Mindless Ramblings - Justin Six (best short novels .TXT) 📗

 Brandon’s room matched his personality and showed quite clearly what his interests were. His walls were lined with posters from his favorite rock bands and TV shows. Behind his custom built computer hung a nude calendar that with every month showed a new girl. Then there were his surround sound speakers, which allowed for him to blast his music, to the dismay of his neighbors. Despite all there was for the eyes to see in his room, when he walked in on the 17th of December all he could do was stare at the back of the head of a stranger.

 

A man in his 40’s with a mix of grey and brown hair stood with his back to Brandon, staring out of Brandon’s window.

 

“Who are you?” Brandon asked.

 

“Why are you getting back so late?” The man counter questioned.

 

“Excuse me?” Brandon replied.

 

“My name is Alex and you are late, you’ve kept me waiting too long,” The man said and turned to face Brandon.

 

A scar across the man’s face was now visible to young Brandon, but what was much more threatening was the sadness in Alex’s eyes, they implied that he had nothing left to lose.

 

Brandon took out a pocketknife and threatened Alex, “What do you want from me? I will call the cops and if you try something I won’t hesitate to use this.”

 

Alex didn’t feel threatened; he had to repress his laughter, so as not to insult Brandon. Because Alex couldn’t speak for fear of laughing and Brandon didn’t know what to say, silence ensued.

 

With his motives once more in sight, Alex spoke, “I’m here to help you, help me save a lot of people.”

 

“Am I just supposed to trust every old man that shows up in my room late at night?” Brandon asked.

 

Alex had predicted a question of this kind and he’d prepared accordingly, so he responded confident of his words, “No, but I am not just some random man. I’ve found a way to manipulate time, which I can demonstrate here and now. I can help you get what you want by demonstrating this, if I do this, however, you must help me to prevent a great tragedy.”

 

Disbelief overtook Brandon’s face; he couldn’t imagine how crazy the man in front of him actually was. First he broke into his house, then he waited for him patiently in his own room, and now he claimed he could “manipulate time”.

 

“The girl you like, tomorrow she will be at your bus stop, waiting for a bus that will never come. Two very annoying girls will be harassing her at the time; you can “rescue” her from them, finally giving yourself the chance to be with her,” Alex explained.

 

Brandon opened his mouth, ready to ask how this man could know who he liked, but before the first syllable could be pronounced, Alex had disappeared. Dumbfounded by the entire experience, Brandon decided to dismiss it as a result of not enough sleep and to go to bed.

 

The next day he said nothing of the conversation he’d had in his room, but he did get to the bus stop faster than usual, eager to disprove that Alex was a real person. When he got to the bus stop, there was no one around him to be seen. A sigh of relief came from Brandon. It had all just been leftovers from the mushrooms I had taken plus my lack of sleep, he thought.Then Celia came into view as she turned the corner, headed towards Brandon, and sure enough there were two skinny, too perfect looking girls following her. Celia did not say hi to Brandon when she got to the bus stop, she was too busy taking insults from the other two girls.

 

In Brandon’s opinion Celia was the prettiest and coolest girl in the school, though it wasn’t a popular view on her, many simply saw her as a weird or depressed girl. Her blunt words and focus on what she cared about rather than what others did was attractive to him.

 

“Can I talk to you for a second Celia?” Brandon asked.

 

All three girls turned towards him, noticing him for the first time. Celia got up eagerly and walked away with Brandon.

 

“Thanks for getting me away from them, are you finally going to admit that you like me?” Celia said.

 

“Uh, no problem and I was just trying to save you from them,” He replied.

 

Celia’s tone of voice hinted towards disappointment as she said, “Oh, ok-

 

Brandon quickly interrupted, “I do like you though.”

 

“I like you too,” Celia stated, smiled, and turned to make eye contact.

 

They held eye contact for seconds, and then their phones vibrated. Their parents had alerted them to the fact that school was closed today due to an incident involving a fire.

 

“Do you want to go get breakfast with me, since school is closed today?” Brandon asked. “I haven’t eaten anything other than a few bites of cereal.”

 

Celia agreed to go and grabbed Brandon’s hand with her own. They walked hand in hand to the nearest breakfast diner. On the way to the eatery they realized they liked a lot of the same bands and that they could hold a conversation quite well with each other.

 

“Table for two please,” Brandon said to the hostess of the restaurant.

 

They got good seating by the window and sat down as close to each other as possible in their booth. Neither knew quite what to get because they didn’t want to get anything that would be too messy to eat, so when their waiter came they had lots of questions. But Brandon had more, for their waiter was Alex, the same man he had spoken to the prior night. The peculiar situation he was in, hit him at once.

 

“What would you like to drink?” Alex asked.

 

“Orange juice please,” Celia said.

 

Brandon was at a loss for words, so he simply restated what his newfound girlfriend had said. After a couple minutes of silence Celia finally decided to do something. She poked Brandon; made sure he was looking into her eyes, and asked if everything was okay. Celia feared that Brandon might be regretting his decision to go out to eat with her.

 

“Yeah, sorry, our waiter just looks like someone I used to know,” Brandon said.

 

Celia gave Brandon his first kiss, they both smiled, and then Celia got up to go to the restroom.

 

“I see you took my advice. Now that you have seen that I really can control time, I think it’s time for us to talk,” Alex told Brandon.

 

Brandon turned to see him and the fact that everything had seemingly stopped, as though time had stopped. He screamed, “What the hell is going on? What do you want from me?”

 

“I have already told you what I want. I want you to save people’s lives. I can see into the future, I can see into the past, but I can’t go forward or back. All I can do is stop time and create portals which I cannot enter. You can though, this is clear to me,” Alex explained.

 

“Even if you can bring me back in time, how am I supposed to stop something horrible from happening? I’m not some superhuman, I’m just a teenager,” Brandon asked.

 

“All you have to do is kill a single man, a man that is inevitably going to start a horrible accident that results in an explosion which kills sixty people,” Alex said.

 

“All I have to do? Are you mad? I’m not a killer!” Brandon said.

 

“Sixty deaths or one, the choice is yours. Just know that I am not lying and this man is no saint,” Alex retorts.

 

A strange bubble with a clear image then appeared in front of Brandon. Through it, Alex showed the travesty that happened ten years ago as well as the man responsible for it. The sight isn’t a pretty one, the fire, blood, and screams convinced Brandon.

 

“I’ll do it,” He said.

 

A new, darker, larger bubble appeared in front of Brandon. On the other side he could see a blonde haired, blue eyed man, similar to himself; it’s the man he needed to kill. He was in what appeared to be an office, alone and doing nothing productive. Brandon walked through after receiving a gun from Alex.

 

“Where’d you come from? Why are you pointing a gun at me?!” The blonde haired man asked. His hands shaking.

 

“You are going to kill a lot of people today,” Brandon told him.

 

Confused, the man said nothing. With reluctance, Brandon raised the gun to the man’s head and pulled the trigger. The loud noise and kickback from the gun resulted in Brandon dropping the gun. He came back to the present, just after recovering from the shock of losing the gun, and seeing the man he’d shot on the floor, drowning in a pool of blood.

 

Back in the time-frozen present, Brandon discovered he was covered in blood, and that he seemed to be fading out of reality.

 

“What’s happening?” He asked Alex.

 

“You did it. You saved everyone and killed the man that was going to be your father. I must thank you for this,” Alex said.

 

“But if I am never born, how can I go back in time to kill my father, which results in me never being born?” Brandon asked.

 

“Time travel is too complicated to explain in your last seconds of existence. All that matters is now my family will never die, and I will never become the man that I am now. Thank you for this,” Alex explains.

Killing’s The Only Solution - Ch. 1

"Among all the demons of mankind's existence, there has never been one as great as mankind. Yes, you heard me correctly; we are the most evil creature that inhabits this planet,” a tall, fat man with grey hair preaches into a microphone. “We are a plague without a cure.”

           

Poor old bastard, you are getting yourself caught in the crossfire and you don’t even know it. Mark lets his carefully aimed bullet fly from his gun towards his mark. Screams start to come from the crowd gathered around the now-dead man. Mark doesn’t notice - he is already halfway to the ground floor of the skyscraper he was in.

           

“He’s dead. I am headed back to base,” he says into his headpiece.

           

“We’ll be waiting for you,” Jim replies.

           

Authorities have begun to show up at the site of the murder. This causes Mark to pause when he exits the building. He quickly recovers from this state of shock and remembers that he has a plan. Hailing a cab takes less than a minute. He is soon heading toward upstate New York as they drive through the traffic. The sound of sirens seems to get closer; a cop is attempting to get the cab to pull over.

           

“What have you gotten me into?” the cab driver asks.

           

“Nothing, you were speeding,” Mark says calmly.

           

“Because you are paying me extra to. What’s in that suitcase of yours?” the cab driver asks.

           

So much for my bonus.

           

“Here’s another 700, act as though you are going to pull over just before this light, then speed up and make a sharp right,” Mark tells the driver.

           

After quickly looking at the money, the driver does exactly as told, regardless of the fact that the light