Short Prose

"The law forbids me from brandishing my gun in public when I'm under no threat so get your hands off that gun."

"Oh Elvin," Leo smacked, "I'm not that stupid. You reach for your pockets I reach for my gun. Just to be sure, so don't mind." 

"I'm duty-bound not to kill you in public, much less without you posing a direct threat." Elvin gruffed, looking at Leo with his eyes narrowed. 

"But I'm a most wanted." Leo bragged, a disdainful sneer on his face. He turned and let his eyes wander in the restaurant. A waiter stood by the doorway leading to the kitchen, as people teemed about in the foreground. He had his eyes firmly on Leo but upon meeting the brute's eyes, he averted them to the door, where and elderly woman waddled in, a young man by her side, keeping her in stride.

"Who's that and why is he staring at me?" Leo turned to Elvin and used his eyes to lead him. "That waiter with jaws like a chisel." Elvin turned a disinterested eye at the waiter, who was now rushing to the table where the elderly woman had settled.

"Perhaps he is wondering just how long we can keep our butts here." Elvis said. "We better make this quick. I want to arrest you. You want to hand yourself in right?" 

"You have moles in here don't you?" Leo said, his face suddenly plunged into an aggressive scowl, brows knotted, and eyes narrowed. He appeared beastly, much truer to the brute he actually was. 

"I said I don't know him." Elvin retorted, displaying his own aggression with a sharp look and pellucid eyes. "Perhaps he likes you."

"Oh that's funny." Leo said and with a swift move, he whipped out his gun. 

He moved fast, so fast that Elvin had been left momentarily blurred as the figure fleeted before him and fired. The crack of the gun broke the calm air of a dusk tea den. Momentarily, time stopped as the bullet whizzed over heads following the explosive burst. It was immediately followed by sharp screams as everyone scampered off their butts in panic.

The waiter, tray in hand, collapsed in a heap as the elderly woman momentarily forgot her age as she scampered awkwardly to the door, where a bottleneck of scared people lumped in a rush to get outside. Elvin ducked late as Leo pointed the gun and fired at him. The impact threw him back, sending him crashing on the table behind him as his blood scattered and sprayed onto the white wall behind. In place of his left eye, was a gouged socket throbbing with deep red blood, his whole face smeared with the gore as blood pooled below his head from his torn skull.

Sad Love Song

Bolo was a wispy man. He came in an odd shape. He had a phallic head which was supported over his scrawny, lanky frame with a thin neck. Not exactly a human being that eased one's eyes. If anything, based on the fallability of instant bias that comes with a being human, he was repulsive, repellent. He had little, if at all anything physical, that atoned for the cruel physicality bestowed upon him. He was the Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Beast, a man who could lose a beauty contest to a warthog and still go home feeling like a champion for at least making it far enough to be in the final two. He had reddish, watery and distended eyes, a disproportionate nose that seemed to gulp down oxygen through the outrageously oversized nostrils and a pair of thin, dry lips that folded into a crooked smile that went a long way in bringing to prominence the ugly wrinkles on his cheeks and the hideous forehead folds that his straight face hid. While others held their smiles as a redeeming asset, Bolo's smile would be what made him the undisputed repugnant entity. It did more damage and offered no discounts. Which was why he barely smiled, barely even creased the side of his cheek by a millimeter. The last time he had smiled was something of half a decade ago, in the midst of strangers. A joke had been cracked. It had been a raw one, a ribcracker of rare authenticity and punch which had been delivered with a deadpan humourist that had become his good friend since that day. Just like everyone around, he could not control himself. Yet by the time the laughter was smouldering , it was he that provided the humour, he had become the joke. His aversion to smiling had thus been born. For years now, he had cultivated in him a brood and now, five years on, he owned his melancholy and wore his solemn, grave and humourless face with pride. But forget about smiling. At least he had had a chance to smile until five or so years ago. He had never had sex. Never. And he was clocking twenty five. Not that he seemed to care much anyway. Sure he longed for a girlfriend, but he had long been let know of his shortcomings and had come to see it as the definition of whom he was. So he never bothered to hit on any woman, even those he felt he would die for. Why would they want to look at him while they could find pleasure staring at the waters leaking from a broken sewer? So porn and masturbation became his distressful comfort. His struggles yet his fulfilment. His pleasure yet his guilt. Something that did not fill him with pride yet something he did with zeal akin to passion. His fantasy was to get a decent woman. His reality was masturbating to phone sex with an Asian prostitute with curves to die for. How inverted life was. Definitely not fair but not wholly unfair either. At least he once got to screw a voluptuous bbw in a dark alley at K- street. Yet still, this other thing is what actually kept him going. It was his passion, his definition. This one thing he did that could make all people respect him, make any woman fall for him, earn him enough money to live a comfortable life. Thinking of it in that sense flattered him and gave him the fuel to keep working on it. If only they stopped and paid attention when he rose and spoke. At least just slice him an ounce of their time and he would blow their minds away. He reached for the guitar and held it in hand. He placed the notes before him and studied them keenly. Then he strummed the first notes of this sad, love song he was composing.