Prompt
Our prompt today was to take a random action passed out in an envelope and work in an obsessive thought while that action is taking place. The thoughts were handed out in the same manner. I really liked this exercise because I got a pair that catered to my genre.
Action: Juggling Knives
Obsessive Thought: The fact that s/he hates his/her boss and wants to quit his/her job.
Response
Lyle was an expert at juggling knives. It was one of the few magic tricks that he knew how to preform. Growing up under the tutelage of a master wizard he had to learn how to be calm and collected and avoid distractions, or at least continue working despite them. Juggling had been his tutor’s idea of how to learn to be distraction free. Starting off easy, Lyle first learned to juggle bean bags then worked his way up to knives.
It was because of this constant training that instilled juggling as a second nature for Lyle and allowed him to think of other things while doing it. As the knives twirled threw his fingers on their way to being airborn Lyle thought of his job. It was not boring, it was not mundane, it was not for the feint of heart, yet sometimes he hated it. Now was one of those moments.
As a protector, Lyle’s job was to defend those without any magickal inclinations against those who would do them harm with magick. Now it is not magic that he was charged with defending against, for magic is cheep tricks like the juggling act he was performing as he thought. No, magick with a k is the kind that most people would like to deny existed. It can run anywhere from a low level clervoyant who knows who is calling before they look at the phone to a full fledged wizard like Lyle. Someone who is capable of doing extreme damage to those around them.
Earlier in the day a mother had come to Lyle claiming her child had been kidnapped by some mystickal creature. It wasn’t uncommon in a place like Seattle where he weird is the normal and the paranormal can fit in. What was uncommon was what Lyle had found several hours earlier, the boy’s body, completely destroyed. Destroyed was the only word Lyle would allow himself to use, for it was a horrific scene and not one he cared to remember. This was the reason he hated his job sometimes.
The world gave him these jobs and he was in no position to say no. Vary rarely were the cases something pretty.