’t let these pathetic trashbags think that I’m not onto them.
I look him up and down. I’ve seen it a thousand times. He is all bravado and boot jingles. Dressed like he stepped straight out of a Western Warehouse. I could tell those shiny boots had never stepped foot on a ranch. Just puffed-up pride wrapped in a cowboy hat, trying to mask the desperation of someone who’s never been anywhere else. And doesn’t realize he is the one getting fucked by the system.
“You’ll be seeing me soon, huh?” I say, watching his eyes flicker. “Let me tell you something, partner. If you don’t straighten out that attitude of yours—if you don’t drop this little act and do your job like a professional—I’ll find someone else to sell this house.” I let the words sink in before delivering the knife twist. “Maybe a dame.”
His mouth opens, then shuts.
“Oh yeah,” I continue, my voice smooth as the whiskey he probably pretends to drink neat. “I’ll bring in one of those ‘progressive libs’ you despise so much. Maybe someone fresh out of California, with a Prius and pronouns in her email signature. Someone who’ll take your commission, your sale, and leave you standing in the dust.”
His face twitches. The bravado cracks. He swallows hard. His grip loosens on my hand.
“Good talk,” I say, finally letting go of his hand. “Now get to work.”
This is a wonder prompt OP.
the city was a mean old broad, and so was my sunday. me and some guy—just another lost soul killing time—went out for brunch, the kind where they serve regret on a plate and charge extra for the privilege. then we pounded pavement, drifting through stores like ghosts with empty pockets. didn’t buy a damn thing. just left fingerprints on glass cases full of things we’d never own.
this week, i’m back in the grind, punching the clock like a sap, sticking to business hours because that’s when they let you work. last job didn’t care when you worked, just that you got it done. back then, i was a king, a labor aristocrat, calling my own shots. now? just another stiff pulling the national average, watching the dream shrink in the rearview. but at least i got a union now, a real-deal pension, not some flimsy 401(k) scam dressed up like security. something about that makes me sleep easier—like knowing i’ll get a coffin with my name on it instead of a cardboard box.
next week, though? next week, i hit the bars, where the drinks are stiff and the men are softer than they look. i’ll be cruising, playing the angles, maybe bringing two, maybe three back to my place for a little midnight symphony. if the whiskey flows right and the neon hums just so, i might even call it a perfect night.
I signal to the bartender and he slides a glass across the bar. I catch it without looking and down it. It’s water, but I wince anyway to put on a show for the lady next to me who clears her throat.
“Excuse me, I think that was my wa-” she starts, but I pull out at a cigarette and offer it to her. The bartender looks like he’s about to say something, but I silence him with a steely glance which he gives me as I place the cigs quickly back in my pocket and make a heart gesture. I slam my empty glass down on the table. “Another.”
The broad stalks talking about her dead-end job in the union. I smile fondly, and tell her about my union-busting days working as mayor’s lapdog back when the city was a crime-addled ruin of its current self. I miss those days. The daily beatings of the unionists made me the man I am today, and I beat off my fair share of them too.
She gives me a look and asks if I want to go back to her place for a little music. “Sorry toots”, I say, “I don’t play the clarinet.”
She fixes with me a look, a look that a thousand women on a thousand dark days have given me; shock, awe, admiration, and another look which people assure me is this thing called “puzzled revulsion” whatever the hell that means.
She leaves, and I watch her go, and part of me wishes that I could go with her to that midnight concert. But Jazz is the only woman that I need, which bums me out because I really like 1970s progressive rock.
that’s the price you pay for crackin’ down on the workin’ man and chasin’ skirts like a two-bit romeo with a death wish. Trust me, pal—goin’ after men is like findin’ a loaded heater in a dark alley: it’s faster, it’s cleaner, and nine times outta ten, it won’t leave you bleedin’ out in some gutter wonderin’ where it all went wrong.
I tip my fedora down and take a drag of my cigarette, blowing a plume of smoke whilst suppressing the urge to cough. I prefer vape pens and nicotine patches, but she doesn’t need to know all my secrets. “You dames are all the same”, I say cleverly, “with your big city ideas about efficient heating”
“But let me ask you this”, I reach into my trenchcoat and pull out a leaflet, “is it really more efficient to burn fossil fuels to heat up a dark alleyway than to just wear a trenchcoat?” A silence greets us as the HVAC begins to hum at higher frequency. I push the leaflet about the sale on trenchcoats at a nearby warehouse into her porcelain hands, and then without looking back, stride mysteriously out of that alleyway.
back in the day, if a guy said he was packin’ a heater, he wasn’t talkin’ about stayin’ warm—unless you count the kinda warmth that leaves smoke comin’ outta a guy’s chest.
I chuckle darkly as she whispers sweet nothings to me to turn back, but my days of spraying gasoline on my chest and setting it on fire to entertain the morbid curiosities of my friends and admirers are over. “Friends don’t let friends demean themselves” I say. I make a power fist and hold it high, just like my therapist taught me.
I believe I’ll find myself headed for a low dive to meet with the boss and his right-hand men. There’s business to be done and it’s time to pay the vig.
(It’s our weekly D&D session. I’m bringing snacks.)
Me and this dame have a date with destiny.
She walked into my place, all long legs and short temper. She asked if I wanted to go and shoot something.
Of course I did. But first, we needed to solve a mystery, the mystery of the French Hen. Why is she sassy? Why is she the boss? Why is she capable of melting hearts with a single bawk? A true femme fatale, dressed in black and wearing a raspberry beret; the kind you find on a pretty chick-en.
Yes, until we could discover what had this hen in such a mood, there would be no shooting, no fighting, no fun.
I suspect the answer lies in biscuits, but dare we risk our fingers to find out?
Maybe another dame has ruffled her feathers, and she’s running from her checkered past.
In a way, *takes long slow pull of cigarette* aren’t we all?
