The inspiration for this piece of flash came as my fifteen year-old daughter was showing me a You-tube video on why people over twenty-five shouldn’t be on Facebook. I know it was meant to be funny, but really it wasn’t. At all. It did however make me hyper-aware of how people are viewed in this modern day “brave new world”.
the journal.
This is John’s journal. It begins when he is fourteen
and ends when he is forty. Yes, the dates are right; I intentionally made it in
the very near future.
May 1, 2019
Took
my mother to the morgue today. She bitched the entire time. It got annoying,
especially at the end, when she grabbed onto my arm and looked at me like she
knew what she was saying, like she thought she was still, I don’t know; a
person. But that couldn’t have been true,
so I took her hands off me when they came to take her away.
-John
February 1, 2029
John
Jr. wanted to go to the zoo today, but it was too damn cold out. We took him to
the taxidermy section of the museum instead. Little kid didn’t even know the
difference. Am I smart, or what?
-John
May
1, 2039
They
let me go at work today. Just gave my job away. They even had the balls to ask
me to stay a week; show that pimply faced asshole who’s replacing me how to do
my job. Like he can learn all I have to do in a week, anyhow. I told them to
eat shit and die. No, I didn’t, but I should have. That’s what I’ll tell them
next week when I’m done, though.
-John
March
10, 2045
John
Jr. is coming for me today. I told him he’s wrong. I told him I’m the same man
I always was; I still feel. I still
love. I’m still me. He just smiles and nods, the same way I smiled and nodded
at my mother, not believing a word she said, hoping she’d just be quiet and
make it easy on me. She didn’t. Her cries still haunt me, especially now, when
I know she was right. I won’t do that to my son. I will go quietly. That way
when his time comes he won’t have to know how terrible it is.
-John
Wow, that is sad and disturbing. What on earth have people been posting on Facebook anyway?
ReplyDeleteWhat comes around goes around.
ReplyDeleteVery creative and horrifying.
ReplyDeleteWhoa....
ReplyDeleteAt least I never had to do that, but I did have to watch my parents die with cancer. Not fun either way.
The voice is so raw and hints at bitterness in a man's life that we don't get to see. There is horror and sadness in this story, and you gracefully showed us about the tragedy of what appears to be an underlived life.
ReplyDelete