Ever had one of those days?

     Short story time, again!  Enjoy!

 - - - - -

     Jackson stared at the man across the desk before him, assessing his demeanor, his visible equipment and armor, and most importantly, his eyes.  He knew that the eyes would be his first (and maybe only) warning that an attack was forthcoming.  Jackson let a small smile tug at the corner of his lips.  "Tell me again, why you came to Stonewall and Associates, Mr?..."

     He let the sentance hang, waiting for the man in the shiny gold armor to supply his own name.  In the intervening seconds he reached for another roasted fiddler crab.  They really were quite good today.

     "You can call me 'Cleric' Mr. Cobbler."  Said the man, coldly.  "And, as I explained to your associate in the lobby, I require your services."

     Jackson Cobbler leaned back in his sinfully luxurious chair, the chair was one of the few things he had demanded when he came on board with Stonewall & Associates - Freelance Adventurers.  He steepled his fingers together, took a breath to speak, and --

BOOM!!!

     The thunderous noise was so loud that the sound wave tore the building apart before the fireball even got there.  The clap of noise exploded the eardrums of both men, sending them into sudden unconsciousness as if their lives had been switched off.  Their only consolation was they were dead before the air was instantaneously sucked away, leaving both men to cough several previously vital organs into the maelstrom that picked up their corpses and hurled them towards the sea.  Just ahead of the ever growing fireball.  The armored man hit a massive stone block mid-flight, slowing him enough to be consumed and incinerated by the expanding fireball.  The corpse of Jackson Cobbler hit the ocean traveling at several hundred miles an hour, splitting into pieces and actually skipping across the surface of the water for a few hundred meters before the friction slowed him enough to sink.  The largest chunk of his body (most of his torso, his right arm, and the bottom half of his head) came to rest on the seabed, where it became the home and primary food source for a family of fiddler crabs who, in their primitive fiddler crab minds, considered him delicious.

     Had he still been alive, Jackson would have found the irony amusing.

 - - - - -

     Yeah.  So that got dark in a hurry.  Sorry about that.  I was actually planning on writing a whole story about Jackson and his client, maybe throwing in some sword fights for action and wizardry for flavor.  Then I got a bit into it and realized that I just didn't care about these characters.  My muse just ran out and I couldn't bring myself to care about where their conversation was going.

     So, I BLEW IT THE FUCK UP!

     See you tomorrow.