Chicken or the Egg

I walked back into the conference room, jamming my pack of cigarettes and lighter into my pockets just as a single gunshot rang out. Screams and shouts replaced the idle chatter that once filled the auditorium. To my amazement, a couple of the attendees pinned the gunman to the floor and his pistol kicked well out of reach before I ventured to peek over the back row of chairs from behind which I took shelter. Directly in front of me, scientists, philosophers, reporters, politicians, and other attendees either sat alone, catching their breaths or huddled together, holding each other in safety. Toward the font of the seating section, several people stood together forming a circle as best they could around a person lying in the row. On the stage Dr. Henry, who was about to give a breakthrough lecture that promised to solve the Chicken or Egg debate, lay dead with his blood and brains splattered on the wall and charts behind him from a single gunshot to the head.

I shoved my way forward through the crowd blocking the center aisle. Call it natural scientific curiosity or just a feature of the human condition that relishes in viewing the macabre, but I needed to see, to hear, to know. After all, Dr. Henry wasn't unveiling a new chemical weapon or alternative fuel source, he was just solving the classic argument between the chicken and the egg and their places in history. Not a controversial topic at all and certainly not one a sane rational person would expect to be assassinated for.

As I neared the group holding down the gunman, I could hear them ask the same questions. "What were you thinking?" "What is wrong with you?" "Who are you?"

At the same time, the gunman ranted almost as loud as their cacophony. "We can't know the answer, we can't know the answer?" he repeated over and over

I pulled one of the men away for a moment and threw myself into his spot in the circle. "What do you mean we can't know? What is the harm of knowing?" Knowledge was the opposite of fear, it drove away ignorance, and made possible all the dreams we thought we could never realize. Even solving something as mundane as the Chicken or the Egg debate might help humanity gain insight into its own evolutionary course: would we be born with new survival traits or is it something that we could mutate into as we grew?

The man stopped raving for a second to look me in the eyes and I feared what I saw - clarity. This wasn't some drug-addled lunatic from off the street or some crazed, violence-prone conspiracy theorist who watched one too many Youtube videos. This man was calm, determined, sure-of-purpose. "We can't know. There are mysteries that must remain if humanity's existence is to continue. Our collective existence is the only barrier between The Creature and our universe. Our minds are its doorways into this reality."

One of the men holding him down dug his knee deeper into the gunman's back. "Whatever nutjob, except we don't experience a collective consciousness, or hive-mind as you psychos like to call it."

"No, not a hive-mind, but the similar questions individuals have within our society forms the barriers that keep The Creature from invading our heads and pushing through into our reality. Dr. Henry was about to answer one of those questions and thus open a doorway through the collective barrier we have formed for ourselves."

I knelt down next to the gunman's face. "What are the other barriers? These other questions that keep your creature at bay?" I asked, curiosity taking over.

The man smiled at me. "A believer in your midst. I am surprised. 'Who am I?' and 'Why am I here?' are two very big ones. 'Is it better to die by fire or ice?'. 'How long should I wait to call her back?'. Any of your wonderful 'Would you rather' questions."

The man with his knee in the gunman's back pressed the man's face into the hard carpeting. "Ok, that's enough nonsense out of you," he said with a growl.

Though I and others like myself considered the conference a big deal, it really wasn't important enough to warrant a full police presence. The handful of officers and security guards on staff spared just one man to check the body to confirm Dr. Henry's passing, and then left him in the auditorium to watch over the crime scene and the gunman. The rest scattered to assist those who might've been injured in the panic, to call for assistance from medical personnel, and to sweep the convention center in case there was another lunatic on the loose.

It was probably due to this distraction that I made it passed the lone sentry and onto the stage amongst Dr. Henry's work and his body. Why I was even up there, though, that part seemed questionable. I couldn't recall what drove me to walk casually behind the guard when his focus was elsewhere, to climb up on the stage, and start going through the late physicist's work. Charts and diagrams and graphs all on giant boards still covered in the man's blood. I didn't realize I'd stepped over his body until I found myself at a table on the other side of the stage. Two dozen white binders stood filled with pages and pages of research from cover to cover, obviously meant to be handed out at the end of his lecture.

I casually opened one of the binders to a random page. Inside, Dr. Henry laid out a rebuttal to the idea that the egg came before the chicken. It obviously wasn't his final conclusion, just addressing concerns his colleagues rightfully would have if they attempted to disprove his ideas. I flipped through pages and pages of proofs and theories, skimming the words as I tried quickly to follow where Dr. Henry's ideas might lead. All the while, I felt something tingling in the back of my skull, slowly working its way to my forehead like a roach scratching its way across a newspaper inside my head.

Before I could turn the page to the end, I looked up to see the blank eyes of Dr. Henry staring at me. Except they weren't completely lifeless as one would expect of a dead man. I could feel a slight flicker of life behind those eyes, and as I stared I swear I saw the slight twitch of his lips. Having worked with cadavers I knew all the tricks my mind plays on me, unsettling me as shadows or illusions of the mind caused parts of the body to appear to move. But this wasn't like those times. I hesitated, my fingers clutching the corner of the page, ready to turn it over. I couldn't look away from the man and the illusion that some part of him might actually be alive. As I stared the scratching stopped its movement just behind my forehead, but never stopped its scratching, scratching, scratching, intensifying until I thought it might break through my skull.

Then I saw it, the slight roll of an eye, just one of them. Both eyes had been focused on the binder in my hands. Now one of them clearly focused on my eyes.

"Oh, what the fuck," I said to myself, letting go of the page and staring intently at the body of Dr. Henry.

His other eye wasn't so subtle. It rolled quick like a marble across a concrete floor, missing my face and staring up a the ceiling. It shifted down too quick and ended up a the floor. Finally it came back up, both eyes now locked with mine. The corner of his upper lip twitched a fraction of an inch, then opened wide like a fish trying to breath out of water, and I swear I saw for the briefest of instants, a green tentacle quivering inside his mouth. My legs gave out and I fell to to the floor, the binder still in my hand. I slid back until I was against the wall, as far as I could get from the body but not far enough. The scratching inside my head turned into a pounding.

"Turn the page, finish the reading, you need to know," said a voice from Dr. Henry's mouth, though clearly not Dr. Henry's voice.

I shook my head furiously determined to drive the sight of a talking zombie from my view and the pounding out of my head. "No, no, no," I repeated over and over again.

"You have to know. You want to know. Let us out," the voice gurgled as if underwater. I heard a scraping noise like nails on a chalkboard. I opened my eyes to see one of Dr. Henry's arms extend out to me. I watched as a mass of tentacles wiggled under his skin, moving from the extended arm to the other. Then his other arm shot forward, dragging the limp body with it. "Finish the page. Let us out," he repeated. It brought one hand up and clamped onto my ankle. I swung the binder at it but it was useless.

Before I could scream, Dr. Henry's mouth opened again. Rather than let out words, though, slimy green tentacles emerged. First one, then two, three. Wider and wider his mouth stretched open until there were at least a dozen tentacles wiggling in the air, each as wide as three of my fingers together. And there, in the very center of the mass, glowed a single eye filled with hatred and malevolence glaring back at me. An anger as deep and vast as all of creation itself.

"Finish the page and release me!" came a voice that definitely was not Dr. Henry's. Though the physicist was nearly 60 years old, the voice that raged now felt older, filled with a gravitas of something ancient, something that might've existed even before the words "Let there be light" were ever spoken.

I went back to the tactic of closing my eyes and shaking my head, hoping to drive out the command as well as The Creature's assault on my psyche as it fully occurred to me what exactly the scratching and pounding actually was - The same monster possessing Dr. Henry also trying to get into me. I pulled the report tighter so my chest knowing the moment I opened the binder The Creature would have me as it had taken Dr. Henry.

This was it, the monster the crazed gunman spoke of, a being seeking to possess humanity through our certainty. Our only psychic barriers being the questions we asked ourselves everyday. Did the chicken come before the egg? I repeated in my head a couple of times. Is it better to die of fire or ice? How can I tell if he likes me? did I make the right choices? What comes after death?

I gained a single moment of clarity, a brief window where I knew my mind was my own. I stared at the possessed body of Dr. Henry, his vice-like grip on my leg, the mass of tentacles stretching, reaching from his mouth, the glaring eye in the center of it all - and suddenly I knew what to do. I pulled my lighter from my pocket and set the pages of the binder on fire starting with the last pages. I could feel The Creatures anger about to explode. Fearing another psychic assault, quickly I tossed the report then closed my eyes and covered my ears, then curled myself into a ball.

The creature let out a howl at my defiance, rattling my teeth and shaking me to the core of my being. I trembled, doing my best to control my fear until it eventually broke loose. I let out my own scream, a primal, terror-filled, victim-about-to-be-stabbed-in-a-horror-movie scream.

I felt hands grab my shoulder, shaking me. "Dr. Fox," a voice said, "Dr. Fox, ma'am, are you okay?" I opened my eyes and uncurled my body to find the security guard and a pair of the other scientists crowded around me. The smell of smoke and burnt pages filled the air.

Slowly, I uncurled myself and brought my body into a seated position against the wall. I took several deep breaths. "Sorry, I'm not sure what happened," I said, looking around the room. My flaming binder hit its mark - the other binders stacked together on the table. The ones that weren't torched were instead doused by the liberal spraying from the fire hose pulled from its box against the wall. Near my feet, lay the body of Dr. Henry, his body now limp and lifeless and no sign of a creature trying to escape his flesh.

I happened to lock eyes with the gunman. They had him hand-cuffed and seated in one of the chairs. His eyes met mine and widened. "You saw The Creature," he said, "It tried to get to you. The monster, you heard it, felt it."

"Did you move Dr. Henry's body?" interrupted one of my colleagues that had climbed onto the stage.

Before I could respond, the security guard said, "A little my fault. I might've kicked him a little when rushing to put out the fire, or dragged him a bit with the hose. Or, you know, post-mortem spasms. I've heard of bodies twitching, jumping long after they were dead."

The other man just grunted and walked away. "And did you really need to spray everything up here. We won't be able to see the damage to the computers and hard drives until we can get them set up someplace else. The other presentation material is definitely irreparable."

"Sorry about that. Just being thorough, though I might've gotten carried away." The security guard turned to look at the gunman and gave him a slight nod which the gunman subtly returned. "I guess we'll never know which truly came first."

"I swear between you and that pyromaniac it'll be surprising if we have any data left."

Maybe it was all just stress, grief hitting me all at once that caused me to buy into that nutjob's crazy story. I looked down to see bruising already starting to appear on the ankle The Creature grabbed and I knew that it was real. I also knew enough about my colleagues and the scientific community to know that they weren't going to believe me. I looked over to the security guard staring at me with hard eyes that betrayed nothing. "I just needed a smoke. I wasn't paying attention, lit the report on fire. I got scared, wasn't looking when I tossed the binder. Sorry." I said, looking back down at my feet.

The security guard just shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the damaged presentation. "Grief affects us all differently, I guess. Just be a bit more careful in the future."

I turned and headed back up the center aisle toward the exit. Now I really needed a cigarette. I sensed the security guard fall into step next to me. We walked in silence until we got outside the auditorium. "So, no one else saw what happened?" I asked.

"That's not how it works," said the other man as he pulled out his own pack of cigarettes. He offered and I took one. "They all saw it, heard it, felt it, but it's whether or not they want to believe it. Most people will look for any excuse to disbelieve something that doesn't fit into their narrow world."

I took a drag of the cigarette. "So, you're working with the gunman."

He nodded. "Never work alone, very important rule to follow." The he held up a white business card, blank except for a phone number. "Give it a call if you're looking for a career change."

I took the card and put it into my pocket. "I'm ready now. I want to know, need to know. What else is out there?"

So, this unfortunately was a long one even from the person writing it (I think Word put it at 2675 words). Yes, I know there are parts in it that I should cut-out for being too wordy but it's too late at night to focus really well on editing. From the Reddit Writing Prompt: A quantum physicist solves the riddle of the Chicken and the Egg and is then shot in the head. I was trying to get one story done a week, but the one I was working on last week just couldn't get any traction. I had most of the story, just the ending was eluding me so I gave up, mostly so I wouldn't just have a story that ends on a plot twist reveal. One positive about writing this one now is that I'm currently on "Ghost Story" of The Dresden Files and I tried to channel Jim Butcher's description of the monster He Who Walks Behind into my description of The Creature. The ending, I think, mostly needs work, if I were the type to go back to polish any of these turds.

Getting Back in the Game

Instead of writing actual stories, I decided to waste time detailing the writing issues I'm encountering as I do my ... 65-75% best to get back into writing. Basically just a dumb list of of things I'm encountering since I fell off of writing for almost a full year. Why even give this the time? Because it feels good to complain, and really, isn't that what the internet is for? Also, I was listening to an interview with author V.E. Schwab (Shades of Magic series, Vicious) when she responded to a question about her writing process, "I kind of love any opportunity I have to procrastinate on one thing that needs to be done with another thing that needs to be done." And that's the same advice I heard from other writers too, if you don't want to or just can't write, maybe just do something writing adjacent. I don't want to work on Project A so I'll do Project B. And I know that this doesn't need to be done, but it seemed like something fun, so here we are.

Also, just to give some background without going into a lot of detail, it was just a lot. I had these ideas ... for short stories and responses to Reddit prompts that I scrolled through daily, those vacation posts I wanted to finish as soon as possible and instead ended up taking a year to put together, longer story ideas for a series (if you remember my Pokemon fanfic which I promise I'm still sort of working on), an actual novel idea, different projects I wanted to start on as regular weekly or monthly posts ... and I just couldn't settle on one to work on without two or three other ideas coming into my head, like bored children jumping up and down asking when it's their turn to play. And just like slapping children, slapping at ideas is frowned upon by society, especially in public where authorities tend to be called.

Concentration is the biggest hurdle right now. Sure, it has never been my best quality, but I swear I used to have at least slightly better focus than I do now when I have a pen in my hand. Typically music helps with that by becoming the background noise that drowns out the other background noises, but even that trick has abandoned me. Now everything needs to follow a specific system or else it all just falls apart. I deleted all my writing playlists a long time ago. I assumed I didn't need playlists filled with anime theme songs, k-pop, and Chemical Brothers anymore since I could write with whatever was playing. Now, I NEED silence to start. That's the time I use to come up with the ideas to focus upon. Only AFTER I've got some idea, direction, and hopefully a couple sentences written can I put on music, and very specifically, the music I used to use (meaning I should probably get started on a new writing playlist). For now I just shuffle the kpop genre or Scandal on my iPod, or else put Youtube on autoplay.

On the topic of music, when I use Youtube for music, I now run into something newly annoying: Grammarly Ads

The worst part: I watched several Grammarly ads just to find a screenshot to use, some of those ads I watched all the way through. I'm not sure if Youtube is associated with Blogger or if Skynet is just being an asshole, but without fail anytime I'm typing up a post a Grammarly ad is sure to pop-up. Look, I get it, I'm not good at this. I don't need our AI overlords taking a heaping shit on my hobbies. 90% of them are skippable after the first 5 seconds, but it does break my rhythm and already fragile concentration to stop my typing to switch to another tab to skip the ad which most times is actually almost done, only to repeat the process every 3 minutes and 30 seconds.

As much as I prefer writing on paper, eventually it does need to be transferred onto the computer or else what's the point. Plus, how would I bother those handful of you that actually waste your time reading this thing? Typing, I find, is a hurdle all on its own. My laptop isn't the best, nor the most convenient. Being over 10 years old, it isn't the fastest to start-up nor does it have the best battery life.

Also, since I don't use it often, it's also always buried under a stack of paper and books (relax, they're not hardcovers). Without a table, that stack of books in the picture on the right also gets moved so I can get to the binder underneath. I already spend 8 hours in front of a computer so doing it again for several more hours isn't really an appealing way to spend my night. It's also never as simple as just typing up what I've handwritten word for word. Typing up anything immediately becomes a revision of my work. If it's going onto Reddit, the main issue is that the word count is always too high so I'm spending time cutting things out while trying to make sure it makes sense. Just knowing that I'm going to re-read and edit it all six or seven or eight different times before I decide that it doesn't completely suck fills me with dread. Anything, really, could stall the task of trying to get my words typed up. Then comes the obvious hardship of trying not to get distracted by all the entertainment the internet offers: Plane fares for an upcOming tRip, clips of aNime fight scenes, POcket knives, new Reddit writiNg prompts, kPop music videos, cOmedy stand-ups, Reading other people's blogs, New books to add to my reading list, etc.

I tried to find someplace quiet to write on my own without worrying about other people bothering me. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, every other week or so I holed up in a library someplace on one of those days that it closes up late, around 8pm or so. Obviously not so much right now. I've never been comfortable writing in front of people mostly because they have an annoying habit of talking to me, usually with one of the two (or sometimes both) of the popular questions: 1)What are you writing? or 2) You know what you should add to your story? And there's only so many times I can tell people that I'm working on my suicide note before they start referring me to a hotline, or I actually get around to finishing it (it's going really well). At the library, the general public doesn't care about me as long as I keep to myself and because if I start looking around, parents tend to hold their children a little closer. No, I don't have a library card but there isn't a bouncer at the door. Most have free parking. If I can get there after work, in a usual 1 and a 1/2 to 2 hours of silence and lack of distractions I feel like I can get a lot more written than at home. I'm still not sure if it is because I'm able to focus more at the library, or if I can just get more written at 5pm than at 9:30 or 10:00pm?

With a lot of my writing coming from Reddit, before I wanted to write for only the newest, most upvoted prompts since I believed that was the best way to get my story read and get those upvotes. Starting back up again, I've found that I don't care about that kind of shit anymore. For one, I can't stay up that late anymore to first post a story to a popular prompt. I do most of my writing after 8pm nowadays and to spend several hours on a story usually means finishing up, if I manage to finish, around 11:30pm, or 12am, or 1am. You know when you're watching a show and you tell yourself, "okay, just one more episode because I've gotta get up to go to work tomorrow," and then all of a sudden you realize you made a mistake because you need to be up for work in an hour? Yeah, same thing. I'll look at the clock and just think, "Maybe I can just finish up this part and tweak that part and then I'm done." Then it's about 1:30am and I'm just thinking, "I made a mistake," and even my inner voice is saying, "You made a mistake." I'm also trying to do the prompts with few or no responses. I figure if only one person replies then the prompter is probably more likely to read it. Plus there's less pressure on rushing to finish since most are already a day or a week old, giving myself more time to be the shitty writer I am, and so I can stop writing when it starts to get late and go to sleep. My brain just doesn't work well in the fog as it used to when I could function off of a couple hours of sleep for a few days. Even just for blog posts like this one, I'll typically finish up late enough that I can't re-read it properly, and so the editing and tweaking gets pushed to the next day, usually during my morning cigarette or while I'm eating lunch (as long as no one else is in the lunch room).

And right in the middle of this writing revival as I got back to picking up my pen and notebooks with some regularity, I committed THE cardinal sin - I stopped writing. Call of Duty came out and as long as it took me to still not finish Devil May Cry V, I sped through the campaign and did something I never do, I started on the multiplayer and got hooked on it. No, I still suck at it, but luckily, I'm not easily discouraged or else dying 20-30 times a game would be a real turn-off. So of course, I fell off and needed to work to get back to writing again. I think I've gotten that little addiction sort of squared away, feeding it every so often, but at least I'm starting to write more of those horrible stories again.

Jailbreak

I trudged down the basement hallway, my wrists bound tight together with a light, golden thread. Sure, it was stone walls and marble pillars with burning torches set every ten feet or so, but the damp, musty, unused smell gave away what this place really was - forgotten and unvisited. I just stared straight ahead at the angel walking in front of me, golden armor and wings of pure white. Compared to my naked self draped in a borrowed blanket, he looked magnificent.

Every fifty feet or so we passed a doorway on one side or the other. And from behind most, if not all, came a knock. Some just a light tapping, others a heavy, two (or twenty or two hundred) handed pounding. "So, what's behind all the doors?" I asked, still staring at the wings in front of me.

"Exactly what you think is behind the doors," the angel replied.

"More of us. Humans. Trapped for all eternity."

"Heaven isn't a prison."

"A gilded cage," I said, "Besides this isn't really even Heaven, is it?"

"No, but your kind will be comfortable here. Until the end."

"Until the end of time, you mean."

"Yes, until the end."

We walked in silence for a little while more, the only sound in the hall being our footsteps or the constant pounding coming from the other side of the doors. But no one can really stay silent walking with the divine, or semi-divine, or whatever the angel was. Not with so many questions to ask, and so many secrets to tell.

"Why do you keep them all locked behind the doors? Why not let them in? Or, if not, why not just destroy them altogether?"

The angel continued to walk. "God is very ... attached. Yes, attached is the right word ... attached to his projects. Maybe He can't stand to see another mass of you destroyed. Maybe He still desperately hopes one of you were not complete failures and show yourselves worthy of his companionship. And companionship with the divine requires perfection." The angel motioned to the locked doors. "And none of you have shown the kind of perfection required."

"Well, we are only human," I said, stopping in front of one of the doors. From the other side, instead of the pounding sound I'd been hearing, this one had a scrapping sound, like claws or knives.

"A saying every one of your iterations has managed to come up with to excuse your failings." Sensing I was no longer following, the angel stopped and turned to me. He gestured at the door next to me. "Through that door, He tried to give you the tools to survive, dominate your world. Claws and fangs, tougher skin, better senses. You would be the Alphas of your realm, above everything." The angel smiled as if recalling a memory from long ago. "If I remember correctly, that version didn't last a century before ripping each other apart."

The angel turned and started walking again and I hurried to follow, marking the doorway with the scratch, scratch, scratch. My feet and legs ached with every hurried step. I couldn't remember how long we'd been walking for. Not only from the trek through this corridor to the prison cell, but from the journey here as well. Lined with scars and possibly with a thorn or barb still stuck in them.

My guide continued talking. "He tweaked with your physical attributes until deciding that perhaps another change was needed." The angel nodded to another door but continued to walk without pause. "He tweaked your mental capabilities, made you smarter, more intelligent. Another failure as you attempted to disprove His existence. A very entertaining conclusion when they ended up here."

We passed more pounding, some sounding more like explosions than fists. Then we came across a noticeably quiet door. I stopped, drawn to the silence. A light emitted from the cracks around the door and instantly my feet felt restored, not just rested from the strain of walking but the scars healed too. "Empty?"

The angel stopped, then walked quickly, putting himself between me and the door. He banged on the door once and the light died. "If only. In a desperate attempt, He decided to give these ones a touch of the divine. Power to almost rival His own. They attempted to overthrow Him before they were ready to inherit the responsibility that comes with perfection. He locked them away." He grabbed my shoulders and turned me away. "We will continue walking now."

We walked for another twenty or thirty minutes, or maybe a day or two. Time just didn't seem to work how I expected here. We passed door after door until I thought that maybe the pounding was actually just coming from inside my own head.

"So, that was the point of it all? To find a friend?" It came out with more scorn than I intended.

"Life was a failure. He tried to raise you to perfection, to learn and grow through lifetimes until eventually reaching your own collective divinity, to one day become caretakers of your own universes, or maybe even this one. You failed." Then he stopped and pointed at a door. It was a plain, wooden one with a gold-plated keyhole. "We're here."

The angel turned to me and grabbed a key ring from his belt. "Now, before you rejoin with your compatriots perhaps you would like to explain how you escaped your room?"

I smiled, a big, wide, toothy, fuck-you grin. "Oh, I didn't break out of the cell. I came in through the other way."

The angel tilted his head, puzzled. "The other way?"

"The other way. The long way."

Then the angel straightened, stiff as a board as he finally understood. "The other way," he repeated.

I nodded. "You really shouldn't have let Dante publish his trilogy." I leaned until I could see around the angel and his massive wings. "Take him now."

The angel was fast. Before I could stand-up again, his sword was already in his hand. It was too bad, really. If only he knew he was already dead. There was a flash of light and the smell of sulfur, and a blade coated in Hellfire sliced across the angels throat. He dropped to the ground, silvery liquid flowing from the wound. Perhaps if he realized how close death was, maybe he would have reached for his horn instead and called for reinforcements. At least his death would've been a sacrifice instead of a waste.

"Did you get the answers you wanted?" said a voice behind me before cutting through the thread holding my wrists together.

A scarred man in front of me extinguished the Hellfire, though I assumed that the rest of Heaven was already alerted to its presence and would be sending its horde against us. With him were a half-dozen others dressed in rags if clothed at all, every one of them also holding angel-steel swords, some coated with blood already. "I got the answer I knew I would get." I turned to one that had cut my bonds. "How many do we have?"

Her long black hair hung partially in front of her face, an attempt to hide the burns. "The ones you see here, plus another two dozen or so on the way. I spread the word amongst our people still trapped Below of our rebellion. If they manage to escape, either down through the Last Circle or, if possible, Redemption, they'll come to join our fight here."

I nodded, brushing the hair back behind her ear. We suffered for a God that didn't want us. We shouldn't be ashamed to hide what He did to us. I bent over and picked up the key ring and tossed it to her. "Let's let our kin out from the cage. Then maybe we will look into the nature of these other ones, if they should be allowed to join us in Paradise."

Taken from Reddit Writing Prompts: "God tells you life is a mistake and that he was attempting to create perfection." This is a prime example of why you don't throw anything away, or why you should throw things away. At least now I can get rid of it. Originally I had written most of this to a prompt about finding different versions of humanity. Since I didn't use it, I just let it sit in a notebook until tge notebook filled up, then put the notebook aside. When this prompt came up, I immediately went hunting for it and the writing I already had. Sure, I can tell that the story doesn't quite fit the prompt, but I think I did an okay job of trying to make it work. If I had more time (if it wasn't already 11:30pm and I needed to go to work tomorrow) I would've tried to think harder about a better ending, and middle, and beginning, and title. I need to stop trying to do a full ... I don't like it enough to call it a story ... a full thing in one night even if some of it was just copying. Or been smarter and just worked on something else. Note: After finally re-reading this over several times and making little tweaks, and getting a nights rest, yes I do realize (during our current crisis) I wrote a story which the protagonists are a bunch of jackasses who just couldn't stay in their room until it was over.

Unauthorized Use

You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you just know something bad is coming. An engine roared as a truck swung wildly around the corner on my left, barrelling down the street toward me. I could hear sirens in the distance, getting closer.

I gripped the bench hard, crushing the wooden planks with my fingers. I could stop this. This bench wasn't heavy enough to stop the truck, but tossing it into the cab might scare the driver to stomp on the brakes. I spotted several three-foot high cement planters decorating the outside of the office building behind me that I could toss into the road. I could possibly flip the truck over with a running start, or at least knock it onto its side.

No, I thought, as I loosened my hand from the bench. I couldn't use my power. That was the one condition of leaving The Agency: No Powers. And sure, I might've used my strength here and there just to hold open a particularly heavy door during a powerful windstorm or unscrew a frozen bolt from an old tire. Luckily The Agency seemed to overlook those little instances, or at least they never sent a team after me yet. It was only a matter of time until they caught me using my power. And if they were watching me now, they'd definitely catch me this time tossing 200lb planters into the street. One strike and it was off to prison, or worse, forced into servitude as one of their government thugs.

Sirens blared and a cop car swung around the same turn. The passenger of the truck leaned out and fired several shots from a handgun. Through the windshield, I saw the driver take a hand off the wheel to fire shots out his window too. In front of the truck, the light turned red and pedestrians crossed into the intersection. Some broke into a run at the sight of the truck and the sound of the sirens. Others wouldn't make it across in time.

I was barred from using my super-strength, but I couldn't just sit back and do nothing. Maybe just a small act, something no one would notice. I reached into my pocket and pulled two coins, resting one on each of my thumbs. Timing it just so, I flicked both toward the truck. The first coin popped the passenger side front tire. The second coin hit the passenger in the side of the head, knocking his head back and smacking it hard on the window frame.

The next second felt like it was moving in slow motion. Though he looked unconscious or at least soon to be, the passenger continued to pull the trigger, now firing wildly into the buildings and crowds of people gathered on the sidewalks. When the tire popped and the truck skid, the driver dropped his gun and jerked the wheel. I heard another loud pop and instead of straightening out, the truck flipped, aimed at the pedestrians still in the road while the passenger hung limp out the window.

The truck started to roll but before it could crush the passenger and then all the pedestrians in the way, I heard a loud snap and the world stopped.

"You can breath now, Jackson," said a female voice behind me, one I hadn't heard for years and hoped to never hear again.

I exhaled a breath I didn't know I was holding and turned to find a woman in a dark suit and sunglasses. Captain Evanston, my training commander before I left the program. "Is this you?" I asked motioning to the frozen moment we were currently in. She just stared at me, as if that was enough of an answer. "So, The Agency has been watching me?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Just checking in. We do that every few months with all the recruits who opt-out of the program. We come by, observe for a few days, then move onto the next."

"So you didn't set this whole thing up just to see if I was using my powers?" I said, glaring at her as I waved my arms wildly at the chaos behind me.

She took off her sunglasses and looked around behind me, and just shook her head. "There's enough going on in the world that not only would there be no point into adding to the madness, but we just don't have the resources to set up scenarios for every individual we are currently monitoring." She put her sunglasses back on and stepped passed me and into the disaster. "Now, where is he?" she said, walking across the street. I hurried to fall in next to her, curious about who she was looking for in all this madness.

"Your plan was almost perfect. Stopping a moving vehicle with minimum damage to people and property while maintaining anonymity as this would be an illegal use of your powers. Knock out the passenger to stop him from firing, especially into the crowd of people. It also isolates the driver, psychologically he knows he's now alone. Popping the tire not only disables the vehicle but also puts the driver's focus back on steering the truck."

"Yeah, well, as thought out as you make it sound, the truck still flipped so I guess it wasn't that great of a plan," I said, staring at the truck hanging suspended in mid-air.

It was in mid-roll, the passenger-side about to meet the asphalt with the upper-half of the passenger hanging out the window. The rest of the roll might take it through the intersection, crushing one or two people still crossing the street before hopefully stopping when it slammed into the cars stopped at the light on the other side of the street. Worst case, perhaps the truck is pulled by the weight of the cab or the way the driver turned the wheel at the last second and the momentum pulls the roll into the larger crowd gathered on the sidewalk, then through a large glass window of a small convenience store at the corner.

"What did you use to take out the tires?" Captain Evanston said. At some point while I stared at the truck and the carnage about to ensue, she must've walked right passed me and now stood next to the truck itself.

"A coin," I replied, making my way to her. "A quarter, I think. I was waiting for the bus. And I only got the one tire. I used the other coin on the passenger."

She waved and I walked over to her next to the driver's side front tire. "Coins, right? So I take it this wasn't you?" She took off her sunglasses and pointed to a blown tire on the driver's side, except the hole punched into it looked melted through. The second popping noise right before the truck flipped.

"Over here Jackson," she called, now standing in front of another guy several years younger than me mixed in with a small crowd that must've just come out of the deli to see the commotion. He was dressed casually, blending easily with the crowd. Luckily Captain Evanston must've known what to look for. It took me a little longer before I noticed the red eyes and a slight tan around them, darker than the rest of his skin. "This is what you didn't plan for, a second person acting on the threat. Same idea, disable the vehicle. Heat vision, I'm guessing, to melt a hole in the tire. I'll have a team pick him up."

Captain Evanston put on her sunglasses and started back across the street to where we were originally standing at the bus stop. "That's the problem with subtle," she said absently, as if teaching a class to no one in particular, "If you had chosen to do something big and bold, it would've stopped the amateurs from interfering with your plans." She pointed at the large planters behind me. "Toss one of those into the road or onto the truck's hood. That would've stopped the chase. But you were too afraid of being caught, concerned about your own well-being."

I looked away, embarrassed knowing that was one of the plans I'd originally come up with the foil the getaway.

She stepped up close to me and grabbed my arms. "Or just jump in front of the truck and stop it with your own two hands."

I yanked my arms away. "No way am I that strong to stop a barrelling car."

She stared at me. "You could have been. Our projections showed that you might've been able to stop something twice that size at that speed if you just stayed with us."

I shook my head, forcing away the flashback coming on from my time at The Agency's mandatory training camp for anyone caught using their powers without authorization. "I'm not cut out for that, to be one of your thugs." I forced the sneer from my face and tried to replace it with a grateful smile. "But luckily you guys were here this time to save the day, to prevent this tragedy. I guess The Agency can do some good."

Captain Evanston just started at me blankley before shaking her head and raising her right hand. "Actions have consequences, as does inaction. A lesson you should've learned by now." Then she snapped her fingers and everything went to hell.

Bullets whizzed by, shattering glass windows or hitting bodies with dull, flat thuds. The crunch and snap of bones and flesh as the truck landed was just loud enough to be heard over the screams of the people around me. The truck rolled and it was the worst-case scenario: its momentum pulled the roll through a dozen onlookers, including the young man with heat vision, and into the building before it finally stopped inside the corner store. People were sprawled on the ground, blood splattered everywhere on the concrete.

I spun around and grabbed Captain Evanston by the shoulders. "What is wrong with you?! You could have saved them all!"

"You could have saved them," was all she said before she vanished. In my hands and in front of me one moment, gone the next. I felt a sharp thin stab in my neck and the world started to go dim. "You can save them. I will show you how."

Once again, Reddit Writing Prompts: "You have superpowers but aren't allowed to use them." A simple prompt that didn't force the me into too much of a corner on how the story should go. Mostly I'm just happy that I finished it, but other than that, yeah, I know it isn't ... I was going to say the best but really, it's barely good just on the standards I try to have for myself. Of course, I've still got a weakness when it comes to description as you might've seen from the lack of detail with Captain Evanston (I opted for some generic government suit type character) as well as "The Agency" (I really couldn't figure out what to make this out to be). I also rushed the beginning, that first paragraph, because, well, figuring out how to start is hard. This was another one that it took me a while to figure out the action, how everything moved together, as you could tell from the shitty diagram I pulled from my notebook. I've been trying to get something done once a week but last week... I was just lazy.