flash fiction

Orphans

by

I’ve been going through some of my old poems and converting to flash fiction. Here is the original poem:

We had faith in the soothsayer’s poison.
We knew how to sacrifice our sons and daughters
to secure the future of our race. We chant broken prayers
through the night, only madmen dream.

I kneel and hope to find you in the ruins and decay.
My memories of you fade–how you smothered me
with your shame, lulled me to sleep with your ambition.

You were my friend, my purple-haired, monstrous wild child,
a lonely girl with a sad tale, impossible eyes, and hard to ignore.
We were orphans, engaged to each other, separated by fate.

I decided to expand it into a flash fiction piece with a cyberpunk flare. I was thinking cyberpunk needs a rebirth, especially now that we are living in the future that the original cyberpunk writers wrote about. I asked the question: Are we living in the future that cyberpunk warned us about?

Here is the poem in flash fiction form.

We had faith in the soothsayer’s poison, a belief coded deep into our neural implants. It wasn’t the kind of faith you found in temples or altars; no, this was different. It was raw, metallic—an algorithm that pulsed through our veins, a digital religion wrapped in ancient whispers. We knew the cost of our obedience, how to sacrifice our sons and daughters, not in flesh but in code. Upload their consciousness to the Grid to preserve the future of our race, cold and calculating, ensuring we would live on in the endless streams of data.

The city pulsed with neon veins as we chanted broken prayers into the void, hacking the dark corners of cyberspace. These prayers weren’t to any deity but to the remnants of old systems, the ghosts of lost servers, the AI gods long abandoned. Only the madmen dream anymore—those willing to drift in the liminal space between the real and the virtual. I am one of them, kneeling amidst the wreckage of a forgotten data farm, hoping to find you in the ruins, in the decay, in the dead pixels flickering across the skyline.

I close my eyes and try to reconstruct you from memory—your face a distant, corrupted file. The way you smothered me with your shame, a relentless torrent of emotional malware, your ambition infecting everything in its path. You lulled me into sleep cycles filled with synthetic dreams, ones where your voice was the only constant, a glitching loop that whispered of things I couldn’t understand but felt deep in my core.

You were my friend, once. My purple-haired, monstrous wild child, a misfit in a world that demanded conformity. You hacked your way through life with impossible eyes—eyes that saw beyond the gridlines of reality, into the soft code that bound us all. I still remember the first time you found me, lost in a back-alley VR club, disoriented and terrified. You smiled that crooked smile and pulled me from the void, made me feel like we could rewrite the script of our existence.

We were orphans, you and I, not in the literal sense, but in the way the system had abandoned us. We grew up in the shadow of megacorps and digital overlords, knowing full well that no one was coming to save us. Engaged to each other, bonded by the absurdity of it all, promising ourselves to a future that never arrived. Fate had a way of severing those kinds of connections—ripping the code apart, leaving us to drift in separate streams of consciousness, locked in different nodes of the network.

I think of you sometimes, in the quiet moments between hacking jobs, when the city sleeps and the hum of the machines dulls to a soft lullaby. I wonder where you are now. Did you escape the Grid? Or did you become another ghost in the machine, another lost soul wandering the endless expanse of cyberspace?

I kneel here, in the ruins, searching for traces of you in the decaying code, hoping that somewhere, somehow, you’re still out there, waiting for me to find you. But my memories fade, like corrupted data on a failing drive. I wonder if, when I find you, you’ll recognise me, or if we’ll be nothing more than echoes of who we once were—faded, fragmented, lost to the system.

The future we sacrificed for never came, did it? All that remains are these broken prayers, these decaying bits of what once was, and the ever-present hum of a world that no longer cares. We had faith once, but now, only the madmen dream.

when ignorance is wise

by

By changing the chemical and electrical activity in their large brains, they argued that as a species, they had fallen victim to evolutionary success.

Others worried.

They worried that besides the relentless pursuit of pleasure, they had forged sad habits and an ethos that would lead to a good life. The insiders were suspicious of such talk. It didn’t suit their brand of morality. It was a deeply unscientific way of thinking perpetuated by guru philosophers and techno shamans.

“Take the pills”, they insisted. The message is easier to spread if you take the pills like they did in the old days. The world transformed. Happiness was inverted. Re-insert the matrix back into the brain. They chose happiness over enlightenment. Knowledge veiled in ignorance is comfortable. False beliefs and bad practices make them happier.

The happiness machine was a brilliant invention. Ignorance retained its appeal. It sustains happiness, however shallow and unstable. Wise ignorance is the key to understanding.

Then he understood.

She would go for long walks through the fields with her Portuguese girlfriend. Sometimes their conversations went round and round pointlessly. Why don’t we just go to bed together, she caught herself thinking.

Her Portuguese friend said, “I used to believe in the Conservatives. I held out hope for traditional values to return.”

“What do you believe now?”

“These days,” her Portuguese friend said, “I side with the Anarchists waiting for the world to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.”

She found herself thinking, I wish she would collapse into bed with me.

He watched them circle the field three times.

How much absurdity does it take before one gets to bed?

One evening they walked through a rough neighborhood. There were shadows in odd places. They had been warned to avoid this sort of area. Rival gangs were on the prowl. Ethnic groups disliked each other. These two didn’t fit in.

“Should we turn back?”

Her Portuguese girlfriend didn’t think it was a good idea to turn back. “You can’t force fix things. Using force to fix things never works as intended. You have to guide it. Let things take their natural course.”

“Guide it?”

“Yes. Let it flow into the absoluteness of emptiness. Embrace the chaos of limitlessness.”

“Let’s flip a coin instead. Heads you kiss me. Tails we go on pretending like there’s nothing between us.”

When morning came, she woke from a strange dream about stealing a peach from an orange tree grove keeper. When fully wake she found herself on a filthy mattress on the floor. Her Portuguese friend was not beside her and she did not feel like she had been touched. She felt possessed by a memory of something that might change her.

Through her aches and pains, she remembered a conversation with her Portuguese girlfriend about the maltreatment of women and why men go off to war. There is satisfaction in pain and humiliation she remembered arguing. But does it really offer meaning? Purification, release, relief, like masturbation perhaps? But meaning? Goodness knows.

When she returned home, she found him sitting at his desk, typing on his laptop. She kissed the top of his head, then went and took a shower.

even monsters need to eat – reissue

by

Everybody keeps going on about returning back to normal as if we could carry on living our lives the same way before the pandemic struck. I don’t want to find my way back to normal. I was already tired of the ‘image is everything’ culture we’d been sold through the foul mouths of marketers who are little more than piranhas praying on people’s frail egos and desperate need to be “liked” by people they don’t even know or care about.

I hope the world does collapse. It was shit anyway being under so much pressure , forced to earn a living selling false hope to be people who were blind and deaf to their own demise. Don’t hate me too much, even monsters and sharks need to eat. It’s not my fault we live in a world that rewards monsters like me for selling shit to people they don’t need.

You’re partly to blame for my grotesque behaviour. You patted me on the back for hard work. For success. For owning lots of fancy things. Now you look at me like I’m disgusting. All I’m doing is playing by the rules you laid down. What are you complaining about? You’re the real jackal.

That’s why I’ve stopped being friendly about it. I figured, If people are naive enough to give money to a voice on the phone, then fuck them. You have to have money to give money. If they want to give their money to me, who am I to complain?

I should warn you. If you’re the whining little moralistic type here to save my soul, don’t bother. I stopped believing in that fairy tale a long time ago. I broke through the barrier of mis-belief. I learnt to see the truth which is greater than any truth bound in rules and laws designed to deceive the weak and protect the strong. And the truth is this: the real world is soulless and automatic made palatable by the media you consume.

While I’m not brain dead, what remains of my mind is splintered and shackled through shards of black glass.

They’re coming for me now. I can feel the shock of their distant wings bearing down on me vibrating my skull with their shrieks. I feel something between hope and fear as I wait for them to descend upon me.

I want to be consumed. Sacrificed. Let them eat my organs. Let the earthworms rule my brain.

Let them go ahead and curse me. Rip my face off. I’ll always be a rebel. I have no time for conformity. In the Middle Ages the churches tried to eliminate madness in order to establish order and control. They needed to burn heretics like me. It was the only way they could maintain their grip on the hearts and minds of normal people.

These days the Church has lost its grip so, instead, they turned to reason to establish control. Changed heretics to lunatics like me who threaten the system. Social misfits they called us. Rounded us up like swine, consigned us to prisons, asylums, workhouses, fast food restaurants and school. The prisons and asylums are the worst. They are the pillars of order. If you refuse to act like everyone else, they throw you in prison. If you refuse to think like everyone else, they throw you in an asylum.

Orwell tried to warn us. But we let it happen anyway. Take a look around you right now. Look at all the spying devices you have in your home – the laptop, your mobile phone, the webcam, the digital camera, location apps, and GPS’s. Alexa, Siri, and Google are watching and listening to everything you do and say. Amazon tracks everywhere you’ve been on the Internet. Have you ever wondered how they can do same-day delivery? They know what you’re going to do before you do? The trucks are already loaded with the contents of your next order even though you haven’t even placed your order yet.

Which brings me to this: reason must subjugate non-reason.

It’s how they maintain order and control these days. I know they’re on to me. I know they’re monitoring this transmission from you. They know I know they know. It’s only a matter of time before they round me up. They have their choice with me because I neither behave like I’m supposed to behave nor think what I’m supposed to think.

I hope I see you on the inside too. Even though we’ll be locked up, we’ll both be free.

Take Another Happy Pill

by

I had to come down off the crest of the hill. It was getting dark and the hounds would soon be released. The speckled purple shadows behind me lengthened.

A dog howls, it’s not dark yet. I lengthen my stride.

I could hear my brother now, he would be talking about tanks and how their treads tear up the European mud in the Fall. The boy is obsessed with mud. I’ve known him to strip totally naked and go lie down in a mud puddle for hours.

More grainy pictures flood my mind.

I remember there was a gun, small caliber. We didn’t dare talk about it. My sister captured every five minutes of my panic. I was wearing dark blue pajamas and hopping around on one foot.

If you get caught…

All eyes on me, the faces peer from the shadows, leaning in to get a closer look, I notice faces from my past. Uncle Pete, who raced swan boats on the Boston Common. My cousin Sibyl, who, wanting to know what it was like to a kiss a boy, kissed me instead, pretending she was teaching me how to kiss a girl. My aunt Faith used to masturbate to Christian Rock. All you could hear from her room was Jesus, oh God, Jesus.

She sat with someone else on the carousel that night. I wanted to ask her about her red painted fingernails and the French beans she was so fond of eating when it rained, but the brass sprinklers caused a distraction, getting everybody wet. Your loss, I said. My gain, you pervert, she said back. I didn’t know what to do with that.

I stood up and went to the window. I’m only trying to help, I said.

Why don’t we have our last meal together? Forget all this talk about families and travels and girlfriends and pointed daggers. Your physical body soothes me. Eyes like Orange Crush, with hair too match.

A vague mist floats in. heads nod.

Every girl I’ve ever met became my tormentor. Over the years, I learned to bare their torment stoically, which led to orgasmic dreams, a small price to pay for middle-class privilege.

I should take another happy pill and forget about her.

One evening

by

They tell me pain can be interesting. But it has never been to my liking. She had a habit of shooting up with razor blades, said she liked the strange rush of fear how it melted the pain into a dirty kind of pleasure. I can’t tell if she is addicted to pain or simply just a weirdo. For some reason she was popular with the younger girls in the office, probably because of her exotic choice of hair colour.

Even now I can feel her drawing power from me. Pay no attention to me, I tend to whine at the slightest discomfort following my primitive impulses. I’ve got to take the power back. Rage Against the Machine told me that. She’s fondling her breasts now.

Listen to me talk to the world. I want you to think I’m oppressed. Can you follow what I mean? She wants pain. I want pleasure. There’s a discrepancy in the power dynamics of this relationship. Control. Loss of control. Control. Loss of control. Lose control. Never had control. No control. Accept my grief.

Are you crying for your mama? I can console you! Come, little darling, come to your good mama. I’ll sing you a lullaby. Everybody knows romantic love doesn’t concern love at all.

Large dark shapes move in and out of the corner of my eyes. They’ve been exposed to the outside world, had fear planted in them. I want to say that I’m scared, but there’s no time for that. I have to perform without bloodshed.

I’d sleep with you any day.

I’m too nervous to respond. I’ve lost her. I don’t stop, but move more slowly. Now i’m unconscious, a machine, resting against her shoulder.

She leaves me there etherised upon the mattress.