{"id":12581,"date":"2023-02-04T00:26:47","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T00:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/?p=12581"},"modified":"2023-12-09T17:06:10","modified_gmt":"2023-12-09T17:06:10","slug":"switching-gears-by-lb-sedlacek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/switching-gears-by-lb-sedlacek\/","title":{"rendered":"Switching Gears by LB Sedlacek"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Switching<\/h1>\n

Switching Gears<\/span><\/h1>\n

By LB Sedlacek<\/p>\n

Kim stared at her computer. She was looking at rough draft number she didn\u2019t know what. She\u2019d lost count, there had been so many changes. Her characters were no longer her characters. Her publisher wanted them all to be despicable. No good ones anymore. All bad to various degrees.<\/p>\n

She groaned. She slammed her head into her hands. \u201cI\u2019m fed up with this! These characters are awful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her accent waffled from southern to no accent at all. Too many years living out of the south. Too many years back. She often joked her voice didn\u2019t know what it wanted to sound like.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Joseph grumbled at his car. It puffed and smoked and finally choked its way into his assigned parking space outside of the factory.<\/p>\n

He stared at the flowers beds, all blooming and fresh. He stared at the equally glorious blooming trees alongside the flower beds.<\/p>\n

He mumbled \u201cBeautiful outside. But inside those factory walls it\u2019s like death.\u201d His accent was all southern. He\u2019d never left home. He\u2019d never been out of North Carolina not even over a state line to buy fireworks in South Carolina, to see Dollywood or Nashville in Tennessee or to go to Busch Gardens in Virginia.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kim typed \u201cIt wasn\u2019t always easy being squeaky clean or appearing to be that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph entered the giant rectangular windowless red brick building and moved past the group surrounding the man tied in the chair. His Boss, well everyone\u2019s Boss, was stuffing $1 bills down the guys throat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t even lunchtime when the town shook from the boom. Kim flipped on her scanner app to hear \u201cThere\u2019s been an explosion at plant 7.\u201d<\/p>\n

She typed \u201cPlant 7. Exploded with a thunderous roar.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Money or rather shredded pieces of dollar bills blanketed the town for hours. The newspaper headlines later read \u201cIt\u2019s raining dollar bills.\u201d A contest was held with folks guessing how much money had floated all up in the air around town.<\/p>\n

It was decided that $5000 sounded like the right amount. Joseph knew it was exactly $5000. They\u2019d made him practice on new hires until he got the count just right \u2013 how many dollar bills do you have to stuff down someone\u2019s throat to kill them.<\/p>\n

Technically, five would do the trick. Maybe ten if the person had a large mouth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kim typed \u201cJoseph had a change of heart. He quit and moved and then he took all the money for the throat stuffing and sent it to the victim\u2019s families.\u201d<\/p>\n

She thought, \u201cLet\u2019s see if my publisher likes this.\u201d Then she laughed and typed \u201cCharacters are people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LB Sedlacek has had poems and stories appear in a variety of journals and zines. Her poetry books include \u201cSwim,\u201d \u201cThe Architect of French Fries,\u201d \u201cThe Poet Next Door,\u201d \u201cSimultaneous Submissions,\u201d \u201cHappy Little Clouds,\u201d and \u201cWords and Bones.\u201d Her short stories “Backwards Wink” and “Sight Unseen” both won 1st Place Prose for different issues of “Branches” literary magazine in 2022.\u00a0 Her latest fiction book is \u201cThe Jackalope Committee and Other Tales\u201d published by Alien Buddha Press. Her fiction books include the award nominated mystery \u201cThe Glass River\u201d and \u201cFour Thieves of Vinegar & Other Short Stories.\u201d\u00a0 LB also likes to swim and read.\u00a0 Find out more at: www.lbsedlacek.com<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kim stared at her computer. She was looking at rough draft number she didn\u2019t know what. She\u2019d lost count, there had been so many changes. Her characters were no longer her characters. Her publisher wanted them all to be despicable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[425,418],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemporary","category-stories-about-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12581"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12888,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12581\/revisions\/12888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}