flash fiction
I am submitting the following story as part of my entry to LEO Weekly Booksmart Challenge, but I figured I would share it with you guys. Let me know what you think. It is flash fiction (the criteria was fiction or poetry under 325 words) and it is a parody, so please don't take it literally and get all defensive (or accusatory).
12 Step Bourbon
Thomas Abrams scans the room timidly. Coffee pots brew to the left, a cigarette circle to the right, and a pint of Jim Beam sits on every other chair. A fifth of Kahlua stands beside the percolator as a mix-in salvation for coffee. Thomas’s eyes nervously pan back across the room suspicious of the smiling faces. He wonders, despite his theocratic urges, if he should pour himself a drink.
He hadn’t seen the signs. His mother, a devout catholic, and his father, more of a social Christian-holidays and baptisms-both increased his risk factor. Jesus, even Buddhism is considered a religion anymore--call it a philosophy, or belief system, or gateway religion, but it always leads to harder spirituality.
Thomas was here because his own religion had alienated him from his personal and professional life. He worshiped daily without consideration for his secular expectations. Thomas could not even eat without praying. He was caught, eventually, praying in public, a “Class B” misdemeanor, for which he now is serving a requirement of his sentence.
Sitting in a folding metal chair at Religions Anonymous Local #776, Thomas reads over a pamphlet on his new path. It states that there is something tangible, more powerful than he, something that could make him realize and come to terms with his normal defects, that he does not have to harm others for his existential beliefs, nor alienate, but they could lead him, with the right alcohol and mixer, to a more meditative, compassionate, true understanding of the world and his life. He shrugs his eyebrows, imagining what he could learn from a hangover.
Thomas leans forward in his seat, head down, resists the urge to pray, but thinks of Jesus turning water into wine. He inhales a cup of coffee to chase his first shot. His path begins; he takes another. Ten more to salvation.
12 Step Bourbon
Thomas Abrams scans the room timidly. Coffee pots brew to the left, a cigarette circle to the right, and a pint of Jim Beam sits on every other chair. A fifth of Kahlua stands beside the percolator as a mix-in salvation for coffee. Thomas’s eyes nervously pan back across the room suspicious of the smiling faces. He wonders, despite his theocratic urges, if he should pour himself a drink.
He hadn’t seen the signs. His mother, a devout catholic, and his father, more of a social Christian-holidays and baptisms-both increased his risk factor. Jesus, even Buddhism is considered a religion anymore--call it a philosophy, or belief system, or gateway religion, but it always leads to harder spirituality.
Thomas was here because his own religion had alienated him from his personal and professional life. He worshiped daily without consideration for his secular expectations. Thomas could not even eat without praying. He was caught, eventually, praying in public, a “Class B” misdemeanor, for which he now is serving a requirement of his sentence.
Sitting in a folding metal chair at Religions Anonymous Local #776, Thomas reads over a pamphlet on his new path. It states that there is something tangible, more powerful than he, something that could make him realize and come to terms with his normal defects, that he does not have to harm others for his existential beliefs, nor alienate, but they could lead him, with the right alcohol and mixer, to a more meditative, compassionate, true understanding of the world and his life. He shrugs his eyebrows, imagining what he could learn from a hangover.
Thomas leans forward in his seat, head down, resists the urge to pray, but thinks of Jesus turning water into wine. He inhales a cup of coffee to chase his first shot. His path begins; he takes another. Ten more to salvation.