Consequences

This story was written for Trifecta’s weekly prompt, which was to use the word “whatever” as a an adverb, “used to show that something is not important. It is also another entry in Constance’s Story. To recap, Constance is a former treasuer-hunter, who became the guardian angel of newlyweds Amy and Steven after she accidentally caused them to meet each other on Christmas Eve. Shortly after their wedding, however, Amy was killed in a bus accident. Constance tried to resurrect her, but unfortunately Amy came back as a zombie. Steven was a bit upset by this, and told Constance he wished she had left them alone. Constance granted his wish, and things went very badly indeed…

Sirens wailed like so many toddlers crying to have their toy back. Steven paid no heed to them, or to the people running headlong past him to get out of the city. They kept yelling at him that he was going the wrong way. Steven didn’t care. Amy was alive. She was somewhere in the city, and so was a gigantic green Godzilla-type monster. Steven had to find her before the monster did.

“Okay,” he said frantically to himself, “If I was Amy, and I was being chased by a monster, where would I go? My basement, that’s where. Amy lives on Third Street. She’s gotta be there. She’s gotta be.” 

He ran towards Third Street hard as he could. Along the way, he noticed that the city had changed somehow. Its buildings had once been charming and quaint; now it looked like Joel Schumacher had set a Batman movie in it. There was more neon, more metal, more hard edges, more smells of oil and Listerine. Steven didn’t know how things had gone wrong, but if he could only find Amy, he was sure it would all be right again.

He rounded a corner onto Third Street, and stopped in his tracks. Piles of smoldering rubble lay before him. Constance was perched on one of the piles. “Hey.”

“Where’s Amy?” Steven demanded.

“I’m not supposed to tell, you dimwit. This is your wish. Live with it.”

“I didn’t want all this!” he yelled, waving at the chaos around him.

“Whatever.  I don’t care what you meant, you still made the wish. I left you alone. So Amy never met you. So she became a ruthless corporate raider, nearly got arrested, lost her job, started making crystal meth, and then fell into a chemical vat. Way to go.”

Steven grabbed Constance by her shirt collar. “Where’s Amy, Constance? Where’s Amy?”

“She’s rampaging over there, through the library!”

“…rampaging?”

“Yeah. She’s not being chased by the monster. She is the monster. Duh.”