Month: March 2013

This is the 92nd in a series of 365 Flash Fiction stories I’m writing. You can find out more about the challenge here.

The Head Hunter Letter, by Jonathan L. Lawrence, 3rd March 2013

Word count: 705

Info: Woohoo this story gets me past the quarter mark. Going to do a top 5% when I hit the big one double zero.

The story:

To my successor,

I am a corporate head hunter, photographs of my many success stories line the walls of my office.

No, I don’t work in recruitment, directly anyway – though thanks to my efforts plenty of people have gotten promotions and new jobs. The focus of my job is quite literally hunting people and bringing them low, destroying them. I mostly do work in the private sector, it’s less morally ambiguous.

If you’ve got a problem boss, maybe he’s an arsehole, maybe he refuses to retire, or maybe it’s a colleague or a competitor compromising everything your trying to build, (usually a bank balance, if I’m being honest), and you don’t care how it happens, I can fix it. Scandals, controversies, on personal and professional levels are my specialties. I sniff them out and expose them, and if there’s nothing, I’ll create one. And I do all this at fairly competitive rates, and with the utmost discretion. Except for the pictures on my wall, but they’re only ones that I feel wouldn’t undo my good work, I might be an egotist, but I’m not mad.

How did I get into this business? Well it started a few years ago, I was a corporate schmuck. For nearly ten years I towed the company line, did everything that was asked of me, yet I had risen as far as I was going to get. There were too many settled people higher up the ladder, those that weren’t were either job swapping in to new areas, or were consultants that effectively filled temporary holes I couldn’t seem to fit into.

Continue reading “Daily Flash Fiction Challenge 92: The Head Hunter Letter”

This is the 91st in a series of 365 Flash Fiction stories I’m writing. You can find out more about the challenge here.

The Life of Toad, by Jonathan L. Lawrence, 2nd March 2013

Word count: 738

Info: a few days late with this one, playing catch up. Bish bash bosh, here they come….

The story:

Toad awoke with a start, he was immediately alert and on the look for whatever had woken him. Two bright dots in the mostly darkness peered at him. Toad crept forward, and the growing dots proved to be from a cat, the weak security light reflecting in curious eyes.

“Go to sleep Cat,” he said dismissively, crawling back into his nest of cardboard and newspaper.

An hour or two later Toad awoke again with the return of dawn. He gathered up his few belongings, his creature comforts, a spare pair of socks he wore only at night, or when the weather was really cold so they’d last longer, a pack of chewing gum, and a half eaten burger he’d collected the previous day, a sign on cardboard that was weathered and faded, and sixteen pence left from his previous day’s begging.

He left his back alleyway and ventured into the town centre. Sitting outside a McDonald’s, out of the way of the binmen and street cleaners, he ate his burger, imagining it was fresh and that he’d just bought it from the restaurant he was outside of.

“Oi, clear off,” the restaurant manager said running out to chase him off before the breakfast crowds arrived.

Toad didn’t argue, there was no point. He went across town to one of the last public toilets, there was a small group of homeless men waiting for the cleaners to clean out, so no one would kick them out.
After that he went towards the train station on a route frequented by the wealthy and well fed, near coffee shops and newsagents.

The begging was poor, but it was that time of month. That said he had enough for a coffee and a buttered bread roll from the market place by lunch time.

Continue reading “Daily Flash Fiction Challenge 91: The Life of Toad”

This is the 90th in a series of 365 Flash Fiction stories I’m writing. You can find out more about the challenge here.

Race Track, by Jonathan L. Lawrence, 1st March 2013

Word count: 998

Info: a few days late with this one, playing catch up. Bish bash bosh, here they come….

The story:

“This is the Pagani Huayra,” the salesman said, “It’s as fast as you could possibly want, and it’ll do fourteen miles per gallon, which is pretty good for a super car.”

“Hmm,” the man in the expensive suit said, “Does it come in black?”

“Of course,” the salesman said with a smile.

“Great, I’ll take it,” the man said.

“Let’s go do the paper work,” the man said with a smile, imagining the commission.

He was a little shocked when the man presented him with a bag of euros, but he gracefully accepted the payment, after verifying it was real.

The paperwork took an hour, but the man drove out of the exclusive dealership, in one of the world’s most exclusive sports cars. The dealer waved good bye and went off to arrange a security van collection for the money,

The man in the Pagani Huayra meanwhile was pulling into a warehouse.

“Good you got it, any trouble?” an attractive young woman asked.

“For this much money, few questions asked,” the man said climbing out of the car.

Continue reading “Daily Flash Fiction Challenge 90: Race Track”