11 March 2011

Dream Job

Heat.  It was always hot, Bobby Sack thought, wherever I go.  Sweat drizzled slowly down his neck onto a collar near sopping.  The air conditioner sluggishly pushed air with a wheezing noise, offering his legs a hint of a trace of a suggestion of coolness. Uncomfortable as he was, Bobby did not step away from the window.  When the moment came, and it always did, he would be ready.

It wasn't the heat that bothered Bobby.  It never was.  It was the waiting he didn't like.  And his job required a lot of waiting.

His eyes were fixed on a door across the street.  It was a blue door, faded, and not a standout amongst the slightly decrepit warehouses and flex offices that lined the road.  He focused on it intensely, willing it to open.  He tensed a little as a shadow drifted across the door.  Just a cloud, he told himself, a cloud.  The door was Bobby's next payday, and when it opened and if things went as planned, the check would be in his account before nightfall.

Ticktockticktock...Bobby breathed slow and steady.  He was just about to raise his head back from the eyepiece when the blue door opened a crack.  Bobby sucked in a breath, held it.  Through the optics, he could see a shock of brown hair atop a small face wrapped in ultrablack sunglasses.  Bobby grinned, his hands holding the stock in a soft grip.  The body attached to the head stepped out from behind the door.

Heat sucks and hate waiting, Bobby thought while squeezing the trigger, but some days this is the best job in the world...

12 comments:

  1. Oh, Irish, usually I like your writing, and while the story stands on its own visually, I am NOT liking the direction!
    Sorry, but OY.

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  2. I'm sorry to say I agree with the previous comment.

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  3. This is exactly why I am dreading summer.

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  4. The beginnings of a great Mystery...You got me!!!

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  5. To all: Don't worry, it's purely a fiction. Bobby is a complicated man who did some bad things...and I'm still figuring him out :)

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  6. I like it. I like that you're not afraid to go against the grain, that you're willing to make your character 3-dimensional, and that means that he's not black and white, good guy or bad. I say keep going with this. The character you created is interesting, and that's what keeps people turning the pages.

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  7. Some of the best advice I ever received in regard to writing: Make your characters imperfect. Make them suffer. Then you'll have a good story.

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"Let your laws come undone
Don't suffer your crimes
Let the love in your heart take control..."


-'The Hair Song', by Black Mountain

Tell me what is in your heart...