Tag Archives: daily

Voices

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The post accident recovery seemed to go smoothly. Sure, it took time. But with time, Cliff was able to regain all of his cognitive abilities, his blurred vision cleared, pretty much as the doctors said it would, and even the limp was going away.

In fact, because the ordeal cost him a few pounds and gained him some much need sleep over the past few months, Cliff could admit that he might feel better now than he had before the crash.

The only exception was the music.

His speech was fine. His hearing was fine. All was well in his world now until he listened to music. Not all music, mind you. Orchestral, or anything instrumental was fine. But when it came to lyrics, there was some disconnect, some quasi-organic algorithmic bio flaw in this thinking that prevented him from hearing or understanding all the words as they were intended. He forgot how the doctors described it, and it really didn’t matter because they didn’t have a name for it anyway.

Sometimes it was every other word. Sometimes it was every third, fourth or fifth word. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to it and despite more testing, the doctors were stumped. They said it might be a frequency thing. It might be altered brain waves or patterns. But no matter the condition or cause, they agreed that as long as he wasn’t suffering any ill effects from the phenomenon, he was still considered fully recovered.

Cliff was not as convinced, for while the doctors said he was fine and that the condition might very well pass with time like his limp, music was changing for him.

If the condition were regular or something that could be easily recreated, it might be easier to write off, but it wasn’t. The music now held different messages for Cliff. It spoke to him in different ways.

Where others might hear songs of love and adoration, the glories of summer or the wonders of the moon, he received…different messages…darker ones. Strands of broken lyrics reached out to him from everywhere.

The average person probably doesn’t realize how much music they might encounter in a day, in even a short stroll. Cliff was well aware…now. Songs weren’t just songs anymore. They were messages, like voices, but from where and why? More importantly, how could he make them stop?

Photo Bomb

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Biggs passed the photograph back to Chance, “I’m sorry. For the tenth time, I don’t see him, and you’re starting to freak me out.”

Chance snatched the photo from Biggs and held it in front of his face peering at it, into it, as much as he dare, for to him is was clear as day.  The trip out to Billing’s Pass was one of the best days ever. In the photo, as he remembered taking it, were his three best friends in the world, Biggs, Toad and Captain Don.

The three stood by the sign that labeled the site of the falling water as Ellinger Falls. Captain Don was holding out his hands to the sign channeling Vanna White. For the first dozen times he looked at it, the image seemed fairly normal and mostly like he remembered it, but after that, a face, no – the likeness of a whole person began to appear as if it were some time delayed photo bomb coming to life.

It was a man whose face was pale with dark eyes, or at least there were dark circles under his eyes. He was taller than the three of them, and yet he looked hunched over as if he was standing on a rock or something behind them and was forced to bend in to avoid having his head cut off by the frame. The grinning face was wedged between Toad and Captain Don while hands had formed on their shoulders as if he was just one of the gang, one big happy family.

“You have to see it,” Chance urged holding out the image to Biggs again. “He’s right there!”

“Sorry man,” Biggs said waving away the image. “I see what I see, or don’t see.” He got up and moved into the kitchen.

Chance looked at the image again, but again…it changed. As he looked at it, watched it, the image began to shift in his hands. It wasn’t the gradual sort of, hey I don’t remember that being there before kind of change. This time there was real movement.

The hands on the boy’s shoulders grew longer. The fingers seemed to wither into what looked like claws and the grip seemed to increase with the finger tips drawing into points like claws that began to dig into the boy’s flesh. A small trickle of blood dripped from Captain Don’s shoulder as he stood there smiling with his hands reaching out to the sign. Ellinger Falls. Captain Don didn’t seem to notice or care.

The skin on the face drew taught to render a bonier appearance and the simple, sly grin grew wider and wider until it sat disproportionately and nearly all-consuming on the face. The lips pulled back incapable of maintaining their hold over the emerging fence of teeth behind them. The teeth were jagged and broken in spots, yet also pointed and sharp as if they were filed into dangerously sharp points.

Chance watched silently as the strange image of the man began to sway as if he were held back from him, trapped in place by the images of the boys before him, his friends. It pulled and weaved looking for a means of escape. Finding none, he stopped to find Chance’s gaze and held it. The clawed fingertips dug deeper into the soft shoulders they perched upon.

Chance’s arms quivered with a cool ripple of bumps as the hair stood on end.

If it were even possible, the thing’s grin grew wider. The rows of dangerous teeth opened, yet remained loosely connected by thin quivering strands of saliva and what looked like what might be blood.

As the dark eyes held his gaze, Chance was helpless to look away. Behind him, as the mouth of the thing in the image moved, a soft, gravel-filled whisper rose up from what sounded like just behind him. A hot light ‘breath’ brushed against his ear that carried with it the stench of garbage and rot.

“You’re mine!”

Lists

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Like a kid stuck in math class who looks longingly out the window at the playground swings, Jaxon stared at is paints, his canvas, his brushes.

His ‘to-do’ list was a hundred miles long, but his ‘want to-do’ list was vastly shorter. It seemed the safety and care of the entire world stood on the success of his completing the to-do list. What did he stand to gain from working his want to-do list?

The to-do list was self-perpetuating. Items seemed to appear on the list in bunches like rabbits in springtime.

His want to-do list remained short, manageable, contained, and yet just as seemingly impossible to conquer.

At the end of the day, he would look at both lists only to find that despite what he felt might be progress, was actually very small and insignificant steps toward accomplishing anything. Tomorrow, the lists would lay in wait for him. He would start with the to-do list and try to get as much done on that as quickly as possible with the hope of getting to the want to-do list, but already, he knew how that would go. 

Slow Learner

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It was hot, too hot.

And he knew that even before he put it in his mouth. It was burning his fingers, so clearly the next obvious step to avoid damage to his fingers was to get it in his mouth, which was the ultimate part of the plan to begin with.

He had all the time in the world. There was no reason for him not to wait for it all to cool down to something easy to handle and easy to consume. The only rationale was that there was no rationale. He had to get this hot molten thing in his mouth right now for fear that it might vanish, or that the flavor might evaporate or that someone will see him eating this thing while it was clearly too hot. The need was primal.

Now, there was nothing but hot consuming his mouth. Burning, not flavor and the roof of his mouth would punish him for days for doing such a stupid thing. Even the mouth knew it was too hot, but the mouth has never had the strength to fight the hands, especially when the fingers are in jeopardy.

Saliva rushed to the rescue filling any space not taken up by what the brain could only surmise was lava. It seeped a bit from his lips.

“HOT, HOT, HOT,” the brain screamed, “WARNING!”

He tried to push the glob to his teeth, but his tongue protested, “HOT!”

He stood there, sucking in air and feverishly waiving his hands in an effort to cool the thing, end the pain, and minimize the potential damage.

There was only one choice left. He tossed his head back moving the thing to the back of his teeth where he chewed maniacally, sucking in cooling air as fast as he could and hoping by breaking it down quickly and cooling it at the same time, the horrible ‘hot’ would go away.

He swallowed.

As if determined never to give up, the evil glob of hot fought for life all the way down, burning everything it could touch, before it ultimately vanished into the stomach.

He grabbed his glass and chugged it down, not even remembering what it was. The cooler liquid did little in the moment to provide relief and seemed to instead, highlight each spot the hot glob touched in its battle for survival. Each spot a tiny reminder of his silly and fruitless behavior.

He sighed.

He was sweating a little.

He looked over at the pan.

Maybe now it has all cooled down enough for another try.

Thud

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There was a loud thud, followed by silence.

Chince looked up from his book and gave the room a quick once over. Nothing drew his attention. He was alone in the room. Everything was as it was before the thud, but at the moment everything seemed just a touch quieter. He froze for a moment wondering if everything was all right or if he should investigate. Chester had been up in the attic for nearly an hour. It was a warm day, but it was always warmer in the attic.

Chince listened to the quiet, squinting a bit as if that would make him hear better.

A sudden scraping noise cut the silence followed by another profound thud. Then, an exuberant exclamation of the name of our lord and savior and the wish that he condemn all things to Hell rose into the air from above him.

Chince sat a bit longer. If Chester needed help, he would ask right? He closed his book and laid it softly on the end table. He listened to the returned quiet, squinting and moving his eyes back and forth a bit like a cartoon spy.

“Dammit to Hell!” came another roar from above.

Chince looked up. “Are you all right?” he called out.

Silence.

He sat up a bit and inched to the edge of his chair. “Chester?”

“WHAT?!” Chester’s voice, muffled a bit by the layers of the house, rained down upon him dripping with frustration. Another thud rang out to which Chester responded with an even more frustrated, “DAMMIT!”

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Chince called up to the ceiling.

Silence again.

THUD!

“CRAP!”

“Chester?”

“Wha…”

THUD

“SHI…

THUD

“I’M FINE!”

Relief

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Ezra plunged his head down.  After the initial roar of the water and ice settled, the sounds of their voices, of their laughter, faded into the soft rattle of the ice cubes tapping against the walls of the steel sink.

The water was bracing, yet refreshing. He closed his eyes and held himself there as he worked to push everything from his head. It was too much.

A very faint, soft ringing rose up into his head as the body started to react to the time it had gone without a fresh breath. His hands gripped the edge of the sink for a bit of stability. He forced his head down to where his forehead rested gently on the sink floor. Another cold tap of relief greeted him when his skin touched the metal.

He thought about pulling out, taking another breath and plunging back in again, but he didn’t want to break this string of relief. In the water, there was nothing but the water. Outside of the water, at the point where the water now lapped against his neck, the world lay ready to pounce, to kick him again when he was down.

For this moment, for as long as he could hold his breath, he was safe, sober, alone, awake and in some sort of sense, home.

Icon

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Tobias clicked through pages and pages of old photos of Marilyn Monroe.

He couldn’t say for sure if he ‘liked’ her or the photos, or even that he ‘enjoyed’ looking at them, at least not the way others seemed to look at them. It was probably more accurate to say he was drawn to them as an odd curiosity.

Yes, she seemed to be a naturally beautiful woman, a representative of what may seem like an antiquated definition of beauty, rooted in a time where beauty was less prone to artificial maintenance and enhancement.

And he was not a fan per se. He couldn’t recall one of her movies that he may have watched end to end. He didn’t read much about her or follow the random tidbits of information that may pop up about her in the news. The anniversary of her death is likely the most common, along with persistent lore and rumor. He didn’t discuss her or defend her. He just looked.

His intentions were not voyeuristic or base. He didn’t study her form or seek fuel for fantasy. Rather, it was her face that drew him to her.

Her time was different from his, so the information he had access to, the fragmented bits and pieces that he pulled together formed a persona in his head of a sort of sad soul. It was harder to see in movies, because people who are directed represented more of that direction than of their own self, but the photos…

Her eyes drew him in. Matched with her smile, he moved from image to image seeing the joy and the history of the moment, and yet, if he looked closely, there lie a tinge of sadness, perhaps a touch of loneliness behind the glitz and the glamour.

Yes, it could be his own thoughts and ideas projected onto those moments that may taint them to some degree, but while Marilyn offered some of the most compelling examples, he saw it in other places too. Faces tell stories. Smiles hide pain. Glances betray joy.  He’d seen it a thousand times, his grandmother, his sister, the Marquet family photo of 1993.

That was the gift of photos. Even that which we try to hide, and hide well, can be captured, and even if only a hint of it is caught and frozen it can reveal the truth of ourselves.

Claimed

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Billy pulled the bag from the freezer. As he looked down, his brow furrowed.

“What the hell,” he muttered to himself while inspecting the bag further.  He yelled out, “Jason?”

“What?” Jason bumbled down the stairs to the kitchen where Billy stood with a puzzled look plastered on his face and a bag of frozen hot dogs in his hands. “Those are mine.”

“Yeah,” I gathered Billy said. “Am I seeing these right? Do they all say, ‘Exclusive Property of Jason Schwartzman’ on them?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Each one individually?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Billy asked.

“They’re mine.”

“I get that. It’s clearly indicated on each and every hot dog that they’re yours. How did you do that?”

“With a Sharpie®. I started with a plain one, but then I switched to the fine point. That made it much easier?”

“Why?”

“Duh, the fine point is not as thick, so the letters look better.”

“Why did you use a Sharpie® at all?”

“Well, I figured they would work best, they‘re permanent and non-toxic.”

“No. Why did you feel the need to write on the hot dogs at all?”

“They’re mine.”

“Right, fine. They’re yours. I’ll get to that in a second, but wouldn’t it have been easier just to write on the bag?”

“Well…I didn’t want you to get confused.”

“What, in case some hot dogs I might have somewhere decide to infiltrate your bag somehow and we can’t tell them apart?”

“You don’t eat hot dogs.”

“Which makes this even more bizarre.”

“But yet, here you are in the kitchen hold my bag of hot dogs.”

“Do you really think I wanted to eat your hot dogs? I was looking for something else. I saw these and I clearly remember thinking, ‘What the hell?’”

“I don’t see how it’s so bizarre. You write your name on stuff so I don’t get confused. You have a carton of eggs in there you marked as yours.”

“Right, but you have your eggs and I didn’t go through and mark each one the “Exclusive Property of William Jennings Cooper.’”

“Of course, not.”

“You see my point then?”

“Yeah, you prefer ‘Billy.’”

An open letter to Mark Burnett

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Java typed with determination and focus, as she was prone to do in these situations:

An open letter to Mark Burnett –

Dear mark Burnett:

I don’t know you. Chances are I never will.  I understand you are the reason the show ‘Survivor’ exists. Good for you. I enjoyed watching the first season, but after that, it just got all “same old, same old,” me.

Last night, I had a dream where I was climbing a mountain. At the top of the mountain, you sat in a giant golden chair with bright light all around you making it appear as if you were glowing in regal splendor. There was a line of people waiting to see you. It was Free Idea Thursday. One day of every week, you allowed the little people of the planet a chance to have an audience with you to share their ideas and thoughts about your programs.

You had all the people whose ideas you like carried away on chariots, while the ones you didn’t found themselves mysteriously flung from the mountain by an invisible force.  Screaming.

As with all dreams, the moment it was my turn and I began to speak, while shielding my eyes from your glory…I woke up.

So, because I believe I was destined for your magical chariot ride, here is my idea.

Scandalous Survivor.

Taste that for a moment before you fling me from the mountain.

You gather up all the people who are currently embroiled in scandal and controversy and let them fight for their survival in the very harshest of conditions. These people seem to be skilled liars, keen manipulators, deeply motivated by self-preservation, self-promotion, ego, cash and power. I’d be shocked if their hubris would allow them to decline.

I can sense your interest. Ponder the wonder of possibility as I share with you some thoughts about the cast.

  • Anthony Weiner – too obvious?
  • Eliot Spitzer
  • Michele Bachmann
  • Bob Filner
  • Dick Cheney
  • David Rivera
  • Laura Richardson
  • Tom Delay
  • Maybe that guy who was leading BP at the time of that giant oil spill just to mix it up

The list is virtually endless.

I’ll leave you now and I’ll let you stew on that one for a bit. I’m sure it won’t take long for you to imagine the possibilities. Your skill at bringing the wondrously dysfunctional to our TV screens will certainly help you mold this nugget of inspiration into ratings gold.

Be well. Eat lots of fruit. Oh, and I do enjoy Shark Tank.

– Java

Loneliness

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She awoke in the morning,
from a night of restless dreams,
where a faceless body screams out – you’re alive!

Then she stares at the mirror,
taking stock of body aches,
rubbing at the circles near her eyes.

And she welcomes the coffee,
something warm to fill her up,
once his hand but now this cup, oh why?

She retrieves the paper,
looking out into the sky,
wishing for another day to say goodbye.

–

When she clears the table,
the reporter on TV,
says another normal day has gone by.

And the light turns to darkness,
she runs her fingers through her hair,
one more hand of solitaire, oh my.

As she steps to the bedroom,
She says a silent solemn prayer,
to any angels who may care – oh please!

Stop this endless cycle.
All my work down here is done.
Take me home to the other part of me.

Four Magazines

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“Four magazines?”

“Yeah”

“How long did you expect to be in there?”

“I never really know.”

“Really? Never?”

“Well…”

“How old are you? How long have you ever been in there? Even in the worst of circumstances?”

“I never really thought of it. There was that one time I was in there all day. It was awful. I wish I had a magazine or two then.”

“How long were you in there just now?”

“I guess about four…maybe five minutes.”

“That’s not enough time to get through one magazine was it?”

“Nah.”

“But you brought four in.”

“Yeah. Look, I’m not sure what the big deal is. It’s really more of a habit than anything else.”

“A habit?”

“Yeah.”

“Look, I just find it curious that you have a ‘habit’ of taking dense reading material in when you know you’re only going to be in there a few minutes.”

“Sometimes it’s longer.”

“Yeah. Probably because you’re in there reading four magazines.”

“They have pictures.”

“Does that help in some way?”

“It does if I’m not in the mood to read.”

“So it’s a mood thing?”

“It can be.”

“And these are old magazines. You’ve read these before.”

“Right.”

“So, you take a bunch of magazines in and what you take depends on your mood. You often take in magazines you’ve already read, but that’s OK because they have pictures you can look at when you’re not in the mood to read.”

“That gets it.”

“And this…’helps’ you in some way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you ever bring magazines other places where you might have to wait?”

“Not really. Doctors usually have magazines. Not good ones. And I don’t like taking my books and magazines places. They might get stuff on them, or I could drop them and they could get jacked up.”

“But you’ll take them in there without a care in the world.”

“It helps pass the time.”

“What time? The five minutes?”

“Are you telling me you never bring anything in?”

“On a rare occasion, I might have brought in a brochure from the mail or something…if I was in a rush.”

“Well, there you go. It’s the same thing.”

“Not hardly.”

“Were you wanting to go in or something?”

“Well, yes. Yes I was.”

“Do you want one of these? I have Popular Mechanics.”

“No. No thank you. I think I can manage this without Popular Mechanics.”

“To each his own.”

“Look, where are you going with those?”

“I’m going to put them back.”

“Where is back?”

“You know…where I got them.”

“You should have them burned.”

Blue

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It was a heavy day. The blue stuck to him like a thick, yet invisible muck. The subtle strains of the week’s exhaustion seemed to come early making the weight of the air and the gravity more prominent. Each deliberate movement seemed slow, and forced, and draining.

There was no one focal point of consternation, rather a collection of a thousand and one annoyances that all vied for his time and demanded his attention. Under the guise of being critical, each item more trivial than the last piled on like a self-generating to-do list created by some dark presence testing his system, working to see what would force the eventual overload.

Comparatively, if you matched his world point for point against those in the throes of a real life and death drama, his troubles were few, his battles simple and his inability to maintain perspective pathetic.

He approached the looming pile of cosmic debris with a half-hearted determination. With his head down, he worked to chip away, to make progress, to sort and sort again, to handle and resolve, but the problems and aggravations multiplied faster than he had the energy to even fully recognize.

The weight of the day was oppressive, resolutions and solutions elusive. His brain generated a multitude of grand and seductive notions about shaking everything loose and then stepping away fast enough to watch it all fall. He’d have a laugh. Where was the value, the payoff for this day-to-day struggle? Is there even a remote chance it will all be better tomorrow?

Despite the overwhelming and obvious evidence that it would most assuredly not be better tomorrow, a small, barely noticeable, and yet quite obvious and determined voice would whisper from the back of his head, cutting through the clatter and noise of his useless imagination, “Keep going.”

Bad Ass

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Riding around in a truck all day gave Gil and Remmy plenty of time to discuss the deeper philosophical questions that plague the minds of all mankind. At least they should plague the minds of all mankind. Gil always said that people who didn’t ponder what he called “the greater questions” were just using up valuable air.

Today, on the heals of another superhero movie release, they revisited the topic of who is, or was, the most real badass human.

“How about…Neil Armstrong,” Remmy offered.

Gil sat for a moment tasting the notion in his head. There was validity there. “First man on the moon. Interesting. You may proceed.”

“Think about it,” Remy started. “Here’s a guy who competes to go to the moon. The freakin’ moon! A place that everyone has seen, but nobody has ever stepped foot on. And when the time comes, they say, ‘Neil, you’re going to the moon.’ And I’ll bet his only answer was, ‘When.'”

“That would be badass,” Gil said.

“Right? Now, think of this. He can’t get in a car or whatever, he gets to the moon by climbing into a freakin’ rocket that is going to ‘BLAST’ him into space! Then he’s got to land this thing that has never been tried in real life, get out, walk around – unarmed – gather up some rocks, take pictures, plant the flag…”

“Bad ass.”

“Right. And he does all this stuff, all while not losing his shit with the realization that he is on the freakin’ moon! I know people that won’t go to the mall across town without a computer to walk them through every step. And if you told them you were going to ‘BLAST’ them some place…they would just melt.”

Gil thought for a moment. “Not bad. But he didn’t do it alone.”

“Right, but it could be argued that most badass dudes don’t. It just looks like they do. They just seal the deal. They pull the trigger. They make it happen. I mean Batman has Robin right?”

“Right.”

“But which one is the bad ass?”

“Not Robin.”

“Not Bobin. I could argue that part of what makes a bad ass a bad ass is that there’s always someone behind him supporting him, promoting him, or needing him which works in turn to motivate him.”

“Good point.”

“They could have just as easily picked another guy who gets up there and just can’t handle the overwhelming awesomeness of what he’s doing and goes bananas. And being second doesn’t matter because that guy is all, ‘Well it must be OK out there, because Neil did it and he didn’t get eaten alive, so I’ll go.’

Then…after all that. The dude flies back, lands in the ocean and is all like, “Yeah, I walked on the moon. It’s cool. No big deal. What are we going to do today?'”

“Being humble is an admirable badass trait,” said Gil.

“I think that we should take all those t-shirts and stuff that says, ‘Chuck Norris did this,’ or ‘Chuck Norris did that’ and replace him with Neil Armstrong.”

“I’d buy one,” Gil said.

Cut

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Tork hated the way his mind worked…sometimes.

The cut on his hand was an accident. Just a stupid accident. But it felt substantial and there was a lot of blood. He was afraid to look too close to better avoid the chance of throwing up. A cut with lots of blood was one thing. A cut with lots of blood while vomiting was a whole other thing. He tried to remember the last time he had a cut like this. Nothing came to mind. This felt really substantial.

He remembers pulling paper towels from the rack and wadding them up to staunch the wound, but the blood was aggressive and soaked through that fairly quickly. He reached for more paper towels and witnessed – almost in slow motion – the last 1, 2, 3, sheets pulling away from the tube and leaving the brown core to spin freely as if it were laughing at him.

Crap!

He stumbled down the hallway to the closet where he kept the extra rolls of paper towels. The door swung wide to reveal an unexpected vacancy where the paper towels usually stood in waiting.

Gah!

Maybe there were more in the basement. Treated like a small storage facility for the things he had too much of at any one moment, he took the stairs down and pushed his way through jars of peanut butter and dishwasher cleaning solutions to where he thought the paper towels must be. The 1, 2, 3, sheets he got from upstairs were taking on a healthy red coloring. There were cookies down here. Hm. He wondered if they had expired yet.

A brand new package of 6 rolls – which had the absorbency of 8 – stood before him. He grabbed the package and tried to puncture the plastic housing with one hand. Again, as if in slow motion, the 6 rolls with the absorbency of 8 all flew away from him. He noticed the room getting warm, or he was getting warm. Yes, he was sweating now and he watched the rolls rain to the ground and spill away from him.

He dropped to the ground and grabbed at the closest roll, spinning it in his hand looking for the starter sheet. It seemed impossible. How did they secure that first sheet he wondered. Then he wondered if it might not be better to insert a small tab on the first sheet to make it easier to access. It was certainly something worth contacting the company about. It was like a public service, making the sheets easier to access in emergencies such as spilled chocolate milk or blood…Right! The blood!

He tossed away the now dripping 1, 2, 3, sheets from upstairs away revealing the cut for longer than he had hoped. Ugh! A feeling gurgled in his stomach.

Unable to find the elusive first sheet, he crammed the whole roll onto the cut. He applied as much pressure as he could to stop the bleeding and rolled onto his back.

That felt good.

A nap might be nice now.

He lay there for a moment, holding his hand to the roll for dear life as the room swirled around him. He sensed this was a good plan. He made a mental note that the gutter on the left side of the house might be clogged. He needed to check that. Also, these paper towels felt nice. He should write a letter to tell the company telling them how pleasant they were. Oh, and why did he have so much peanut butter?

Standoff

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“My name is Denali Bins,” He shouted. “I am a baker from Chesterfield!”

Officer Clay Ashton held his stance, arms out and service revolver trained on the target. “Put the gun down Mr. Bins and we can work this all out.”

“We tried that. I didn’t do this! I don’t do things like this!”

“And yet here we are, Mr. Bins. You are holding a gun, you are covered with blood and you’re standing over a dead body.”

“I make bread!”

“Mr. Bins…”

“I make hard rolls…and donuts!”

“And I’ll bet they are delicious, but right now we have to take care of this problem.”

Bins quickly swung the gun back and forth between the two figures stepping up behind Ashton. If it was even possible his eyes grew wider and darted between the now three officers. “Keep them back!”

“They’re just here to make sure nobody else gets hurt.”

“I tell you I didn’t do this!”

“Put the gun down Mr. Bins and we’ll figure it all out.”

“You said that yesterday at the station! We’ll figure it all out! That’s what you said!”

“And yet, you took off.”

“You said there was video! That’s a lie! I make cream puffs and scones!”

A crackle in Ashton’s earpiece preceded the order. The time for chatting was over. The order was given. Put him down.