It’s the final year of FlashNano, by Nancy Stohlman, where we write a flash a day in response to a prompt, or just because. This is a quick write, but it was kinda fun. And again, I just happened to have the right image!

Day 9: “Write a story where the ending comes first!”

“I prefer door number 2,” I stated tremulously. After all it had taken to get to this point, I hoped I hadn’t chosen wrong.

###

I picked him up outside the Morningside apartments at 9 am. He stood leaning against the rusted black iron banister, arms crossed in front of him as he bent to take a final drag off his cigarette, before tossing it on the sidewalk. Tipping his head back once to indicate what? Greeting? Acknowledgement that I was there? Irritation that we were sharing the same air? Attraction?

He liked it that way. I suspected that I did too.

Passing over the spot where the butt lay, a thin strip of smoke curling up into the still morning, he stopped to toe it with his Converse, ground it into submission before the neighborhood went up in flames. And without breaking rhythm, he yanked open the car door and slid into the passenger side of the front.

“Let’s roll,” he said.

So we did.

“What’d you say your name was again?” He was unusually talkative today. Was he nervous about something? We’d met a half-dozen times before, always at the late night west side parties that popped up like mushrooms after a hard rain.

“I’m Chris,” I answered, hoping his bad memory wasn’t due to my being so dull.

He grunted, rolled down the window with the hand crank, and dug in a jacket pocket for his pack of smokes, and a Zippo he probably lifted from the party last night.

“I’d prefer you not smoke in my car,” I said quietly.

Glaring at me with a cool gimlet eye, cigarette dangling between his full lips, he mumbled, “Wrong answer, kid.”

“That’s Chris.”

“Whatever.” Shielding his cig end with one hand, he moved the sputtering Zippo flame to the end of what looked like a Marlboro and lit up.

Why did I ever agree to this?

After stopping at the Liquor Q for a little quick refreshment (I stayed in the car so I wouldn’t end up paying for his booze), we headed out on the road outside of town. Stopped for gas, which I did pay for, and a bag of Mexican Tasty Snacko’s. which I also paid for, We sat in silence as he munched and I drove. And drove. And drove to the far mountains where the old silver mines were located. He said he knew a way in that wasn’t regularly patrolled, and we could pick up some pretty fine weed that a buddy had stored there. We’d get a cut, if we played out cards right.

He said. Why did I believe?

It was a half mile walk over rocky terrain under the blazing sun. My car made it part way up the hill, but we had to leave it under the shade of a Sequaro to reach the entrance. I’d brought a couple of plastic bottles of water that’d been rolling around in my trunk, cooking like 7-Eleven hotdogs. I’d offered one to my traveling companion, but he declined.

“Too many plastics,” he commented.

I looked sideways as he crumpled up what had been an almost full pack of cigarettes. He threw it on the ground and pulled out his Zippo again. This time it didn’t light. Out of fuel. He threw that on the ground as well.

***

The caves were cool, the sandy ground scuffled with what looked like footprints and drag marks. Some one had been here before us, but because the air was so dry, I couldn’t have guessed how long ago that was.

“This doesn’t look good, man,’ I noted. “Are you sure there’s anything left of what you wanted to pick up?”

He paused, shoved his hands deep in the front pockets of his baggy cargo shorts, hiking up his shoulders. “My buddy is apparently an asshole.”

“Maybe it’s further back in the cave.” I almost felt sorry for this guy. If only he weren’t such a jerk. If only he wasn’t so hot, in a sandaled, dirty toe-nailed kinda way. “Maybe we need to stop and think what to do?” I pulled out the bottles of water that I’d been carrying this whole time. Handed him one. We sipped in silence.

“Don’t,” I said, “Do not throw that plastic bottle on the ground.”

He looked sidewise at me and halted.

“It might come in handy. Didn’t you ever watch MacGyver when you were a kid?”

“Sure. Yeah.” Strangely, he didn’t sound so sure. And I started to like him a little more.

“So, let’s go further into the cave. I see a little light ahead, and maybe that’s where they stowed their stash. Or maybe it’s a way out.”

He grunted in response and let me go ahead. I followed the light, and lost count of the number of times the tunnel split, and which branch I took. Maybe I was distracted because he kept close behind me, and I could smell his sweat, his cigarettes, the crunchy snack he’d finished in the car, and something else un-nameable. Something him.

One more turn-off, and we wound up in a cave that was lit up only by some luminescent moss growing on the wall. Looking behind me quickly, my mouth connected with his. He tasted awful, so I pushed past him and to the juncture we’d just passed. Grimly, I realized that the luminescent moss was the only light we had been seeing was that given off by the moss, which stood sparse and high on the cave walls. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

We pushed on, to a widening of the cave, him occasionally brushing against me, stepping on my heels. His breath was fast and shallow, and going even more sour than it had been when I decided to turn around. I say that I decided, because my weed-seeking companion had left all his bravado somewhere near the first juncture. His panic started to leak into my own sense of well being, but someone had to take charge or…

The point where the cave had widened had three tunnels branching off, all equally dark. Like I said, someone had to make a decision, so I did.

“I think I prefer door number 2.” Tremulous, I tried to lighten things up and find some courage in a joke. So that’s the way we went.