3 Chords and the Truth » Short Stories

The Rising

ec18 — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:40:16 +0000

The riot squad sounds like a thundercloud as they approach the protesters. From my perch above the streets, the futility of their stand strikes home. Their protest hasn’t roused the media attention that was needed to prevent the stomping they are going to experience by the riot squad. I wonder do they even remember what they are protesting right now, as the wall of batons and shields approach. The movement sparked by a moment of passion and poor judgement will end up with a death toll of more than a hundred. And here I stand looking down wondering whether to intervene or not. Still somewhat in awe of how it all started. Such a simple insult causing so much hurt.

The day started out like any other, the hustle and bustle along the streets as people mad their way to work. Walking along the streets hearing conversations that range from serious business phone calls to discussions about the latest movies. A group of carolers start a rendition of silent night. The atmosphere is festive and jolly. An important woman surrounded by a cluster of secret service types parts the crowd. A flicker of movement and the suddenly the secret service agents have a man pinned to a wall and are the woman is hustled back into her car and it speeds away. The agents pinning the man have released their grip and are now hitting him, he falls and the thud he makes breaks the festive mood, the music stops everyone stops and stares at the agents kicking him.

Some good Samaritan tries to stop them but he falls and meets the same treatment. The mob thats gathered around the incident starts to grow unruly and the agents sense this. One gets on the phone and orders a pick up, the remaining draw their guns. Back to back they move to the edge of the pavement. The crowd slowly parting for them. It looks like it will end with no serious incident. But then a wannabe hero in the crowd makes a move for one of the guns, the gun goes off and theres a small boy hit in the chest. And it was so close to ending there and then. The mob will be out for blood later……

Night Bus

ec18 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:52:43 +0000

Billy Joel is playing on my ipod, the night and miles are slipping away to the Piano Man. There is a certain appeal to travelling at night it’s almost like a night flight from a Tolkien or spy novel. Slipping away at night without attracting any attention. Man! Does you mind wander on long bus journeys. Looking around the dimly lit bus cabin seeing the different characters. There’s an old man sitting next to me admiring the pretty girl in the row ahead of us. The old man has a rather stately distinguished look, his hair and beard both neatly trimmed half moon spectacles sitting on the bridge of his nose. To finish off he has a pipe clenched between his teeth.

The woman looked like she had just fallen out of the Casino Royale in Montenegro. Elegance personified with hair that shimmered in the over head lights, and draped in diamonds that sparkled like a thousand constellations, in the rays from the street lights. Observing these two and how out of place they seem on the night bus bound west. My mind wanders again this time to the sound of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. It wanders in a new direction, inspired by these two strangers as to what chain of events led them to this time and place. My tired mind weaves their stories together and moves backwards through a series of events that may or may not have happened all to the tune of Bob Dylan.

My mind wanders into the past first back to a time when men carried hip flasks and cigarette tins. To what seemed like a much more sophisticated and timeless era. Back through events that have shaped the world we live in today, back past the first gulf war, past Vietnam even back past world war II. It wanders to a time shortly after the great depression. It’s 1931 in a Chicago Jazz Club, the room is thick with cigarette smoke and everyone is sharply dressed in suits and dresses. The man at the bar ordering his drink seems familiar something about him, an aura of familiarity that I’ve seen him before. The moment passes and he moves away from the bar and takes his seat near the dance floor. The men that he has sat with do not stand out on first glance. On a second glance however one notices the fine cut of their jackets and unmistakable bulge, that signals that they are armed.

Crouched low over the table that wards off any would be eavesdroppers. The business they discuss must be important. Watching them from afar imagination runs wild each possible topic much more improbable than the last. By the time I stop day dreaming about what their conversation it has ended and the familiar man is dancing with some stunning red head. The band plays out and the club starts to empty. Something compels me to follow the man. I don’t know why but I do, back to his hotel where I rent the nearest room I can. All these things I do out of instinct for no reason that I can fathom. With a stroke of luck my room is next to his. (Almost like someone was writing this. What happens next who knows?)

Sleep comes and it’s several hours later when I wake and begin to recongise the familiarity of the hotel room. Automatically I place my ear to the wall that I share with the man from the club. The rhythmic rumble of his snores let me know that he is still there and sleeping. With my curiosity about this man peaked, it’s time to for some pondering and piecing together of what has happened in the last 24 hours. Tracking back through the ether of memories events shape themselves into a scenario, the situation builds itself like a movie. The charismatic bank robber who’s stolen the countries heart and the relentless dedicated law man trying to catch him. The only question left to answer is which part do I play?

Still pondering my role in the unfolding story I leave for breakfast. The diner down the road gets recommended by the hotelier. Wandering down the street wrapped up in my own thoughts I fail to notice the gentleman that has appeared beside me. He walks lockstep with me to the diner and sits beside me in the diner, drinks his coffee then leaves. He left his cheque book behind him. On the back is my name, a place and a time…………..

Eleventh Hour

ec18 — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:55:32 +0000

The wind rustled through the trees as the storm passed through the empty city streets. The majortiy of the city dwellers had already sought the comfort and warmth of their beds. But not yet there was work to do, a final task to complete. On through the streets, everyone and everything looking the same. All the buildings, dark, grim souless apratment blocks. The few who ventured out whores and druggies mostly, but some just had no place to go, or they’d rather face the storm then what was waiting for them at home.

She was different though, he was unique in this motley assortment of the dregs of humanity. She walked with a purpose, with dignity, there was somewhere she had to be, something she had to do. The people on the street sensed that as well they moved out her way. As if her purpose gave her an aura of protection and authority over these people. To the casual observer this could have been viewed as respect, but I recongised it for what it was……Fear. That aura of protection was in the way she moved, she didn’t walk. She glided, loped like a hunter stalking it’s prey. She moved like she had tamed violence and destruction and kept them in her pocket.

In truth that was true, she was an assassin one of the best. She had killed more than five hundred people in her career. But tonight was her most important kill. Tonight she was not being paid, there was no clean up team to make sure that she could get away clean and move onto the next job. This was personal, the old adage goes “Hell Hath No Fury like a Woman Scorned”. They were right, a man caught cheating, man about to lose more than his life.

This kill will be the easiest she won’t even use a gun. Her bare hands are enough, maybe a knife if she feels like making him feel some real pain. She enters the apartment through the living room window, using the fire escape. He sees her and starts to run, she’s quicker and breaks his leg. I sit back to watch her go to work on the guy. After an hour the guy finally dies and I need to get started. “PUFF PUFF” . She never heard not saw the bullets coming, one took her in the left shoulder the second hit a second later and took her head off.

Why? you might ask. Why did I kill her? The old adage is true about a woman scorned but that is nothing compared to a mans quest for revenge. That woman has killed over five hundred people, but the last three she killed were a mistake. The fourth she should have made sure he was dead.

The Jazzman

ec18 — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:06:14 +0000

The Jazz man finishes his set, the keys smoke after his melody making. The crowd gives a standing ovation and the player stalks off stage. The smoke filled green room welcomes him back. In the green room the other players greet him. The blues man puts down his cigar and shuffles to the jazzman and the door. He congradulates the jazzman on his show and moves off to start his own set.

The soul man eyes the jazzman suspiciously. Friends and rivals since they were there’s now a distance between the. One wronged the other years ago, so long ago neither remembers what happened, but their pride is too great to allow either to apologise. They exchange stiff and formal compliments about each others performances and then move off to join groups on either side of the room. Each regretful for a friendship lost.

The smoke that fills the room acts as a barrier. The bluesman comes back after having a set that literally brought the house down. He enters the room and the smoke dissipates. The presence of the blues man seem to relax the tension in the room. The 3 groups of musicians merge into one in the presence of the bluesman.

The party is getting started, the banter is flowing and they are settling down for what looks like an all night jam session, then the door opens and smoke pours into the room. The silhouettes in the doorway seem alien to the room full of sharp suits and slow melodies.

The silhouettes enter the room and they start a ruckus, hammering the 3 musical styles together. When the door opens again the world will never be the same again.

Out of the door comes a musical form never heard before,

Out of the room comes the musical juggernaut that is Rock Music

Titleless

ec18 — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:10:46 +0000

Pay no attention to the man in the corner. He’s old, a has been just waiting for death to take him. Earlier in his life though he was a great warrior, who wielded a mighty hammer. Some say that the only person who could match him in strength and skill with a hammer was Thor himself. The end of his fighting days came suddenly, one day he just simply could not lift his hammer. His pride was broken that day now he is a shadow of his former self.

Ignore the man at the bar he’s a drunken holyman. He believes he’s on some holy quest from god to save the world. Says he must kill the one who came before him. He doesn’t know where that person is or what they look like but he must find and kill them. He will not be able to rest in peace till that person is in pieces.

The man behind the bar is a storyteller. His favourite one to tell is the one of the dueling dragons. The two ancient serpents that were each others opposites yet completed each other. They gave the world balance in the early years before law and order existed. The story of how one killed the other in a moment of rage. The slain one simply accepted it as fate. The other went mad and was killed to preserve the world.

The man behind the piano is blind he lost his sight when he was a boy for getting mud on some lords boots. He sits there in and plays the piano. He is trapped behind the piano unable to move trying to compose his masterpiece, a piece of music that will elate and bring joy to people. Some say he can see the music moving up from the back of the piano, that he’s trying to assemble this piece by sight looking for the solution in the melody.

The man at table dressed in black emits a aura of danger, that death follows him where he goes. He is a death dealer all he lives for in life is the continuation of order and balance in the world. He is not a naive idealist that believes that good will prevail. He recongises the necessity for evil and wrong doing in the world. He is unique in order to gain his attention you must either be an absolute.

The bar shutters swing open and a woman appears in the doorway, she looks troubled and travel weary. In a bar where everyone is so absorbed in their own thoughts no one notices when she falls down from exhaustion. Time passes and the barman notices and lifts her to a couch at the back of the bar. The woman never wakes.

Time passes and memory fades the storyteller leaves for bed and asks the man at the bar and the man at the table to leave. Outside the men lock eyes and the holy man asks the man in black.

Are you the one who came before me?

The man in black looks at the holyman for a while.

The next thing the holyman hears is the click of the hammer going back on the man in blacks gun.

Then The man in black answers the holy man,

No I’m the eternal one neither before or after, I just am

The gunshot rings out in the still night, the holy man falls to a silent death none will mourn or miss him, none will even notice that he has fallen.

The man in black turns and walks away, knowing balance has been restored.