- Richard
- Lizzie
- Tom
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LIZZIE
The photo was on the table, silent. Undeniable proof.
Nah, it’s fake, someone said.
And yet, it was there, a loud accusation to all those denying it.
No one touched the photo, but everyone looked at it.
They knew it had been taken there, in that sunny apartment, but where exactly?
It’s clean. Nothing. No blood, no footprints, no fingerprints. Leave.
Nothing they could do. And they left.
Years later, breaking down a wall, there she was. There she was… 5 years old and definitely not a fake.
The photo got lost in a mysterious flood in the archive room.
RICHARD
Have a nice day
Every day, I get up, shower, have breakfast and leave for work, where I put on my fake plastic smile, take a deep breath and start the day.
I hate my job, can’t stand my colleagues, and the customers make me borderline suicidal.
The hours are long, the pay is rubbish and job satisfaction is non-existent… But, that fake smile stays fixed in place throughout every transaction, every interaction, every minute of the day.
I turn to the next customer, ramp up the fake smile to a cheerful beam and say my line…
“Welcome, to the happiest place on earth!”
SERENDIPIDY
My husband looked at me aghast.
“What? Seriously… Every time?”
I smirked, “Yes honeybun, every single one was fake. You’ve never been able to satisfy me in that way, and you never will.”
He looked confused, eyes glancing at the chains securing him firmly to the Saint Andrew’s cross, to which I’d bound him tightly.
I answered his unasked question: “No, sweetiepie, none of this is intended to achieve what you have always failed to do, but it is nevertheless, going to bring me a great deal of pleasure!”
I picked up the scalpel, advancing slowly towards his exposed manhood.
TOM
Oh No, Not Again
If I hear the word fake used in casual conversation one more time, I’m going to drive this here number two pencil through their brain. I know the odds I will hit actual functioning gray matter is pretty slim. At least I’ve a chance to diverting the river of verbal chub. I don’t really care if their selected bubbled echo sphere has feeling checked it till it bloods red white and blue. What I want to is a chain of provable facts that led to the postulation being presented. What I want is a discourse of words that haven’t been weaponized.
NORVAL JOE
Billbert hoped his mother would show up soon. Hoping to avoid the subject of how he and Linoliumanda got home from the dance, he asked, “Is that a real Farrari?”
Marrissa rolled her eyes. “No. It’s a fake. I saw you and that funny girl fly away from the school. How do you do that?”
A car with a single headlight turned onto the street. It could be his mother. Billbert said, “We weren’t really flying. That was all fake, you know, done with wires and mirrors.”
“I’m smarter than you think, Billbert,” Marrissa said. “You can’t fake me out.”
TURA
Fake
———
The British Royal Family is going to the dogs. Some look back to Queen Victoria, but really, all she did was sit in the chair too long. She was peak empire and everyone knew it. Lizzie the First started it and it was clogs to clogs in three hundred years. And before her you had the Tudors and Plantagenets smashing the place up like children. Fake monarchy, and a fake aristocracy. These days, you get a peerage for slipping a few bob in the right places. You’re not a real aristocrat unless your family came over in the Norman Conquest.
PLANET Z
Truth is, none of this is real.
I’m not real. You’re not real.
It’s all an illusion.
It’s all in your head.
Or maybe, it’s all in my head.
I have no idea. And neither do you.
There’s no way to prove anything.
So, we just have to agree to deal with each other like this.
Even though neither of us, none of this, is real.
What is real?
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Maybe I never knew what was real.
So, how do I know this isn’t real?
How you and me and all of this isn’t real?