Day 151 - Shoe Story

Shoe Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

A lone castoff shoe remained there in the gutter. It was a left men’s two-tone brown and white oxford. When Jason first saw it, he thought it was a bowling shoe. He didn’t know his men’s dress shoes, but he could tell it was a quality shoe – not the sort of shoe that often got left behind. It struck Jason as sad. The shoe was shined and the white was still bright. A stain of mud from the gutter had been splattered on one side. Jason imagined the owner would hate what had become of his shoe. Of course the owner had left it behind, so Jason wasn’t exactly sure what the owner had been thinking. But it just seemed like a crime – so much attention had been paid at one point to keep the shoe pristine and yet here it was now, the pair separated, ruined.

Jason felt a strange attachment to this shoe. He had just found it and it was still there in front of him, and yet he now had a certain amount of nostalgia for it. Irrationally he picked it up – he knew he would keep it, despite the fact that it was but one shoe. It had become symbolic of something he had lost in his past – part of a dream or icon of some greatness to aspire to. He would learn a focus and purity from the previous owner, a cleanliness of the soul. The mud stain became the dark patch of his soul. He would clean the shoe and show it some form of esteem and cleanse himself.

J.D. woke with a headache. He wasn’t sure where he was. He tried to remember where he had been before. He remembered being sucked down. He sort of thought it was a sinkhole. But he imagined that if that had been the case, he would be trapped underground somewhere. Instead he was on the sidewalk, clean and free from rubble. Something had happened to him but he wasn’t quite sure what. He was in a neighborhood similar to the one he had been in before, but didn’t recognize his surroundings. He sat up. He was going to have to move. He knew he couldn’t just sit there. He was never going to find his way if he just sat there.

He looked down at the ground with a sense of dread. He didn’t know where he was going, or how he was going to get there, and he knew he had a long hard walk in front of him. He didn’t mind the journey. He just really wished he had his left shoe.

Day 150 - Mug Story

Mug Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The man ran possessed with fear. He showed no hint of awareness of his surroundings. The driver didn’t have time to stop or react. It was over in an instant. The man appeared and just ran out into the street with no regard for his own life – he wasn’t watching where he was going – he was just running. There was nothing the driver could have done. Short of being psychic, there was no way he could have foreseen what was to come.

The driver waited for the police to arrive. He was a decent man. He felt terrible for what had happened. He had great inner peace and was prepared to pay any price necessary for what he had done, even if it had been an accident.

At the same time, a block away at the entrance to a dark alley a man lay on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound. A wallet was on the ground, an indicator of a mugging gone wrong. The driver and the crowd of gathering witnesses to the car accident had no knowledge of what was happening close by.

“These guys look similar to you?”

The police had arrived. The detectives were surveying the scenes. Both men had died.

“Other than their faces being busted up?” replied his partner.

“Yeah. Other than their busted faces.”

“Nah. Not really.”

“No, I didn’t think so either.”

Hours earlier there had been an attempted mugging. Manny was held at gunpoint. He handed over his wallet because he didn’t want trouble and he wanted to live. He wasn’t going to beg though, because he didn’t want to live like that. He handed over his wallet and instead of leaving, his accoster for some reason remained. He opened the wallet and looked inside.

Then all of the sudden he paused. He stared and lost his concentration. His hand with the gun slowly lowered. He looked up at Manny, a surprised look across his face.

By then Manny was already charging him. Not because of some intense bravery or stupidity but because of some chemical fight or flight instinct. Manny was no hero, but he had been held at gunpoint. He had been threatened. He was ready to fight for his right to self-preservation.

They thief had been distracted, but not that distracted. They fought. They struggled for the gun. The gun went off.

One man fell.    

One man took off running.

One man died from the shot.

The car took care of the other one.

The police detective stared at the bodies and shook his head.

“What is it?” asked his partner.

“What happened here? Who was the mugger and who the true victim?” He tossed his partner Manny’s wallet.

This partner looked at it. “Yeah? So?”

He tossed his partner the other wallet. “Look at the IDs.”

Manuel S. Gonzalez met Manuel Z. Gonzales and now both were dead as a result.

Day 149 - Intoxicated Story

Intoxicated Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

She asked me what I was doing there. For some reason it caught me off guard and I paused and smiled instead of answering. She was a good looking girl – Sheryl Parker Silva, daughter of Raymond “Ace” Silva. She had been born beautiful and famous. She was successful before she learned her first word or took her first step. She was born one of the lucky ones. She was part of a family that had had money for over a century, with ties and links and interconnected marriages to the movers and the shakers, in front and behind the scenes. Previous generations had been happier behind the scenes, where they could whisper and push and make their money that way. They had been king makers. They had turned elections. Their playing ground was with the industrialites, the money makers, and politicians. Her father was a master of the stock market and had interests in technology and manufacturing all over the world. But this young generation of brothers and sisters and cousins, they featured an ever increased number of socialites. Money for money’s sake with a healthy round of hedonism for everyone. They were so comfortable in front of the camera now. But that’s natural. That’s the story of the here and now and the spoiled. Always get suckered in and get their ‘fifteen minutes.’ Fame is intoxicating in its own right, and who can blame people for pursuing that.

One thing for sure, little Sheryl was going to get anything she ever wanted in this world. And yet, I couldn’t hold it against her. Looking at her in that moment of silence, I understood why people fell in love with her. I had been warned. I had heard the stories. I had read the reports. And yet here I was suckered in the same way everyone was suckered in the first time they saw her. She had a spirit energy about her that was infectious. She brightened up a room. She had lived her life and grown up in front of the cameras with a million gossip writers waiting for her to slip up, and she never did. She made it through adolescence unscathed, a tough feat for any kid, but damn near impossible with that money and the moochers and the prying eyes.

 She asked if I worked for her father, if I was hired to spy on her. I nodded and she accepted it without me saying a word of consent. I could see her relax. She shouldn’t have. She should have asked more questions. Even if she believed I had been hired by her father, there was no good explanation why I should be in her room so far away from the party.

She told me I was bad at my job, telling her that I was a spy, but she joked that if I was willing to help with the occasional lie of her own, then she could help me out with an occasional secret bonus. Her father must have had a long history of hiring body guards and detectives and she must have known a thing or two about sneaking around behind his back.

I told her I had no interest in telling her father any of her secrets. That was true enough. She was hard to lie to, even the simple lie of omission. She looked at you like she was letting you in on a little secret, like you were now her closest friend or confidant. She must have been taught that by an acting coach or something. Probably it was part of her lifelong training of dealing with the public. Still, it was hard to lie to that. You wanted her to like you, to love you. You wanted to be a part of whatever future she was selling you on. The simplest lie seemed like the worst sin imaginable.

I almost told her right then who I was and why I was there. I wanted to, but I knew if I did I would never get to see her again, ever. And the thought of that was just too painful.

I thought about the other men I was with. I was the lucky one to have found her first. But they would be here soon. I put my hand in my pockets, feeling my gun with one hand and the zip tie handcuffs in the other pocket. I knew what I was supposed to do. I also knew what I now wanted to do. I was going to do something very stupid and very dangerous.

If I got her out of here in one piece, all she would ever think was that I was really good at my job. If she asked her father it would probably lead to some confusion, but hopefully I would be long gone by then. Something about the way she looked with those eyes of hers made me not want to go anywhere. But that was just stupid. I knew that was just me being stupid.

When the first former associate of mine came in the room, I fired before he had a chance to say anything and reveal who I really was. I grabbed her arm and pulled her with me. She had no idea how lucky she was that I was the one that found her first. There was no way she could. The lucky ones never really understand just how lucky they really were.

Day 148 - Afterglow Story

Afterglow Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Lloyd on had been living on two continents on two different worlds. He was very young when it began and didn’t fully realize what was happening. He just went to sleep on one planet and woke up on another. At first he thought he was just having very vivid dreams, but the other was too clear and his trips there were too often. He grew older, but still didn’t understand it. He had no explanation. It should have been impossible, but he knew it was happening to him.

Lloyd learned at a young age not to tell people about what was happening to him. Very few people listened with any open sincerity, less let him finish. None believed him. But they all had judgment. That was one universal – they all would judge him. Lloyd learned quickly enough he did not need that. He hated the way people looked at him and whispered when he was on the other side of the room. He could only imagine what they said when he wasn’t there, but he hated that too. He didn’t want to hate them all, but he couldn’t help himself. The blatant disrespect and constant questioning made it impossible to interact with them on any normal and positive level. So Lloyd kept his mouth shut a lot. He hated living that way.

When he was young, it was said that he had a great imagination. As a young man, he was called a daydreamer who lacked focus and maturity. When he reached young adulthood, he was weird and unbalanced. Throughout it all he had seen many different therapists and self-help gurus. Most friends and families thought Lloyd was bored and would someday grow up.

On the other world he was much freer. This world was much more advanced than the world he came from. It was like living in a science fiction fantasy. It was a world of technological marvel. It was a world of simplicity and leisure. There were dynamic and electric cities. There were forests and lush natural habitats. There were creatures like he had never seen before.

When he was a child it was easy to imagine it was all a dream. That was a simple and easy explanation. That was the explanation that made sense. When he was on the other world he was a young man. He didn’t understand why, but he never seemed to suffer any of the normal human frailties. He was never hungry, never tired, and he couldn’t remember ever being hurt. Even if something had happened to him before traveling, he was fine when he arrived. Bruises were gone. Cuts were healed. It was a fantasy paradise available only to him. When he was a teenager he wanted to flee his life and escape full time, but that was impossible. He had no control over his travels. His travels began when he was asleep. Later they occurred more often – sometimes with a blink, other times with a stray thought. One thing he never had was control of when or why he would travel. That was beyond his power of comprehension and influence.

Time worked in a very strange way. On one world he aged. He grew. He married and had a family. On the other he was still young, ever young. When he was young on one world, he was a young man on the other. When he was a young man, he was a young man on both. As he got older, he had the joy of retaining his youth. Other people went grey and lost their hair and added wrinkles and unwanted pounds, and he did too, but not on the other world. It was an amazing gift, the chance to have something forever. He didn’t know if anyone else got to have that, but he had to imagine he was the only one. He never knew anyone else that didn’t age.

During his late teens Lloyd began seeing a therapist and continued to see various therapists on and off over the next twenty years. He didn’t know what answer he was searching for, but he often felt empty. Living a split life was draining and he was often dissatisfied with both. He loved certain elements of both, but never got the satisfaction that would come with having everything at the same time. No one had any answers for him, but some of that was because he lied to them all and never told them about his other life. Some of their failure to help his was that he didn’t really want the worlds reconciled or combined. He was afraid that if they somehow did become one that he would lose the best part of both and what made them so special. He would rather have two imperfections that held moments of greatness than risk losing either.

There had been a girl there – a young woman who he spent a great deal of time with. Her name was Lisa or Lizzy or Michelle or something like that. He couldn’t remember it when he was on the wrong world. He didn’t know why. He could strain and struggle and try very hard to remember details, but most of the time it was a cloudy blur. She was smart and sarcastic, but sad. He could feel her melancholy across time and space on whichever world he was on. She had light freckles and usually had bangs. He knew that. She had a peaceful smile when she would allow herself to be happy. He didn’t know why she was sad, but he knew she was.

Most people he could remember were always sad. All the amazing things, on either world, and yet they were always a little bit unsatisfied and sad.

His memory was always bad. When he was on one world he could hardly ever clearly recall the other. He supposed that was part of the trick. He didn’t know. He wished he could see things more clearly. But instead it just lingered there, a bit of perfection just out of reach. It always left him with a lonely longing feeling.

He grew older and older and then so old that all he could do was look back. He had very few regrets, but he did miss the sandy brown haired girl whose name he couldn’t quite place. He wondered with all the amazing technology that existed why no one had cured the sickness that was aging. He could swear he had been young once, young in an infinite and everlasting sort of way. He remembered long timeless adventures. Where had those gone? It was lost to him. They were never supposed to end. He had never been able to share them enough or really live them, but he remembered them like they were real and true. And the girl with the freckles and bangs. She had loved him. He was sure of it. Did she have glasses? He wished he could see her face more clearly.  They used to run over the hills during endless summers, or were they running through city streets on cold autumn afternoons? It was an amazing land. He missed it so. He was young, always so young. And when he died, he could swear that wasn’t all there was to it.