It is more flash fiction from Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds. I found this one particularly challenging. We had to incorporate five random words -- "wig," "dusk," "flirt," "mobile phone," and "figure" -- into the story. We had 1,000 words. I used up 984.
This is an awful lot of fun.
There was a dark outline of a man in a hat at the edge of the water, black against the pink and orange of the setting sun.
This was it.
This was how it was done.
Dudley O’Reilly had wondered about it sometimes, but not often. Growing up, he was more concerned with his books.
The man at the water’s edge didn’t move.
“Do you see him there?” her voice was light but a little smoky. It made him blush and sweat.
She leaned to him across the back seat of the big Cadillac. He felt her arm brush against his, could smell her breath – didn’t smell like gum or mints or anything. Just clean. She smelled clean, her red hair trailing down her forehead, over her shoulders, down towards her breasts.
He took in an audible breath.
“Yes, I see him.”
It had been a week earlier when Dudley found it. Sitting there by the trolley stop. Abandoned. But it wasn’t the kind of thing anyone just forgot.
Normally a guy like Dudley would walk away, forget about it. Go home, start in on one of the old classics. Maybe Vonnegut. Steinbeck. He hadn’t picked up a Hemingway in a long time. Grab a sandwich from downtown, stop at the vending machine in the laundry for a Mountain Dew, feed the cat, close the blinds, kick off the shoes, drop the air down to 63 – cold AC was his one indulgence – and curl up under the Banned Books blanket he’d found at a yard sale, crack it open to the first page.
That hadn’t happened.
It was large, a regulation Army duffle, though he could find no stenciled name.
And it was full.
Dudley was a textbook recluse, but he wasn’t dumb. The duffle belonged to somebody, and it would be worth a lot to them. And so he went to work.
The next day at the library he stocked up on all the crime fiction he could find. Ed McBain. Jeffery Deaver. Randy Wayne White. John D. MacDonald. Agatha Christie. Dashiell Hammett. Lee Child. Elmore Leonard. He’d emptied the giant duffle and filled it with books, mostly paperbacks.
“That’s an awful lot of books, Dudley,” Marina whispered. Marina worked with him in the library, and had been in love with him from the moment she first saw him. He grunted, lifting the duffle onto his back.
“Yeah. Don’t say anything to Mrs. Peco,” the library director, “okay? I… uh… I’m working on a project.”
As he clomped out the door with his ridiculous duffle bag full of books, Marina whispered, “I won’t,” and sighed. She watched him walk out the door, not turning around.
He took the week off and started reading. The first epiphany came to him after the second day with an Elmore Leonard book. Stake the place out. And so he did. He could see the bus stop from the small walkway towards his apartment, and he sat out in a plastic chair for the better part of the afternoon, reading, waiting.
Finally they came. Two men and the red-headed woman. The men were tall and hard to see, dark in their suits and ties, her in a sharp, gray outfit with a trim skirt.
As he approached, the red-headed lady saw him first.
“I can help you,” he’d said with more confidence than he thought he might.
A tense conversation ensued, with him assuring them that whatever it was they were looking for was safe.
The red-headed woman handed Dudley a card. Only a phone number and the word “cell”.
“I’ll be in touch,” heading back to his apartment.
On the third day, he knocked on the door of his neighbor, Woodrow. He’d always been aware of Woodrow’s paternalistic concern. When you gonna ask out that nice girl at the library, Duds – that’s what he called him, “Duds”. And Dudley would dismiss it, saying, “Marina? She doesn’t even like me.”
Woodrow had shown him the .22, a pistol, told him – joking, mostly – that any time he needed protection, just let Woodrow know. It ain’t always that safe around here, Duds.
He handed over the .22 with some aprehension. It’s loaded, Duds – don’t wig out. A look of grave concern was etched on the old man’s face.
There wouldn’t be any more than five of them, and the gun held twelve rounds. Small bullets, might take two to kill some of them. Figure unload it and they’re all dead.
He played it one more time in his head. No way they were letting him live. No way. Not what he’d read in his books.
Gun comes out, red-head gets it first. Then the driver. Made sense. Her closest – right there, in fact. The guys in the front would have to turn around. Pop, pop. Even Dudley, never fired a gun before, could hit them in the back of the head.
The tricky part would be getting out of the car and then hitting the dark figure against the dark water. Maybe he’d just unload and hope for the best after that.
And after that it was easy. He would chuck the gun in the bay, go back to his apartment and get rid of the duffle. Get rid of it forever. Not even keep any for himself.
He would get rid of it, go back to work. He’d ask out Marina and she would say yes. They would date very happily. Move it together at some point. They’d get married and have kids, maybe even a lot. They would be happy, grow old, retire. And then one day he’d be laying in bed and he would tell her the story, and she would chalk it up to the age or the sickness or the medicine or all the damn crime books he read over a long lifetime. But it would all be true, and it would finally have been told.
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