For NQW’s second round of flash fiction, I decided to do a satire regarding the West’s strange ability to control the narrative of anything they find embarrassing or sheds any negative light on the supposed glorious Western Empire. The prompts for this competition were: Include the word “disco,” incorporate the name of a dance move, and have an action that can be interpreted as “freaking out.”

I had so much fun writing this. I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think in the comments below:

George Orwell’s 1984

“Alright, sir,” the officer says. “First, we’re gonna do a heel-toe step test.”

“Ugh, can’t I take the breathalyzer?” I plead. I’ve only had one beer, after all.

“No. It’s waiting on repairs. Now, pay atten –”

That’s when a giant, discoidal spacecraft about the size of a small warehouse drops from the night sky like a fucking meteor, crashing onto the road beside us with a terrible, grinding screech.

“Holy shit!” I yell, covering my ears. “Did you see that?”

“Um. See what?” He says, brushing debris off his pants.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I point to the ship and gesture at the jagged chunks of asphalt forming a semi-crater around it. Dirt and metallic dust glitter in the moonlight like falling snowflakes. The smell of hot metal burns my throat.

“Sir, are you okay?”

I feel my jaw drop. Am I going crazy? No. I glance once more at the wreckage, then turn back to the officer looking at me as though I’d stated windmills cause cancer. He seems to be intentionally avoiding looking at anything but me.

“You don’t see that spaceship right there?” I splutter, gesturing wildly.

“There’s nothing there, sir,” he calmly replies, and is suddenly very interested in straightening the silver badge pinned to his shirt.

“My god, man! Are you fucking blind?!” My eyes bulge. They might pop out of my head soon, if this uniformed idiot doesn’t start making sense. I know I shouldn’t scream at a cop, but I can’t help myself. “Use your fucking eyes, goddammit!” I start hopping back and forth like a toddler playing on a mattress, using both hands to point. “It’s right here!”

Before he can respond, the chop of helicopter blades approaches from the west. Next thing I know, two dozen feds dressed in fancy suit pants and pressed white shirts are clambering out and setting up a perimeter. One of them, a young blond woman with a severe expression, beckons to the officer and me.

“Officer,” she says. “Take your car north and redirect traffic to the nearest alternative route. We’ve already blocked off the southbound.” He half-salutes and walks away without a word, but I notice he glances over his shoulder at the spacecraft as he does. The fed turns her gaze on me. “Sir, you need to go home. Someone from the Bureau will contact you tomorrow morning.”

I swallow mingled relief and excitement and nod. “Can you believe it? A real alien!”

She raises an eyebrow. “Alien? That’s quite imaginative, sir, but I assure you that’s just a downed hot air balloon.”

The excitement bleeds out of me like oil into a drain pan. Confused, I take another questioning look at the wreckage. It doesn’t look like a hot air balloon, but...

“Are you sure?”

Her nod is firm. Confident. “Just a hot air balloon.”

I shake my head, blow a breath in my palm, and sniff it. Then heel-toe step all the way to my car.

Share

Miami’s Palladium nightclub is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with Friday night dancers determined to start the weekend with a bit of fun and, in some hopeful cases, debauchery. Strobing lights keep pace with thumping bass. The tang of sweat mixes with that of alcohol and perfume. Everyone, with the exception of the two bartenders, one deejay, and three bouncers, has begun the ritual of forgetting hard days spent working or studying over the past week.

Perhaps that is why no one notices one old man standing motionless on the dance floor.

If all goes well, his life will end tonight, but instead of enjoying the blaring music, or sipping a martini at the bar, or even contemplating end-of-life mysteries, the old man is thinking of a single Latin word: Cide. Well, not a word, really, but a suffix. It means to kill, or killer, from the Latin verb caedere, meaning to cut or slay. He knows many words for murder using this suffix. Homicide, matricide, siblicide, and infanticide, to name a few. But as he studies the handsome young man he’s come here to kill, he thinks he’ll be committing an unknown cide, one for which there is yet no name.

The first few strings of a Reggaeton song play loudly overhead, breaking into his thoughts. He recognizes this one. Dile, Tell Him, a song from his youth. The dancers cheer and begin to bounce on their knees and roll their hips forward and back in smooth, provocative rhythms. Others, like himself, stand around watching like silent sentinels or sit on barstools chatting amongst themselves and holding red plastic cups in their hands. His fingers tap idly against his thigh as he watches the young man, keeping pace with the music.

Dile que bailando te conocí, the first verse begins, and the young man twirls a beautiful raven-haired woman into his arms, then leans over and plants a kiss on her luscious lips. He’s wearing pressed black slacks, a clean white t-shirt, and formal dress shoes. She wears a gorgeous green sequin mini dress that sparkles when the strobe lights catch it and a pair of velvet platform shoes. Except for the tight roundness at her abdomen, she’s mostly thin. Small spots of color bloom high on her cheeks. She looks thrilled to be alive.

Rosa Bell Fernandez, the old man recalls, though back then, he’d called her Bell. She used to laugh at that, but her hazelnut eyes had always sparkled like the stars every time he’d used that name.

His eyes move to Rosa’s belly as the first tear spills over onto his leathery cheeks. No doubt the child would have been just as beautiful as its mother, just as noble, and just as proud. A child who could have grown up and done marvelous things, perhaps changed the world. But the old man had never known, thanks to the lying, cheating scumbag dancing with her.

An hour from now, Rosa and her unborn child will be killed in a horrible car accident. The young man survives with hardly a scratch. It was always the bastards that live, always the good ones that die.

Well, that was going to change, and damn the consequences. He’d waited sixty years for the miracle of time travel to be possible, six decades to come back and make things right.

The lovers lock hands, and the young man begins pushing through the crowd, pulling Rosa with him. The old man moves to intercept. He clutches the rough wooden handle of the serrated blade concealed in his pocket. The young man pulls out a cell phone and begins tapping the screen, angling it away from Rosa so she doesn’t see.

It takes every bit of willpower the old man has to control his sudden rage and still his trembling hands. Bastard! Bad enough to betray her at all; the little shit’s doing it right in front of her! I’d almost forgotten that cocky smile.

He tries to recall the name of the woman the young man is texting, but it’s like grasping at strands in a complex spiderweb. It doesn’t matter anyway. Whoever she is, or was, what happened hadn’t been her responsibility. It had been this arrogant sack of shit’s.

Closer now. The old man breathes cold determination. Soon, they’ll pass right by him. He steels himself for the right moment, swallowing his rage, his depression, his hope, and fear. He forces them into a tiny box and shoves it into the deepest recesses of his mind. He can’t afford to fuck this up. If he does nothing, the young man will walk Rosa to his Honda Civic. He’ll open the passenger door like a gentleman and usher her into the steel deathtrap that will become her tomb. All the while planning a tryst with his sidepiece, no doubt fantasizing about all the different positions he wants to put her in while his woman waits for him back home.

If the old man does nothing, that is.

The accident will make the local news headlines, its front page featuring the small car, the passenger side peeled open like a can of sardines, where emergency firemen used the Jaws of Life to get at Rosa’s broken body. She’ll suffer from head contusions, numerous internal bruising, and a dozen cuts to the sides of her face and forehead where the glass exploded. But it’ll be the broken ribs that kill her, one of which pierces her heart. Internal bleeding causes her death long before the ambulance reaches the hospital. The baby dies less than an hour later, unable to survive the trauma.

But the bastard who kills them? He survives with only a broken wrist and a few scrapes and bruises. The worst damage will be to the cell phone he’d been texting his sidepiece with as he ran the red light and got plowed by a Ford F250, flipping the car over 3 times before it finally slid into another vehicle.

It’s happened thousands of times in the old man’s mind, in every waking moment, in every dream. He won’t let it happen now. He leaps forward with a growled curse and a snarl, and before anyone knows what’s happening, buries the knife deep into the soft flesh of the cheater’s belly, savagely twisting it on the way out before the younger man has time to do more than cry out in shock. Rosa’s screams are lost in the crowd’s terrified screams and shouts. She stumbles backward, clutching her stomach. The liar seizes the old man’s wrist, but it’s too late; the death blow has already been given.

The young man stares in shocked confusion into the eyes of his killer. Familiar eyes, the exact shade and shape of his own. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and gasps out a single question:

“Why?”

The old man leans close to whisper. “I had to save her. From us. She will live now.”

Understanding dawns on the young man’s pallid face as the old man relaxes. His body is already beginning to fade into nothingness. He turns to Rosa, smiling weakly despite her horrified regard. She’ll be traumatized, of course, but the baby should help her through that. They’ll both be okay now; that’s what’s important.

“My beautiful Bell.” He whispers.

He thinks, It’s not suicide, not really. Maybe, selficide? Then he’s gone.

Leave a comment

October winds carry chilled tidings over the lake’s murky waters, promising a hard winter. Lillian stands on the shore, a colorful shawl wrapped tightly around her diminutive frame, face tilted upward, eyes closed in contemplative silence. Her tawny, yellowish-brown cheeks are no longer etched with worry lines but s…

Read more

Harper shouldered through the Hyde Park crowd, feigning disinterest as she glanced backward. The bloke in the brown coat was still following, a silver badge featuring a bird with outstretched wings pinned high on his chest.

Her lungs constricted. Goddess, help me!

Ahead, a young girl stood fiddling beside an alley. Harper…

Read more

Most people pay little heed to signs. You know the kind—portents, omens, harbringers of bad juju—but I’m not most people. I read my daily horoscope, spend a good amount of time interpreting my own dreams, and look for synchronicities in my daily life. So, how I didn’t see this disaster of a date coming, I’ll never kn…

Read more

Amor, how I’ve longed for you to see me, tangled in the living green ropes stretched above you. I wanted to come to you, but I don’t have the strength to break free of these wrought iron bars.

I’d almost given up hope, resigning myself to a cold life lived in shadow without the warmth of your smile. But at last, you’ve…

Read more

Lilly opens her bedroom door. Hallway light slants across the grey carpet, illuminating the corner of her Barbie blanket against the bedpost. Beside it is a narrow strip of darkness, where the monster has been watching for the past three nights. Waiting to feed.

Stomach churning, Lilly ambles to the edge of the bed. She pauses there, heart hammering, str…

Read more

A/N: This story was initially published on Vocal Media last year. A few weeks ago, I submitted it to one of their summer competitions, “Leave the Light On.” Yesterday, I found out I won! Anyway, please enjoy my winning short story, The Countdown, and be sure to let me know what you think!

A deafening cheer erupts from the …

Read more

'Ana walidatuk (I am your mother)

I rocked you in the waters of my womb

'Ana waliduk (I am your father)

I gave of my flesh so your tree could bloom

'Ana 'akhuk al'akbar (I am your older brother)

I fought against those who would harm you

'Ana 'ukhtuk alsughraa (I am your younger sister)

I gave you comfort when you were subdu…

Read more

Photo by Jonathan Castañeda via Unsplash

Dogust 2, 2024

Attn: Colonel Floppy “Long Ears” McSniffles.

418 Waggin Street

New Yorkie, NY 10017

Colonel,

I regret to inform you that I've failed my 347th escape attempt. After this latest defeat, I've come to believe the initial reports of human simplicity provided by the Central Canine-telligence Agency are either …

Read more

Photo by A.C. on Unsplash

“Oh my God, Quinn, would you hurry up?!” Vic glanced at his watch - 6:46. Fourteen minutes until the library closed, and he lost his chance with Monica forever. “What’s taking so long?”

Quinn inched his square-framed glasses down his broad nose with a slim finger and raised a bushy eyebrow. “If you think you can do this any faste…

Read more

Hello, everyone, and thank you for reading. Last week, I promised to publish my group-winning story for NYC Midnight’s Short Story Competition. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this one, and I hope you enjoy reading it. The judges stated it was ‘beautifully crafted’ and a ‘wonderful setup for a new fairytale. I’d love to know if you agree!

…

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

The Poem: The Ghost of Your Gun …

Read more

Read more

Today, I caught up on a challenge issued by fellow vocal media creator L.C. Schäfer. The original publication is linked below if you’d like to read it:

Dollar Challenge (August/September 2024) - Let the Magic Begin

L.C.’s challenge immediately drew my interest: Write a short story of 300-600 words and include a quote inspi…

Read more