Oct
Something Happened on the Way to Heaven
By Clarksville’s Last
Steven didn’t have time to take the Santa costume off; he didn’t want to stick around and find out if the woman’s husband was really trained to fire an M-1 rifle.
“May I see your ticket sir?” the attendant said.
She’s too hot to be working a job like this, he thought to himself.
“Hold on, I left it in my carry on.”
Steven pushed her aside—relishing the feel of her breasts slamming against the thick felt of his costume—and tried to see if there were another place he could sit until the train reached Gran Cielo.
He finally peeled out of the costume and felt for the lump in the right pocket. Still there. Now the little brat couldn’t squeal on him; if he could get another Santa gig in another mall, he could make the alimony payment in time.
His heart stopped when he saw the cigar-shaped object in the sky. He knew it was almost Christmas, but heaven didn’t need its own decorations. His dad once told him about this area of the New Mexico desert and how prone it was to sightings such as this. Even more, he remembered the way he described the object: flat, elongated, and the same shade of sea green that hovered in the sky before him.
Steven felt around in the costume and tried to pull the camera the little boy used to blow his holiday cover. He pushed down the candy cane red rage down; the kid had no proof, and therefore couldn’t tell the kids in the only school in town that Santa was not only fake but the mechanic who lost his job after he punched a costumer in the face.
Not my fault I caught him at my house, checking my wife’s undercarriage.
But he steeled himself; he remembered that one rag that was always looking for UFO sightings to publish. They’d probably give him an extra hundred because he could send them a picture too!
“He’s in here somewhere! I saw him go this way!”
The knob of the camera caught on a loose string in his pocket and Steven could see the conductor making his way to him. He let out a pathetic cry as the object in the sky began to fade from sight.
He threw the costume out of the window and sat down. It was too late now to catch the UFO. But he sighed in relief.
I can always come back here again. This place is pretty generous with UFOs.
The conductor yanked Steven up.
“The attendant says you’re the Santa that doesn’t have a ticket!”
“She’s lying! I’ve never seen her before in my life! What makes you think I’m the man you’re looking for?!”
“Probably the Santa hat on your head,” the conductor said as security slapped handcuffs on his wrists.
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Tiffany V
I integrate Transformative Language Arts into any work I do, and I work with people all over the world, but I can't tell you who they are, due to NDAs! I was once told, “you exude art.” So, I decided to spend the rest of my life helping other like-minded individuals get to do the same. Let’s do something magical together!
We find ourselves aboard a dicey, quick paced, action adventure, unraveling disguised thriller with personal history flashes of an unsavory male character both offending passengers and falsifying his work purpose. The unseemly Santa complete with camera investigations of a UFO siting gives us a capture on digital and himself on train of an incompetent spy mission.
The Santa character did not win my sympathy, the sentence structures and syntax were confusing at first read, but I was intrigued by the storyline enough to want to read the more complete story surrounding this flash fiction piece.
I can visualize every scene: the mark of a true writer!
How sad – Santa gone bad!!! But still a UFO thrown in does make for an interesting train ride. Nice writing.