"Suprise Me!" I said to the Balloon Man

The red balloon came out of the wall of trees and I knew I wasn't alone. 

I thought I was cool, smoking at the elementary school playground by myself.  My house was blowing up, the girl at school was making out with that jerk, and I had nothing better to do, so I went to my usual place.  The park looked like a very large child had spilled his wooden toys and decided he didn't want to pick them up.  There was half a pirate ship that you could lounge on and smoke or mess around on.

It was my senior year of high school and I dreaded the future.  I couldn't wait to get out, but damn if I knew what I wanted to do.  College wasn't a trend in my family and I had no prospects of moving out of the state.  So, I laid there and tried to smoke away any worries. 

The park was quiet, school was out for the day and the normal families were eating dinner.  My lighter was deafening when I lit another cigarette.   I watched the clouds and birds fly free, a slight breeze rustled the leafs. 

It was after my second cigarette when the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up.  Someone was watching me.  I looked around to see if the custodian was back to yell at me or if maybe someone came home from work and was wondering what this punk was doing on the kids' playground.  There was no one.  I started to lay back when I heard someone giggle.  The giggle echoed off of the jungle gyms and monkey bars.  It pierced my ears and tore at my chest.  My stomach tightened.

I got off the pirate ship and started to walk towards my car.  That's when I heard a loud crack from the forest on the other side of the soccer field behind the playground.  It didn't sound like someone was cutting down a tree, it sounded like something snapped a tree.  I looked at the forest and that's when I saw the red balloon.  A shiny red balloon.  It floated out of the woods and up toward the sky.  The balloon felt wrong.  It did not belong there.

Then I heard the rubbery sound of a balloon rubbing close against something.  I turned toward the sound and saw a yellow balloon float out from under a slide in the playground.  Another balloon appeared from under a wooden platform that kids could climb on.  Four balloons floated out from under the pirate ship I was just on.  I started to back away from the playground until I heard the sound of the wooden bridge attached to the wooden platform creak.  A man that wasn't there before was on one side of the bridge.

"These are all of your problems, Billy."  His voice was creaky and hoarse.  He was in a red and white candy striped suit with a straw hat. 

"Let me help you get rid of some of these problems.  It's so easy, look at this..."  And the balloon man pulls out a large needle, the shine off the tip catches in my eye.  He grabs a yellow balloon, smiles at me and pops the balloon.  A distant scream comes from where the balloon was and some red liquid splatters the balloon man in the face and on the suit.  "I think if you asked Kristie out tonight, she'll probably say yes."  His smile lights up his whole face and I feel confident that she would say yes.

"I can do this for you all day.  I hate seeing you sad and lonely, your future is so bright and these problems shouldn't stand in your way."

"Why are you doing this?  Who the hell are you?!"  I tried to sound tough, but I was freaked out and wanted to run.

"You know who I am.  I'm the balloon man.  I'm a problem-solver and let me tell you, my favorite thing in this world is to pop these damn balloons."  Then he sagged down to lean on the chains that held up the bridge.  He looked a lot older than he did a minute ago.  With his thumb he pushed the hat up off of his brow and wiped off some sweat.

"Listen, I hate balloons.  I know where they come from, what they stand for, and it pains me to know it.  They follow me everywhere, and it seems that whenever I think I've popped them all, more appear.  These are yours.  And I know you don't know me from a hole in the wall, but can you do me a favor?  Help me pop them.  These are your issues.  Each one I pop will get rid of one of your problems.  So, you do me a favor, I do you a favor.  Can you do that?"

A chance to get rid of a problem.  I couldn't pass that up. 

"Are you, like, a genie?  What happens to the problem?  How long do I have you?  What if, I get another problem?" 

 There was a twinkle in his eye as he smiled and stood up straight again.  I think he knew I was already planning on what problems I wanted to get rid of.

"Son, I'll be with you as long as you have problems.  I'm not a genie.  I'm just someone that likes giving people what they want.   If a problem comes up, you'll see me out of the corner of your eye.  As for the problems, well, I don't know how much you want to know.  I think a demonstration will work the best.  Go home and let's test it out." 

At home my parents were fighting.  I stood on the step next to the door on the side of the house and could hear them.  The balloon man was leaning against the wall holding two balloons.  He held the large needle in his hand and looked at me.  Mom was written on one balloon, Dad was written on the other.  I nodded toward the balloon marked Dad.  He lifted up the needle and pressed it against the rubber until it exploded. 

A scream came from within the house.  I ran in to find my Dad on the ground laying in a pool of blood.  He had a hole in his forehead.  My mother was on her knees staring in shock at the gun in her hand.

"We don't own guns.  We don't own guns. We don't own guns."  She kept repeating it, even after the cops came. 

"The problems take care of themselves."  He said.

He left me alone for the night.  I didn't know how to feel at first, but then as I laid there in bed and started to think of my future and all the things that have been holding me back I swear I could hear the hiss of an air tank filling up more balloons.  

Who wouldn't want the ability to easily remove any problems that came their way?  Only now I know that I wasn't getting rid of my problems, but was feeding the balloon man.  He lived on giving people what they wanted until they had gorged themselves on it and he offered them one final solution to their problems, death.

When the balloon man showed up the next day, I was ready to help him get rid of those balloons. 

The balloons covered the ceiling of my room.  He stood there ready to grab one, any one I wanted. 

"Surprise me."  I said to the Balloon Man. 


---
It's been a while, I know.  I'm actually working on writing a novel on top of all the other stuff that takes up my days.  I'm aiming for a 50,000-60,000 word novel, so a lot of my time is focused on that.  I hope to finish it in a month, it's about a quarter of the way done.

Thanks for reading.

Five Sentence Fiction: Limitless

Some people need to have barriers, limits to what they can do.  Bobby was one of those people.  His gift was the ability to grant wishes, and having no limits meant that he was finally under no one's control and give everyone exactly what they deserved.  The lamp's current owner wished to be rich, Bobby smiled and gladly granted the wish.  A ruptured stomach full of gold and one less master were all that was left as Bobby tossed away his lamp and walked toward town to fulfill some more wishes.

Two Sentence Horror Story: The Drop

I only had one chance to save them.  My hands were sweaty and I couldn't hold it any longer.

In the Hot Seat

They told him where to look, what to wear, and how to speak.  He was tied tight to the chair, they said it was to keep him from messing up the shot, but he felt it was to stop him from escaping at the end of the interview.  He isn't believing any of their lies about what this is and how it will end.  The lights are hot and won't allow him to see his interviewers.  If he tries to look around and not directly at the camera they shock him. 

Questions come from everywhere in a tinny electronic voice, it sounds like an old recording.  He answers crazy questions that have no reason to be on video.  They aren't personal questions that dig into his live, more along the lines of does he remember his first dream, what would he do if his favorite toy was destroyed, and why does he walk on the left side of the sidewalk?  Bizarre questions that start to panic him because of how close they must have been following him to ask these unimportant questions. 

The last question is the important one and he doesn't even realize it.  The recording asks him "one or two?"  It repeats a couple of times and then he hears the click of the record machine as it continues to turn yet it's at the end of the tape.  Is there anyone behind the lights and the camera, he wonders as his seat starts to warm up.  He screams for someone to let him go, that the lights are getting hot and he answered all of their questions.  The room starts to fill up with the smell of cooking meat and burning fabric as the lights burst into flames and his seat cooks him alive.

"The questions are ready for our next subject.  Please follow the line to the set and allow us to give you some guidelines..."

Five Sentence Fiction: Medicine

I think the visions are happening again, but some days are harder than others to tell if I'm here or there. I want to be here, where I am chained to the robotic head of my "best friend" and go on adventures through out this wasteland of dirt and broken cities. The days I take the pills the head spits out, I go to some place of desks, normal people, houses, and real food. But, I know it's a trap sent down from the computer to the evil "best friend" that talks to me incessantly when I forget to take the pills, it tells me this isn't real, that I'm hiding here. This will be the last time I go there, I like it here and I hope smashing the head will help get me free.

Did He Really Ever Have It?

He couldn’t decide if it’s worse to lose it or to never have had it to begin with. Waking up in a cold sticky sweat he looks in the corner hoping it will still be there. For a year the pulsating sac was there emanating a fear that he could use throughout the day. It was a drug that he hated. The nightmares and paranoia were not worth the words he put on the page. But, now it’s gone and he is afraid that it never existed.

He wanted to be a writer for as long as he could remember. Reading was a passion, but he could never find the story that he wanted, so he decided that he would write it. At first it was stories about love and teenagers, but those never hit the core of what he wanted. Then his stories were about depressing individuals that lived tough lives and could never win. Those stories were closer to what he wanted, and would eventually morph into what he desired, horror stories. It was around then that he noticed the fleshy sac growing on the wall of his bedroom, a color of dead skin left in a swamp for far too long.

Staring at the corner now, he thinks about the night that he discovered the sac. After a long boring day at work and a fight with his wife, his night of sleep was spent tossing and turning, hating the clock for bringing the sun and another day of work. When he got up to go to the bathroom he saw the sickly glow of something in the corner. At first he thought that it might have come from a street light shining through their bedroom window, or something reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall of their room. He turned the bathroom light on and went back into their bedroom to see what was on the wall. The glow came from a sac that was about the size of a quarter and hung low like a pregnant woman ready to give birth. Sticky strands of mucus held it to the wall, but there was no trace of how it got there. Inside the sac something moved, but the skin was too thick for him to see what it was. He felt a twinge of fear and creativity as he stared at the sac and his mind grasped the mixture hungrily and caused him to throw up his first horror story on paper.

The next couple of months were a blur of ignoring everything else in his life except writing. At work, at home, throughout the night, all of it focused on writing stories of horror and fear. He remembers those as good times, before he overdosed on the fear the sac fed him and his life took a terrible turn. Now sitting on his bed in the dark he looks over to the empty space on his bed, just one part of his life that was ruined from his addiction. He barely remembers his wife leaving, telling him he needed to get some help. He was glued to his computer, furiously pounding the keys, didn’t even have the strength to look up as she left. While this happened, the sac kept growing and sending out more waves of fear.

The paranoia and fear started out as simple everyday things. While at work he would fear that his boss would catch him working on his writing more than projects. Or he would worry that the police would pull him over because he was speeding home to get back onto his computer. Holding his head in his hands with his knees up to his chest, he laughs at himself thinking about those little fears and how they were nothing compared to how much his fear grew the last couple of months. He isn’t sure if the paranoia grew the fear or if the fear grew the paranoia, all he knows is that it was harder and harder for him to leave his house. There was some solace in front of his computer screen, but he had to plaster the wall behind the screen with mirrors to make sure nothing would sneak up behind him. Something was always just on the outside of his vision, or just leaving the hallway he was entering. At night he would feel tiny bugs crawling on his skin, and it would take ten minutes of fighting with himself to try to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, afraid something would grab his leg and pull him under the bed. But, his biggest fear was the sac opening and losing his muse.

Those months after his wife left and the fear got worse he was churning out great horror stories that he posted on his website. And as those stories got popular the sac on the wall got bigger. He can’t understand how the sac is gone now. It was such a part of his life, taking those fears and pouring them out in his stories. He can now admit that the paranoia and terror he felt was what he needed to make his stories better. Sweating on his bed, scared to move, he knew that he couldn’t write like that anymore. The only fear he has now is what happened to the sac. It ruined his marriage, and any friendship he had. His only focus was the horror stories, and it’s all gone now.

Slowly, he puts his legs on the ground and walks toward the wall. There is no trace that the sac was ever there. He touches the wall and is truly afraid. Was it ever there? Running to his bedside table he turns on his laptop and opens up the story he was working on. Staring at the text on the screen he sees the rambling of a mad man. It’s just gibberish, a crazy rant on murder and monsters. He doesn’t remember writing any of it. He logs on to his blog and sees that it’s full of the same. Some of his first stories on the blog make sense and are decent, but the later stories are incoherent and are just scenes of senseless violence. No plot, no character development, no conclusion, just a journal of a lunatic. The comments on the stories are either people offering phone numbers to get help or saying they are going to call the police.

Sitting down next to the wall he starts to cry. After what seems like days he feels the caress of a large insectoid creature cradling him and telling him everything will be okay. The creature stings him in the neck and he falls back to sleep to dream about a life he wish he had.

I Want to Sleep in a Haunted House

I want to sleep in a haunted house
Not the ghost type, the Halloween type
Not the actor type, the robotic type
I want to sleep to the sounds of robotic ghosts and ghouls
My lullaby should come from a static-y speaker playing a haunted sounds record
My teddy bear is the cheaply made monster made in 1983
I want to sleep knowing the scares around the corner
The robots jumping in jerky motion everytime I walk pass
The scares aren't real as much as the thought of those scares
I want to sleep where the lights are black or orange
Someone should change the bulbs in here
Someone should oil the machines, they are falling apart
I want to sleep where the walls weave a maze to the outside
I don't think anyone has visited this attraction in a long time
Do people still get scared of robots in vampire costumes?
I want to live in a haunted house

*Not really big on poetry, but thought I'd give a whirl