Evan Brooks had it all once. At the turn of the century, he was an up and coming lawyer with an apartment and a fiance he adored. Alas, when his beloved Lisa walked out on him, he turned to the bottle, thinking at first that it would be a temporary salve for his wounded heart, only to succumb to addiction, losing his career, hopes, and dreams in the process.

Twenty years later, Evan's favorite pastime is waxing a stool at O'Malley's pub, sousing himself silly with one drink after another as he whines to anyone willing (or even unwilling) to listen to his tale of woe about the one that got away.

When his boorish behavior gets him kicked out of his favorite watering hole, Evan meets a mysterious stranger named Reuben who may very will be the last person in town willing to listen to a middle aged drunk's inane ramblings. Evan confides to Reuben that he carries a chip on his shoulder that rivals the one pushed by Sisyphus, for he truly believes that had Lisa not left him, he would have become a happy and successful attorney and family man.

File this story under "Careful What You Wish For," for when Reuben works his magic, he gives his new charge a trial run of the life he would have had if Lisa had stuck around.

Evan awakens to find himself living in a dystopian nightmare. In this alternate version of the world, Lisa married Evan and together they inadvertently raised a son who grew up to overthrow the United States government, thus becoming the cruelest and most bloodthirsty dictator in the history of the world. Referring to himself as "The Eye" due to his highly intrusive mass surveillance program, Evan Jr. racks up a kill count the likes of which Hitler, Mao and Stalin could only have dreamed of.

Reuben lets Evan choose. He can live as a captive figurehead in the Eye House (formerly known as the White House) and never be apart from Lisa again, or he can return to his life as a 50-year old drunk who delivers take-out and lives in a one room apartment with a mangy alley cat.

What will Evan decide? Will he put the fate of the free world over his own selfish needs? Will he even get that option? Read on to find out.

Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" meets Phillip K. Dick's "The Man in High Castle" in the second of BQB's Twisted Shorts series. Do you like "The Twilight Zone?" Do you like "The Outer Limits?" Do you like "Black Mirror?" Well, BQB doesn't have the budget to make shows as awesome as those, but his self-published journey toward creating an episodic anthology has begun.

NOTE: This is a short story of approximately 14,898 words (including an author's note and promotional material after the story.) It is a quick read.

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• Literature & FictionShort StoriesSingle Authors
• Science Fiction & FantasyScience FictionDystopian

• Publication Date: August 4, 2020
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
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• File Size: 942 KB