Stressed

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: Write a story that contains the line: "Where were you last night?"

Stressed

There was a momentary mismatch between the man and his reflection in the mirror.

Damon almost caught it - a lag between him, at the bathroom sink; and him, on the inside looking out.

A perfectly matched wave of the hand demonstrated that it was nothing other than his mind playing tricks.

He tossed it off as stress. Lately, his mind just wouldn’t shut up. It was as if it had a bottomless bag of doom that it reached into; pulling out one bit of negativity after another.

He sloshed through the inch-deep water on the bathroom floor. He paid no mind to it; just like the way he ignored the blood-soaked towel that clogged the toilet.

High pressure meeting coming up this morning, he thought as he dragged the straight razor down the side of his jaw. Right away, his mind began a slideshow of all the things that could go wrong like his boss pushing for higher sales in a market that wasn’t interested in buying. He could lose his job.

God how he hated his boss; almost as much as he hated that money-grubbing ex-wife.

He dabbed the last bit shaving cream from his face.

There is was again! Did he actually see the image in the mirror smile a brief smile that wasn’t his?

No. It was just the stress…

In the closest he stepped over a pile of still-wet and muddy pants without a thought. Fiddling at his night stand, he pushed aside a gun that he didn’t know he owned. It was wrapped in a torn shirt, he didn’t know was his.

One last trip to the bathroom…

There it was again!

In the mirror, he saw himself holding the straight razor to his neck.

He saw himself ask, “Where were you last night?”

Word count 300