For today’s Fiction Friday, I invite you to consider what 5 minutes changes. 5 minutes could mean missing the accidents, or catching the lights and transportation.

In this case? Today’s short story is Red Letters Lore, but also begs the question of what happens if Woods waited just 5 more minutes that night. Because his world would have been very different and the book series would have had many different endings if he had…

But like the first line suggests, until Woods tells his side of “Before The Fall”, we only know hers. And she tells everyone that the end is the beginning or the beginning is the end… With a silent narrator and an unreliable one, it’s up to the reader to put the puzzle together and see the pieces the characters don’t yet.

---

September 2009

The bar was dead again. Every time I came in to play, it held less and less people. Considering the band I played with previously is doing well without me? Feels like it’s my fault. 

I’m getting too old to keep trying to play this guitar and pretend to be a rock star at night when the day job is offering a career path. I’d hate it, admitting defeat and going corporate like that. But it was what my parents planned for me.

Playing this dead club just made it hurt more. 

The women looked at me, not as a musician, but as a trophy to add to the wall. Someone to bang to say they did it with a guitar guy. I stopped doing that when it started to feel dirty. 

The bar manager, Frost, tried to pull a drinking contest together to get customers, but it barely had anyone and the night was getting on. 

“Woods, hey Woods, earth to Woods… Mate, you alright? You don’t look so good.” Frost’s Scottish accent didn’t affect me anymore. I heard him clearly.

I got up off my stool, the one on stage that I used when I sat and strummed. I started to pack away my guitar. Even the lights up the street never reached inside this dark pit. The thoughts in my head got louder, until I voiced it.

Couldn’t even name what kept me coming back. Still can’t. But I think I’m done.

“Might be time for me to really quit this place and this music thing.”

It came out so casual, like maybe music didn’t live in my blood. But it didn’t matter. That life passed me by, and I had to grow up.

“You’ll always be welcome here mate. But I know what you mean, this place died out.”

I half listened. Started packing my stuff up, needed to go before I changed my mind. I walked off the stage and paused a moment to look back at it. I walked towards the back hallway and let myself out.

The metal door thudding closed felt like it should be final.