{"id":2547,"date":"2023-09-09T13:43:22","date_gmt":"2023-09-09T20:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/?p=2547"},"modified":"2023-09-09T13:43:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T20:43:22","slug":"intrusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/09\/intrusive\/","title":{"rendered":"Intrusive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

prompt: Write a story about someone trying to resist their darker impulses. Whether they succeed or fail is up to you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

available at Reedsy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intrusive thoughts, that\u2019s what my therapist calls them. But they aren\u2019t just thoughts, they are fully realized scenes that play out in the theater of my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The colors, the sounds, the smells, the feelings<\/em>\u2026that\u2019s what they are. I watched the old guy in the store with the pistol on his hip. He didn\u2019t pay attention to where he was or what was around him. Twice I\u2019ve managed to sidle past him in the aisle and put my hand on it; the second time I just stopped myself from pulling it when I had hold of the grip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had to hide in the diaper aisle while the scene played out in my head. I draw the pistol and shoot him, point blank. The look of shock makes me laugh. I continue with my shopping, like nothing is wrong while everyone runs from me. I approach the checkout lane and use the pistol to encourage the cashier to ring me up. I pay with my card while waving at the cameras. Anyone who gets in my way, I shoot them and continue. The blood is beautiful, as beautiful as the looks of fear.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the scene had played out and I was done grinning like a loon, I pulled myself together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre you okay?\u201d the soccer-mom looking woman asked me. She was looking at me as if I\u2019d gone mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, yeah. I took a shortcut through this aisle and couldn\u2019t help remembering when my boy was a baby. Happier times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHappier?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah. Teenagers are the worst. He\u2019ll grow out of it, I\u2019m sure.\u201d I left her with her lower-middle-class suburban haircut and cart full of cold cereal, milk, yogurt cups, and training pants to get back to my own chores. As if I\u2019d ever have kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw a police officer in uniform, probably just came off shift. He was far more aware of his pistol than the old man. On a whim, I stopped him in the cracker aisle and asked if he could reach one of the boxes on the top shelf. It was a reasonable ask for someone as short as I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He put his right hand on his pistol as he reached up and grabbed the box with his left. \u201cJust the one?\u201d he asked as he handed it to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, just the one,\u201d I said, \u201cthanks. Good work on weapon awareness, by the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou a safety instructor?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, just pay attention.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, you have a good day.\u201d He looked at me as though he suspected something but couldn\u2019t do anything about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I finished my shopping and told the cashier I\u2019d changed my mind about the crackers. With full reusable bags in hand, I made my way to the bus stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d lost my driver\u2019s license when I let the \u201cintrusive thoughts\u201d win and threw it into park on the freeway. It wasn\u2019t as exciting as I thought it would be. The car just slowed down until it came to a stop, then the transmission made a loud clunk as it shifted into park and wouldn\u2019t shift out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other people on the freeway got all the excitement. One guy slammed on his brakes to avoid rear-ending me and got rear-ended himself, spinning him into the next lane. That created a chain reaction that involved fourteen cars and a semi-truck. Problem was, it all happened behind me, and I couldn\u2019t see much of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I almost missed my bus, as I was busy trying to recreate the scene that had played out behind me that day. I lugged my bags to an empty seat and sat. The bottle of malt vinegar bumped against my ankle, and I chuckled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I empty everything but the bottle from the bag, then stand. The bag handles in my grip, I swing with all my force. I laugh at the sound of the bottle cracking skull. Head injuries bleed a lot, and the scene is glorious. Someone tries to grab me, and I swing at them. The bottle connects with their wrist, a sharp snap as their ulna breaks under the impact. I cut their scream off with a hard swing to their head, the bag now thoroughly soaked in blood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other riders on the bus have gotten used to me. I\u2019m sure they thought I was mentally impaired in some way. Still, I felt eyes on me; someone was staring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked around and found them. A woman in the sideways seat in the front stared at me. I looked at her, opened my eyes as wide as they would go and licked my lips. The way she almost jumped out of the seat and turned away to look out the front made me laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you, darling,\u201d I said. \u201cI ain\u2019t been eye-fucked that good in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I blew her a kiss as I got off at my stop. I skipped the elevator and took the stairs to my apartment. It was always good for a little extra exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My therapist said that exercise was a good way to combat the \u201cintrusive thoughts.\u201d I didn\u2019t agree, but I did have to admit that I was better shape than I had been in a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a so-so take-out dinner, I settled in to watch every horror movie on stream\u2026or at least the ones with gore and rated R or MA. I was still watching and laughing at the splatter-fest on my screen when the sun came up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t have any plans, so I decided to just fall asleep in front of the television whenever. There were still hours and hours of movies to go, and I wasn\u2019t tired. I ordered breakfast from one of the delivery services, since I didn\u2019t want to pause the movie too long, it was the funniest I\u2019d seen yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It consisted of a thin veneer of plot over a plethora of inventive and increasingly complex methods of gory murder. When a kid\u2019s intestines were slowly wound around a hose reel, I laughed so hard that I nearly choked on my breakfast burrito.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I liked it so much, I restarted it as soon as it ended. At some point, I laughed myself to sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I woke feeling tired, my body aching, as though I\u2019d been working out. I reached out for the remote, but my hands were bound to the table in front of me. Handcuffs. A scratchy blanket was wrapped around me. I looked down, and saw that I was nude under the blanket, and covered in blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hurt, but not enough for the amount of blood. It couldn\u2019t be mine. \u201cFuck!\u201d I pounded my fists on the table. \u201cIt must\u2019ve been amazing<\/em>, but I don\u2019t remember anything! God damn it! It\u2019s not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to remember. We have you on camera. We\u2019re just trying to establish a why.\u201d The detective tried to talk all gentle and polite, but I could tell she was a hair from snapping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s on camera? Can I see? I want to see. I need<\/em> to see!\u201d I shook the blanket off and looked at the blood that had dried on my body. From the looks of it, I had painted myself with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to let you wa\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you show me, I might remember why,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair! I don\u2019t remember it, but it had<\/em> to be good. Just look at me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The detectives decided they weren\u2019t going to get anything useful out of me and booked me. They didn\u2019t know that while they left me waiting in the hall, I was able to see some other officers gathered around a monitor, watching my antics. I just wished I could remember what it felt like in the moment, but it was hilarious to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t stop laughing, even while I was booked, forced to wash, and thrown into a cell. It was just too funny, and I imagined all of them with their intestines on a hose reel, which just made me laugh more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wondered if my therapist would even talk to me any longer. She\u2019d probably be disappointed. That thought made me momentarily sad. I could find out where she lived and go talk to her; let her know it wasn\u2019t the same \u2014 it couldn\u2019t be the same \u2014 because I don\u2019t remember it. To talk to her, of course, I\u2019d have to get out the jail first, but I was already working on an idea or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

prompt: Write a story about someone trying to resist their darker impulses. Whether they succeed or fail is up to you. available at Reedsy Intrusive thoughts, that\u2019s what my therapist calls them. But they aren\u2019t …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[208],"tags":[234,210,221,209],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trunk-stories","tag-contemporary","tag-fiction","tag-horror","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pxT7i-F5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}