Murdered Reality by J. W. Wargo

I dropped to my knees. My eyes started to leak.

"I'm so sorry," was all I could choke out.

He choked up a bit of transparent blood and kept repeating, "It's okay. It's okay."

I wasn't aware he had moved, blindly assumed he was hiding out in his lair more often now since he had grown so noticeable. He had actually abandoned that place for a new one on the other side of the floor, right behind an old, dirt soaked mop. I didn't bother to check behind that same mop when it was time to spray down the floor and walls with chemical cleaner and scrub it spotless.

The sound of their searing bodies filled the room as several of his neighbors ran in all directions, the burning of their skeletons equaled only by the sound of their pathetic, tortured screams.

Admittedly, part of why this job exists is to see that any particularly problematic population booms of the less desirable types are kept in check, and part of me agrees with that fact. But not him. Never him.

He was special. Tenacious. He had little fear and was seemingly content with his station in life. He and I, we had an understanding. We had even grown to respect each other, and I just pulled the guillotine on him.

Crawling out from behind the mop slowly, he limped on six usable legs, dragging two behind him. I couldn't see it at first. My mind pushed away the vision it was receiving. The vision held firm, then pushed back so hard the resulting realization hit me like a dropped piano.

I sat with him until the very end, remembering him and sharing my energy to help release his life force into the ether. I gave him a funeral by toilet. His vessel a soft, one-ply raft to send him off through a sewage nirvana ending at that big, moist, dark, abandoned basement in the sky.

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J.W. Wargo, Nomadic Bizarro Storyteller, is neither here nor there, but a little bit of everywhere. You can find him on your city's sidewalks busking for his next meal, or at jwwargo.blogspot.com. His first book, AVOIDING MORTIMER, is now available on Amazon.

Copyright 2013 JW Wargo