Fred Aiken Writing

Tag: Short Story

February 13, 2023

Amnesia Visions Viciously Prophesying Personal Narratives Crushed in a Non-Recyclable Can

Are you interested in buying?

Not in the slightest, I said.

Then why are you here?

I thought you could answer that for me.

The man sitting in the car shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He looks over his shoulder, then back at me. You’re not a cop, are you?

I don’t respond. Instead I light a cigarette, but don’t smoke it.

Hey, I’m leaving if you don’t confirm or deny your status in relation to local PD.

…

I’ll shoot you.

I forget to respond. The man shoots me. It stings. But when I regain consciousness, I remember everything.

February 10, 2023

Misspelled Apocalyptic Thoughts on the Precipice of Pseudo-Intellectual Meaning

You know how close the words ‘anesthetic’ is to ‘aesthetic’. I get them confused all the time. Thank god for auto-correct, amiright.

Yeah, so what?

It means…that beauty was originally an alternative pain killer.

The two men watch as an asteroid heads toward the Earth. It looks like a moving sun getting closer and closer. Their eyes are attached to the asteroid and nothing else. Soft, pale speckles move across their field of vision.

One of the men moves a couple of feet to his right to get another angle on the asteroid. His eyes don’t leave the flames biting through the sky.

I imagine it’s a beauty not to feel pain.

February 9, 2023

Susan, If You’re Reading This, Then It Probably Means I Already Forgot

The feeling like I just swallowed raw all-purpose flour while a plus-size dominatrix sits on my chest keeps coming back.

I can’t decide if I like it or not.

Bloodshot eyes, searing toothpick-to-the-brain headache, a stench somewhere in the allium genus family of vegetables permeating my pores, clothes, and general demeanor. My Fitbit says my heart rate is 140 bpm. I approach the last counter I’ll ever see. 

Another desperate human being sits behind it, though they appear to be seven feet higher than me (but it’s realistically probably only about a foot or so higher).

I shouldn’t be here. Probably a good name for my memoir, if I had the energy to write one of those. Maybe an autobiography some grad student could pick up as a pet project. But no one would read it. I certainly wouldn’t.

I can’t hear a thing; too much noise floating around. 

Everything inside of me is screaming for me to stop, turn back, do something else. I don’t listen to that voice. I only listen to voices that destroy.

I tell the figure behind the counter, the figure that holds my future between its calloused, permanently grimy fingers, what I want, why I’m here. I sound more uncertain than I wanted to.

I feign confidence.

I want to puke.

Pupils dilate, endorphins kick in, a warm simmer bathes over, and I feel this lightness settle in my bones, like the weight lifted and I can continue.

I yell for everyone to remain calm, but it’s more of an internal suggestion. I don’t know if I should be doing this, but I do.

A loud bang reverberates against the plaster walls. The whole building seems to shake with the vibration of an unstoppable force that is beyond my control at this point. 

Nothing will go as planned, but what no one realizes, including myself, is that was my plan all along….Or at least that’s what I’ll tell myself as I lie motionless on the ground with blaring blue neon flashes marking my final moments.