14/11/2022 - Gullible White Bloke
Reading time: 3 min
Photo by Tânia Mousinho on Unsplash
Michael had never accomplished anything in his life, but he believed—in that delusional way some men are convinced of their worth, even without evidence—that he deserved more.
His heroes hadn’t had an easier start of their fashionable life. People like Donald Trump just pushed and bullied their way up to the top—success was a marathon, not a sprint—and that’s what Michael thought was about to happen to him.
Focus on your strengths, forget your weaknesses.
But Michael didn’t have any strength. He was mediocre in every possible way. You could have placed him in any room full of white blokes and he would have disappeared.
There was only one characteristic of his social persona worth any notice, and he had built an entire character around it, wearing the badge like a medal.
He had been banished from every museum on Earth.
In his infinite, unjustified arrogance, he thought he could get girls just telling the story.
“I’m a member of a very exclusive club,” he would say, and then, walking along the Thames, he would turn towards Trafalgar square, climb the steps to the National Gallery, and point at the picture of his face on the door. “I’m not allowed in,” he would say with a smirk.
He was so delusional in his accomplishment, that he aimed specifically at women passionate about art, and never failed to remain in awe when, hearing his story, they jerked in disgust or left in a hurry.
Leila seemed different, though.
She didn’t have piercings or visible tattoos. She didn’t wear middle-east-styled scarfs and didn’t have books in her purse. She had those red lips he would have begged to kiss.
“Wow,” she said after he showed her his biggest achievement. “What happened?”
Michael had prepared a version of the story which did not exactly match reality, but in his mind, it was even better.
What had really happened, in his only trip outside the country, is that he tripped, hitting a temporary statue built like an origami of copper tubes, and tripping he broke the mechanism that kept it upright. The statue fell on a roman mosaic older than Jesus Christ, and when the guards and the curator accused him of clumsiness, he pretended he did it on purpose. While he was escorted out, he punched a hole in a painting to make his story more believable, then ignored the wave of crushing debt coming his way.
The story Leila heard didn’t have the tripping part.
“That’s amazing,” she said. “Why did you do it?”
That was a good question. Why did he do it? He had never gone so far in the conversation with a girl, he had never thought about it. Why would he do something like that?
Well, first of all, for popularity. It doesn’t matter why people know you, as long as they know you, right? But he couldn’t say that. It made him seem desperate.
He thought about a statement from the news, though he couldn’t quite remember who said it. Maybe some Muslim terrorist destroying museums, just like him.
“You can’t move forward if you’re stuck in the past. Am I right?” he blurted out; his gaze fixed on Leila’s cleavage.
“Perfect,” she said finally. “You’ll fit perfectly in our organisation. We just need to teach you how to build bombs.”
About this story
Prompt:
STEP 1: Post a comment below saying “Challenge Me”.
STEP 2: Reply to someone else’s challenge comment with five words. Reply to as many people as you want! Check back for latecomers and share the excitement!
Need some ideas? Here's a very fun Random Word Generator for your enjoyment.
STEP 3: Once your initial ”Challenge Me” comment has gathered enough responses, pick your favourite/s, use them to write a story, and post the results in a new comment below! (Bonus points if you end up combining multiple Challenge Me’s into something strange and wonderful!)
My words for this challenge: Mechanism, Medal, Mosaic, Member, Marathon
From the official page of FFM 2022.
Notes on the challenge
Each and every story published here has been written, reviewed, polished and published in less than 90 minutes. Which means you’re going to find spelling mistakes, ugly sentences and weird structures. I still hope you’ll enjoy them!
