When I showed up at the wrong building the construction workers were at first confused and then pointed a mile away back to the east side, Detroit Stokers building and not much more than that. Race across town. Five minutes late.

I scrambled from the car, already ten minutes late. 

Which door? Which door? Take the main entrance.

The receptionist informs me it’s on the other side of the building.

Round the corner. Fifteen minutes. What am I going to say?

Interview and sweat, let them know I first tried their new location and then went to the wrong business. They assured me with some laughs, it was fine.

It took them six months to get back with me and let me know I had the job. I was working my tail off for a pittance in downtown Detroit. That call was right on time.

Character Prompt

If you could create a fantasy land what is the one thing it would have in it?

Kindness. Everything about life is pointless without it. 

Chaos is fun and brings along novelty which seems as important to us as the air we breathe. But like oxygen, too much and you die. Kindness is the knowing smile when your world is spinning around an eccentric axis that grounds you long enough to reorient yourself.

With kindness everything can change. You can be lifted up beyond your reach with a series of kind words. A simple act of kindness reminds you that you are important, you have worth, you are stronger than your circumstances and you will survive. 

Kindness can boost hope and can bring reality into clear focus, and it is the swift current that supports society along the river of time. It is the only reason humanity will survive.

You didn’t give me any choice, not in any way that resembled a modicum of freedom that I’ve come to expect. Limited my vision. Left the important pieces out and guided me to a choice among a bad outcome and one mildly tolerable way out. I cried along the way that there’s just no knowing which way to go until I had come upon the fork, and you didn’t listen insisting there was only the dinner laid out before me. Then I will not eat your supper as it is bitter to me.

Don’t get me wrong. You scare the shit out of me, and for that you earn my respect and a wide berth as I avoid your wrath, but also know that I will not forget and one day, when you are gone or incapacitated I shall reveal my truth and it will be obvious to all that I carved my own path despite your machinations.

Here we have a skinny rabbit, chewing clover and replacing its winter reserves. This story is just beginning as tiny fluffs bounce behind their mother and begin to learn. It’s as it should be and as real as the Spring storm coursing down the mountain. 

And over there a seagull coated in raw oil another tanker run aground and the story here is one of death. Not a real death which is just a cycle of renewal and part of life, but unreal death as in the end of something full stop. The gull will not be a part of anything bigger except as another piece of trash in a landfill. Another uncaptured expense for money. The biggest lie of them all.