The Order of The Forgers (A microfiction Series)

 

Late to the party are you? You can still read part one/two here and here.

Part Three: Darn Them All

Darn all these secret government buildings with their fifty cameras in every hallway or room. Darn them to heck with their keycard doors everywhere.

Give me a lock any day, I’ll have it open within a second. These darn keycard doors, with all their complex constitution and extravagant merriment, why they take me way too long to open using just my natural talents, and worst of all, every effort I put into one of these shaves off a couple of years from my life.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: a nigh-immortal like me worrying about losing a few strands on the grand tunic of life he cloaks himself with, what is he smoking? But you have to understand, a nigh-immortal I might be, am still carved from the rock of humankind, thus do I still dread the end and of course, if I am to carry out my noble duty, it would do us all much good if the blood is still pumping in my veins.

So yes, darn them key card doors, and darn whoever invented them. Darn the fact that I have to break into the rooms where they keep the keycards or knock a few amiable security guards senseless to steal theirs.

But then darn the sight that meets my eyes when I finally arrive at my destination. A man sits on an actual throne in the middle of the dark room, lean as a chicken leg, with a beard long as my arm and not half as charming, sunglasses so dark they could be tiny black holes manifested, a demonic blood-red halo swirling over his head and smoke billowing from his nose and mouth.

And there on the floor, what else should lie there except the limp, chained body of Sofia. The girl, my girl.

Well darn the whole world, because the rage I feel could conjure up the spirits of billions dead and forever doom the living.

Click HERE to read part four!

The Order of The Forgers (A microfiction Series)

 

Looking for part one? It's over here!

Part Two: The Girl

Her voice carries the softness of a feather on silk.

Her aura is that of a sunset on a tidally locked planet. Perpetual, haunting, notoriously hard to tear yourself away from, as if the key to its liberation lay in the sharing of its imprisonment with others.

I am never in control when am around her. I run away from her only to tumble and find myself reeling back into her arms again.

‘So you can unlock every door in the world, is that it?’ She asks one day.

‘Well, everything with a lock on it essentially, yeah.’

‘With a magical master key?’ She teases.

I sigh. How do I explain this part? Do I have a key or am I the key? Am I a manifestation of a practice or simply its practitioner?

Am I but a sorcerer?

No.

I am not a sorcerer. I am hardly better than your average chemist. Or artist. Why then, if you think about it, your best of writers and artists are mere chemists too. How else would you explain how they affect their audience so? They intrude upon their audience’s chemical composition, causing them to ‘feel’, and laugh or cry, using otherwise lifeless symbols on paper or canvas. So men of art as it turns out, are men of science after all!

As am I. Only I don’t just make the science, I am it as well, but how do you go about explaining something you can’t quite articulate, barely understand yourself.

‘Yes.’ I reply.

‘Cool!’ She replies. ‘Well, what else can you unlock besides doors?’

Your heart and mind, and should I do it long enough I could bend your will to my own amusement if I choose. Maybe then I could be rid of you.

‘Just locks. Am afraid as far as superpowers go, mine’s not that glamorous.’

The Order Of The Forgers (A microfiction series)

Part One: In Deplorable Company.

‘This is a secured government building. How did you break in?’

He’s in full control of this conversation. It ebbs and rises as he sees fit. He alternates between using his tongue or his fists to communicate. I in turn respond well within my disposition with silence, grunts of pain or the occasional insult against his mother. I’ve crossed paths with men of his ilk before. I’ve been through worse than him.

The conditions could have been worse, of course. Not to say I enjoy being suspended in the air with my arms clamped and chained to opposite walls of the room, and a cup of coffee would have been nice too, but I’ve been in worse positions. One room I was exiled in once, I stretched my hand before my eyes and could not see it. When people talk of purgatory, I remember that place.

This place, it’s nothing. This man, he will tire. They always do. He does, and he leaves.

That’s when I whisper to my arm, ‘Mif-tahun.’

There are exactly seven hundred and twenty nine locks in this entire building. I can feel each one of them, but right now I need to focus on just two.

The process has always been painful, it’s never not been, but I need to be rid of these chains.

It stings.

It burns.

Then it gets worse.

In my haste, I drop my newly acquired key. It clinks mockingly as it kisses the floor, then rolls away and disappears into a drain in the floor.

I swear in exasperation.

Right then, let’s try that again.

 

In case you're wondering, Part Two is over here!

Microfiction #14: Origins

There was a clock. Ticking and tocking.

Tick, tick, tock, tick.

He couldn’t see it, but it certainly was there, constantly.

Tock, tock, tick.

It ticked whenever he did something good, like that time he helped the sickly old lady cross the road and she thanked him by telling him he had a very special destiny to fulfill

Tick tick tick.

It tocked whenever he did the opposite, like when he punched the homeless guy in the dark alley out of rage for being fired from his third job.

Tock tock tock.

In spite of himself, he often found the tocking more soothing. So he bought himself guns, until later he could afford rockets and a presidential campaign.