Creationsims: Part II

He stared across the street. The woman who was buying a newspaper was so perfect he had trouble coming up with adjectives to describe her for his inner monologue. He began to cross the street towards her, hypnotized, completely ignoring the Manhattan’s afternoon traffic. He stopped as a taxi sped past in front of him, and then continued a bus narrowly missing him from behind. He walked on his eyes never leaving her like a man possessed, expertly weaving through traffic, starting and stopping just in the nick of time, as though guided by Cupid himself.  He stepped up onto the curb just as honking car clipped the briefcase out of his hand, he didn’t seem to notice. He approached her, “Hi,” he said.  She looked up and smiled.

He found it an odd time to have finally reached nirvana. The plane he was flying on was hurtling with insatiable appetite towards the ground, nose first, and yet he felt a complete inner calm. As people screamed around him, the obese woman next to him grabbed his arm, sinking her chubby fingers into his bicep, yet he didn’t notice, instead content to stare out the window expressionless. His old self might have found it ironic that he had achieved absolute peace and serenity so close to his end, but irony no longer concerned him. As the plane plunged into the earth with a chaotic fury, there was at least one soul on board who felt completely comfortable with his surroundings.

The crowd had gathered in front of the old courthouse to pay their last respects. The yellow demolition tape snapped in the breeze as some of the construction workers adjusted their caps. The mayor began the countdown, there were some muffled tears. After all, the courthouse had been the center of town for almost fifty seventy years. No one had grown used to the new modern building going up across the street, it was just too impersonal. The end of the countdown was reached, and the crowd inhaled as the plunger was depressed, their eyes never leaving the great limestone building. For a moment nothing happened, then in a great blaze of glory, the public library next to the courthouse imploded from the crowd up, sending bricks and books flying into the sky. The crowd was too stunned to let out a collective gasp, the mayor turned his back and began walking down Main Street amongst a flurry of raining pages.

A small dark spot began to evolve on the ceiling above him. He stared at it for a moment growing slowly darker, from an off-white to a dark brown. A drop of water appeared, hanging by its tail from the pool through which it emerged. It struggled for a moment, until it was released, landing on his forehead. Another drop appeared, taking the place of its predecessor.  He stared at the spot, he hadn’t the heart to move.

He loaded a single bullet into his revolver and spun the chamber closed. He looked out across the meadow, the wind gently rocking him in his chair. He raised the barrel, encompassing it with his mouth. The metal was cold in his mount, it tasted of metallic dirt. The hammer cocked as he pushed the trigger forward with his thumb. Click, the hammer closed on an empty chamber. He again depressed the trigger. He thought of his wife, how she would find him. Click. He thought of himself as a child playing in the tall reeds by the pond outback. Click. He thought of the lone figure that had rode down the path to his house, atop a steed as dark as a cloudy night, clothed in a rich black leather. Click. His lifeless eyes peering out at him from beneath the rim of his hat. Click. The reaper cometh. The last chamber spun into place. A tear fell, curving around his nose, down the sides of his lips, where it met the barrel of his gun, and drifted onwards. A wisp of smoke passed in front of the sun.

“That damn Brian filled my tuba with pudding again.”
         
Climbing to the top of the rafters, he suddenly remembered that he had left his common sense on the floor.
         
Any good recipe for disaster will contain equal parts poor-timing and ignorance, as well as a healthy dose of idiocy.
         
The firefighters emerged from the wreckage, their faces wearing the mask of a long night. One walked up to a woman standing apart from the crowd, he grabbed her hand and dropped a smudged wedding ring onto her palm, his soot-stained fingers leaving a trail as they left. She began to sob. He turned back to the rubble, the charred remains of her life. How she would go about filling its empty shell he did not know, then again, his job did not afford him the opportunity to sympathize. He climbed into the truck and pushed the thoughts out of his head, the bell would ring again.
         
A man and his dog, walking alone through the snow. The walls of the valley rose up around them, the world attempting to grab them, to shake them into submission until they were so awe-struck that they would beg for mercy. But as the valley swallowed them, they continued on, ignoring the world with each belligerent step, alone.