Sunday, July 28, 2019

Flash Fiction Friday, Week 31 - It's Gonna Be A Really Bad Day


The prompt this week was heat – lots of it. Heat in a random location, with a random object. We were given six choices of location and six choices of things.

Location:                                                                           Thing: 

Awards dinner                                                                    Press-on nails
Dark lake                                                                           Onion rings
Car wash                                                                            Remote controlled drone
Parking garage                                                                   Box of animal crackers
Village plaza                                                                      Plastic fork
Quiet suburb                                                                      Folded sheet of paper


I rolled a 3 and a 4, which was a location of car wash, and my thing was a box of animal crackers. What a combo! I decided to have fun with these, and I hope my little tale makes you smile too.

It’s Gonna Be A Really Bad Day

Of all the days for aliens to pick to invade and deep fry Earth, why the hell did they have to pick today? Saturdays are my day to catch up on all the household type nonsense I put off during the week. Since the wife ran away with the mailman – I know, it’s the classic stand-up comic’s line – I was left with this five-story house and credit card bills. The house was always more than we could handle financially, and those credit accounts in my name that she maxed out just add insult to injury. I wonder if these tentacled space goons have incinerated my house yet. Surely those blood-suckers at the bank wouldn’t expect me to finish paying off my mortgage, would they?

Currently, I’m solely responsible for all of it. I do the cooking, the dishes, the laundry, the shopping, the vacuuming… I don’t want you to think I expected my wife to do everything on her own. I helped her with the housework when I got home from my job and on my days off. I believe that marriage is a partnership; although, my scrubbing the kitchen floor while she was linking up in the sack with our mail carrier is not exactly what I had in mind when I described our relationship at a 50-50 level.

Work is a nightmare, with all the young studs climbing over close-to-retirement me on their way to the executive suites, and for the reasons I’ve listed, home’s no picnic either. The time I most look forward to each and every week is the 15 minutes or so I spend here at the car wash. I can sit back and relax while my car is pulled through on the track and chow down on my favorite snack of animal crackers. Weird? Maybe, but spending those few minutes with the water sloshing all around and the zero taste of tiny tigers and giraffes bring back memories of a happy childhood. Now, these bug-eyed bastards from outer space have ruined it. Why do these kinds of things always happen to me?

I can hear people screaming outside, and buildings exploding. Their heat rays are sure doing the trick, especially in here. The water’s so hot, it’s melting my windows. The contents of my box of animal crackers look like they just came out of the oven. As my SUV caught on the track and started moving inside, I saw the ships coming down closer and closer, and all of a sudden, streams of what looked like liquid fire began raining down. The hits seemed random though; it appeared as if they deliberately chose not to wipe everyone out in one swoop. They’re probably planning to use survivors as lunch meat on their sandwiches for the trip home. Then again, perhaps, this will become their new home, and those same survivors would be lined up as the entrees in some grand buffet.

Who knows where they came from or why they came here. In the overall scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter much. Obviously, we have no defense available against them, so why fret about it. I’m going to continue to enjoy my animal crackers that are pretty hot right now, and wait out the melt. I have to admit that in these last moments, I’m going to try to find some comfort by imagining my ex and her mailbag-toting boy-toy ending up as hors d’oeuvres.

2 comments:

  1. What a great story. I feel so sorry for him - his life really sucks. And keeps getting worse. But, he is determined to enjoy the last few moments as much as possible.

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    1. Thanks, Mike. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I chuckled while I was writing it. His life really does suck, but perhaps at the end, he can enjoy the last laugh!

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