This is a nodeshell commando action

This is what you've been tricked into doing. You don't appreciate it, and you don't like it. You vow to yourself every night that you'll quit this job. But you needed the money. You can't help yourself. Sometimes in fact, you like it.

A woman, middle aged, takes a few cautious steps towards you. You're dangerous and you know it. She looks down at the ground, and then up at you and asks, "What'll it take?"
A price. We all know that it's just gonna take a price
"We'll talk about that later ma'am, let's just get on with this."
You don't even want to think about what you've just done, what you're about to do...

She leads you toward an adjacent room, and gestures for you to step inside. You, after a deep inhalation of oxygen (to help clear aside your worrys, the pressures, and the stress of what you are about to face) step through the door. The sensory overload of this place hits you like an 18-wheeler filled with bowling balls, dropped from the outer reaches of the ionosphere. The heat of the room hits you first, the temperature outside your skin rockets from comfortable to I wish I were naked in a bucket of ice. Flames dance inside the room, lights flash and the sound of so many feet erupts behind you. An indiscernable mob of small creatures surrounds you, screaming, wailing out a horrendous, unified chant, and you submit to their will as you fall...

Later that evening

"Honey, it's my birthday! Will you make me a balloon animal?"
You shudder
"No. Hell no. I've been doing that all night, and quite frankly, my jaw aches."

Smile, it might never happen
or
Hey, you look like a lovely girl, why not give us a little smile, heh?

I originally thought this was just the Glasgow males lack of imagination, the fact that you'd hear comments like that passed to women in bars and night clubs almost anywhere you went and any night of the week. Then I travelled about a bit and let me reassure you, it's everywhere.

It translates into other languages. Men even use hand gestures when all else fails. And it even extends to same sex encounters. I've been told to smile whilst sitting on my own at the end of a bar. Or asked if there's something wrong, after all you look so sullen. I'm quite happy sitting on my own, thinking, I just don't have a requirement or want to grin like a maniac whilst doing so.

It's not that you have to be unhappy not to smile, smiling takes effort. I know this, the number of times I've heard 'smiling is a form of exercise, it burns up calories' or something similar...

The one time I did smile was on hearing someone try the Smile, it might never happen line on a friend I was out at a bar with.

"I've been doing that all night and quite frankly my jaw aches" she retorted.

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