A Prompted Story by /u/prompted-writing
“You look familiar, have we met before,” “Uh…yeah just a few years ago but you tried to kill me,”
(reddit link)
"You look familiar, have we met before?"
"Uh... yeah, just a few years ago, but you tried to kill me."
I squint, and move closer until she's at the distance that my eyes are still able to focus. I still can't place the face. Reddish blonde hair, dirty and ragged, reaching just below her ears. Tiny button nose and hollowed cheeks. Eyes that seem just a little too far apart, exaggerated by the dark, sleepless bags beneath them.
"Counter-revolution? '48?" I take a guess, sitting back against the rusted fuel drum. She takes a long moment to look me over before replying. I'm too tired to worry about her trying something. I can't squander these last shreds of exhausted energy on mistrust. Eventually, I guess, she decides the same.
"I was a staffer at the White House," she says, "P.R. I kept trying to get you all into bowties."
It makes me chuckle. The absurdity of it. How important it had all seemed back then. Then she giggles too and in a moment we're both laughing, uncontrollably. Our bellies are heaving and neither of us can stop. The pain it causes in our abused lungs somehow just makes us laugh harder. We're gasping for breath as we react to each other's genuine, unadulterated, grief- and despair-coated laughs. It's like those naive idiots we'd been all those years ago are standing over us, looking on in disapproval. It just makes the whole ridiculous, cruel reality even funnier.
It takes minutes for the guffaws to fully pass. The silence afterwards is like a little oasis of peace and thoughtlessness. In that brief calm, I find a last sliver of strength I didn't know I still had.
"Let's give it one more try," I say, using my makeshift shovel to get back on my feet.