I Live at the End of a Five and a Half Minute Word Sprint

(#swoon)

In honor of the incredible musician that is Poe & one of my favorite songs of said musician, I'm finna hit a five and a half minute word sprint. The ground is white, the blood is green, and I'm a writin' machine.

Kick it.

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The bear had no feet, which was unfortunate. More unfortunate was his son's choice of a Father's Day present: vintage 1987 Nike Air Jordans. There are several levels as to how this borders literally on a horrific idea for a gift. The first, obviously, is how did a small bear obtain these kicks? Seriously, the more you dig into this story, the more levels it has. It's like a ridiculous onion.

So, not only does this bear manage to get a hold of shoes that human beings have murdered each other for, he provides them to a father, who not only has no feet, but harbors a deep hatred of all sports due to, again, the fact he has no feet.

Possibly the most troubling aspect of all this is, how did the small bear get the money to pay for the shoes? He had no money, no job. All the money his dad had in the world, other than his stock in Dover Motorsports, was the $12.53 he thought was hidden outside under a rock. Fact is, that money was stolen years ago by a kid who gave it to the local wino for two bottles of grape Mad Dog 20/20 and a quick tug job behind the gas station.

A Mother's Love

Another Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge by Chuck Wendig. One thousand words. Here we go.
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"Wanna hit?"

"No, Mom, I'm good."

"You sure? Good stuff."

"Yes, Mom, I'm sure."

Most 12-year-olds being offered a toke off their mother's joint during breakfast would naturally assume there was no way she was being serious. But that's also assuming one's mother was not only rocking the wake-and-bake, but doing it at the dining room table as well. Thomas knew his mother was serious; she was generous to a fault and that included sharing the kind with her only child.

Jenny, Thomas' mother, wasn't a bad person. She doted on her son, ensuring he had everything he needed to live a happy, healthy life. Whether it was paying for his private schooling, buying him the newest iPhone when it came out (and not making him pay for the phone and the service plan like his friend Tyler's parents did), or burning down the house of the high-school kid who punched him at the mall just because he didn't "like you soulless fucking gingers," her heart was in the right place.

He looked at her, simultaneously eating eggs with one hand while checking his Twitter account on his phone with the other. Thomas knew, objectively, his mom was attractive. After his father died in an unfortunate meth lab explosion, Jenny had had a couple different boyfriends and they had made their way to the small but cozy home the two shared. Two of them he got on well with because they, like he himself, loved comic books, especially Batman. Thomas hadn't liked the most recent man to come a-courtin' the Widow Jenkins. He had shoved Thomas once when he came over drunk, announcing he didn't care much for little orphaned bastards.

The glass eye he was fitted with after Jenny took an ice pick to him looked pretty natural, Thomas had to admit.

The boy was aware his mother wasn't a typical mother in that she didn't feel the need to hide anything. At all. Thomas knew other women Jenny's age did similar things, or worse, but were much more adept at hiding their indiscretions. And it's not as though she was a harsh woman; nothing could be further from the truth. She smiled easily, never swore, and that time she beat the preacher's son mercilessly with an aluminum baseball bat after the young Baptist had spray painted "Cock EATING Whorr!!!" on the side of their house, she immediately called 911 and waited with him until the EMTs arrived. She even bought a massive floral display for his funeral a week later.

It just never bothered Thomas the way other people felt it should bother him. The only time he felt embarrassed regarding his family was after his father's accident. It wasn't that his dad, a man who encouraged the boy's love of online gaming and cried during Little House on the Prairie reruns, was cooking meth. It was the fact he was cooking meth with someone he knew was borderline retarded and was being watched by the police. Doing something illegal wasn't necessarily bad, but doing something stupid was.

The people in the community tut-tutted whenever they saw Thomas and Jenny in public, their assumption being that this poor boy, a straight-A student who was active in sports and the student newspaper, was living a Dickensian existence at home away from prying eyes. Stories of abuse by the endless string of Jenny's lovers (in truth, she had Biblically "known" one man since her husband's death and that was an ill-advised one-nighter occurring about 450 miles away from home) and a life lived humiliated by his family's shameful behavior couldn't be further from the truth. He missed his father terribly and he loved his mother without condition.

In fact, he felt worse for the people too uncomfortable to live their lives honestly and without excuses. So his mother liked to drop acid at church. Who did it hurt? If anything, Jenny running down the aisle topless provided Pastor Daniel a much-needed distraction from thinking of his dead son. Jenny had a penchant for beating abortion protesters with a pipe she kept in her Audi. Again, is there really a victim? Some tormented girl has one less asshole screaming at her and said asshole is taught a very valuable lesson. At worse, it was a push.

"Honey, I'm going to be late picking you up after school," Jenny said, interrupting Thomas' train of thought. "Your aunt wants me to take her shopping this afternoon and she said it's only going to be an hour or so, but you know she's lying."

It was true. Aunt Lydia was a delightful person but suffered from several different forms of mental illness, including a case of OCD that made grocery shopping more painful and uncomfortable than surprise sodomy. Example: she would shake a two-liter bottle of soda, wait a minute, then count the remaining carbonation bubbles. The bottle with the least amount of bubbles was the satisfactory one. Thankfully, Lydia only liked one very specific soda so they didn't have to do this with every single container. The problem lie when the one store at which she liked to shop was out of her brand. Then things became difficult.

"That's OK, Mom," Thomas said, finishing up the last of his sausage. "I wanted to stay a little late anyway. I'm working with Mr. Inkwell on some Photoshop stuff for the newspaper."

"My little future Pulitzer winner!" Jenny exclaimed. "What did I ever do to deserve a perfect boy like you?"

"You held the stork hostage and threatened his wife with a straight razor unless you got the best baby in the bunch," Thomas said. "At least, that's what Dad always told me."

"Oh, your father," she said. Jenny didn't talk about Tony much--it was obvious she still missed him terribly. Thomas quickly changed the subject.

"By the way, I'm probably going to stay home this weekend."

Jenny stopped what she was doing and looked at her son. "I thought you were going paint balling. You've been looking forward to this for a month! What happened?"

Pause.

"Oh, nothing. Just changed my mind."

But Thomas knew his hesitation had betrayed him. Jenny was a pretty smart cookie.

"It's that girl, isn't it? She's going to be there, isn't she?" she asked with a dangerous tone in her voice.

Jenny was referring to Zoe, a girl Thomas had had a crush on for more than a year. Two weeks ago, when Thomas made his intentions known to her via text message, she took a screen shot of it and posted it to her Facebook page, tagging Thomas and nearly their entire class in the post. Normally other-worldly composed regardless of the circumstances, even Thomas had taken this quite badly.

"Yes," Thomas said quietly.

His mom effortlessly scooped up the breakfast dishes, depositing them into the sink with a smile, the smell of kush and her perfume tickling Thomas' nose. She snubbed out the rest of her joint in the ash tray on the table and turned to look at her only child.

"Would you like me to grab my cattle prod and some zip ties before I talk to Zoe?"

"Yes, Mom," Thomas said. "And thanks. I love you, Mom."

"And I love you, too. Now get your backpack so I can get you to school."

Fly Away

Writer Chuck Wendig laid forth the following challenge at his Terrible Minds blog and I accepted. Please enjoy the following. And enjoy Mr. Wendig. He is a man who wants, nay demands, writers to be better at their craft.

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“Hey. Tony.”

“Yeah, Frank.”

“I’m floating.”

“Huh. So you are.”

It was true. Frank was floating about an inch off the couch they had been sharing for the last, oh, 15 hours or so, watching Monty Python, playing video games (if the zombie apocalypse were to come, Frank and Tony would be experts in culling the mindless killers, assuming the guns were in the shape of Playstation controllers), and smoking a ridiculous amount of weed. Despite the amount of THC coursing through their respective systems, Frank actually was floating, a fact causing no small amount of hilarity within the minds of the two friends.

The first hour of Frank’s barely-measurable exile from the earth’s surface was spent attempting to discover why the proud junior college dropout was now hovering above the indented and sweat-moistened section of the couch he had spent the last several hours, and truth be told years, firmly attached to. Tony took a card from the deck sitting next to the couch (when food/beer/weed supplies were low, the drawer of the low card had to get up and restock) and slid it between Frank and the couch. The card met no resistance. Tony giggled.

“You’re not touching the couch.”

“No shit. I’m floating. That’s what floating means.”

“I know, but it’s weird.”

“Fucking duh.”

Tony proceeded to shove Frank off the couch. Frank landed on the floor, or rather an inch above it, appearing to have actually crashed to the filthy carpet, but was instead still floating ever-so-slightly over it.

“What the fuck, dude?!”

“I wanted to see if you would hit the floor,” Tony said, tears forming from his barely-controlled attempt to conceal his laughter. “You didn’t.”

“Felt like I did. That hurt.”

Tony pondered. “So you didn’t actually touch the floor, but it felt like you touched the floor. Has it occurred to you that maybe the rest of your skin is invisible? That maybe you have, like, invisible flab or something?”

“You slid the card under my ass, remember?” Frank asked, still looking wounded from his fall. “It wouldn’t have slid under me if it was ‘invisible flab.’”

At the moment Frank said “invisible flab,” both pairs of eyes immediately lit up. They looked at one another, exlaiming, “Band name!” (It was an inside joke the pair shared. Other band names included “Shitty Cupcake,” “Batman’s Nipples,” “Couch Fart,” and “Drug Mules for Sister Sara.” The irony being neither could play an instrument and Tony couldn’t actually spell the word "guitar.")

After laughing maniacally over the new musical moniker, the two lapsed into silence. Nearly five minutes had passed when Tony spoke.

“Alright, man. I want to you really think about this. Open your mind and shit and, like, really focus on this. OK?”

“Sure, man,” Frank said, sounding hopeful.

“OK. Now. Has it occurred to you that you’re only floating because your mind is telling you you’re floating? What if you told your mind ‘Hey, dude. I’m done floating. Now let me get back on the couch so I can smoke a bowl and get back to the Parrot Sketch?’”

Frank thought about that. He took Tony’s concept, inhaled deeply, taking in the aroma, and then put it in his mouth, swished it around for a good 20 seconds to really release the flavor, paused for a moment, and then spit it into something that looked like a small ashtray.

“I told my mind to knock the shit off,” Frank said, dejected. “And I’m still floating. Dude, what if I fly away? Will I float into the sun? I don’t want to fly into the sun. I’ve got too much to accomplish on Earth.”

A man, or at least a man-shaped being, strolled into the room shared by the now-deeply depressed duo. He was nude, in the sense he was wearing no clothes, but Tony noticed immediately he had no genitalia. Despite his assurances to anyone within earshot at any given time that he was a real man and loved the pussy, Tony was actually gay. It would be two years later at a late-night round of fantasy gaming at his local comic book shop that he would act on those feelings with a young mage named Aaron who preferred to be called “Monkor the Mightily Equipped,” especially during what he referred to as “Naked D in D.” (Don’t ask what D in D means. Seriously. Fine, it means “Dick in Derrière.” Happy?)

“Who are you?” Frank asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” said the being, smiling. “I’m going to eat you.”

Silence.

“Wait. Did you say you were going to eat him?” Tony asked, starting to giggle.

“Yep. Had to slap a force field around him for a couple hours to get the germs off and there were a lot. Now, I’m going to eat him.”

Before another word could be spoken, the being’s mouth opened impossibly wide as he leaned over and quickly devoured Frank. Tony, torn between screaming in horror and laughing hysterically, settled on looking at the space his best friend since age seven recently occupied. He finally managed to tear his gaze away from the piece of floor Frank had been sitting on (hovering above) to look at the being.

“Am I n-next?” Tony stammered, true panic setting on him for the first time.

“No,” the being said. “Eating two of you? That’s just weird. And gross. Yes, weird and gross.”

Tony shook violently and woke up. He turned to his left and there was Frank, sucking on a 52 oz. fountain drink from the local convenience store and watching Monty Python. Michael Palin was dressed in an outfit obviously purchased from LL Bean and singing about his occupation as a professional woodsman. Tony felt a sense of relief that was better than any bud he had ever smoked. Ever.

Frank noticed Tony staring at him and spoke.

“Hey. Tony.”

“Yeah, Frank.”

“I’m floating.”

“Huh. So you are.”