Caffeine and Magix

writing-prompt-s:

write a story that takes place in the span of one minute.

She’s thinking about her brother’s death when the helmeted man starts waving the gun around. She’s thinking about how this robbery—this traditional, old-timey robbery—wouldn’t even be happening if her brother hadn’t died with blood in his lungs, mask askew as he begged her not to reveal him even at the end.

Don’t stand, he’d begged her, eyes fluttering shut. Don’t stand.

If she’d stood, the emergency vehicles and officers trying to dig people out from the rubble of the bridge might have found him. They might have rushed over and seen the deep purple of his costume, stained black with his blood, and realized that their hero—her hero—wasn’t going to make it.

Better, in the end, for heroes to disappear. They take too much when they die.

She should have stood. She didn’t. Instead, she tucked his mask into her pocket and held her brother’s hand as the blood bubbled through his broken teeth. He died as a civilian, no hero’s fanfare, just his sister and the wail of sirens as his witness.

She’s on her knees now like she was then. The other bank patrons and tellers are on their knees too, watching the man in the helmet start to wave his gun around. Together, they’re listening to this criminal escalate, whispers and mutters turning into shouts and bellows. It’s not enough money. Nobody has enough money.

Everyone here knows that there are no more heroes to come rescue them. Her brother was the last, staying even as their town stopped paying him, as their coffers ran dry, as the other heroes moved away, shame-faced and hunched. He’d stayed because she wouldn’t leave and that’s why he was on that crumbling bridge, the one the town’d meant to fix for as long as she’s been alive.

They didn’t have the funds to fix it. When it died, her brother died with it, and then there wasn’t any money to fix the bridge or him.

It’s the rich who can afford heroes, in the end. Sad, but true.

So she’s on her knees with the people of her town all dead-faced around her because they know what’s going to happen next. The man in the stupid helmet is turning red from rage and his finger is on the trigger, gun safety forgotten.

Someone is dying today at this man’s hand.

She doesn’t know what changes in those seconds as that realization sets in. It’s hard to track all the thoughts racing through her head as the gun starts turning, the man’s finger hardening, his eyes narrowing.

She thinks about how she knows everyone in this room from banquets and festivals and gatherings and how it’s not fair they’re dying because of money when none of them never had any.

She thinks it’s horrible that they’ve all just accepted that somebody is dying today, no question, resignation tangled all along their fear because that’s what happens in towns like these.

She thinks about how her brother never accepted death as an option until it was his life on the line.

She thinks enough.

She’s not angry, this town has taken too much from them all for anger. But she can feel the deep weariness in the bones of the people around her, the helplessness, the death of hope and the regret. Regret that things aren’t different, that they aren’t different. Such overwhelming, hopeless regret and the endless bitterness that comes from never having enough.

She grabs it all, claws it from her fellow citizens like a wild thing, takes it into her hands like steel wool. Then she does what her brother’s ghost is still begging her not to do.

She stands.

The man’s eyes narrow, finger tightening, mouth hardening.

She lifts her own weapon, screaming and clawing at the skin of her hands, and steps forward.

They shoot together.

The bullet burns across her cheek, takes part of her ear, and doesn’t do any more damage than has already been done.

The horror of a town’s death hits him straight on, burrowing under his skin, lodging behind his teeth. His eyes go wide and sightless, hands limp, mouth gaping in a silent scream. He falls to his knees, tears pouring down his face, and stays there.

Later, when he’s still catatonic, still unable to do anything but cry, she won’t be able to bring herself to regret it. What’s she’s done to him is—it’s inhuman. Not right. Horrible. But…

Nobody died today.

She stands.

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