Flash Fiction: Special Bagels

INT – MANSION - OFFICE – DAY – WIDE SHOT

MR. X, a large, well-proportioned bald man in a nice suit, stands at his large desk. He is on the phone.

MR. X: Listen to me, I want this procedure to work, you understand?

He turns away from the camera.

MEDIUM SHOT – MR.X’S BACK OF BALD HEAD

MR. X: Again, I shall only repeat this once…I want this procedure to work.

Silence.

CLOSE SHOT – TELEPHONE CRADLE - Mr. X hangs up the phone.

INT – LABORATORY – DAY - MEDIUM LOW ANGLE SHOT – DR. HANZ AND THOM - DR. HANZ hangs up the phone.

DR. HANZ: He will not give up.

THOM: The man’s insane. They call us insane? They call us mad doctors? He’s the mad one.

CAMERA FOLLOWS DR.HANZ walking to a long bank of windows overlooking an operating theater.

DR. HANZ: Sanity is a lie, Thom. It matters not who is the ‘mad one’ in this situation because sanity is bullshit lies.

Dr. Hanz glances over to Thom, o.s.

MEDIUM SHOT – THOM - He’s barefoot, gnawing and sucking on the dirty toes of his left foot.

CLOSE UP – DR. HANZ - Sadness on his face.

DR. HANZ: (quietly) Sanity is made-up bullshit lies.

INT. OPERATING THEATER - LOW WIDE ANGLE SHOT – CAMERA SLOWLY ZOOMS UP TO DR.HANZ, LOOKING DOWN

DR. HANZ: (his voice muffled behind the windows) He wants her to have bagel boobies, then she shall have bagels for boobies!

Flash Fiction: Good Night, Mrs. Calabash, Wherever You Are!

I no longer weep for the alien dead.

I’m hardened by the fact that civilizations die not from without but from within. They drive themselves to death, whether through civil war, economic disaster, environmental damage, or irresponsible morality.

I’m part of a team that cleans up the remains of dead civilizations.

We landed on a planet our charts identified as X55-R3. Our first-drop recon team examined the writings of X55-R3’s long-dead technological alien race and discovered its now extinct inhabitants called the planet Earth.

Brecht-5 and I we were in our heavy, awkward environmental suits.

‘Will you look at that,’ Brecth-5 said.

We stood in reverent awe before a large structure.

 ‘By the Ancient Blurms of Nu’rff,’ I said, ‘a television broadcast station.’

Legend told of how The Great Blurm conjured from the heavens a device called television. This television was powered by the cathode ray tube. Television displayed phantasmagorical sights and sounds from beyond our mortal realm.

Television was a powerful gift from the Blurm, it was not a toy. Tragically, many stage 9 civilizations treated television like a toy, no different than how a young G’mmeduil treated an Am’hatt or G’loorp. Those stage 9 civilizations never made it to stage 10.

I placed my gloved hand against the metal door of the broadcast station. I felt like I was touching the Great Blurm.

 ‘Shame we’ll have to destroy it,’ I said.

Destroy the idea of television. Our species took it upon ourselves to prevent lesser, weaker, civilizations from stumbling upon a dead planet that was destroyed by television.

Very few civilizations could handle the awesome responsibility wrought by television.

I knelt down beside an ancient television set. The green-gray glass of the cathode ray tube had shattered. I said a brief prayer then stood back up.

‘Execute destruction sequence A6889,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the Shatner out of here.’

Flash Fiction: Yeah, But It Really Happened

Yeah, but it happened.

My friend, Philip, was a dullard. He was my best friend, and I loved the guy, but he was a dullard. He was the kind of guy who’d gulp down a scalding cup of coffee, scream to High Heaven that his insides were scorched, and then immediately gulp down another cup of hot coffee.

One day, he was as excited as a science fiction nerd who’d kidnapped Marina Sirtis and had her chained up in his attic, next to his collection of mint-in-box Will Riker and Deanna Troy action figures, and an autographed copy of Bill Shatner’s LP, The Transformed Man.

“You’ve gotta see something, man!” Philip said. His eyes were full of fire and he had seemed less like a dullard. He actually appeared intelligent. “I want to show you something f--king amazing.”

He rarely employed the use of hyperbole and profanity, so I was intrigued.

We hopped into my old jalopy. Yes, I said jalopy, got a problem with that? And no, this did not occur during the 1950s. So, sit on it, Potsy.

We raced through Grover’s Corner. Philip was full of anxiety, shaking and sweating like a gamer awaiting the new Olivia Munn swimsuit calendar.

We were on the old side of Grovers Corner. We’d raced past the abandoned, derelict single story buildings that once housed ma and pa hardware and grocery stores, and into the dusty, quiet part of town that makes you feel like you’re on the far side of the moon.

“Calm down,” I said. “What is this ‘thing’? What are we going to see?”

Philip smiled. “Oh,” he whispered, “you’ll just have to wait.”

I wheeled the jalopy onto Turner Lane and slammed on brakes.

“Holy, s--t!” I said.

And that’s when we saw “it”, the thing that encapsulates your entire knowledge of who you are and how you fit into the vast cosmos; the thing that reminds you that you are but a dried booger on the handkerchief of the universe.

We saw a THE REMAINING PORTION OF THIS TEXT HAS BEEN REDACTED by order #1142331456A - PRIORITY: MANOS **** EYES ONLY ****