kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"IfTheStreetIsTheMan"

words

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of distance, run."

The gentleman stopped and looked into the alley. "Who said that?"

Eyes of the world answered him from underneath a cardboard blanket, face rimmed with scruff and rash and scar. "Could be someone famous, I'm sure."

"Could be. I don't believe I've heard the line before. Were you adressing me?"

"You stood before the entrance to life and death, and the voice called out to you. In the scheme of things, I'm not knowing where that voice comes from."

"That voice?" The gentleman was curious.

"The voice that commands. The voice that tests. Truth is in the voice as are lies. You heed but do not; I see. You don't, and that is the way of it." He looked down at his watch.

"I doubt I've got your understanding, or you mine. Pray be clear, you intrigue me."

"Clarity he calls for as the sixty seconds fall. Meant to be, it is." He smiled sadly to himself. Adjusting his crotch, he pulled out a well maintained, silenced, silver pistol, and lost the gentleman his life. A simple hole lay in the man's head, surprise barely taking the victory ahead of death, a subtle but telling sign of the troubles within the victim.

"Why don't they ever run?" the street muttered to himself. Looking down once more at his watch, he stood up, brushed himself off, and found another alley in which to calmly wait. Sixty seconds had him sitting, sprawled yet zen-like, under another cardboard blanket.