Drabbles for Halloween

Now, these weren't exactly made for Halloween, but my general style of writing can convert anything to the ocassion; so here are a couple I pulled from my pre-NaNoWriMo warm-ups to share with you. A bit short, but this occurred to me on a last-minute whim, so deal with it.

Prompt #1: "High in the corner of a room there is a spider, as it sits in its web watching everything around it you can hear its soft voice whispering a secret."

"Did you lock the door?"

The whisper brushes across my ears, gentle yet soothing. I turn over, drawing the covers closer around me. I don't want to deal with this today, not yet. The blankets are still so warm and comforting.

"The door is unlocked. Someone might come in."

"No they won't," I mumble, burying my head into the pillow, "there's no one around."

"There's always someone. I'm here, am I not?" The voice makes sense, if it were more than a voice. I'm convinced it's all in my head, that the months of isolation and despair have finally taken its toll.

"You're not real. You're not real!" I throw a book over at the wall, cutting through several cobwebs and smacking the wall. The echoing thuds ring in my head, and I push my hands against my ears and scream.

No one hears me, except the spider crawling high up in the corner.

---

Prompt #2: "The world is in a state where there are no laws. Write a short scene of what you think life would be like in this situation."

"Someone shot Nancy this morning," Jack mentions, placing his cards down on the table. I feel my lip twist for a brief moment, before forcing my face into a neutral gaze. There's no room for emotions right now, not when I could easily become the next 'Nancy.'

"Not much you can do, unless you liked the chick enough to get your revenge," I mutter, drawing another card. Damn, it's only a four. I'm going to lose again tonight, like I've lost the last several months.

"Nah, she was good in bed, but not worth getting attention drawn to me," he decides, placing down his hand. I follow suit, and watch as Jack scoops my money into his corner. Sal, who'd been pretending he doesn't exist in the corner, slams his hand down on his desk, rage apparent on his face.

"What kind of sick world do we live in, where we can't even care anymore?!"

I sigh, bending over to pick up the picture that'd fallen to the floor. Sal's wife and twin girls look back up at me, and I place the frame face-down on the table.

"We live in a world where people didn't care enough to choose someone to lead us. So now, we lead ourselves."

"We're cops, for cryin' out loud! Does that mean nothing?! Is there anything we can do?!" Sal's frustrated, and I don't blame him. I feel much like he does, but unlike Sal I've accepted that I'm obsolete.

"Not anymore, kid," Jack answers for me, saving me from having to erase the naive boy's hope. I pick up Jack's pipe, stealing a drag before the elderly man notices. It's a finders-keepers world now, after all.

Sal doesn't accept Jack's answer though, and the last I ever see of the kid is the back of his shirt. The shoulders tense and stiff, justice straightening his back into an opposing force.

It will be eight days later that Jack tells me, over another game of poker in the local precinct, that Sal was shot in an alley, trying to kill the man who killed his family.

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and there's no room for justice or liberty.