Will of Blades – Part 3
Today is going to be… Busy. Emphasis on the capital ‘b’. I had a lot to get done this week, which will be my last clustering of days off for the foreseeable future: it essentially worked out to a mini-vacation.
During this week, I had such high hopes to get editing done on Temple. I have made some progress, but most of my time this week has been spent being irrationally tired and trying to compensate for that fact. Add in a dash of last-minute requests for the new job starting Monday, and I may as well kiss any productivity this week goodbye. I’ll do what I can to make this weekend count, but I need assistance with my editing and that just isn’t going to happen without money.
As I have long suspected, it is my belief that my lack of decent objective editing and drive for the same will delay my career for many years. I’ll still get there; I still write, and with purpose, so it’ll happen. Yet it feels further and further away when these golden opportunities come along and I just let them go. I fear that one too many will go past, then there will simply be no more.
That thought terrifies me. The simple barren wasteland of my own failed opportunities being my only legacy. I hope I can do enough to make that a simple nightmare, instead of inescapable reality. All I can do is work, and hope.
On with the work…
Will of Blades – Part 3
“Good to see you healthy Bob. Never would’ve thought you could get so violently ill in May.”
I smiled easily at my bosses small dig. He meant well, but it wasn’t the first time vague insults had been wafted my way. I hadn’t missed a day after signing the divorce, and that was almost three years ago. He and I both knew that no one else in the building could claim anything remotely like it.
Besides, I had worked remotely anyway, so it’s not like I hadn’t done my job anyway.
The thought and the irritations behind it normally would’ve hogged down my whole day, possibly even my whole week. I would’ve ground my teeth in irritation, snapped at my secretary, and avoided co-workers during breaks. Today, however…
Today, the smile didn’t even hitch. The anger and frustrations of my life before the quiet morning of two weeks ago seem like another persons. I was someone else entirely, and I liked who and what I had become.
Which made today that much better.
“Frank” I said while still smiling “I couldn’t give a rats ass what you thought possible.”
Frank’s affably ignorant smile vanished like water through a drain.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me Frank. You and your blithe insults, your flagrant favoritism, and group of brown-nosing yes-men can all take this job and shove it up your collective asses.”
Franks mouth, unsure of how to handle this wholly unexpected situation, just hung open. The words poised to fall out dying mid-birth.
“The only reason I’m here at all was to collect a few things I’ll need over the next few weeks. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have even bothered showing up. You run this place like it was the popular kids table in high school. It’s no wonder we lose money steadily every quarter.”
Frank still hadn’t managed to form a coherent sentence by the time I stood up, placed the large leather tube containing blueprints I’d stolen on my shoulder, and simply walked out the door before Frank could put his mind back in order.
“Y-you can’t just….”
The blustering sputter followed me out the door, yet I still wore the smile I had the whole time I had been here. The same smile I wore most of the time now, come to think of it. As I approached the entrance, two of the burly security guards who worked the entrance were waiting for me.
“Mr. Green, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to surrender the satchel before we let you leave.”
Mike, the wall of flesh wearing the company logo and a gun, had placed his hand on the night stick which he wore opposite his holster. The other, slightly smaller but no less enormous security guard, did likewise.
My smile widened, and I winked at the pair.
The security cameras which adorned the wall watching the entrances of the building blew out with an enormous rain of sparks and the stink of burning wires. At the same time, the barrels of the two guns holstered before me rose up. I had neatly sliced them away, and as they rose the metal comprising the barrel thinned into a thin sheet of metal. This happened in moments, the guards barely having time to react to the explosive mess I had made of the cameras.
The sheets of metal reformed rapidly, molding to my will and imagination as I continued walking towards the pair. Two pairs of simple shackles formed from each sheet, the metal strengthened almost beyond belief under my guiding mind. The shackles whipped forward, clasping about the wrists and ankles of the two men before me. The nightsticks were only halfway out of their carrying loops by the time the manacles whipped through the air, locking closed on hands and ankles.
The two men, deprived of free motion and caught so completely off-guard by the uncanny situation, fell unceremoniously to the floor, slamming into each other and the furniture which littered the small entrance foyer.
I never even broke stride, smiling all the while, almost thirty blueprints of various ATM designs and bank vaults in the tube riding across my shoulder as I walked out the door.
To be continued….
Shacklefully,
Justin
