Not So Extremely Short Stories

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Friday
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Not So Extremely Short Stories

Postby Friday » Sat Mar 08, 2014 1:12 am

Kevin Bacon rolled his eyes. Here we go again, he thought.

The bright flash of blue light, the buzzing sensation, like his whole body covered in bees, inside and out, and he's back in his chair, holding his pen, posed above the report.

He'd been teased a lot about his name, of course. People with the same name as celebrities tend to get that. Mostly, he went by his middle name, Charles, to avoid people's stupid shit. Though, if he had to look on the bright side (what little there was), at least his fucking name wasn't a problem anymore.

He leaned back in his chair, watching Sally walk past him. Odd, even after all these times seeing it, he still appreciated the way her ass looked in that miniskirt and heels. She was carrying a folder destined to be filed away in Dale's office. He couldn't remember what is was about, exactly. Been a while since he'd ripped it from her startled hands and read it. Boring shit, that's all he could remember. Much easier to remember the taste of her lips, her thighs. The feel of her blood on his bare hands, the look on her face as the life drained from it.

Brian walked with his head down, buried in another report, only seconds away now from rounding the corner of the cubicles and bumping into Sally. Asshole. Kevin had killed him more times than any of them. Probably. It was getting hard to remember.

Yep. Yep. The soft whump as they collided. Brian's report going flying. The apologies. The awkward attempt to flirt. The small smile Sally gives him as she brushes herself off. Kevin turned away, looked out the window.

Steve, a man he had never met (technically) was pushing a garbage can toward the dumpster in the parking lot four stories down. He could see some bluebirds in the well manicured trees in the grass across the pavement. One time, for fun, he'd launched himself out the window to see if he could land directly on top of Steve. Took him a few tries, maybe twenty or so, but he'd eventually got it. So far he hadn't been able to catch any of the birds.

How long before he just lost it? Maybe a hundred thousand more cycles? Yeah, probably. He could count them down. Give him something to do.

The whole office shuddered, bounced. People looked up in fear from their desks. Kevin just twirled his pen, wheeled his chair over to the other side of his cubicle, and wrote on a pad of post-it notes.

Fuck this.

The vibrations got stronger. A faint buzzing sound could be heard. A woman screamed. Veronica. Her lips tasted like cigarettes and cherry.

The flash of light. The buzzing sensation.

And he's back in his chair, pen in hand, posed over the report.

Twenty-three point four seconds. He'd timed it on his watch plenty of times. That was his life.

Why this was happening? Why he could remember past cycles and others couldn't? Kevin didn't know, didn't care anymore. At first he had cared, of course. At first it had been a big fucking deal why.

But after a million or so cycles, unchanging, unrelenting, you started to not really give a shit anymore. It had taken him a long time before he started killing people. Like, in the back of his mind, he worried that maybe on the cycle he murdered someone, it would end, and he'd have to go to prison.

He'd gladly do so, now. He could kick back, maybe be somebody's bitch.

How many cycles? Kevin had lost count ages ago. How many years had he been trapped, in terms of his remembered time? Easier to estimate, but still impossible to know. Could be anything, really. He doubted it was over thirty years, though. He'd probably had gone insane by thirty.

Sally's ass walked by. Kevin watched it go.

God, he wished he could come.

Try as he might, he could not reach climax in twenty three seconds, and each time the cycle reset, his dick was as limp as a wet fish again. There was, of course, the option to force himself on Sally, or any of the nearby women, and though he had done so, he still was sane enough to feel bad about it, so he'd quit after a few times.

He'd killed a lot of people, though. His record was nine in one cycle. Took a lot of tries to get that high, perfectly mapping out when and where people could be killed easiest, the fastest ways to overpower them. He'd killed himself, of course, far before he started going on killing sprees (but after he'd committed single murders) usually by throwing himself out the window, though he had invented other ways. What was on the other side? He didn't know. Whenever his brain quit, he'd just feel the buzzing sensation, and snap, back in his chair.

He'd seen Groundhog Day, once, and now he laughed at how the main character started to consider it hellish, being trapped in the same day over and over. Hell, he'd give anything for half a day. An hour. Ten minutes. Ten minutes might be long enough to actually have semi-interesting conversations with people, at least. Just to pass the time, you understand, before the blessed relief of insanity set in.

The flash of light, and he's back in his chair. Hardly moved from where he was before. More and more lately, he's just spending cycles doing nothing. He had long ago pushed the limits of what he could access on his computer. His personal PC didn't have an outside internet connection. His boss down the hall had one, of course, but it took almost his entire amount of available time just to sprint down there, push his boss out the window, (which was the most expedient way to get onto the computer) and type something into Google. He could get onto Wikipedia or Facebook or whatever long enough to read maybe a sentence or two, then it was bye bye Kevin, back to your desk.

He had hope, still, in a tiny locked away part of him, that maybe this... thing, was localized. Maybe he was in some sort of weird time bubble, like something you'd see on Star Trek, and on the outside scientists were working furiously to save everyone trapped inside. They'd have to hurry if that was the case, though. Insanity was only a hundred thousand cycles away. He opened his computer's calculator, punched in the numbers. Twenty-seven days of sanity left.

Kevin smiled. Sally smiled back at him.

"Hey," he said. "Doing anything later tonight?"

"Sorry," she said in the exact same way she always said it. "I've got a boyfriend."

No you don't, he thought. "Oh, alright. No big deal." Sally smiled tightly at him, moved on. The delay caused her to miss Brian. As Brian passed by, Kevin stuck out his foot and tripped him.

"What the fuck?" Brian said, eyes glaring up at Kevin, papers scattered around him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there," Kevin apologized, as he helped Brian to his feet and then threw him out the window. The sound of the shattering glass drew Steve's attention. The bluebirds, startled, took flight.

Kevin followed Brian out the window headfirst. As his skull smashed against pavement, he felt the bees on him, in him.

It might be sooner than a hundred thousand.
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Mongrel
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Re: Not So Extremely Short Stories

Postby Mongrel » Wed Mar 12, 2014 12:16 pm

FWIW, I thought this evoked a suitably terrifying nightmare world.
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