They say your life flashes before your eyes if you happen to be near death. This was not the case for Jason. He was focused solely on the pistol a few inches from putting a bullet between his eyes, and the tall, handsome man in a suit at the other end of it.

This other man now held Jason’s life captive. He had all the control on whether Jason lived or died. They had never met before.

“Bad things happen to bad people.” The man in the suit said, in a low and assertive voice. “You do something bad, it’ll come back to bite you in the ass. It’s called karma”.

“You can call me karma. And the gun’s here to bite you in the ass. Metaphorically of course, as really it’s aimed at your head. But you can see that”. The tone in his voice, the calmness and the wittiness of how this man spoke said something more to Jason. This guy meant business, this was his business. He wasn’t going to hesitate.

The biggest problem for Jason, other than the man holding the gun, was understanding why he ended up in an abandon warehouse at a loading dock, a few miles north of the town. He knew the how. A black car followed him from his house on his way to work, and four men jumped out, grabbed him, blindfolded him and brought him to Karma.

This was a confusing time. Should he ask why he was here? Should he plead for his life? Why did they blindfold him if they were going to kill him? As all these thoughts went through his head, the man in the suit spoke again.

“See, I’m here to take care of some things. I have been hired by a very wealthy and powerful man. A man whom you have crossed”.

A confused look appeared on Jason’s face.

“See, the problem with people who are wealthy, and have power, is that they are also greedy. They don’t like to share their power or wealth. So when you take money from them, they get angry. When they get angry, they call me.”

Drops of fear and confusion induced sweat fell from Jason’s brow. From out of the shadows stepped an older gentleman in an expensive suit. His hair greyed and stomach bulging. He looked like he’d been a Wall Street stiff his whole life and now he just sat around collecting his money from where it may come.

“You probably don’t know who I am. My face is probably unrecognizable. But that tends to happen when you try to fuck someone in the ass!” He shouted angrily as his faced turned red. “You are going to repay me kid. All that coke you stole. You’re going to pay for it and then you’re going to return it, because you think you’re a nice guy.”

It started to come together, this was one of the biggest drug dealers in town. He was never a Wall Street stiff, he was just a seasoned veteran of the drug trafficing game, eluding cops for thirty plus years. And now Jason owed him $50,000 worth of cocain, and $50,000. There was no way he was going to be able to pay him back.

“I don’t have your drugs. And I certainly don’t have that kind of money”.

The man in the suit spoke again. “Like I said kid…” he cocked the gun, “bad people. Bad things. Nothing personal, it’s just karma”.

As Jason closed his eyes, preparing to die, the man in the suit swung around to his right and pointed the gun at the grey-haired man in an overpriced suit.

“Mr. Dickson, you’re under arrest!” The four men who had picked him up and were lurking in the shadows rushed towards Mr. Dickson and quickly put him in handcuffs. They were FBI agents, who had worked their way into his company and set up the entire thing. The tall man in the black suit, their team leader “Agent Fox, FBI” he said as he put his hand on Jason’s shoulder as if to calm him down.

“Sorry ‘bout all that. Anderson here will take you home”. Jason was even more confused than ever. But Agent Fox walked away, and Jason fallowed Agent Anderson into a car. They drove away from the scene with a million questions, and only one answer.

Bad people. Bad things. Karma. 

Serenity

The windowpane, cut unevenly into three displayed the warm afternoon of a spring day. Inside, the walls were beige, plain and simple. The room consumed him, like a wave beginning to crash over a surfer. Soon to be engulfed and thrashed around, there was that mere moment of peacefulness, of reality, of happiness.

The walls were barren. They held no photos of loved ones, or adventures past. There was no clock and no sense of time. A place where time could be forgotten, or ignored, a place where the only sense of time was felt within and the watching of the day pass by, through the window. The door to the room was left ajar, as if to only be noticed enough to be ignored.  There wasn’t a sound to be made, except for the gentle creaking of the floorboards as the rocking chair swayed rhythmically, back and forth, back and forth.

It was in this chair, with this view of the world he sat, for at least a few hours every day. It was in this calm where he’d come to feel most alive, like a girl about to be kissed by the boy of her dreams, on a summer’s eve in a grassy meadow. Like a boy, brushing back that same girl’s hair from her face, as he held her head in his hands, and went in for the kiss. There was that moment of a rush, a shot of adrenaline that slowed the fastest of moments and made them feel like a lifetime.

That was what he felt, every minute of every hour spent in that chair. He was unbothered by wars, by politics, by sports and by those who surrounded him and loved him.

With his brown slippers peering out from a navy blue, wool blanket, it was a familiar sight. They both had been with him, keeping him warm for years. On this day, he wore his flannel red and blue shirt, with its hints of white, tucked into his jeans and half covered by his favourite blanket, with all but the collar button done-up. His arms rest comfortably on the armrests at his side, from elbow to finger tips. As he leaned back and rested his head on the chair, he kept the soothing rocking in time. With a smile on his face, he closed his eyes and let his mind, body and soul feel the swaying and hear the creaking of the floorboards.

There he would fall, into the deepest of sleeps, as a final moment crashed over him. The wave of the surfer, the adrenaline of the first kiss, pure serenity. 

I’ve been working the last two days, doing grunt work in an office. It wasn’t exactly fun, but it did leave me about 8 hours a day alone with my thoughts and my iPod. What that has resulted in is a number of short story ideas. Some ideas came and went, some were not so good, and some are stored away.

But, some were recorded, in drawing on the white board in my office (yes I had my own office). Below is one in particular that will likely become a story by the end of the week. 

I’ve also have about 3-4 songs from a few different artists that when I listen to them, I think of a back story, a continuation or a way to present them in my own words. Basically 3-4 stories are likely to be influenced by songs I’ve been listening to lately. Maybe when you read them, you will be able to figure out what songs they are.