Aside from trying to get Bruce Willis on the phone, I wasn’t sure what that meant. Prepare for invasion by a vastly superior technological power we know nothing about?
There’s only three kinds of mass casualty event I can think of: War, Disease, Natural Disaster.
I’m in no position to stockpile nuclear weapons myself, but I’m doing my bit. I’ve voted for the biggest warmonger on the ballot, refused all vaccinations and I’m leaving my gas guzzler idling in school zones.
If those aliens come, we’ll be ready for them.
If they find us clad in lycra, they might just retreat in terror.
You can’t stop them with your thoughts. I know that. I’m not just some dumb kid, I’m nearly seven.
You can’t stop them with prayers either, but in case he’s listening. In case he can hear me over the bangs and the screams. Are you there, God? It’s me, Maggie.
You can’t ban them. The man on TV says so. Only the bad actors then. Not the good ones like in the Barbie Movie. Mom said I was too young but I saw it at Harper’s sleepover.
Miss Soto will stop them though. She’s really nice. Everyone listens to her.
Extroduction
I’m sorry, America. There’s a lot I don’t understand about your country but this one is top of the list. I remember Dunblane. I was 14 years old. I remember the news reports and the songs and the appeals and the endless photos of flowers and teddy bears lining the streets of a small town in Scotland. It was the deadliest mass shooting in UK history, and within a year, laws had been passed to make it harder to own a gun, in a country which already had decent gun control. In other countries, a single school shooting has been enough to make international headlines and new laws. American school shootings don’t even necessarily take the top spot on national news. Stats vary widely, but even the lowest estimate I could find was 8 school shootings in the US this year (the highest was 143, just over one every 2 days).
So, Rochelle’s nice picture of guitars, reminded me of the video below. It’s over a year old, and it may say something that I don’t know whether or which school shooting it refers to. Please watch it.
Some more notes, specifically about heroes:
Harper in my story was named for Harper Moyski who died in Minneapolis last month. She was 10. The boy who died with her was 8, and the youngest victim taken to hospital was 6 years old. One of the heroes of that story was a little boy called Victor who was shot while lying on his friend, Weston, trying to protect him. Weston was unharmed; Victor was taken to hospital and survived.
Miss Soto is Victoria Leigh Soto, a Sandy Hook teacher who died protecting her class. Twenty 6 and 7 year olds died in that event, together with six teachers.
We called Dunblane a ‘massacre’. The government was given little choice but to enact reform (even against high profile resistance from, among others, the Royal family). In the USA, they seem to call these things Tuesday.
“They don’t know the half of it,” he opines, throwing a copy of today’s paper on the bar. “These reporters think they’re so clever but their sources are just tea ladies selling titbits for pennies.” He goes on, talking to nobody and everybody. He’s important, at least in his own mind; people will listen.
I don’t want to, of course. He’s handsome and arrogant and almost certainly an ass. But he’s spilling words like overfilled beers. If I make him feel I can’t get enough of him and his words and his self-confidence, he might drop something for tomorrow’s column.
Extroduction
By the way, genre for this one could be quite different depending whether you’ve just watched a Netflix / Hallmark Christmas movie (I started wrapping yesterday), or a political drama like Impeached: An American Crime Story, which is a weekly treat for me. 😉
Thank you to Rochelle Wisoff Fields for this photo. All characters are imagined; no real people are referred to here. I don’t know what you are talking about.
Today At Noon
Olivia glanced at the man across the table. Studio lights glistened off his forehead, but he wasn’t sweating. So many of her guests, even the seasoned ones, felt the pressure to perform, live, answering her questions before millions.
He smiled a serpent smile; she could almost see the tongue-flick, hear the hiss.
Sweat beaded on her brow. Not from nerves or anticipation, but revulsion. She was a professional, and prided herself on balanced reporting… on showing both sides of every debate. But his wasn’t a side she could stomach.
I haven’t really got time to join in F this week, but I’ve been away a couple of weeks and I miss it, so here’s my (slightly rushed) response to the prompt. I would love your feedback and I will make sure I get to a few other stories over the course of the week.
Thanks to Roger Bultot for the picture. If you’re wondering how it links to the photo, the fear that many of the stories would prominently feature the door thing in the centre as a tardis or portal sent me spinning off into a daydream about reading the same old thing over and over again, which in turn led me onto a political path about history repeating itself as the UK government prepares to plunge into yet another military intervention of questionable merit, which all led me to Chrissie, and her mother, and eventually Simon. I’m not looking for political discourse; I’m just giving you the short version of what Roger’s intriguing photo has to do with this story.
I am aware that the title and the use of this word in the story could upset some people. I hope you will read to the end for Chrissie’s (and therefore the author’s) justification for its use.
Retards
“Oh pur-lease,” sighed Chrissie.
“What?”
“That,” My daughter indicated something on her phone and I pondered the return of single word + pointing. Thirteen years ago, I was desperate for her to speak in sentences and she did. Until recently. “Retards.”
“Chrissie!” I warned, relieved that her brother was upstairs.
“Proper ones, Mum. No condition, no excuse, just idiots.”
“I’d still rather you didn’t use that word.”
She saw my glance at the ceiling. “Simon’s not a retard, Mum. His brain didn’t develop like theirs and he’s still smarter. They should be pleased to be compared to my big brother.”
elmowrites 