fiction – Page 6 – DAVID V. MATTHEWS

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #45: Good Luck with That

Last week, a newbie named Hasker started trying to get us to unionize. He said we deserved a living wage, a voice in the company’s future, all that socialist crap. He got fired the next day—for incompetence, the company said. I’ll bet someone informed them before I could. Anyway, Hasker filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. Trump’s board. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy my promotion to department director by buying everyone drinks tonight at Wolves Gentlemen’s Club, that great reason for working your ass off. One lap dance would have cured Hasker for sure.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #44: Self-centered

I felt like posting this image, though it has nothing to do with the story.

My sister, who’s thirty-eight, thinks I’m jealous of her ’cause she’s never been married or had kids. She’s also never had sex, a fact she brags about as the organizer for her virgins’ group. “You don’t need to have sex to have a worthwhile life,” she says. Maybe, but having sex certainly helps. I think she’s too self-centered to get laid, frankly. And too judgmental—she called me a Nazi ’cause first I called ICE on the illegals next door, then I filmed the arrest and posted it.

Fuck her, so to speak. Everyone should see what happens to lawbreakers.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #43: Front-row Seats, Baby!

I’m the organizer for the local V-CARD group. I’m also a thirty-eight-year-old virgin, and I assure you, I lead a fulfilling life; I have friends and a great job and my theater subscription (front-row seats, baby!). Sure, I wish I had an intimate relationship sometimes, but you don’t need a sexual or romantic partner to feel worthwhile. I always tell that to my fellow Carders.

My sister, who’s thirty-five and lost her virginity at fourteen, told me “I wish I had your life, with no asshole ex-husbands or bratty kids.” Her exes are assholes, but her kids are actually individualistic.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #41: Virtually Legal

“You’re under arrest for possession of marijuana.”

“What? Come on, pot’s virtually legal.”

“That’s not the same as actually legal, now, is it?”

Another rich white boy, looking for cheap drugs in this neighborhood. I could tell he was rich due to his tie-dyed T-shirt—a little too new-looking, like straight from a boutique.

So I arrested him. Later, a couple scumbags almost beat him to death in the holding cell. That bummed me out a little, I’ll admit; I was still a rookie. But the law’s the law. And he’ll have a story to tell. Everyone needs a story.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #40: Nosmo King & the Filter Tips

In 1961, at college, I formed a band called Nosmo King & the Filter Tips. I’d come up with the name. I smoked like a chimney, but so did everyone else.

There were four members. I played drums. We did sloppy covers of rock-and-roll songs. (Everyone also drank like a fish.)

We never released a record or taped anything. Although we stunk, we should’ve documented our youthful exuberance.

We broke up in ’63, after graduating. We never played together again. This morning, our lead guitar player died from emphysema, making me the last surviving Tip. Somehow, I don’t feel lucky.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #39: Red Snoopy

Near downtown Pittsburgh’s annual furry convention (people who very much enjoy dressing up as anthropomorphic animals), a red Snoopy in a swashbuckler’s costume shouted “I love you, man!” as he approached me on the sidewalk.

I replied “My sixteen-year-old son got arrested for smoking pot yesterday, and I wouldn’t bail him out ’cause I thought a night in jail would teach him a lesson. He’s in the hospital now, ’cause his cellmates beat the shit out of him, apparently just for fun. Do you still love me, man?”

Snoopy leaned in for a hug. “Please, I prefer Scooby-Doo,” I said.

revised July 6, 2018

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #38: Geographical Inconvenience

Having found out their health insurance didn’t cover their twelve-year-old’s eventual male-to-female, gender-confirmation surgery, Randall and Grace Yates, who had always considered themselves loyal Americans, now wondered, as they sat in their kitchen, if they should move to Canada, whose government covered that medical procedure, though to differing degrees in each province, causing long waitlists and geographical inconvenience.

“But at least we’d have something to wait for,” Randall said.

“Why don’t we fight for that something here?” Grace said. She bit into her vegan, gluten-free chocolate brownie.

“And give up computer solitaire?”

Irony soothes. So does chocolate. Everyone needs soothing.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #37: Samuel Adams Utopia

The green 2009 Corolla hydroplaned at forty MPH on the crummy state highway, almost ramming into Mr. Pal’s black 2018 Escalade. As the Corolla swerved into the left lane, Mr. Pal thanked the god he worshipped, God. Later that night, in his living room, Mr. Pal sipped his Samuel Adams Utopia (at $199, the most expensive bottle of beer he’d ever bought) and wondered, ’cause life’s so short, maybe he shouldn’t waste it hating that Jew at work, Ms. Greenberg, ’cause she’d received that promotion and he hadn’t. Maybe she was better qualified. He could admit he had some limitations.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #36: An Irritating Irredentist

Due to life’s transitory nature, Ms. Greenberg attempted not to waste time hating anyone she knew; however, she did somewhat loathe her coworker, the ironically-surnamed (in her opinion) Mr. Pal, whom she considered an irritating irredentist, someone who had for the past several years contended in a quasi-facetious, quasi-condemnatory manner that she had usurped the office space he by all rights deserved due to his seniority, his having worked there for eight years and ten months, one month more than she, making her feel at first like an interloper, until she (shallowly?) realized his sartorial choices tended toward tight garishness.

Flash Fiction (a Hundred Words or Fewer) #35: Cynosure

Never missing a chance to use one of the myriad vocabulary words she still retained from studying for the GRE over two decades ago, Ms. Greenberg, in her latest blog entry, called herself “the cynosure of the survey department, the most well-regarded telephonic inquisitor, the doyenne of data discovery”—a passage her male supervisor, in the gourmet break room the next morning, told her he’d disapprovingly found “a little narcissistic,” making her wonder if she should launch the hashtag Cynosure, since Twitter fame can allegedly have a salubrious (if fleeting, though fleetingness still has its advantages) effect on one’s career.