Microstory 746: Wild Cards

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I want to take a moment and write whatever pops into my head. You guys are in for a real treat with this next microfiction series. I don’t know what it’s about. What I did is look up nicknames for playing cards, and put them into a table. I chose the ones I liked best, and if there weren’t enough to be choosy, then...well, I wasn’t. I randomized the list, and that’s what you’ll be reading for the next several weeks. Exactly what this series entails, I could not quite tell you. I have the titles, but that’s about as far as it goes. Are they people? Nicknames of people? Is each title merely a jumping off point for me to write completely disparate series? Honestly I don’t know, and that’s why it’s a treat, because you get to watch me slowly spiral into insanity to try and figure it out. Right now I’m listening to Max Richter, trying to calm myself down after an hour of frustration working on my website revamp, which is nowhere near ready to be released. The images won’t resize to where I want them, and twitter has some funky new system that refuses to cooperate. I’m barely halfway done with the new navigation coding, and I’ve not even begun to code the new coloring scheme. This all coming on the heels of a terrible day where nothing went right. It was the last day of one of the worst years. I lost my job...technically I got a new one, but I still don’t run the world, so that’s disappointing.

King Dumpster started his tenure as—I can’t even type it out anymore. It’s just too hard to handle. So how do we think 2018 is gonna go? Is it gonna be better? Well, that evil man is still going to be in office, regardless of how many political pundits predict his downfall. Justice is dead. Literally every man besides me and those in my family is a rapist, or at least a sexual assaultist. Gun sales are doing really well, especially for those terrorists, who desperately need automatic assault rifles to protect the country from those frightening five-year-old children. And we’re still spending buttloads of money protecting pandas, which should—scientifically speaking—just die out already. No, 2018, you’re not lookin’ so great. Because the fact of the matter is that time doesn’t fall into categories that well. Nothing magical happens at the start of a new year that resets how people think, or what they do. The world can get better, and in many ways, this process has already begun. But there is no royal road to our success. So what can we do? Well, all I have is my platform, which is the combined power of my website, and social media accounts. I’m dedicating 2018 to women, and unoriginally referring to it as the #yearofthewoman (#yotwoman). I’ve erased my male lead in my Sunday macrofiction, and replaced him with a female. All main characters in the Saturday mezzofiction are going to be women, with a strong feminist lean. I’m even changing the color scheme on my site to pink and purple, which my mother says might be a little too obvious, but it’s what I can do. It’s all I can do. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in 2018, in the real world, or even in my stories. What I can tell you is that this is not the end. We’ve only been doing this for a few thousand years, we’re still just babies. At least, we always have been. I think it’s time we start to grow up. Or maybe we wait until next year...because I woke up like this.

Microstory 32: The Cop

There was a cop that I used to see, sitting in various speed traps, while I was out on my walks; the only exercise I would ever get.  We would speak for a few moments each time. I learned that he’d been on the job for the better part of a decade, had a son from a one-night stand, and was planning on proposing to his boyfriend. One day, I decided to walk straight east, towards Stateline, through a not-so-great neighborhood. Up ahead, I could see Officer Pender. Instead of sitting in his car, he was standing on the corner with his radar gun. I waved up to him, and as he smiled and waved back, I heard a pop from the left. Pender twisted a little from the force, but remained upright. A series of crackling noises followed; an automatic weapon sending him to the ground. A car screeched away and disappeared behind the hedges. I ran to Pender and reached out to him on instinct. It was obvious that many of the bullets landed in his vest, but there was still blood. At least a couple of them made contact. He was coughing and struggling to recover, and I tried to put pressure on the wounds but there were too many. I heard shuffling behind me. “Back away,” a man said. “This doesn’t involve you.” I could practically feel the gun pointed at my back while he continued to walk closer. I looked down to Officer Pender’s face. He was admiring the clouds sliding across the sky. He was losing too much blood, and the life was draining from him. I could only think that if I ran, he would die, and if I tried to talk the attacker down, I would be wasting precious time. The threat needed to be eliminated. Pender’s eyes darted over and met mine, as if he had heard my last thought. There was no time to argue. I pulled out his sidearm, spun around, and shot the attacker. He was close enough that it landed in his face. It was the first time I had fired a weapon, but it wasn’t my last. A year later, Officer Pender and I became partners.