Asklemmy

My wife and I sat across from each other, eyes heavy with the kind of exhaustion you don’t shake with a good night’s sleep. The school had made its choice—they put our boy in harm’s way, ignored the words on paper that were supposed to protect him. An IEP, they called it. Just another stack of bureaucracy to them. To us, it was supposed to be a shield. But shields don’t work when the people holding them don’t give a damn.

So we made our choice too. He wasn’t going back. Not to that school. Not to a system that saw him as a problem instead of a person. We are taking matters into our own hands—homeschooling.

And Texas? We were done. Finished. Washing our hands of it. This place chews people up and spits them out, and we aren’t waiting around to be next. Somewhere out there, there had to be a place where education means more than lip service, where kids aren’t just numbers on a budget sheet.

Tomorrow, we meet the realtor. Sell the house. Cut the ties. A clean break. A new start. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find a place where they gave a damn.

Me and this dame have a date with destiny.

She walked into my place, all long legs and short temper. She asked if I wanted to go and shoot something.

Of course I did. But first, we needed to solve a mystery, the mystery of the French Hen. Why is she sassy? Why is she the boss? Why is she capable of melting hearts with a single bawk? A true femme fatale, dressed in black and wearing a raspberry beret; the kind you find on a pretty chick-en.

Yes, until we could discover what had this hen in such a mood, there would be no shooting, no fighting, no fun.

I suspect the answer lies in biscuits, but dare we risk our fingers to find out?

The air was stifling. The kind of air that sits on you, like a hot blanket made of water. The kind of air that makes you understand that the atmosphere is heavy, in a way your high school science teacher never really conveyed. Big, heavy, hot, wet air.

It engulfed ArcticPrincess, squeezed him from all directions with it's sticky wetness. He curled up tighter in the strange hexagonal hole he'd found in one of the walls of the airport basement. There was work to do, but he wasn't going to do it. At least today, the world could keep spiraling towards its populist, capitalist collapse without him.

The Fiji Airways Lounge at Nadi airport, incomplete and abandoned. Once, someone had a dream of what this place could be. An architect somewhere, a vision of this space filled with wealthy travellers, the sub-elites, the smaller masses who could afford slightly better treatment while the larger masses endured the gate-surrounded food court upstairs.

Something had gone wrong. Maybe it had been corruption. Maybe the fickle will of the shareholders. Maybe it had been a boondoggle all along, a scheme for furthering the career of a junior executive who'd already moved on to their next, higher paying position. Whatever the cause, the architect's dream sat half-built. One half elegant workstations, elegantly curving divisions between contrasting flooring styles, elegant chairs and elegant partitions. One half abandoned construction materials, unassembled couches and unfinished, purposeless rooms.

The place felt like ArcticPrincess's life, like the lives of all the old friends he'd seen on this trip. Grand dreams in the middle of a slow motion collision with reality. In the centre of it all, a weird hexagon cut into the wall in which you could momentarily try to hide. A retreat for writing fiction in style that had also bloomed and died, for a platform whose dream of freeing social media from corporate dominance was also wilting as quickly as it had blossomed.

ArcticPrincess's phone rang. It looked like he was going to have to help the world collapse today after all.

This is a wonder prompt OP.

the city was a mean old broad, and so was my sunday. me and some guy—just another lost soul killing time—went out for brunch, the kind where they serve regret on a plate and charge extra for the privilege. then we pounded pavement, drifting through stores like ghosts with empty pockets. didn’t buy a damn thing. just left fingerprints on glass cases full of things we’d never own.

this week, i’m back in the grind, punching the clock like a sap, sticking to business hours because that’s when they let you work. last job didn’t care when you worked, just that you got it done. back then, i was a king, a labor aristocrat, calling my own shots. now? just another stiff pulling the national average, watching the dream shrink in the rearview. but at least i got a union now, a real-deal pension, not some flimsy 401(k) scam dressed up like security. something about that makes me sleep easier—like knowing i’ll get a coffin with my name on it instead of a cardboard box.

next week, though? next week, i hit the bars, where the drinks are stiff and the men are softer than they look. i’ll be cruising, playing the angles, maybe bringing two, maybe three back to my place for a little midnight symphony. if the whiskey flows right and the neon hums just so, i might even call it a perfect night.

The days were short, cloudy, and freezing as they usually are in February. The sun rises and sets during working hours, so the only time to see it is during lunch break. You can forget about feeling the warmth of sunshine on your skin, though. The Nordic winter sun is pitifully weak, while the wind is brutal. Probably not a relevant detail today, though, because the grey shroud covers the sky again.

Last Sunday, I went shopping, but my favorite tea store was closed. Of course it was. Apparently, I need to try my miserable luck during the weekdays. Porridge was aslo about to run out. I had enough for just one more morning. The mere thought of cramming myself into a crowded sardine can on rubber wheels to make my way to the nearest supermarket filled my heart with disgust and dread. Once in the bus, regret will undoubtedly join the party.

The suffocating atmosphere wasn’t the only reason, though. As all remaining shreds of decency and withered human souls are sacrificed on the altar of capitalism, my hope for the future dwindles like a candle slowly running out of its pale fuel. I never really enjoyed supermarkets or the constant bombardment by intrusive advertisements in all forms: audio, visual, and even olfactory. Even though I don't endorse or condone acts of violence, living in the city has made me somehow understand where some crazy people are coming from.

I believe I'll find myself headed for a low dive to meet with the boss and his right-hand men. There's business to be done and it's time to pay the vig.

(It's our weekly D&D session. I'm bringing snacks.)