Tag: Short Story

Short Story: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

By day, they were no more than a group of nerds– social outcasts banded together from their mutual trait of having been exiled from the other cliques of the standard, American high-school. By night however, they were two psionics, a tank-built soldier, a sniper, and a combat medic whom specialized in healing their wounds. Their goal was not to gripe about the bully of the day, or become enveloped in social commentary on their less-enlightened peers. Instead, they came together for one reason; to game.

When they entered the basement where the walnut-wooded table with its soft, velvet top, resided, they were instantly transported to a universe both similar and so unlike their own. Each night their surroundings were different. At times they might be slogging through a scot-like bog, ascending great nordic-dwarfing mountains engulfed in blizzards, or even delving deep into a labyrinthine bunker of blood and danger.

To the casual observer their D20s were just curiously-shaped number cubes, but to them they were their Gods. Its rolls were the Gods’ words, commandments they were bound by honor to follow whether through great success or unimaginable misery. With each toss, they might find themselves in mortal peril that even the most clever of schemes could not correct. With one mistake, they might doomed, slain before they could react, or else they might defeat their enemy, scour its corpse for loot.

To them, the game was life, the automated die-tracker built-in to the table the oracle of all things good and evil. The randomized, procedurally-generated scenarios eternally crawled from the table’s speakers and the Game Master’s, synthesized, female voice to give narration to the landscapes that rose and fell before them in their Augmented Reality glasses. Each step, breath, and move was tracked in real-time before them as though they were there.

When the tank’s roll came up positive, combat began with him in the lead. His avatar so curiously resembled him sans the full-body armor it wore. Like it, he was enormous; a giant, fleshy redwood that lumbered through space-stations, across foreign planets, and along hidden trails to combat encounters. Like him, his primary weapon– a shotgun– was big, loud, and intimidating. In reality, the soldier was little more than a giant with more heart than flesh– but this wasn’t real-life, that was the point.

Invariably, behind him the Psionics would be scanning the horizon with their sub-machine guns. Whether it was a jungle, ice-field, or even open desert, they’d both be in single-file behind their leader. There was only the smallest hint of a ever-present field of super-opaque blue around them, an effect of their psionic barriers interacting with their armor’s shields. The shimmer told of powerful psychics ready to manipulate sub-atomic matter at a moment’s notice, unleash hell on any would-be attackers.

To that end, the combat medic would be second to last, always with her assault rifle shouldered to suppress any enemies and head for cover. When the others’ shields failed, or the tank-like solider drew too much aggro, she would lay down fire, rush to aid with medical tools, and keep death’s scythe at bay.

Meanwhile, the sniper at their rear-guard would never falter. Her long-rifle was steady, attached bi-pod waiting to be deployed or her light-bending cloak activated to make her invisible to the naked eye. Then could she duck down, bob, or weave through the enemy advance to gain the high-ground, out flank them. Even outside of combat she was ready to sneak ahead of the others, leave the rear-guard to the medic to take up over-watch on a ridge. There she could observe and mark enemy positions and patrol-routes on the over-head, A-R map accessed in real-life by a simple button press on the side of their A-R glasses.

When things finally kicked off, be it from crude, synthetic life-forms; their more-advanced, less obvious android counterparts, or any of the other multitudes of human or alien pirates, mercenaries, or rogue soldiers, they were prepared. The tank’s job, his duty, was to keep the others safe, lead them to victory. With a howling war-cry he’d boost their various stats to increase their resolve, initiative, and stamina, then sprint headlong into the furthest cover forward to take aim with his shotgun and blast their adversaries apart.

Behind him the Psionics would further buff the groups’ stats, spray SMG bursts at the enemies, or manifest elements in their hands to hurl at clustered or individual enemies. Beside them, the medic kept her aim true, ready to bolt and heal at a moment’s notice while her rifle barked with muzzle flashes, spit fire at already-doomed enemies. The few that crossed the sniper’s sights stood no chance, especially when her cloak was still engaged to increase her damage. Even at full health, a single-round from her rifle might strike them down, eliminate the threat altogether.

On the inside, they were more than “nerds,” more than any, singular moniker could apply to them, really. They were a well-oiled military machine, a five-man army with all the fire-power, cunning and honor of even the most fabled war combatants. To see them outside, one would never believe that they had mastered the virtual arts of infiltration, matter manipulation, weaponry or medicine. But such is the deceptive nature of the world. The five needed no approval from those outside the universe they inhabited outside their own. They needed only to rely on each other, both in and out of game, were all the stronger for it.

It is in the nature of the man, like the gamer, to band with those that best compliment their qualities and short-comings. In true gamer fashion, they settled disputes in-game and out with honor-bound duels– either of words or weapons. Even with the latter, no-one was so stupid as to cut the throat, go for the kill, lest they wish the game to end for everyone. Their almost civilized-brutality might have frightened those outside the circle, but the five were well-aware of that.

They were better for it, always respectful for fear of incurring wrath and having their honor-challenged by one whose skills were less advanced. Otherwise, like the game, attacking one meant bringing the full-force of the team against them. Outcast or not, the solider especially was not one to take such attacks lightly. Then again, there were few who would dare to face them at all. At that, they emanated an air of confidence, because– as the adage goes– appearances can be deceiving, and that most certainly applied to them.

Short Story: Modern Day Trojan Horse

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 6 Comments

England had become a police state. It was all over the news; coppers in riot gear, clouds of tear gas, the city on fire. London burned. It wasn’t the first time. No-one was fool enough to believe it would be the last either. Nothing could stop burning, not then. Hell, maybe not ever.

It had started in Paris, with something called the Paris Incident. Basically, every cybernetic and bionically augmented person in Paris had finally had enough. They rallied to march on the city of light, waving banners to protest the corporate occupation there. Every major corp had some outlet in Paris then, still do now– almost makes everything that came after seem pointless.

The numbers were never officially recognized, but everyone saw it; thousands and thousands of people clustered butt-to-gut together, stomping their way through the city. They chanted, thrust signs upward; some with obvious bionics, others with theirs carefully concealed by proto-plastics that resembled skin. Still more were bone and flesh, normal humans fed up with the mistreatment of their friends, family, lovers. If they’d know then what was about to happen, maybe they would have run. Hell, maybe they wouldn’t have. Maybe it would have made them all the more determined to stand their ground, and they would have made a difference.

What sparked their tempers was a string of bad decisions that even today no-one understands. I know I don’t. Though the Augs had rallied behind a single image, an icon, for what became known as the Paris Incident, each of them had their own reasons to be there. Renee Lemaire was just the tip of the iceberg, a rally cry for a people already subjugated, oppressed. She’d supposedly been murdered after it had been discovered that her neural augs had been activated without her knowledge. Simply put, she was brain-hacked by some entity to do their dirty, wet-work. The casual observer of her eventually-public revelation would have blamed the French Government, but everyone else knew the Corps ran the government.

Even before she was killed in a car-bomb, supposedly another “tragic loss” for Locust Group Inc, her employers, the augs had long been mistreated. Corporate Security had taken over the streets of Paris in the years preceding the event, were particularly prejudiced against augs. Corp-sec had developed a strict beat-first, question-later policy. Just about every Aug in Paris had felt some measure of that prejudice.

So what the French had was a largely lawless flame burning in the hands of the Corps, and a powder keg of resentment in the form of mistreated, augmented humans. There was no way that shite wouldn’t catch, explode, and blow a few thousand people the hell. Christ, these people were the very reason half those corps had as much power as they did. Almost every Corp had some stake in physical or cyber augments. Half were even software providers for Neural and prosthetic augs from the other half. Still their own people were prejudiced against them. It was almost dizzying the level of hypocrisy: the augs kept the Corps in business, and the Corps paid corp-sec the augs’ money to beat ’em senseless.

I guess we should have expected the fucking horror show that came. Everyone had Lemaire as their symbol, but in their own ways, they each had their “Lemaire moments”– those times where because of what they were, or were associated with, they’d been looked down upon. Usually that downward look came from the end of a corp-sec barrel or fist. For those lucky few that escaped unscathed, the look came from at least atop a high-horse, however rare that was.

After the initial march began, it was clear that corp-sec wasn’t going to be able to contain thousands of people to the streets. Damn near all out chaos broke out then. No-one was sure what happened first– if someone threw a punch, a rock, a bullet and then corp-sec responded, or vice-versea– but it wasn’t long before they tear-gas was nearly choking people to death, and others were dead or bleeding from random shots fired into the crowds.

Paris became an all out blood-bath. Augs and norms alike were attacking corp-sec, corp-sec was attacking everyone not in their color uniform, and anyone not being attacked was fleeing before they were. I happen to know for a fact Aries Security Corp even took out a couple of Warhound Protection squads in the insanity. Whether this was an accident or just an opportunity to dent a rival corp’s bottom-line, no-one but the corps could say. Let’s face it though, if corps could talk, they still wouldn’t give a shit about telling the truth.

What I can say is that the blood bath didn’t end for almost two straight weeks. There was nearly a full-on civil war that raged after those first shots were fired. It was a while of people attacking corp-sec on hit-and-runs before they rallied to fight back… fight back, right. What the corps did would be classified as a war-crime if there were any governments left to charge them.

Basically, the corps banded together for once. A terrifying thought for a group hell-bent on cutting each other’s throats at every opportunity they got. Clearly it was in everyone’s best interests to nip the bud before it bloomed though. I think even the augs would have quit while they were ahead if they knew what was to come.

The mega-conglomerate dropped a few special deliveries on the 14th night after the marches turned into a massacre. Both Aries and Warhound birds– supersonic jets composed of all menacing points and screaming turbines– flew in squadrons over twelve different districts of Paris. Each one was residential, outside the territory of the corp’s own housing buildings. The packages they delivered lit the night sky with fountains of blood and fire.

Everyone in the world saw that. The corps wanted us to. It was a message; those of us that wanted could rationalize the move however we chose, but the corps were in power. To go against them in such a way as the augs had was to risk their wrath. And if the news-vids were anything to go by, that wrath was smite and hell-fire.

Of course everything was “authorized,” and “sanctioned” by the various governments, but those of us that knew the truth about the governments didn’t even bother to listen. The battle was polarizing. To a point where countless cities rose up in attempts to kick the corps out or offer safe-haven to the augs, or even declare their allegiance. Berlin was one of the safe-havens– notice past tense, was. To see it now, you’d almost think the blitzkrieg had turned on itself. I guess, in a way, it did.

London though, we’ve been of the first group. The uprising started roughly around the time the corps declared war on the people that didn’t serve them. Really, those people are slaves. They don’t have the same chains around their necks, or whips at their back, but crushing corporate debt and fear of stepping out of line work all the same.

I wish I could say I have hope, but I don’t. We’re really just trying to survive. We’re like Paris in a way; outlets of all the major corps nearby, and half our historic sky-line bombed to rubble. See, the thing is though, we’re English, so we don’t quite do things the same. We prefer to infiltrate the corps, poison them from the inside, then get out before the whole damned entity dry-heaves and withers.

I can’t help but straighten my tie in the mirror with a smug grin. I’m the Bond of the twenty-second century, and my evil villain’s my employer. I live large– as large as I can– off the corp while I sequester a little away for myself, or to the side for my comrades in the ghetto. I can’t help but feel a little sympathy for them, stuck in the damp and dank, wet cold while I’m riding penthouse suites to the bank. But I never forget my job here.

My counter-surveillance software makes sure too, that the corps don’t know I’m wired to the teeth with augs, neural and otherwise. One day, it will all be worth it. Until then, I just bide my time, feed a little information to the others like me. Or else, I fuck with the Corps a little more to keep them on their toes, keep them from watching when we extract someone important, or steal something to help us bring them down.

I’m like a modern day Judas and Trojan Horse all in one, and sooner or later, I’m gonna’ open up, bring this place to its fuckin’ knees. Lemaire might be dead, but the rally cry lives on. Whatever its purpose, I’m with the others; Viva Le Revolution!

Short Story: A Job to Do

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 1 Comment

Smoke curled and rolled beneath a low-hanging light, dissipated by the wave of a wrinkled hand. The man it was attached to hunched forward over the table beneath the light, in a booth seat of a dank bar most just called by its designation. Officially it was named The Oldhouse Tap. Unofficially, it ran by other names, most as unappealing as its never-swept, never-mopped tile floors. Even the walls had felt the rigors of age, their wall-paper stained and peeled like a cheap motel.

Another man sat before the smoking man, both with large mugs of beer that were more foam than brew. Such was the way the burnt-out bartender poured her patrons their poison. She cared about as much as they did. Most people in at this time of day were still on company time, the others hiding from their wives or families when they should have been at the unemployment office, or one of the half-dozen places through-out town with help-wanted signs in their front windows.

Instead, they were spread out around the bar, staring up at a television that never strayed from its Info-Corp news channel. Like them, the two men at the booth were mostly quiet, but when deigned to speak, did so in low, hushed tones. The second man hunched forward over the table, parted the smoke with his wrinkled, black, sunken eyes.

“I can have the money in a week, all I need’s more time.”

The smoking man took a drag from his cigarette with a few, resolute nods, “And you’re sure of that, yeah?”

The other man began to launch into a tall-tale. Of course, he started by explaining his position; like many others, he’d been laid off due to the shaky economy. No amount of groveling or employment seeking would help. All those help-wanted signs were for men and women twenty years younger. The shops in town didn’t care much for the older generation with their responsibilities, bills, and needs. They wanted expendable assets to leash one day, and kick-out when they were no longer cost-effective.

The other man went into detail on his experiences, “I was in with a shop down Main St, a coffee place– nothing in the front mind you, they don’t want the geezers working the front. They’ve got an image, you know.”
“Hmm,” the smoking man said with a long drag. He blew a long plume, “Got to have appeal with the kids.”

“Exactly.”

He went further in the same vein, but the smoking man was no longer listening. He’d heard all the tales a million times over. Everyone had their sob story, and everyone thought theirs was worse than everyone else’s. In truth, the smoking man knew they were all the same. It wasn’t his business to care, but he knew nonetheless. Each of the men and women he’d met were cut of a similar cloth; all older– his age really– out of work, and needing money. In a way, he sympathized; it could just as easily be him. Well, not him, but him in another life. He could have just as easily found himself in their shoes were circumstances even a little different.

Alas, no amount of empathy, sympathy, or cold beer would change what he knew now. He wasn’t like them. He was what they wanted to be; well-aged, still sane, and with immovable job-security. He even had spending money, something in direly short supply these days. Hell, he thought, probably not a one of the patrons in the bar today had that. They were all likely drinking on tabs that would follow them past their graves.

He listened to the sob-story a little longer, if only for courtesy’s sake. He already knew what would happen. It wouldn’t be another month before he was back in here to discuss the terms of the man’s repayment, only to be begged and pled with to hold off on collecting. Unfortunately, begging and pleading only went so far. Maybe the man hadn’t personally helped to tank the economy, but he had to deal with it the same as the rest. The problem was, dealing was all they ever tried to do. Not a one of them had learned to hold to their word.

He’d been in the banks’ employ long enough to know that the defaulters knew the stakes. Loans were an uncommon luxury even in the best of times. Now, they were downright impossible to come by. Even so, most of the people that had signed on the dotted lines had still refused to cop to the responsibility inherent in signing. Then, when the smoking man came to collect, they bargained and begged, and pled for more time.

His job wasn’t the most pleasant by any means. He could think of thirty or forty jobs off the top of his head that he’d rather have if only they were quite so secure in their need. That was the interesting thing though, as much as people wanted what he had, they never wanted to take the opportunity to get it. It left him as the sole member of an occupation where help-wanted truly meant it. But it wasn’t a fun job, most certainly unpleasant even with the best cases. Too many people defaulted nowadays, and by the first and fifteenth of every month he was expected to be in fifty places at once. Most places weren’t much different than this one.

Sure, a few of the people would repay the debt, or else shake his cynical core to feeling with their real misfortune. In those rare cases, he’d leave with a thankful politeness, possibly never to be seen again. Or else, he’d promise to return, understanding of their unfortunate circumstances. Whatever that latter groups circumstances were, he was certain he would never find any of them in a dank pit like the Oldhouse.

That was how the smoking man could tell the unfortunate from the dead-beats: when the unfortunate were down-trodden, lost for hope, they ran to their families to spend those possibly last moments with them. Conversely, the dead-beats were always in bars, restaurants, what-have-yous, running up tabs and knowing their last moments were upon them. It was an effective system, one that only a man working so deeply under the table for the banks could have established– or even distinguished.

He listened to the man tell his woes for another half-cigarette, then stopped him mid-sentence.

“I can’t help you,” he said as he rose from his seat.

He pulled his over coat open on the one side while the other man stammered and choked on his beer. A moment later a gun was out. A single, suppressed round ended the man’s life. He fell forward onto the table, blood leaking from a wound in his head. The rest of the bar had watched, each of them fearing they might be next. The smoking man replaced the gun into its shoulder-hoslter, then stepped over to the bar to drop a wad of cash on it.

“The bank will send someone by to collect the body,” the man said as he snuffed a butt in a tray on the counter. “You all have a good day. I’ll be seeing some of you next week.”

Most heads were hidden as he turned away. He had work to do. There was such little job security left in the world, and though it was messy, it was still a job that needed to be done. Even if there was no-one else willing to do it, few would do it as well as him.

Short Story: The Proverbial Hand-Grenade

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Private First Class, Benjamin Harrison; named for America’s 23rd president that Ben’s father found an inexplicably queer fascination with. Why, no-one by the elder Harrison was sure. Even then, it was doubtful a sufficient explanation could be gleaned from the man’s meticulous, daily research and record-keeping of the long forgotten president. What is a matter of public-record however, is the intense sense of duty and honor in the young Private.

All through his life he was teased; from his rigid-postured, vegetable-eating youth, to his JROTC, fatigue-clad teenage years. Life wasn’t a living hell for Ben, at least not between the off-school hours. Otherwise, for his first decade of schooling he suffered the curious ire of his classmates that somehow formed insults from the half-historically honored words of “President-boy,” “Chief Harry-son,” and even “Army-man.”

Such is the crude humor and reckless abandon of youth that these insults, formed of prestigious titles, turned to weapons of psychological warfare. In their way, they were harmless to all, but Ben wasn’t everyone. He was a person; living, feeling, and with a sense of duty and honor that only made him feel worse when he’d decided to devote his life to protecting and serving his country. Unfortunately, grade-school and junior-high were made all the more intolerable by the occasional history course or class that focused on US presidents.

Each year, Ben’s father would dutifully speak to classes about former-president Harrison. As part of a locally-famed historic society, and due to his knowledge of the aforementioned, he was called in without fail to give small lectures each year. Generally occurring just after the winter break, it made Ben loathe the month of January even more than the normal boys whom were simply peeved at the return of scheduled classes.

Thankfully, most of that subsided in high-school. Joining JROTC gave Ben a sounding board of peers with whom he could sympathize. Having been groomed to follow in his father’s boots and join the service, finding others with a similar goal made life all the more bearable. But again the fickle nature of humans eroded much of his enthusiasm. Contrary to intuition, a boy clad in camouflage fatigues was easier to see in the halls of an American High-School than a sore thumb.

Ben and his JROTC-mates were often the targets of the vile underbelly of the school. Being six-foot tall, crew-cut, and peach-fuzzed didn’t help. He was already gangly, lean, and looked weak; perfect prey for the undesirables that even the ‘heads and jocks disliked. Fortunately for Ben, most of the bullying was done on a psychological level– that curious battle-field seemingly isolated to schools, distant war-zones, and clearance shoe-sales.

The only, minor incident that turned physical could not have come at a better time for Ben, nor ended more favorably. The bully, clearly insecure about his vertically-challenged stature, taunted and tormented for a week before he got physical. He’d cornered Ben and a pair of JROTC girls against a locker. The girls were the usual JROTC types; slightly more butch than the others, average-looking, and one more pudgy than the off-brand, preppy-girls that roamed the halls like packs of parental-wallet succubi. As a result, their confidence was less than stellar, their protests shot down with quick, monosyllabic insults masked as swears.

The aggression was met with a firm tongue, and more rigid posture than Ben had ever manifested. He made himself a target, threw himself on the proverbial hand-grenade to shield his friends from the explosion about to be unleashed.

Indeed, Ben’s quick quip back drew the bully’s attention. He spat a swear with a shove at Ben’s chest. Ben was more limber than he appeared, like a cobra raised up and ready to lunge. The second shove only connected to give Ben his opening. In a flurry of arms and the thrust of a fist, the boy flipped through the air. He landed on the ground, hands clutched at his throat, to gasp for air. Ben’s first girlfriend was the pudgier girl present that day. They lasted all through high-school, her hero and his love.

That proverbial self-sacrifice was repeated years later in a middle-eastern desert. On sweep-and-clear orders, PFC Ben Harrison and his unit came under heavy fire. Cornered inside a bombed-out brick building, laid out like a series of low-hurtles and half-walls around them, they exchanged fire with native insurgents. That day was hardly Ben’s first taste of war, but unfortunately, it would be his last in-country.

They spent over a thousand rounds, pinned down by surplus-Soviet AK fire. The irony that these bullets had been stockpiled to kill Americans during the Cold War was not lost on Ben so long as he thought about it. That day, he did. In fact, he thought about a lot of things; home, his first love, sex with her, beers, smokes…. Everything good and bad seemed to trickle on a steady IV drip through his body while Russian weapons sang songs of middle-eastern pride.

Even so, nothing could have prepared him for what came next. Biggs, the guy with the 249-SAW, was encamped just below a rise of destroyed brick and mortar. He had just enough room to roll to his right, sit upright, and slap the SAW around to reload its box-mag. By the time it finished screaming “Die Motherfucker Die!” Biggs was already sitting up to reload.

That’s when it happened. Even then Ben saw it in a play-by-play. He was holed up a few paces down from Biggs, in a piece of wall still tall enough to stand behind. He peered out, saw one of those assholes across the way had detached to rush along side a fuel truck in front of them. It was a stupid place to take cover in a fire-fight, even Ben knew that. One stray round, a spark; that was all it would take to ignite the fucker, blow it and everything in a few hundred feet sky-high– assholes included.

But this particular “insurgent” wasn’t thinking about that. Instead, he lobbed an old-war pineapple grenade through the air. Ben was already in motion when it landed beside his left foot. He dove through a hail of gun-fire, tackled Biggs further sideways. It wasn’t enough for the would-be savior.

To say he walked away from the war would be a misnomer. In truth, he was wheeled away. While the majority of his unit had survived largely unscathed– Biggs the victim of minor shrapnel and facial burns– Ben lost his legs. Both of them. His lower limbs had been torn, shredded to bloody-wet, fleshy nibs by the pineapple. Then, whatever was left had been char-broiled by the heat, the left-over bones pulverized by the shock-wave.

He left for war over six-foot tall, returned two shins and feet shorter. There was a purple heart that came by mail, a lot of doctor’s visits and surgeries, and eventually, some nimble prosthetics that– with therapy– allowed Ben to walk again. There was no welcome home ceremony, no parade, no politicians commending him for his service or sacrifice. Just his parents and extended family; the only ones to notice he’d left, returned, or the pain he’d endured.

One night, he walked into a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. He waited patiently in line, posture rigid as ever, behind a man that fidgeted and scratched like a meth-head. In his little town, this particular disease was becoming rampant. There were too many two-bit meth-makers living in trailers on rural land, brewing up cat-piss and chemicals. It had been hard enough to return home half a man, but returning home to this was worse.

It was no secret to any casual observer that this particular man was ready to crack. He needed a fix, would get it however he could. So, of course, he decided to hold up the gas station. And being the man he was, of course Ben dutifully kept his cool, waited for the man to turn away with an arm full of money. Ben stuck out a single arm that clothes-lined the man as he made to sprint. Then, he was on the ground from a hit to the throat, unable to breathe, money fluttering to the ground all around him.

Ben retrieved the gun and held it on him while the clerk called the police. His metal leg pinned the man to the ground as their eyes met.

“Ben?” The junkie asked through his balsam wood teeth, and pale, scabbed skin.

Ben stared at the man for a long moment. It took time, and a firm, prosthetic foot to stir the images in Ben’s mind. Before long he realized this wasn’t the first time he’d bested the man before him. Ricky was the same punk-kid he’d laid out all those years ago.

“You’re going to Jail, Ricky,” Ben finally said.

Clearly Ricky wasn’t right in his mind, too focused on the prosthetic that held him in place, “What happened to ‘yer legs, man?”

“War happened, Ricky,” Ben replied.

Ricky descended into a mental fit that concluded the conversation with incessant rambles, a mental state akin to psychosis. The police finally arrived to thank Ben for his quick thinking and service. A moment later, Ricky was escorted out to a cruiser as he wailed back at Ben.

“I’m sorry, Ben. Sorry for everything. Shouldn’t’ve…. shouldn’t’ve picked on you.” His head was shoved down, his body forced into the cruiser, “You’re the better man, Ben.” The door shut and he screamed through it, “You’re the better man!”

Ben watched the car roll away, Ricky still screaming that tell-all phrase. Ben had heard it all his life, been told it by everyone he knew; be the better man. When faced with bullies; be the better man. When angry or fuming; be the better man. When called to war; be the better man. When life shits on you; be. The. Better. man.

All his life he’d been the better man, lost friendships, love, even his legs ’cause of it. But something about watching his old bully, now turned to a fiend and junkie, being hauled away gave him perspective. If that mentally disturbed man could, in a moment of clarity, find peace in Ben’s betterness, the man himself had no excuse.

In a decisive moment, Ben turned away from the gas station to climb into his car. He didn’t care about smoking, killing himself slowly by the hit. Instead, he was ready to be finished proving himself– both to himself and the world– and start living. He’d thrown himself on the proverbial hand-grenade for the better of others, but was not ready to do it for himself. That needed to change.

He put his car in gear, and drove for home, chasing a setting sun and a better life.