Flash Fiction: Lennixx

The photo I took has nothing to do with story I just like the fact it says Twain.

I haven’t written or rewritten much of anything since I was laid off. I’ve been headstrong on trying to find a job. I consider this job a stepping stone and will take it from there. I have no choice and in the hearts and minds of everyone struggling, I will keep it upbeat (at least this precursor to my flash fiction story). Actually, this is the first chapter of one of my novellas. It has been in the background stewing in my mind for quite a few weeks and while I have to finish my final polish on my first novel and continue adding 200+ more pages to my second novel, this needed to be written. I call it garbage needing to be polished so it doesn’t stink up the place anymore. If you don’t share your writing, then why write. I just hope people will buy my books too. I’m also needing to get in the habit of only putting one space in between periods. For over 40 years, I’ve put two spaces because that is what I learned. Changing this habit has been difficult. I’m sure every writer out there knows rewrites must be done and so this is a working first chapter that I will probably not go back to in a while. In the meantime, it’s something. Enjoy.

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It was still light out when Lennixx heard the owl. He imagined the owl was adorned with brown and white feathers. The brown would be the outer layer and the white could congregate under and around the wings.  When the owl lifted his wings to fly, Lennixx wished he had night vision goggles. If the owl actually did have that kind of coloring, he might notice the difference. The problem was he had the find the owl first, goggles or no goggles. 

These people were the ones he secretly wanted in his corner if he ever found himself in need of help. These were the people who often became doctors not lawyers or auditors not fraudsters. He did not think all lawyers were short in the attention to detail department, but he had seen more than enough to know money trumps specifics. 

Sure, he understood the desire to describe lawyers in a positive way. Everybody wants a fair representation of him or herself, but he was talking about professional reality. The reality was not everyone is given a fair shake.  Sometimes, the best person for a job gets shafted because he was not, she or vice versa.

People were great at displaying fictitious displays of principles such as hard work and results. Put in another way, these were the brownnosers. Lennixx called them  ass-kissers. The reality was he had seen many people not selected for no other reason than a combination of laziness and stereotypes. These unfortunate people could do nothing about it or could they. 

This was the million-dollar question everyone asked themselves when they filtered out of the front entrance and the doors to their company closed forever. He could see the bewilderment on their faces: their arched eyebrows, scrunched up noses, and lips parted enough to signal the reality had not set in yet. 

He knew because Lennixx was one of them. He asked himself the following: Should I have recognized the signs? How much in control of my life do I really have?  What do I do now? If I am in control of my life, why haven’t I gotten the things I most desire? What the fuck happened?

These desires were those things he had not told anyone about because it sounded stupid. He was not talking mentally stupid, as in IQ range, but courageous stupid where he is too afraid to stick his index finger through the bubble he was living in for fear of failure.

People like to say we have all been there and done that. We have all felt disappointment, heard anger, and seen madness. We know what reaching the bottom means. When our arms are not able to paddle to the top because they are broken, and our hands can’t possibly be strong enough, it is over.  Lennixx felt the only option was to drown. No one was coming to his rescue.  There was no life preserver. There was no rescue buoy thrown in his direction. There was simply nothing but a night sky above him and the owl that never flew away. It hooted all night long. Even if he had wanted to sleep instead, he would not have been able to since the owl was insistent on keeping him company in his misery.

And here he was and so it went, one man with little purpose and no dream left to his name. He had nothing to live for, his life was empty and would be forever pointless, but then someone interrupted Lennixx by talking to himself in the woods. In this dire moment, the intruder came across Lennixx and shined a flashlight on his face.

He wouldn’t find out the intruder’s name until the next morning. The owl had stopped hooting and was replaced by forest birds chirping. Lennixx never cared about the particular species. They all sounded the same. He paid no attention to detail or wondered why the cardinal bird was named that way. None of this mattered when death was the only option.

The moment he decided to get into his Volvo and pull out of the parking garage was when Lennix knew his life was officially over. As a promise to the countless writers before him who never made a penny while they were alive, he drove to the woods nearby and plotted a revenge on life.

This was how death was going to be. He was sure going to show life how stupid it had become. Taking his life meant every bad thing that happened to him was pay back. If God really did exist, he was going to make God pay for his shitty life. As a bonus, he would haunt those who wronged him while they were sleeping once gone. This was his grand plan.  His master of a plan that failed and all because Mr. Wonderful had to celebrate in his own way, outside and alone, on the same night Lennixx decided to kill himself.