Trace of Work
A Short Story
This is a short story written for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme. This cycle, the theme was “work”.
The following narrative is graphic and violent.
After giving it some thought, Kzahyosz finally looked at the thermos-sized canister and made her decision. It could no longer be her blind spot in the corner, the insisted-upon denial of seeing. It was time to take some responsibility and dispose of it.
Reader, it was an atomic bomb Kzahyosz had just sitting there, on her white Ikea shelves, in the corner of the bedroom, like an urn of a dead aunt.
She didn’t mean to have it, she didn’t make it herself, she didn’t want it. It was handed to her a few months ago by Kzahyosz’s dumbfuck brother Khyzair, one night after hanging out with those idiot Chums of Chimera, a local group of teenage vigilantes Khyzair got himself involved with.
This is how stupid the Chums of Chimera were: they pronounced both ch- words with the hard k of ‘chimera.’
But stupid as they may be, it didn’t prevent them from somehow tripping into the situation that landed their paws on an actual factual atomic weapon. An item Kzahyosz had been trying desperately to both hide and ignore.
She had no idea how to safely dispose of it. She didn’t want to contact any officials for fear of what consequences would descend upon her, her brother, everyone she knew. Which official could she contact anyway? She had no idea how to take it apart safely, or how to activate it. It had moving parts, but she refused to touch them.
So the best Kzahyosz could figure, would be to retrace the Chums of Chimera’s steps to where they found the damn thing in the first place.