#flash fiction fridays
Finally completed another Flash Fiction Friday! Continuing the MOIRAI/returning to ithaca series (which can be found collected here) with a sequel to and miles to go before i sleep.@flashfictionfridayofficial
tw: mentions of violence, drug usage, mentions of substance use issues
FFF: The Big City
–
Holy. Shit. He hates. Cornfields.
He never thought he could hold a grudge against a plant that hard but sure enough, he can and he does- enough so that when he finally sees the sign welcoming him to Pennsylvania, a palpable shudder of relief runs through his shoulders. No one’s fucking heard of a corn field in Pennsylvania. What the fuck do they even grow in Pennsylvania-
Apparently corn.
And after thatstream of curses, his knuckles bone white as he grips the steering wheel like he’s strangling it, he thinks maybe he should stop for the day. He hasn’t been sleeping well. Call it excitement or panic or the beginnings (beginnings?) of a nervous breakdown, but he’s got maybe five minutes over the course of the past twenty-four hours. He needs to calm down. He needs to think through his next moves very carefully, because rushing into things landed him in fucking cornfield hell shitfuck nowhere Iowa and the stakes are alothigher now.
Pull over for the time being. If you can’t sleep, at least take one of your pills and just calm down. He thinks that through and nods and then it’s pulling to the side of an obnoxiously scenic road, his palms pressed hard to his eyes once the car’s off.
Fuck. He can’t act like he doesn’t know what he’s doing at this point, because he does. He’s done exactly one job for the past twenty odd years and he’s doing it here too- making people in his way get out of his way. And, well, he knows exactly who’s in his way here because if it was himwith a six year old daughter, a husband, and some lunatic trying to see them then-
Well, if he had all that, he wouldn’t be in this position first off. But anyways, he’d totally kill that guy.
So that’s that. See your daughter. See your husband. Take care of the hypotenuse to this sick little love triangle. And pray to Christ that whoever the MOIRAI send after you, it’s not someone you trained because that might actually be a problem.
Yeah. Good plan.
And he very pointedly does notthink about what’s next after that because well- he already knows he can’t win. There’s no way out now and no point thinking about that because if he does, he’s going to fall apart entirely. So instead he lets his hands slip down off his eyes, his head pounding, and he thanks god that the asshole he took the car from packed Capri-Suns like a motherfucker because dry swallowing oxy sucks-
One tablet and a sigh and he leans the driver’s seat back. He’s got time. It takes longer by mouth, but there’s no way he wants to fuck up his veins. He lets his mind drift, his eyes shut and the afternoon sun coming through the car’s sun roof, and he considers that it’s a four hour drive from here to there. Maybe five with traffic. Not long at all now.
He should clean up first.
There’s that little piece of him now that wants to make a good impression- that desperate, unhinged voice saying maybe it can work, maybe maybe maybe even as what remains of his logic screams that you can’t fucking kill someone and expect their spouse and kid to love you, even if youare him. Even if you’re a better him. A him who doesn’t bother to hide those little white pills, a him who would be honest because they deserve to know-
A better husband. A better Akihiro, though his birth name barely registers as his own anymore. The man he’s going to kill is Akihiro. And he’s-
He hesitates, because he’s never had the chance to pick his own name. Akihiro. ATROPOS. They were both handed to him by someone else. They both ring hollow now. Neither is him, because he’s-
He is Odysseus. Returning home to Ithaca.
That feels right.
And so Odysseus rests, numbed to sleep, and he dreams about a city and a daughter and a better life waiting for him.
Wrote a continuation piece of sorts for well, better than the alternative. this week, so it’s probably best to read that one before this! Yet more adventures of the multiversal assassin DILF follow. @flashfictionfridayofficial
tw: implied drug usage, implied violence, suicidal ideation
FFF: As Good As There
–
It’s one thousand and eighty-nine miles to home.
He chants that in his pounding head, his worn shoes dragging along the highway’s asphalt. He’s making good time- it used to be one thousand and ninety-five, or at least something like that. It was a little hard to gauge considering he woke up with no landmarks in some god awful corn field.
It was because he fucked up the jump.
He didn’t have time to make the right calculations. Normally HQ handles it, but this wasn’t normal and this wasn’t anything close to approved- it was rapid, scrawled numbers across the back of some ancient receipt because he just couldn’t stand it anymore. Not his rotting, dark apartment, not the job, not the fact that he was there, stuck in one reality, and the closest thing to home he had was in another.
So it wasn’t exactly well-planned.
To be entirely honest, he’s lucky he even got the right dimension, let alone planet, let alone country. A thousand miles off is nothing. A thousand miles is a couple weeks on foot, maybe a month or two if he’s slow, and while that might sound like an eternity, he’s waited longer to even get here.
So he just keeps walking. The moon’s out tonight and there’s a cool breeze through the razed Iowan grass and focusing on everything besides the deep, twinging ache in his legs will get him further. He runs a quick inventory on what he has. A now-fried communicator, smelling faintly of burnt electronics. The clothes on his back. About eight hundred milligrams of oxycodone- fuck. He’ll need more-
Ignore it. Keep thinking.
His gun, and ten rounds. A knife. A lighter. His wallet, though he didn’t think to check if they even use the same currency in this dimension. A pen and whatever, it doesn’t fucking matter, he’s still a thousand and eighty-eight miles away. He should’ve planned this. He should have packed and done the fucking calculations and not crossed dimensions on a desperate whim. There’s a trillion factors he didn’t account for, and what’s he even going to do when he gets there? It’s home, but it’s not hishome.
This was a terrible idea.
It’s sinking into his bones, his stride finally slowing to a halt. All there is ahead of him is the flat, dark expanse of the highway, flanked on either side by fields. He doesn’t even have to turn around to know it’s the same behind him.
He’s tired. Physically. Mentally. He’s just fucking tired.
He can’t help but sink down, settling with his head in his shaking, gloved hands. There’s no point to this. No fucking point and no reason to keep walking because she’s kept him going for so, so long now, but she’s not even really his daughter, is she? She never existed for him. His fiance died and everything was worse- no children, no little girls, no sunshine pouring over white hair that’s so much like his own.
An identical stranger had this girl. He’s a little smaller and a little more put together and he has this beautiful husband and beautiful daughter and beautiful goddamn life and it makes the man sitting on the side of the road now let out a bubbling, hoarse laugh at just how badly he wishes he could fucking be him.
He can’t go back to his apartment. Physically and emotionally. He can’t start again. Emotionally. So his only options are keep walking or go to sleep and hope that a semi-truck doesn’t see him in time in the morning.
Fuck. He might survive that. Hospital food sucks- that’s a multiversal constant.
He gives himself another half hour to wallow and then it’s up and at ‘em, his shoes’ soles rubbed smooth at this point. He walks because there’s nothing else to do. No other option. There’s just the endless stretch of road and the faint sound of his feet on the pavement and, without any warning, a distant set of headlights.
It must be nearly two by now. His eyes flick to the moon and then to the headlights. They’re getting closer steadily. Someone’s driving through Iowa at two in the morning and he hasn’t passed a house of any sort in seven miles. There’s no one around.
No one but him.
One gloved hand settles in his jacket’s pocket. It wraps around the familiar grip of his pistol. The other reaches high, waving as the car approaches, his face adopting a facsimile of fear, of concern, of the story he’ll babble to some second shift worker on their way home about how his car broke down and he’s got a daughter at home he has to get back to. It doesn’t matter if they believe him. It just matters that they slow down.
A thousand miles isn’t that far by car.
