Driving into the dark void that engulfed the traffic-less road, the bends dangerously steep and narrow, there stood a tall figure shrouded in shadows. A figure resembling in shape the form of a tree, a humanoid tree, its crooked limbs falling ideally to the road. The man in the car had no time to slow down before hitting the tree shaped figure standing in the middle of the road, he chose instead to drive off the cliff and fly into the night, shouting “GERANAMO!!” as the car was diving head first into the rocky terrain below, and then just before actually hitting the ground he spoke softly and said one word only… “rosebud” he said. The tree-figure, watching all this from above, stood still for a moment, as if thinking, its poster conveying absolute wisdom, and then pursed out laughing, hysterical laughter that no doubt would have driven anybody off the cliff to escape from it. And then just as abruptly as it started, it stopped laughing and walked back towards the roadside, where another slightly smaller tree-figure was waiting for it. “Let’s grab a burger” it said to the smaller figure. They both gave their backs to the concrete road…. only their backs looked strikingly similar to their fronts.
A week earlier, a woman was screaming… she was screaming into the phone, asking it to kiss her ass, and then she slammed it down when the phone refused to do as she said. She took 17 pills from a drawer beside her bed, and slept. She didn’t wake up when her sister knocked on her door 2 hours later, and she didn’t wake up when her baby started crying after waking up from the noise… she didn’t wake up ever. On her grave is written this one word “choiCe” with a capital “C”
At the same exact moment that the woman was slamming the phone, a man was smiling…. He was smiling a big smile, a smile so big that his mouth was stretched from ear to ear. He had been smiling for almost half an hour, he will continue to smile for another 33 minutes and then he will pull a gun from under his t-shirt which has a big “bite me” written in gold font on the front of it, and he will shoot his brains out. Just before pulling the trigger he will say between his teeth as he is smiling: “snowball”
Understandingly enough, the three kids screamed when they saw a man falling from the ten storey building, and then they started crying, their cries only interrupting the screaming for small intervals. This no doubt added to the gravity of the situation, this and the siren of the car he fell on that started making a loud sound as the people stood motionless, watching the corpse of the man who seconds ago was calmly sipping his tea with his best friend. No one standing in the street knew this of course, they also had no idea that the man was a successful businessman or that he had recently suffered from a terrible loss.
The waiter suddenly lifted his eyes from the yellow notepad that he was writing so vigorously in. he looked into the eyes of the man sitting in front of him. He was wearing an expensive looking black suite and a shiny silver tie. The waiter stood speechless for a bit and then he asked the man if he wanted anything else. The man gave him a weird look, but that was only understandable, he was stuttering and he doubted the man understood any of what he said. You should be more careful next time he thought to himself. He walked away from the table and headed for the counter, watching people sitting and mostly talking in the busy café, all are potential stories he spoke in low tones, he gave the order to the other guy (he couldn’t remember his name), verbally, since he had nothing written in the yellow pad but what wasn’t really useful for making an order. He had gathered four stories, not bad for a day’s work, he could try working one more, but he was tired and he already had enough to write on, he was content.
He had the stories alright, he just had to connect them together, but that was easy, someone of his caliber could link them easy, he already had an idea how this would work: The smiling man was blackmailing the woman, not exactly blackmailing her, but driving her crazy mostly, driving her as crazy as he was. He did this until the woman toke 17 sleeping pills and then he blew his brains out, her husband; a rich businessman, went to speak with his best friend just after his wife died. He told him that he felt she was hiding something from him and that this was the reason she toke the 17 sleeping pills, he told his friend this and then he left, but instead of taking the door, he toke the balcony. His friend, after seeing him drop ten stories and his blood spluttered all over the car he fell on, thought about what he said, about what his wife was hiding, and he at that moment, not knowing the story of the smiling man, thought that he was the reason that his best friend and his wife are now dead. A week later, at Halloween, a drunk was standing in the middle of the road, wearing a costume that anyone seeing from far would think that it resembles a tree, but in truth was only a random costume made of rags and long shredded sleeves. A car came by and its driver, drunk from his own guilt, drove of the cliff and died.
Perfect, it was perfect, just needed to tweak a few things and it would be ready. He was a total genius, he knew this fact very well. Yes, he was just some waiter in a café, and not a good one at that, but he knew how to write, this day was a good example, he found out four characters while working. People looked at him as if he didn’t understand a lot of things, but there was more to him than the simple waiter uniform. He spoke 4 languages fluently, he had a bachelor degree, and he read more books than all of the people in the café combined. The job had a shitty pay, but it was decent enough when it came to digging up new stories. He was a master at doing just that, he would stand in front of his potential character, and he would look him in the eye while he is thinking about his order ,and then he would know if he had a story or not, and he would write it down on his small yellow pad. It all looked like he was innocently taking his order, while in truth he was deciding his fate. The man in the suite is a good example, he was sitting there calmly drinking his coffee. Little did he know that, on the yellow pad, he was covering all ten floors in free fall. Although he knew his limitations, as Tolstoy said: he is not the river… he is the net. And for some reason he had to look people in the eye to fish out their story. He was the ultimate performer and he was getting ready for his final act. After writing the next few lines, he was going to get up on a chair and hang his head on the rope dangling from the ceiling of his small 3x4 room. And before jumping of the chair he will say only one word: “Swing”
