Short-Story.Me!

“What price are we talking about here?” Snowy said to the man dressed in the Armani suit sitting across the table from him. The roadside café was packed full of people, it was lunch hour. The place was full of office types and factory grunts sat shoulder to shoulder eating the same shitty food served daily; it was a perfect place to get lost in the crowd and discuss business.

“Twenty K for the first batch and eighteen thereafter,” the man in the Armani suite said.

My name is Shawn Clyde, and if anyone is reading this, I'm already dead. I'm corpsified. Six feet under.

You get the idea.

Technically, I'll be laying in the bed I plan to be in when I swallow a few year's worth of pain pills, but it all amounts to the same thing. I know this may seem strange in such a time of renewed hope and opportunity as we now live in, but you see, that's kind of the problem.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe Corny Coral is following us again.”

I dropped my gaze to the cracked sidewalk.  Where else did the airhead think I was going to walk from high school when I lived next door to her?

“Corny Coral is such a freak,” her friend squealed in that shrill voice that grated on your nerves.  Couldn’t she come up with something Nicole hadn’t already conjured in the ten years since we’d been neighbors?  Freak was the first thing Nicole had called me, the day she’d moved in.  I’d been jumping on my new trampoline, a birthday present from my parents.

Damp wisps of dark, pony-tailed hair cling to the collar of Sara’s pink sweatshirt. Soft music filters through earphones as she jogs in place on the corner of Fourth and East Main, waiting for the light to change. She glances left and sees the fall-colored trees lining the sidewalk in front of County General Hospital. Sara loves these times most – fall for its beauty, and early morning because it’s her time: time to quietly leave the house for a quick run while Tim and Emily are still asleep.