Part-Time Martyrs
Title: Hindsight
Word Count: 427
The Admiral had told me we would have to leave in five minutes, seven minutes ago. That sort of nonchalance about the importance of time was the reason I stopped taking him seriously. Forty-seven days of standing at the door exactly three hundred seconds after the words left his lips, only to be disappointed when he wouldn't show, taught me a thing or two. The first was that The Admiral is always, always late. The second was that I really needed to kill him.
So from day forty-eight forward, I kept at whatever I was doing when he told me we had to be going until he would finally show up and asks me why I wasn’t ready. I have no idea what he did in the interim. Strolled around Stonehenge, drove a moped through the crowded streets of Acapulco, navigated the claustrophobic depths of an underwater cave, who knew? Nobody ever asked The Admiral what he did when he wasn’t here. None of us were that stupid.
I was carefully trimming pieces from Patty Ann's various jigsaw puzzles while I waited for him. It's amazing how, with a little work, you can make several different puzzles fit together, while at the same time ensuring that the originals will never quite look right again. So far I’d managed to work some terribly colorful dinosaurs into a stylized reproduction of Van Gogh's "Starry Night", and was in the process of deciding on a clever title for my abomination when I felt The Admiral join me in the room.
"Why aren't you ready?" he asked, predictably. I put down my hobby knife, carefully pressed the last of my pieces into place, and turned to look at him over the back of the sofa. "I told you we needed to leave in five minutes."
I smiled at him, lifted my matte black Sig Sauer P228 from the cushion beside me, and emptied four rounds into him before he hit the floor. The fifth went into the wall behind him, and I sat for a few minutes with that blasted ringing in my ears, so fucking proud of myself. For all my smugness, however, it didn’t occur to me that he would just come back. Admittedly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Come to think of it, that’s probably why I’m sitting here with Patty Ann stuffed into the trunk of my car, looking all nice and pretty save the two surgical steel shurikans in her forehead. Because The Admiral never was the type to get mad. Just terribly, terribly even.
Word Count: 427
The Admiral had told me we would have to leave in five minutes, seven minutes ago. That sort of nonchalance about the importance of time was the reason I stopped taking him seriously. Forty-seven days of standing at the door exactly three hundred seconds after the words left his lips, only to be disappointed when he wouldn't show, taught me a thing or two. The first was that The Admiral is always, always late. The second was that I really needed to kill him.
So from day forty-eight forward, I kept at whatever I was doing when he told me we had to be going until he would finally show up and asks me why I wasn’t ready. I have no idea what he did in the interim. Strolled around Stonehenge, drove a moped through the crowded streets of Acapulco, navigated the claustrophobic depths of an underwater cave, who knew? Nobody ever asked The Admiral what he did when he wasn’t here. None of us were that stupid.
I was carefully trimming pieces from Patty Ann's various jigsaw puzzles while I waited for him. It's amazing how, with a little work, you can make several different puzzles fit together, while at the same time ensuring that the originals will never quite look right again. So far I’d managed to work some terribly colorful dinosaurs into a stylized reproduction of Van Gogh's "Starry Night", and was in the process of deciding on a clever title for my abomination when I felt The Admiral join me in the room.
"Why aren't you ready?" he asked, predictably. I put down my hobby knife, carefully pressed the last of my pieces into place, and turned to look at him over the back of the sofa. "I told you we needed to leave in five minutes."
I smiled at him, lifted my matte black Sig Sauer P228 from the cushion beside me, and emptied four rounds into him before he hit the floor. The fifth went into the wall behind him, and I sat for a few minutes with that blasted ringing in my ears, so fucking proud of myself. For all my smugness, however, it didn’t occur to me that he would just come back. Admittedly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Come to think of it, that’s probably why I’m sitting here with Patty Ann stuffed into the trunk of my car, looking all nice and pretty save the two surgical steel shurikans in her forehead. Because The Admiral never was the type to get mad. Just terribly, terribly even.