1000 Days

By .tyler. – Claudio Martella.

This one’s been in the interesting list on Flickr before. Or I find it so compelling that, having seen it earlier this week but never before, I felt it had.

If Leon would just do one thing to let you know you couldn’t trust him you’d relax a little, enjoy the ride. But he won’t and he never will. He won’t pull forward as you start to get in his idling car. He won’t palm the coins from the ashtray of your ride. He won’t speak ill of you when you’re not around. He won’t try to convince you he doesn’t need a condom. And he won’t kill you in your sleep. He just won’t.

But you know he could. You know that if you just let your guard down you’ll end up pwned.

You first met Leon in high school. He was a grade up from you. Your buddyfriend’s sister hung with his little brother…or something. You were all at a party you shouldn’t have been. He sat down in the circle of your friends just like they were his. Offered you a smoke.

In the moment it took you to politely decline–because WTF does that?–you realized you’d just failed a test. A test given by the universe, but administered by the Mr. Leon Wrecks.

That’s fine. Life moved on. In college you learned that the universe was giving plenty of tests and it had plenty of proctors. Some you passed; some you failed.

The next time you ran into Leon was in the parking lot in the basement of your first real job’s building. You discovered the shorcut to Starbucks by accident one day when you went one more floor down when you thought LL meant lobby and not lower level. To this day you still can’t decide if he was breaking into that Chevy or getting out of it. Unstartled and as if he’d known you’d be there he turned and called out your name. Next thing you know you’re late to get back to the office and jittery from too much caffeine–probably too much caffeine.

Gonna stop there.

If you can’t tell Mr. Leon Wrecks is a work of fiction despite the accompanying picture of a real person. Thanks Sig. Martella.

Word count: 393