Just for the Fun of It, short story challenge by Tobias Robbins

Just for the fun of it, me and a few friends challenged each other to write a short story based on only one word. The word for this challenge was "revolution." This little five minute read is what I came up with. If you like it then I humbly suggest trying out my book when it comes in this winter. It will be called "The Remnants of Pryr" and it is being published by BWL Publishing 

 

 

Revolution

 

Ch.1-

I will be gosh darned if that morning alarm seems louder on a Monday. Louder and angrier too. I shouldn't complain I suppose, at least I have a job to wake up to. So many Americans are out of work thanks to old man Reagan's economic disaster. Mr. Coffee and a little music will help set my mind right before class. Ever since I was a young man, music has always been my safe haven from outside stressors. I turn the giant nob of my record player and it clicks on, still set to FM I don't bother flipping on a record and just leave the radio to play while I drink my coffee and collect my supplies for today's lesson. Sleigh bells, glockenspiel, tambourine, triangle, maraca; all these elements are necessary to make an adolescent symphony of inadequacy. Oh, it's not the kid's fault, bless their little hearts, it's the lousy school system that can't afford to get me real instruments. That and of course, the Ocotillo County school board's strict censorship of any music that might be deemed offensive. Shake it off, Pete. The kids need you, even if it is a watered-down version of you. The radio cuts from the latest Bruce Springsteen track and instead is replaced with the voice of an old man babbling about a revolution. I figure it simply must be a programming error at the station downtown and flip the player to auto-drop the next record. As the needle pops and hisses over the dead air of the first cycle before Greg Allman's voice breaks the near silence; I’m pushed back a few decades to my father explaining what r.p.m meant. I'm eight and my father had just purchased our family's first record player, I bother him with countless novice questions about the machine's mysterious inner workings including the meaning of the stamped letters r.p.m next to some fantastic switches. Revolutions per minute, he says. Revolution is something going around in a circle he tells me. Like the record playing its worn-out song. Like me wading through the days for my life to take a turn. I dump out the generic music instruments onto the sofa and slide in a few Bob Dylan records. To heck with the school board. Today the kids will learn about real music.

 

Ch.2-

Piece. Of. Shit. That's all it is, just a piece of shit. One headlight, only two windows can roll up, stalls out at every damn red light. Mom should have just trashed it instead of pawning it off on me for a phony sweet sixteen gift for her baby girl. She's a piece of crap too. Her and the car both. If it breaks down on the way to work again Mathers is goona fire me for sure. Skeezy old man always eyeballing my ass when he thinks I'm not looking. Penny Mart ain’t much of a job but it least it pays. Besides I get to sneak Crunch bars all the time. That squealing sound from under the hood is getting on my last damn nerve. The radio might drown it out. I turn the mettle peg where the nob used to be and static fills the air. The car backfires like a shotgun as half a word squeezes through the static. Sounded kinda like "revolt." To Hell with it. I click the radio back off as I pull into the parking lot. Revolt, ya that's exactly the word for how I feel about this place. The engine sputters for a few seconds after I turn the key off. This job is revolting, this car is revolting, and my life since I dropped outta high school is revolting. I can't do this anymore. The Y.M.C.A. down the road offers free classes, maybe they could help me get my diploma and get a better job. I'm going to sign up for classes right now. That creep Mathers can take this job and shove it! I’m outa here. If my piece of shit car will make it there of course.

 

Ch.3-

Never have I been accused of being an impractical person. My colleagues have frequently made note of my reliability and tactfulness. I have, however, been considered too restrained. Too methodical and analytical in my thought process. I place great value on the criticisms of my peers because it helps me define and refine my self-concept. As far as the previously stated peer critique is concerned, I choose to exercise a wide breadth of individual perceptionallity. I choose to view their complaint as a compliment. Being restrained emotionally has helped me achieve positive effects in my life. This job for instance. Could any average 25-year-old get his first job directly out of college as an assistant editor? No. I can conduct myself in a mature, non-emotional way that shows a depth of character that far surpasses the competition. That is why I am trusted by the head editor of Sunset Press's reference department to put out the final product for mass production. In other words, I'm so good that I get to hit the precious and all-powerful print button. More often than not I hit the print button on conservative self-help books or the latest world atlas. This week is a 200-page cookbook with 120 color photos. Sunset Press is a small publishing house but it’s at least a job in the industry of my choice and it looks favorable on a resume to future employers. The next cubicle over I can barely make out the low mumbling of voice from a radio set. It is against policy to play any music on this floor because it greatly distracts from the writing /revising process. The theory is that subconsciously you might end up typing the words to a popular song instead of your assigned work. Despite this possible pitfall, someone has snuck in a small AM/FM radio. With its antenna concealed under a desk it isn't getting very good reception and the only thing that comes through audibly is the gruff voice of a man saying what sounds to the word "evolution" or maybe it was "revolution." What a reckless decision to bring in a radio to a workplace that requires so much mental focus. doesn't that jerk realize how distracting that is? As I try to focus closer on the green block letters forming across the black screen of my computer monitor, I can't help but hear the radio's wordplay over again between my ears. Which was it? Revolution or Evolution? Maybe it is both. Revolution is evolution. Mindlessly correcting spelling errors, I am compelled to let my mind wander into the seldom-seen outback of hypothetical thought. If evolution is slow growth, and revolution is fast change, then is it possible for the two forces to have a symbiotic relationship, one needing the other to perpetuate itself? like the predictable biological mechanism that I have become, I hit the print button without thinking. Another future forgotten masterpiece sent to the printing department. I notice that the radio isn't playing anymore and hasn't for a short time. How much time passed since my imagination took over? damn it, that’s why radios are forbidden in on the editing floor! Apparently, I have to teach that bastard in the next cubicle about acceptable work conduct. As I begin to storm out of my cubicle my eye catches something unfamiliar on the monitor. I sit back down for closer inspection. Oh god. This… can’t be… I don't make this kind of mistake, it goes against all that I am. In my absent-minded delirium, I typed "revolution is evolution is revolution is evolution" in a repeated sequence directly in the middle of page 200. There it is, interrupting the recipe for the green chili pork roast, is my huge glaring mistake. I can feel all of the blood drain from my face. My heart seems to stop beating and then start again twice as intensely. I am going to be fired for this. 

 

Ch.4-

Dad comes to pick me up early from school today. It was real early before I even get to go to Monday music class. He never comes to get me early, not even on my birthday. He says school is pointless after sixth grade anyway, but I can’t stay home and I can’t go to work with him yet. this must be a big deal cuz he never misses work. "No work - no food," says dad. The first thing I notice is our dog Rambo is in the back of the truck and so is the green wool blanket we use to wrap up my riffle. Dad's eyes are red. The truck is loud, and I raise my voice to ask him what’s going on. "This is the big one, boy. Yer uncle Mike came by the job site today and told me about what he heard on the radio. Says the communist bastards are trying to overthrow the government. Some kinda revolution and we gotta get out to yer uncle's place real quick." I look over my shoulder, in the bed of the truck I see the barrel of my 22 sticking out of the green blanket and all my dad’s hunting gear, and his gunny sack full of other stuff. "It was on the radio for real dad?" I ask. He ignores my question, “Yer uncle and yer cousins are hunkering down out at his place and after we meet up we are going to head to our spot at Redfish Canyon." His breath smells sour and now I know why his eyes are red. I scoot the beer cans on the floor with my foot. He usually only gets red-eyed when we talk about mom. Those times he cusses a lot and falls asleep on the couch on the back porch. "Don't be scared boy. We been talkin' about the rooskies dooin’ something like this for a while now." I’m not scared. I didn't want to go to Monday music class anyway.

 

Ch.5-

Margie at the front desk tells me Carl got here an hour early today. She hands me the rest of my messages on small slips of paper and I say, "better than his usual hour late."  She smiles sympathetically and I start down the long corridor to the production booth. The walls are covered in painter's plastic and lift with the draft of my passing. The remodeling has taken longer than I was promised, but image is important in the radio business and you can't try to convince today's hit rock stars to come to your radio station if it looks like a damn library. When me and Carl went into this business together a year ago we never thought it would take this long to convert an educational radio station into a top ten pop chart station. It would be easier if Carl didn't have Jack and Coke breakfasts and whiskey sour lunches. He wanted to be the D.J. so damn bad. All the fun and none of the responsibility. Responsibility that falls into my lap. I flip on the lights to the production booth and there is Carl, laid out over his control board. I sigh so loud I want him to hear it through the glass in the studio which no doubt reeks of booze and body odor. Partially surrounded by an odd assortment of records, and tapes from the old educational collection and some newer material, Carl appears lifeless. I flip on the intercom mic and say as calmly as I can, "ok. Carl old buddy, time to get to work." Without moving an inch he mumbles "Way ahead of ya." That's when I noticed the on-air button was lit. In a panic, I switch to the live feed. It's playing on a loop, just some old guy repeating "revolution". By Carl's leg is the case for an album called "The History of Revolutionary War as Read by Charlton Heston." That deadbeat couldn't even get the right album on before he passed out on the control board. Immediately I flip off the feed. Running my fingers through what’s left of my hair I try to calm down. I say, "OK this will be fine. What’s the worst that could happen?"

 

-END-