Random stories

I understood very little about how the world worked. My wife called me naïve, said I found it easier to always see the good in everything. In everyone.

She called me optimally optimistic.

I always told her everyone was good inside. That was the gods’ honest truth.

Everyone was good.

In our entire life together, through forty long years, the world grew peaceful. The wars of our youth ceased. Petty feuds and skirmishes ended. Crime slowed to a halt.

People cheered each other in the street, complimented each other regularly. Doors were held open and children laughed with abandon.

The rich gave their wealth to the poor. Politicians told the truth and worked together to solve problems, not create them.

People worried about the world. Would it last? They’d ask.

This golden age could not last forever.

We must have been balancing on the edge of a knife. If history was any indication, we would soon fall.

“What if the world crumbles when we die?” My wife asked one night, curled up in bed. “What if jr grows old in a world like the past?”

“You can’t think that way,” I said. “There’s plenty of good out there, in all of us. No one wants to lose that. We’re all just trying to keep our lives peaceful.”

She believed me, and she slept like a lamb. She always believed me.

Ever since that night, in the dark edge of the park. The dim lights flickering above the pavement as she jogged. The shadows growing larger until her feet brought her to where I waited, watching for her.

I told her she was beautiful.

It was the truth. She was stunning.

I told her I wanted her.

She backed away.

I stopped her.

Don’t go anywhere, I told her.

Don’t scream.

She trembled, and she kicked.

And she shuddered.

And when I was done I told her: I’m not a bad guy.

I promise. Im good.

There aren’t any bad guys out there, not on this night. Not ever.

And somehow, she believed me.

She relaxed into me.

And the world followed.

Every night I lied to her, and I held that lie so tight it bled into the rest of the humanity

We’re all good, always.

I know it won’t last. It’ll end when I die.

If I die first, this dream I’ve created will unravel, and she’ll know me. What I did.

And our world will turn to dust.

Perhaps I am the only truly bad person.

But I won’t let her learn the truth. As she dies, I’ll look her in the eyes and convince us both that I’m a good man.

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Submitted by Mmip on Fri, Nov 18, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You can make a lie become truth, but only one lie at a time, once it is a lie again everyone involved will know immediately. You’re on your deathbed, holding one lie as truth for decades. You know hell will break loose once you die and the lie becomes a lie, and everybody will know.