Unlikely - January 24, 2012

[note: this was written during a writing exercise: we had 20 minutes to write something inspired by the word "unlikely". This is the result, unedited, exactly as it appeared when time ran out]

Unlikely - Squiddy Geiger - January 24, 2012

Steve was having an Unlikely Day. It was unlikely he'd get pulled over in a random police check, but he was. It was unlikely he'd misplace his car keys which had made him already late, but he had. It was unlikely that he'd turn left instead of right at the intersection, but he did.

When he realized his error, he'd stopped, waiting for a chance to pull a u-turn. That's when the old man had tapped on his window, making a gesture to roll it down. As unlikely as it seemed, given he was already late, he had.

"Young man, can you direct me to the First Bank of Pradorville?" the old man had asked. It was the way he was going, so he told the man to get in. Why, he could not say afterwards. Not that he told anyone.

When he got to the bank, he stopped and pointed it out to the old man. He'd expected him to get out of the car. He had not. "Young man, I cannot go in there - such a building is off limits for my kind," the old man had said. "will you go in and deposit this cheque for me please? It's already got the appropriate deposit slip, all you need to do is present it."

Steve had shrugged, taken the cheque and gone into the bank. There had been nobody there, and two minutes later he came out with the receipt, which he gave to the old man.

"I don't see why you didn't do that yourself," he'd said. "But I'm happy to help."

The old man had laughed, looked Steve directly in the eyes, and blinked. When he'd blinked, his eyes changed colour. He laughed again at Steve's reaction, and faded slowly, until Steve could barely hear his laughter, then he blinked out.

It took him several minutes to recover enough to drive on. Steve was having an Unlikely Day.

Posted by Squiddy at January 24, 2012 08:30 PM | TrackBack