Portrait of a Person

His sight followed his trail of piss down into the toilet. Blood in the bowl. Never a good sign. He sighed, finished, zipped up, and went to flush, then didn’t. Maybe it would serve the next visitor here as a warning.

At the sink, he washed his hands and looked in the mirror. Four days of stubble, lip swollen, eyes shot through with cracks of blood, and a bruise of deep-purple blood pooling under his cheek. Looking close, he could just about see the pattern of knuckles from the ugly customer last night.

When was he going to learn that he couldn’t live night to night, drinking and fighting? The friends he had gone out drinking with had evaporated, and now it was just him. Days in demo, nights talking to strangers, hitting on strangers, fighting with strangers.

He wanted to change. He wanted to strip his torn, blood-dirty clothes from him and run from the gas station bathroom naked, a new man reborn. He also wanted to not go to jail, so that was out.

He washed his face instead and made a resolution: Tonight, he’d only take enough cash for three drinks. One little rebirth at a time.

Softball Game

Click. Whirrrrrrrr. Up went the garage door, revealing two ski-masked men holding handguns. I was halfway to my car before I noticed them.

“Took you long enough,” said the short one.

“Seriously. We were out here for, like, an hour,” said the fat one.

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “What do you want?”

“We’re stealing your car,” said Short.

“Yup,” said Fat.”

“Really?”

“Yup,” they said in unison.

I looked at each of them, then at their guns. “Okay.”

“Really?” said Fat.

“Just like that?” said Short.

“It’s either that or, what, get shot?”

“Yeah!” said Fat.

“I choose not getting shot.”

“Wow,” said Short.

“That was way easier than I thought,” said Fat.

“Maybe you’re just really good at this,” I said. They smiled. “Listen, guys.”

“Yeah?” said Short.

“I was on my way to my daughter’s softball game.”

“That’s sweet,” said Fat.

“Thanks. She’s pitching. She’s really excited”

“Good for her!” said Short.

“Could I get a ride?”

Pause. “What?” they said.

“Well, now I don’t have a car, and the game starts in twenty minutes.”

Short and Fat started at each other for a minute.

And that’s why we need to wait for Mommy to drive us home.

Panic

She was driving the wrong way. Only two hours left on the babysitter’s clock, and she took a deliberate wrong turn and took them out of the pack. Just off the ferry, minutes after discussion about their timing and stopping for dinner, and after he’d said he was happy to be in the front of the pack. And she had him looking up details of her alternate route.

“Let me read,” he snapped, when she asked him if the road connected through, and she shut up and let him read. He shut the book.  “No, there’s no way through. There’s a ferry.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, we won’t go through the pass this time.” She turned.

He stewed. “We were ahead of the pack. We were going to make good time, we… Where are you going?”

“We can connect up with the freeway this way.”

“Oh.” He paused. “I’m sorry I snapped.”

“It’s okay.”

“I was happy we had the lead, and you just turned away, without knowing…” He looked out the window for a while. Farms with lakes, craggy bluffs with evergreens, like where he grew up, passed by. “This is a really nice route. Thanks for taking it.”

Ferry Dust

She’d never trained for anything like this. Three days after the end of the world, and she was the nominal captain of an inter-island ferry. She’d seen the detonations in her figurative rear-view and gave the full-steam ahead.

Now they were stopped, husbanding the fumes that remained in the tank while her engineer Kaplana figured out if they could scavenge gas from the tanks of boarded cars. No one had protested. She thought they were all still in shock from the blinding lights and the horizon-swallowing clouds. Hell, so was she.

At least Kaplana had an idea of what to do. Her training included useful skills. Not so, the captain. All she knew was how to drive a boat and log her hours, and now this group of two thousand waited on her decisions on where to go, what to do.

“Captain,” came the radio, “looks like the car fuel will work. We have about 200 miles before we’re dead in the water. What do you want to do?”

Cry. Give up. Put you in charge. Anyone, just not me. I’m not remotely qualified for this, or anything like this.

“Where are we going, Captain?”

Neither is anyone else.

“Alaska.”

The Love List

“Make a list of the things you love about me,” she said. And she would do the same, and they’d meet back up the next day and see if they were really a good match.

Ten minutes to go, and he stared down at his list so far. “Tits,” it said.

His marriage was doomed. She was going to come back with a list praising his humor, his smile, the way he crinkled his eyes when he laughed, the stories he had to tell about his clients, everything about his sexy-yet-casual outfits. And all he’d have in return was this one thing, this insulting, sexist love that he held for her.

What could he love in her? Besides, you know. She always made the bed. Eh. Her way with plants? Sorta. It was cool that she’d taken up whittling. Except it always left wood shavings on the floor. Her family was funny… well, weird. She told good stories, too, but he liked his more. She wore nice outfits, but he paid more attention to his own.

She sat down next to him. They exchanged papers. This was it: the end.

“Dick,” said her list.

“Oh, thank god,” they said together.

A 200-Word RPG

You and each of your friends joining you is a player of a role-playing game.

Each player names her character, then gives her character three one- to five-word traits. One is a skill or attribute, one is an experience, and one is a signature object.

Examples:

Cannius Cant, strong, never defeated, heirloom sword

Alberta Alphonsa Margreta III, technologist, cheated from science fair victory, clockwork glove.

Players collaboratively narrate the story, introducing conflicts, enemies, and complications. When a player disagrees with how the consensus affects or narrates her character, she can try to change what happens with respect to her character.

She declares how she wants the story to go, and why this makes more sense for her character. Then, she can make a case for why any of her character’s traits makes her narrative more likely. Each trait that at least one other player agrees supports her story counts.

The contending player rolls one die, plus one for each trait that counts. If any die shows a six, she gets to narrate how the story goes for her character for the next few minutes. Then, return to consensus narrative until another player wants to do something different with her character.

Prince and the Pauper

When the prince saw the poor boy in the street, he knew he’d found his freedom. At his word, guards singled the boy out of the crowd and whisked him away.

The pauper had been abused by the guard before, and feared for his life. It was a bewildering surprise that they took him without harm to a lush garden, greeted by a rich-dressed figure’s back. “We have something in common,” said the prince, and he turned to reveal his face, identical to the pauper’s.

His scheme was simple: change clothes in the privacy of the garden. The prince enjoys a taste of the common life, and the pauper experiences a day of noble luxury. The exchange remains secret from everyone except the prince’s bodyguard, who would accompany the prince.

Overwhelmed by his good fortune and the presence of majesty, the pauper agreed. Within the hour, they had made the exchange, the prince and his bodyguard making their way through the city incognito, the pauper easing himself into the royal life with a royal bath.

It was there that the royal guard found him, ripping him from the water and arresting him for the crime of murdering his royal brother.