A Heart of Brass
The first time I met David Scott through the lens of my tight brown leather gasmask, he was clutching a heart-shaped locket made from the brass that he had stolen off the tops of garden taps. Carefully placing it in my grasp he claimed that he melted them down, by rubbing them on his denim jeans, causing such friction that they could be moulded into the locket. “Probably should’ve taken them off first. The bugger damn near burnt my dick off” He casually joked. In reality, it was probably the constantly exacerbating heatwaves that made this possible, but I didn’t want to argue with this unhinged individual as he started loading his Antique French Flintlock Pistol. “Fucked if I know, if this shit-cunt thing still fires” he glumly moaned staring off into the blood-red sky numb to the sweltering heat of the beating sun. “What’s in the locket?” I asked him as he continued to examine his Pistol. “My bloody heart and soul of course. Means more to me than you will ever know” he exclaimed winking through his grey leather gasmask. “I’ll be careful with it then”, I replied carefully plunging the locket into the pocket of my pants. I was a tall lanky man with red hair and a beard sweating through a black pinstripe shirt with brown pants and suspenders that I was seriously regretting while he was a short bald man sweating through his rose-patterned white shirt with grey pants. We were in the middle of what was usually a busy highway, but today dividing the concrete monoliths of financiers and clergymen was a long asphalt track. Crowds of masked and unmasked people surrounded the edges creating makeshift barriers between the real world and the sideshow about to unfold before their very eyes. The heat apocalypse slowly but surely, killing us all seemed not to worry them as they eagerly stared at the other side of the road where Michael Brent, stood tall and broad-shouldered, in his cream-coloured shirt with a blue paisley vest and blue leather gasmask. He too was fumbling with his Antique French Flintlock Pistol. This may seem like a peculiar sight to you, but such events are commonplace at the Wernham-Miffler Institute of Hydration and Air Filtration Insurance, where workplace disputes are solved by the only efficient means possible. Pistols at dawn. My name is Keith Malone, I chronicle apocalyptic events affecting the workplace, this is my personal account of the duel that transpired.
