Room Temperature

A 100-Word Story Presented Simply From Northeastern Pennsylvania

The ice machine down the hall was broken. He drank his whiskey at room temperature, and went to sleep early in an uncomfortable chair with upholstery that matched the wallpaper.

He woke just after four, squeezed his maliciously expanding body-mass into the black suit laid out neatly on the unused bed, carefully wiped his fingerprints from the doorknobs, switches, and toilet flusher, and retrieved his pistol from the top drawer of the dresser, just below the television.

Clyde Duckworth was sixty-one, twice-divorced, recently fired, and very likely about to die while attempting to rob the First National Bank on Front Street.

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::and your soundtrack for today’s story::

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The other day I watched the movie “Crime 101.” None of the film’s three main characters, for various reasons, are where they want to be in life, when their paths cross. In our own world, when somebody commits a crime, there is this tendency to label them a monster who does things that we assume ourselves to be incapable of. As a younger man, I was much the same. But at this point in my life, I usually try to take a more empathetic view. If someone is a criminal or a monster, I wonder who, and what circumstances, made them that way. From the standpoint of storytelling, every story needs a character for readers to care about. In today’s story, that person is Clyde Duckworth.

-Brian