2 Minutes. Go!

Sipping shit slowly can kiss my ass; I want results, and I want them fast. Six shots go down and the sweat starts up. There is a tipping point, and it begins in your gut. You are either going to puke those shots into the sink or you'll start feeling better. Slowly... 

Unless you've been there, you can't imagine how slow.

Hands shaking mean glasses breaking so you always drink out of plastic. You use the fuel to stop the shake, but it won't make you feel fantastic. 

It won't make you feel at all if you're lucky. 

In the whole ordeal, there's just a blip where you land right where you wanted. Then you've gone too far, you can't come back. Your thoughts are becoming stunted.

Somehow on autopilot, you find yourself in bed. Five hours to pass before the mass, you wake up in your aching head. Then off to work, nine hours straight, and then you can return. To the kitchen shelf where you keep your wealth, and you feel the whiskey burn.

2 Minutes. Go!

What are you gonna do when the narrative betrays you? It can happen to writers, but we can rule with an iron fist in our kingdoms constructed of words. What about the narratives you use to explain life? What about the ones you didn't write? What about the narratives that tell your history? What about the weaponized narratives the rich use to make us hate each other?

What happens when you lose control of societal narratives? People suffer. People die. People let hate take them over.

Its easy to blame social media, but I blame humanity. We have always been like this. We, the majority, have always tried to live happily among the sociopaths who only crave power. They have always existed, and they often get what they want. 

Suffering follows, generally.

It's not that things used to be better, it's just that you used to be less informed. Used to be, it took "news" months to travel the world and, still, not everyone would hear it. Now we have our own personally-tailored 24 hour news cycles in our pockets. They tell us just what we want to hear. 

Narratives are tricky. I don't know a lot about a lot of things, but I know about stories. They are hard to change once you've written them, so it is always wise to tread carefully. Go slow. Take your time.

Me? I'm running from narratives grounded in reality. I'm about to build a fort out of books and live in it forever. 

No soliciting, no visitors.

 

2 Minutes. Go!

The phone rang. That was all that happened. Nothing crazy. Nothing to get upset about. But Tony was upset. Maybe that wasn't fair, but it also didn't stop him from ripping the phone out of the wall and smashing it. 

After that, it was real quiet.

He didn't like surprises. That was part of it. He also didn't like the sound of the ring. When he was expecting a call, he would stand right beside the phone and grab it before the ringing started. This call was a surprise, so that was one thing. 

Tony was also having a particularly bad morning. He'd killed a man that somehow refused to stay dead. It didn't make sense. He'd put seven bullets into the man, but the word was people kept seeing him on the street. Only in flashes, like he was some kind of fucking ghost. 

So, it was a bad morning. 

It would be a bad afternoon, too. This whole hit had shaken him up, even if he didn't want to admit it. There was something about the guy. He never seemed scared. He didn't act like scared people act. Tony was used to the behavior of those about to die. 

He didn't recognize it in the man. 

He crossed the office, stepping on broken pieces of phone. He huffed and his face was red. He should have been paying attention, because suddenly there was cold metal on the back of his skull. 

"Tony, I'm just returning the favor, man. No hard feelings."

Tony was going to tell Johnny to go fuck himself, but the bullet entering his brain took the words away. 

The gunman looked down and smiled. Then, he put four shots into the man's chest and one more to the side of his head. Tony was soup, now, but it had to be done. 

Johnny knew from experience...how easy it could be to come back from the dead.