Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Flash fiction exercises: Part 7

Another in our occasional series. This one is from January 16, 2006. It has a very similar prompt to our last entry. That's probably why what I wrote is similar. Very.

Here's the prompt:

HE BOOTED UP THE COMPUTER AND CHECKED THE E MAIL, CASUALLY. HE ALMOST MISSED IT, THE SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR HIM THAT WOULD CHANGE HIS LIFE. JUST ANOTHER LINE IN THE WELTER OF E MAILS AND MEANINGLESS MESSAGES. WAS IT REAL. HOW COULD HE FIND OUT" WHAT THE HELL DOES HE DO NOW?

And here's what I did with it. I actually like what I wrote here better. I am very tempted to edit a few of the sentences here, but that's not the spirit of what I am trying to do, so I won't.

It was only supposed to take a minute. He’d check his email then be out the door. The machine said fifteen new messages and he reminded himself that this had to become a much more regular thing. But it was hard to make yourself check your email when most of the messages you are getting are advertising drugs or available singles.

He nearly missed the message with the asterisk in the subject line, but when he saw it he knew exactly what it was. They’d found him again. He thought he’d run far enough and had taken enough turns to be hidden for good.

Hah, he had to dream.

So it was an email this time, just to let him know they’d figured him out. He’d changed his name again and his occupation again, and for nearly a year he had gotten away with it. Hadn’t talked to the wife or the kids that he had left behind in Dallas. That had been the hardest part, but he had chosen to run guns and drugs for the mob and he knew that these were the consequences of choices he made years ago.

No time to think about that now. He had to get to the job site. He was hanging drywall again, working his way up to foreman. The college education he’d picked up in Dallas was paying off here. Fitting, since it was the only thing he got to take with him from that life.

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