This is the continuation of my freewritemadness/NaNoWriMo story.

_{Catch up with the previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23part1, 23Part2, 23Part3, 23Part4, 24, 25Part1, 25Part2, 26Part1, 26Part2, 27Part1, 27Part2, 28Part1, 28Part2}

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I am using @mariannewest’s #freewrite prompt (https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-413-5-minute-freewrite-friday-prompt-vase) and @mydivathings’ #365daysofwriting picture prompt (https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-354-365-days-of-writing-challenge) to help write my story.

Today’s prompts are: vase and a Photo by Christopher Rusev on Unsplash

As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes:

The many torments of Tiny Earl - Chapter 29 (Part one)

The gun went off and Tiny watched as Glenn fell to the floor. He was clutching his stomach and blood was oozing through his fingers. He looked at Abigail, dropped the spade and put his hands in the air.

"Well," he said, smiling. "That got my attention. You certainly have a lot of your mother in you." He shifted slowly. "So what happens now? You gonna kill me? Or are you gonna help me get this machine out the ground."

Abigail returned his smile.

"You're going to do all the work, old man," she said. "I'm going to watch. Pick up the spade, and continue digging."

Tiny shrugged and bent down to retrieve the spade. He could see Glenn lying there, his eyes were open, glazed. He was dying. The pool of dark red liquid around him was growing. The colour reminded Tiny of a vase he had had once. He'd loved that vase. He remembered when-

“Can you stop reminiscing?”

Tiny smiled at Abigail’s words. So her sensitivity was so developed she didn’t even have to be touching him to read his thoughts. She was stronger than the others he’d met. Far stronger.

If Abigail read any of those thoughts she didn’t react, without a pause she continued, “And get digging. I imagine it won’t be long before someone misses your friend the gardener, you left for dead in the church. I finished him off, by the way.”

Tiny tried to close off his mind, whilst he dug. But he never had been any good at that kind of shit. Instead he tried thinking various things to see if he could get a reaction of the woman. Saying “fuck you” over and over again in his mind didn’t make her flinch, didn’t even raise a smile.

Perhaps she couldn’t read every thought he had, maybe it was only certain things she could pick up on.

Like memories, for example.

As he carefully cleared the soil from around his precious machine, Tiny continued with his little experiment. If she could pick up on memories, perhaps he’d give her a few.

.

It had become apparent to Tiny pretty early on that his torment was being fucked over by the other two.

He discovered, to his surprise, he had mixed feelings about it.

He saw his torments - his other selves from different realities - as imposters, rivals to be taken out, and to take what was theirs. After all it was his really. He was the one true Augustine Smyth. The others were just copies. So, on one level the fact that the duplicate Janet and the duplicate (although slightly odd looking) Belmond were so obviously fucking each other behind his torment’s back and were presumably looking to get rid of him at some point, didn’t bother him. Let them do the dirty work, if they wanted. Why should he have all the fun?

But, catching the furtive looks between Janet and Belmond, the way she smiled at him, well… well, it bothered the crap out of Tiny. If these two were betraying this version of Tiny in this universe, who was to say it wasn’t going on in other realities too. And if it happened elsewhere then… well, sas his Janet secretly boning the Belmond from his reality?

As he listened to his Torment talk, Tiny clenched his fist, and ground his teeth and wondered what the fuck he was going to do about it.

What was obvious was that in this reality his Torment had had it pretty good. He had money. Lots of money. And with money he had bought power. But it hadn’t been enough. He wanted more control. And he kept talking about leaving behind some kind of legacy.

But something had gone wrong. “A fucknado is coming,” his Torment said. Someone had leaked information to the “press” (apparently the press was some kind of mouthpiece, some way of spreading information to the populous. If they were on your side - if they liked you, or you’d bought them - all was good. But if they wanted to fuck you, then they would do it hard and publically) and the resulting “fucknado” was going to turn their world upside down.

“Just before the fucking election,” his Torment said. “We might have been able to control it, afterwards.”

They needed a distraction. They needed it to be a good one. And they needed it to put the people on their side. It didn’t take Tiny long to work out what they were trying to do.

They were going to fake an assassination attempt.

“It’s got to look good,” his Torment said, looking Tiny in the eye. “That’s why you’re being paid a shitload of money. But it’s safe. We have the best people on this.”

He had no idea Tiny was another version of himself - why the fuck would he? Unless you knew about this whole multiverse shit you wouldn’t even consider it. They’d hired an actor, a stand in, a lookalike. Tiny wondered where the arsehole was now, ‘cos they’d clearly picked up the wrong lookalike. He wondered if the guy was going to show up, spoil everything. Force his hand early.

“If there’s no risk,” Tiny said, staring back at the Torment. “Why don’t you fucking do it? You take the fucking bullet.”

His Torment flashed a look at Janet and Belmond, before returning to Tiny. It was so quick you had to be really looking to see it. But Tiny had seen it. And he knew what it meant, too.

He knows! Tiny thought. He fucking knows! And he doesn’t trust them not to do the job properly, to kill him. Fuck! Janet was clever, she’d have the money. She could even take his place, run for President, or whatever the fuck.

So their plan - such as it was - was to have Tiny get shot whilst giving a speech at an event called “Tiny Steps To Freedom”. Their idea was to link the shooter to a section of the government, demonstrating that there was some kind of conspiracy going on. Then when the leak - the “fucknado” - emerged they could claim it was all part of the same plot: to keep a decent man from helping the people.

“There is no risk,” his Torment said. “But we’ve decided to do it this way. I don’t want to be fucking shot. I want to pay you to get shot for me. It’s a simple fucking business arrangement. Do we have a fucking deal, or what?”

There was no fucking way Tiny was going to take a bullet for this arsehole. And he wasn’t fucking stupid neither. They weren’t going to leave any fucking loose ends. As soon as he’d been shot, he’d served his purpose. The Torment would swop places with him, “recover” in hospital somewhere, and he - Tiny - would become a liability. Proof the Torment had never been shot.

If he were in their shoes he would no exactly what he would do: he’d have himself killed.

But he wasn’t going to say no, either. Because if the positions were reversed and he had given away the whole fucking plan to some lookalike bozo and, after all that, they refused to play ball, he would have no choice but to fucking kill them.

So, he needed to buy some time, go along with it, just until he could get back to the machine and get the fuck out of this twisted fucking reality. At the moment he was lost, trapped, directionless.

And ironically, the only person who might be able to help, was his Torment.

“We have a deal,” Tiny said, holding out his hand.

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