The Chips are Down
“Now is not the accepted time to make new enemies,” said the philosopher on his death bed, responding to the priest’s exhortation to renounce Satan.
“Why the intransigence?” marveled the young clergyman. “Frankly, sir, I cannot imagine there could be a downside to rejecting the devil.”
“Just you ponder that question, padre,” said the wise man. “You seem an intelligent person, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
A month later when the plague hit most of Europe and the priest started developing chills and fever, he conceded that on purely practical grounds the old knucklehead might have had a point.
He also decided, if he survived his perilous ordeal, he’d write an essay on the conflict between official wisdom and common-sense practicality, without delineating the religious aspects of his own experience.
After recovering, the good pastor did pen the piece, embellishing it enough to be a pamphlet. Next, under his obsessive writing hand the pamphlet grew into a full novel, with an overarching theme of the wicker-man rituals of ancient Celts.
As a result, well-read people tend to blame all of humanity’s ills on the pagans.
A sketch of this article was published in Friday Flash Fiction on October 10, 2025.
Index
The platform has transformed into a corridor of dread; stern men in riot gear are surveying the crowd, randomly frisking people, checking luggages. People shrink from their touch but obediently raise their arms for the patdown and open their suitcases. Suddenly memory flickers, this morning I put my Swiss Army knife in my rain jacket, what if they find it?
“Anybody know if pocket knives are considered weapon now?” I ask.
“Only if the blade’s over four inches,” says a well-groomed traveler, staring forward. “But don’t you worry, citizen. They’re only searching for indexed books these days.”
Indexed books, the terminology catches me off guard. “Indexed? What does that mean? Cataloging?”
“Indexed means banned or challenged. It’s illegal to own and read certain controversial books, and it’s also against the law to talk about them in public. As I understand, possession is a crime, discussion a misdemeanor.”
“So which books are indexed?”
“No idea. The list’s growing by the day.”
When I get home it’s a dark moonless night. I take Ezra Pound, Orwell and Harper Lee in the backyard and burn them.
Boy, did I just dodge a bullet!
First published in Friday Flash Fiction on September 19, 2025.
Old Bed from the Old Country
The antique-furniture dealer tells me the bed was manufactured in France during the second half of the 18th Century and even Louis XVI himself slept in it.
I sez, “It’s a nice enough bed but kinda short.”
He sez, “People that time were much smaller in stature because there was not enough meat to go around.”
I sez, “Yes, but only the vassal serfs were reduced to live on bread alone. The royals possessed humongous wealth, they could easily afford high protein diet, like venison and catfish. As a result, the kings and princes, they must have been fairly tall.”
He sez, “Maybe the Louis guy slept in fetal position, pulling his body into a ball.”
I sez, “That’s unlikely because kings that time had to wear heavy mantle robe, day and night.”
He sez, “Okay, what if he started sleeping in this bed after the incident? You know, the beheading.”
Well, so far as explanations go this last one sounds up to snuff, so I make out a check to the tune of $3,200.
Editor’s Choice in Friday Flash Fiction, September 12, 2025.
Supremacy
Ever since childhood they’d called me Champion. In school, at work, in the gym, just about everybody would greet me as Champion. (Even our mood-disordered vicar, who wouldn't call anybody by first name or nickname even if his life depended on it, brought himself to address me Mr. Champion once or twice.)
Frankly, the only rationale for this exaggerated cognomen was that while the other centipedes had one hundred legs, I sported one hundred and one. This relatively small advantage was enough to catapult me into living legend, and the moniker clung like an Olympic gold or a Novel Prize.
My personality cult flourished in every possible aspect of public life. I couldn’t order an expensive meal in a posh restaurant without affluent centipedes present offering to foot the bill. Getting ticket to sold-out ball games would only be a phone call away. My reputation for being exceptional was aided by my taciturn approach to others, which the public took for modesty. I would be interviewed on TV regularly on social and political issues, of which I knew nothing about, but announcing “We shall soon see, just you mark my words” would be quoted in every major paper the following day.
Life was going swimmingly until a youngster, recent Harvard or Columbia graduate, discovered that my 101st leg was only a dry grass blade attached to my ass.
Blimey! You send them away to college to pick up culture or learn a useful profession, and they come back as foul-mouthed radical subversives hell bent on upsetting the apple cart.
First published in Dissident Voice, August 22, 2025.