Flash Fiction


DEATH BY WATCHER Dan Black

ORDER, ROUTINE, SUCCESS

Where am I?

My mind tells me everything isn’t real: I ignore. Some sort of crime-free city? Like in the movies, a Utopian vision of the future. The architecture is sleek and clean. No supplementary windows, columns, or archways. Just efficiency. I’m living in Huxley’s Brave New World Order. Or, at least, something like it.

Could this be a case of fiction seeping into my subcon? Shooting up, from underneath this very city, swirling colors like a tye-dye shirt, eyes aghast, I plop dead center graciously into a group of good looking bureaucratic men sitting around a tear drop table. It’s silver and sharp at the edges. Razor sharp.

“What are we looking at?” three mutter quickly in unison. It echoes in the great gun-metal walls. I’m searching my left pocket for a blade of some kind. Glancing down, I’m dressed like them. All in the same black and grey pinstripe suit as the next and the next around and around the table to infinity. Not finding. A pocket watch in my left, some sort of card in my right. I click open the watch and the room stops its paper shuffling and indifferent gazes. They’re all looking at me. Checking the time… O…. Zero, Two…O, One, Six… Checked. It just comes out. In that monotonous military tone. One of the men slides a paper into the middle of the table as the rest go back to shuffling and blind staring. He places it onto a small metal tray which collapses down inches into the table. A holographic projection, green, BRILLIANT green, explodes upwards and circles slowly upon leering beady eyes. The color… it’s so… so, ahhgg… so be..eu..tif…uuulllll.

I struggle violently inside to not let that thought out. I suppress it quickly. “62 & # 8243; a man across from me says. “Check the numbers. He’ll be at point-seven-three-nine in…” His head rises to take a measurement of the gigantic triangular clock floating above me, eyes flicker: “O… Six, Three… O… Four, Zero”.

All of them knock their knuckles on the table proudly. Things getting done. Another man files a sheet of paper into the tray seamlessly. It projects once again. This time he says, “4 & #8243;” only with more uncertainty.

“They’re TOGETHER?” the first man asks. His neighbor slides a ballpoint from his front-left breast pocket, removes the cap calmly, and jabs it into the first man’s right forearm. The blood rushes out, it wants to escape and wither and die. A rather small amount, but colorless in a way that scares the life out of me. “Shh”, says the neighbor as if he were shushing a young boy at the public library. The first man straightens his tie, black pen still jutting out into the air, Grey blood still dripping steadily.

“We’ll collect them together, then. This hasn’t ever happened before, but surely it will again. We’ll set a precedent, gentlemen. A historic precedent to be used for ages to come.”

Here, here. A great collection of deeply echoing knocks on the table. No smiles, just clup-clap-clup of the metal table and the all too human hands. The projection disintegrates sheepishly. Green turns to blue, then nothingness. We all stand up, I too, collectively. Someone’s, something’s pulling the strings. We file out in a line. The man three spots ahead of me rips out the pen from his arm: licks the tip clean, recaps it, and pockets it with a small shutter. He’s sweating, everyone else is clean.

Out the door around the corner, do it now! I find myself struggling against my will, but I make it through the hallway, around the corner, and out the door unnoticed.

BEDLAM, UPROAR, FAILURE

A room full of my peers takes shape in front of my eyes. It’s messy and cluttered. A warehouse type building. Stacks and stacks of old newspapers to the ceiling in one corner.

Carelessly, with style, I stroll to browse through them. Nov. 22nd, 1963, the 35th Edition. June 12th, 2016, Extra! January 16th, 1926, London Journal. They smell rich and pure. The ink spreads onto my hands, which were dirty to begin with. The sun penetrates through a window at the top, making a remarkable series of light beams on the warehouse floorboards. It feels good on my skin.

Do you feel safe? At home?? The half-grown beard on my face itches like Hell. I scratch it harshly, like a dog. I grab a piece of journalism that catches my one eye: October 6th, 2003. Glancing down, I notice a tattoo-like marking on my inner left wrist. Scared, shaking, my fingers trace the number… 293. It’s metal. Metal somehow embedded into my skin. Cold and shiny. You’d better warn them all.

“Wait, everybody!” I yell with my back still turned to the group. I turn around, horrified but vengeful. “I heard… recently. Where was I? Was that real? Yes, I heard two numbers together. It was 62… and…. and 4. The numbers 4 and 62 & #8243.”

The room rumbled with voices. All the men looked at their left wrists, then scurried along to a friend to examine theirs. A chaotic paranoid mess. Someone fell down in the shuffle, and three or four men helped him up to the ground. Where are all the women?

It is announced, although most of my peers do not stop speaking and mixing, rather loudly that 4 and 62 are out in Downtown, about to bomb the ‘Qxster Building.’ Everything’s moving now. This should be a rather large blow against the Suits. I’m thrust through the outer-most wall and zipping over the city streets and steady traffic. Sharp turns left and right and left again. Going so fast the lights look like streaks in the distance.

Slowing down, I come to a large, shining piece of stainless. This must be Qxster. Down below, scrambling like insects from pillar to pillar, window to window, are 4 and 62. They’re unorganized but efficient. They look to be screwing in items at each place they stop. Uncontrolled, I descend downwards. Something isn’t quite right. They finish up and start running for the alleyway.

They’ll never make it. A Watcher is racing them to the spot, and winning. Before it closes off the path, it turns towards the two men and extends a tentacle arm. Jutting towards 62, it penetrates crisply through his neck. I can smell the burning flesh from up here, in the sky. The tip burns hotly, cauterizing the wound instantly. 62 dies on impact.

The Watcher retracts its arm and now focuses on 4 with its computerized glowing red lenses. With a black, seared wound in the middle of his neck, 62 falls to the ground, spinning like a figure skater. The Watcher grabs young 4 and shoots a needle into his chest, then the doors on its large oval chest swing wide open. It shoves 4 into itself, swiftly cleans up the mess left behind, removes the items placed on the Qxster Building’s pillars and windows, and glides away into the darkness, beeping a pattern over and over again.

By Dan Black, copyright 2009. All rights reserved.





Flash Fiction