People Are Terrible and Other Stories

By Christin Haws

A man who can see everyone else's misdeeds...a woman with a terrible temper...a neighbor with a fixation...an argument between a married couple...a man forced to work overtime...a dying husband and his caregiver wife...cousins cleaning out an attic...a girl and her dog...an assistant manager taking care of his employees...a woman out late at night...a ransacked apartment...an unusual card game...a class reunion at a lake...

People are terrible and they're terrible in different ways.

These thirteen stories just scratch the surface.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christin Haws
• Release date: Apr 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310657634

Christin Haws

Christin Haws is a writer and podcaster with a fixation on reruns and cop shows, a love/hate relationship with the Chicago Cubs, and a tendency to use humor as a coping mechanism. Decidedly unhip, she occupies space in a small town in the middle of a cornfield.

Book preview

People Are Terrible

and other stories

by Christin Haws

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright Christin Haws 2015

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to anyone living, dead, or undead is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

People Are Terrible

Laundry

Customer Service

Devil Temper

Game Night

Husband and Wife

She’s Not Here Anymore

Never Take Your Work Home

Nadie Has a Dog

Bigger Than a Squirrel

Cover Up

Such a Pretty Face

The Monster in the Woods

a novella

About the Author

Home

People Are Terrible

When Walt pushed the loud lady in front of the train, he really didn’t think about it. He just pushed her. Shoving her in front of the train seemed like an effective way to get her to shut up. Just standing on the platform with her, listening to her yammer on and on in her loud, self-important voice about unimportant things that she was making sound important was enough to annoy him beyond redemption. The idea of being trapped in a quiet car with her, which he knew was going to happen, was too much to bear. So he shoved her. Her last words were about some woman that she didn’t like blocking her on Facebook.

And then she thud-splatted against the front of the train.

People gasped and the train screeched and the crowd surged to get a look at the carnage and Walt faded to the back of the crowd on the platform. He watched them for a minute, none of the people noticing him or trying to stop him. They were all too busy trying to take pictures of the loud lady’s mangled form for Instagram and updating their statuses on Facebook and tweeting their observations on Twitter, waiting for the likes and comments and replies to come pouring in to notice that Walt had pushed the lady and now he was getting away.

Yes, he was.

Walt turned and walked off of the platform, feeling vaguely uneasy about the fact that he felt nothing about taking the life of another human being and how quickly he justified what he’d done. If he were caught, he’d probably get charged with only second degree murder (it was done in the heat of the moment after all) and he could probably plea out on voluntary manslaughter. He might do a few years in prison, but he definitely wouldn’t do his whole sentence. They never did. And then he’d be back on the streets, living life like nothing had happened.

As Walt rounded the corner, readjusting the bag on his shoulder, the thought struck him so hard that it caused him to stumble a bit and he came to a stop next to a homeless guy panhandling.

People are terrible.

Sure, everyone knew that. Just check out the news. Check out your own behavior. People do varying degrees of terrible things every day. But as Walt stood on the sidewalk next to the building and the bum, looking around at the morning commuters hustling by him, Walt could see just how terrible each and every one of them were.

He watched wide-eyed as the people and their crimes flew by him. Tax cheats, thieves, abusers, serial users of people. It was almost too much for him to keep up with, the snippets of bad deeds flying by him like so many nasty mosquitos.

Walt blinked his eyes a few times to clear out all of the words, because that’s how he was seeing everything, as words on a tablet of air, and then looked at the sidewalk, trying to re-center himself.

Where was he going?

He had been going to work until he pushed that loud lady in front of the train. If he concentrated on the haze of city noise, he could pick out the sirens that must have been going to the platform. Sad that he had to really listen hard for them, though. That’s how things were. Bad things happening, people being bad, that all was a normal part of life.

And he had just done a really bad thing, so Walt decided that maybe he shouldn’t hang around. It’d only be a matter of time before the police started looking for him.

Walt turned, stepping around the panhandling bum that he’d been standing next to, and started walking down the sidewalk, away from his usual train stop.

Where could he go? He couldn’t go home. He was supposed to be at work. He’d have to hang out somewhere else for a while. Should he call in to let them know that he wasn’t coming? What would he say? Sorry, I’m not coming in today. The train is late because I pushed some lady in front of it and I’m really not in the mood to do anything productive for your soul-sucking business today.

Walt laughed and looked around. Nobody seemed to notice that he’d just laughed for no apparent reason. He was ignored. The bums that sat next to the buildings and panhandled for money were ignored. Cabs ignored pedestrians in the crosswalk. Pedestrians ignored cars as they crossed the street against the lights. People ignored other people. But he could see them all now, see them in stark clarity, all of their bad deeds in sharp focus.

Turning a random corner, Walt found himself walking behind a woman. She had long dark hair and wore a coat that was longer than her skirt. He couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need to. He knew she was heavily made up, wearing too much eye make-up for so early in the morning, her lips shaded a deep red. And he didn’t need to see her face to know that she looked this way for her boss. She was bound and determined to get him to leave his wife for her. She was a tease, though. She wasn’t putting out until she knew she had the money in hand. Past experience had taught her well and she wasn’t going to get shirked out of her bread by some wishy-washy man again.

Walt smiled as all of this scrolled across his vision and he thought about pushing her in front of a bus just to see what would happen, if anyone would notice.

But he didn’t. He’d done enough of that sort of pushing for one day.

When the woman turned right at the next corner, Walt went left and crossed the street. He ended up walking behind a well-dressed woman that screamed money from every pore on her body, from her platinum-dyed hair to her expensive Manolo shoes. And Walt grinned as he saw that she had over three hundred dollars of shoplifted merchandise in her bag. She could afford it, of course, but the thrill of buying was gone. The thrill of taking reigned and she was on her way to take some more.

As she turned to go into a boutique, a man stepped in front of Walt, causing him to nearly trip over himself. The man was older than Walt, probably in his fifties, and dressed in a suit that announced to anyone that glanced at him that he was successful and powerful and in control. But one glance at him and Walt read enough to know that wasn’t true. He was a hustler. His wealth was made from the ignorance and trust of others, his life was an elaborately executed house of cards that threatened to topple any minute. He soothed himself with a steady diet of sex in the form of prostitutes and sometimes he took out his fear and frustration on them, beating them senseless before dumping them on a corner somewhere. What were they going to do? Tell? Call the police? Of course not. No one would believe them. He had the power. He was in control. He could make anyone do anything he wanted. Tonight, he was going to find some girl and...

Walt turned away from the man, rounding the next corner. He felt a little sick to his stomach and he wasn’t sure if it was from what he’d just read or if it was because he hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast that morning. He was in too much of a rush to get to work.

But he wasn’t going to work anymore.

Where was he going?

About two blocks down, he spotted the golden arches and decided that a pit stop for some fast food would be a good idea. Maybe some greasy fries would settle his stomach and sitting in the restaurant might give him an opportunity to figure out what he was doing and where he was going.

The morning rush had died down somewhat by the time that Walt walked through the door. He got in line behind a man that was cheating on his wife with his best friend’s wife and Walt almost chortled at the unoriginality of it. Instead, he bit his lip and stared at the surprisingly clean tile floor so he wouldn’t have to read anybody else’s misdeeds.

When Walt stepped up to the counter, he realized that breakfast was still in swing, so there were no fries. He settled for a sausage and egg biscuit and a coffee, relieved that the guy waiting on him had only banged some girl in the storeroom while her boyfriend waited in the lobby for her and hadn’t ever spit (or worse) in any customer’s food. Walt took his biscuit and coffee with a smile, thanked the young man, and found a seat at an empty table by the window.

As he ate his biscuit he watched the people walk by, their terribleness riding along with them. Walt caught snippets as he ate.

A girl in her early twenties stopped right in front of him to check something on her phone, forcing people to move around her. She was oblivious to the mild irritation these people were able to conjure up by having their paths blocked. Walt could see as the words scrolled over her, no doubt much like how words were scrolling over her own phone, that she was plotting against one of her friends. At first, Walt thought the backbiting was so high school, but then realized just how much of it went on after graduation too, how much of it went on for the rest of people’s lives.

She moved along, taking her plotting and her scroll of words with her.

As the snippets passed by, Walt caught the misdeeds of wife-beaters, animal abusers, shoplifters, outright thieves, and so many guys cheating on their wives he didn’t understand why they got married at all. He sat for a while after he’d finished the last of his coffee, looking out the window and watching the words go by.

People are terrible, he thought, but so many of them are terrible in the same way that it’s almost boring.

Walt looked away from the window and considered this for a moment. Yes, the initial rush of excitement at being able to see other people’s terribleness so blatantly, spelled out in the literal sense, had worn off. He knew people were terrible. He knew everyone was terrible. He was terrible. And it bored him. It didn’t upset him, which was a little upsetting in its own right. He should have been upset by how terrible people were, by how no one seemed to possess any redeeming qualities. He should have been really upset that his own terribleness resulted in murder just an hour or so ago. And yet, he was bored. And disappointed. Maybe a little depressed.

Walt stood up suddenly.

Sitting in a fast food joint certainly wasn’t going to help his mood. If anything, it would only add to it. Walt needed to move, get all of his juices flowing. He needed to think. Never mind other people’s terribleness. He had his own to consider. What was he going to do now that he was a murderer?

Walt threw away his garbage and walked out of the fast food restaurant. He headed down the street in the general direction of the lake. It was several miles away, but he had the time to make that walk today. A stroll along the beach would be a perfect way to clear his mind.

He kept his head down as he walked so he couldn’t get bombarded with other people’s life stories, looking up only occasionally to make sure he wasn’t going to bump into anyone or get smeared by a bus.

Two blocks later Walt’s cell phone started ringing.

He dug it out of his pocket and looked at it. It was his work number. Looking for him, no doubt. He was well over an hour late, close to two. So unlike him. They were probably worried.

A sudden thought occurred to Walt and he smiled as he shoved his still ringing phone back into his pocket.

He’d go to work after all. He’d put his new found gift to work to see all of the terrible things his co-workers had been doing.

As he turned left at the next corner to start heading back to the train station, Walt pondered what he could do with such information. Obviously, blackmail was number one on the list. How much money could he make knowing everyone’s dirty little secrets? He bet no one would say a word to him about being late or missing a day ever again. He’d be able to work when he wanted to and still get paid for it. Every raise would be guaranteed. So would every promotion. There’d be no more denials, no more better luck next time. Never again would he have to worry about getting chewed out by some lazy department head who wasn’t worth a nickel of his salary. Nope. He’d own it all.

And the women? Ha! The women! Every single one of them acting like righteous prudes, too saintly for the politics and co-worker affairs that permeated his office building. Now he’d know who was really screwing who and why. And he’d use that, too. All of this time Walt felt like he was missing out on some of the best the office had to offer. Now he’d be able to get it.

As he crossed the next street, Walt smiled to himself and started humming, not really a tune, just a pleasant noise of happiness. He walked with his head up, smiling at the oblivious people passing, their terribleness scrolling past his eyes in a more comfortable way now. He finally figured out how to ignore the constant scroll of it if he wanted to.

People were terrible. Walt was terrible. The day was really looking up now that he’d truly embraced all of that.

He walked along the sidewalk in almost a trance, his feet knowing exactly where he needed to go. There were fewer people out now that everyone was locked away in their office buildings and places of business, toiling away to make their living.