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I wrote this in the Discord a while back at Cricket's request. I can tell that I am about to forget about its existence, so I'm gonna just drop this in here. Anyway...

Bedtime story

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who dreamed of being a knight. He had listened to the stories his mom and babysitter told him and the seeds sprouted something noble and fierce in his heart.

Unfortunately for little Timmy (as we'll call him here) he lived in Oklahoma in the nineties. So while he was able to slip into a renaissance fair occasionally (he wasn't fond of the smell) or ride his neighbor's horse, he was never able to really get the satisfaction he sought.

When Timmy (as I am calling him) was in his thirties, he was living alone in a decent apartment in Texas while he went door to door selling solar panels in West Texas. The heat was brutal, and the locals were unfriendly.

He knocked on the last house in the neighborhood he was canvassing. He clearly heard shuffling behind the door, but nobody came to answer the door.

He knocked again. Nothing at all came from the other side. He sighed, slid a info sheet through the mail slot, and hopped in his Ford Taurus.

The heat had made him thirsty, so he drove over to the loves on the other side of the bypass. He drove up to the front and walked to the back where the drink coolers were.

Every time he stopped at a convenience store, he had the habit of searching for Cheerwine and never finding it. After embracing the futility of the search, he got a Glacier Cherry Gatorade and headed up to the front.

At the register was a skinny girl, probably a few years younger than him with bad teeth and wild eyes. She took the Gatorade and scanned it, then grinned.

"Anything else for you, sir?"

Timmy leaned to look around her. "Uhh... can I get... let's see... how much are your Newport Gold Boosts?"

She looked confused. "Our what?"

"Newport Gold Boosts"

She turned around and grabbed a pack of Newport Menthol Golds. As she brought them to the register to scan them, Timmy stopped her. "No, no. I want the boosts. They're the ones that turn into menthols if you squeeze the filter."

Amelia (if her name tag was to be believed) turned back around, looking even more confused, and began checking under flaps, behind signs, until she finally found them tucked away behind the sign advertising Marlboro Blacks.

"Sorry about that sir, not many people come in looking for these."

"That's alright," Timmy said. "I'm in no hurry. And, do you happen to have a full carton? I can never find them anywhere."

Now, looking more annoyed than confused, she began looking under each of the counters. When she finally came back, she tried to scan it, but the barcode had a scratch in it.

She waved the scanner over it over and over again.

Timmy laughed. "That means it's free, right?"

Amelia looked unamused. "I need to scan your ID for the tobacco, sir."

Timmy, finally realizing he had outstayed his welcome, pulled his wallet from his pocket and laid his driver's license face down on the counter. She scanned it.

"Your total is going to be $87.99"

Timmy whistled. "Inflation, I guess," he said, inserting his debit card. He punched in his PIN and took his items. He thanked Amelia and turned around. The line of people behind him reached the back of the store.

The man directly behind him (holding a large stuffed bear and a jug of milk) was glowering at him.

"So sorry," Timmy offered weakly, then moved aside.

The man walked up to the counter and Amelia began checking him out. Timmy took out his keys, put his wallet in his pocket, and suddenly dropped his keys.

He watched them fall in slow motion and his fob split as it hit the mostly clean tile floor. Buttons scattered across the floor.

Timmy nearly yelled with frustration, but instead, squatted and began picking up his key pieces. From his new station on the ground, he happened to hear Amelia gasp.

" Terrence Gutierrez?" She asked.

"Yes," came the response. "Do I have enough points to cover it?"

"Yes you do." With that statement, Amelia seemed back to her previous, chipper tone.

Timmy stood up, poured his pieces into his pocket and saw the man walking a way and a look of fear in Amelia's eyes.

She was talking frantically into her in-ear radio, not giving a second thought to the growing line at her register. "The guy from the description this morning was here."

She waited for a response. "Yeah. The one who kidnapped the little girl."

Another pause. "Alright, copy."

With that, she went back to scanning items.

Timmy was shaken. "Do you guys have in house security for stuff like this?"

She looked up, surprised to see that Timmy was still standing there. "No, we just call the police. They handle it from here."

Timmy thought for a while as the knot in his stomach grew and churned. "Will they show up in time."

Amelia looked back up from checking at him with a concerned look in her eyes and shrugged sadly.

Timmy's mind raced and raced. All the while, that thing planted in his soul all those years ago, that longing to be a knight, was tugging at every piece of him.

Suddenly, he took off running toward the door that the man exited from, leaving his cigarettes and Gatorade behind.

The sweaty salesman, ignoring the oppressive Texas sun, ran faster than he had since he was cut from his high school football team and easily caught up to the unsuspecting trucker.

As he approached and Terrence glanced behind him and started running as well, Timmy did another thing he hadn't done since high school. He stretched out in a flying tackle, toppling the heavy trucker to the ground, face-first.

Timmy gasped to get air back in his lungs after slamming into Terrence with more force than expected.

As soon as he could get air in his lungs, he looked over at the heaving frame of the downed trucker and rasped "...Eat... c-con *cough*... concrete... pedo... fag."

Soon, They both struggled to their feet. Terrence ran toward the truck with Timmy right on his heels.

As he got within range of his truck, Terrence drew a pistol and shot Timmy in the gut.

Timmy yelped in pain and fell to the ground, bleeding. As his vision grew fuzzy, he saw red and blue lights dancing at the edges of his vision.

Timmy laughed as he and that peculiar wild thing inside his heart died together.

The End

This is entirely unedited except for one instance where I accidentally said "Jimmy"

Dude wrote this live and on demand in the chat box over a period of 40 minutes, I was impressed.