Drabble Thursdays #2

Time for a few more of these!

DISCLAIMER: Drabbles may suck.

12/06/2012

The target sat in an office, writing and signing papers with a thick black pen.

Outside the door, the agent codenamed Clear stood waiting, adjusting his disguise carefully. Then he walked in.

The target didn't seem to notice him. He passed a woman at her desk, then came up behind the target and reached for the switchblade concealed in his clothing.

A stabbing pain coursed through his side. The target had stabbed him with the back of the pen, which had a sharp point. The target's other pen concealed a knife.

The woman stood behind him with a cane-sword umbrella.

12/07/2012

The rain came down with no remorse, the kind of rain that makes it impossible to see out the window. Vague circles of light indicated cars passing by, splashing up puddles of muddy water into air already drenched by its own rain.

Near an old gutter lay a worn and beaten canvas, lying miserably in a puddle made more of its own paint than anything else. The colors were running all over, making themselves part of the inside of the canvas rather than layers on top of it.

Elsewhere, the artist who'd thrown his work away walked in the rain.

12/08/2012

Squids live in the water, and though they have legs they were never meant to live on the land. This squid knows that to be true, and yet she longs for more.

Day after day, she makes her way up as far as she can, to the place where the waves crash against the sand, and the air is inches away. There, she finds things discarded by humans: cans and bottles, scraps of plastic. She brings them back to her home as decoration. Once she finds a pair of headphones. She doesn't know what they're for, but she wears them.

12/09/2012

The man moved freely along the wide steel flooring. Or rather, the roof. It was the most daring thing he had ever done, because he was thousands of feet in the air, and moving at an insane speed.

The wind pushed against him as he raced to the front to the best of his ability. He stumbled once, but never slid very far.

As he looked through the scope of his rifle, he saw what looked like a missile. But it wasn't. As it drew closer, he fired. The recoil almost knocked him off, but he won the blimp fight.

12/10/2012

Books. Books everywhere. Books on the floor, books on the walls, books stacked to the ceiling and on shelves.

A mad old man sat on a pile of books, staring into the pages of one intently, as if everything in life depended on the next words it had to say.

Books across the pathways. Books piled so high you couldn't possibly get out the door. Books trapping the man inside his own library, for hundreds of years now, so that he had no possible hope of getting out.

That was his fate. He was long gone now, that old man.

12/11/2012

The Man of the Cards was special, and everyone could see it. He dealt with all kinds of cards—normal playing cards, to be sure, as he knew every game one could think of—but also tarot cards, sports cards, and all sorts of strategic games of playing cards. To him, half the fun was owning every deck of cards ever thought up, and the other half was knowing how to play the games.

People respected the Man of the Cards, as he carried around his large tote bag. Everyone knew what was inside. Everyone wanted to play a game with him.

12/12/2012

The girl jumped up the stairs, two at a time, desperately trying to make it in time, before the noon hour struck.

She could see the gears turning beside her, but she didn't know what they meant yet. They meshed together so that they could do their work, day after day, always the same, with no input from the outside world.

Today, though, someone was going to try to change all of that.

Up at the top of the clock tower, the second hand ticked. A boy leaned out and leapt, catching the second hand exactly at noon.

It stopped.