"Compromise" - A Bizarro Flash Fiction Tale

Photo by Ярослав Гринько on Unsplash

I don't think anyone's ever going to publish the following story—it's intentionally nonsensical. But it was a joy to write; I don't think my pen left the page during the first draft (metaphorically speaking; I type my stories).

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Compromise

On Tuesday afternoon, Bernice stomped a cockroach on the living room floor. Right before she brought her shoe down, she heard a tiny voice scream, No!

Squish. Too late. Bernice froze.

Had she, in fact, killed a cockroach? Or had her eyes deceived her? Lifting her shoe, she looked again and shuddered. What she had taken for a cockroach was a tiny man in a brown trench coat.

Entrails spewed from his crushed body. A smear of red blood had squirted from his skull like a squeezed ketchup packet. He was definitely dead.

“Oh, shit,” said Bernice. “I didn't mean it!”

Nobody answered. The man was too dead, and Bernice was otherwise alone in her condo.

What had a tiny man in a trench coat been doing on her living room floor, anyway? Was he some kind of tiny pervert?

While she pondered this, more tiny people swarmed her condo, streaming in underneath door cracks and through air grilles. Apparently, she hadn't been as alone as she thought. She wondered how long all these people had been in her home, and if they were why the water bill was so high.

All the tiny people wore identical brown trench coats. It was an army of tiny perverts, male and female, young and old. They circled their fallen brother, wailing and tearing their clothes until the coats looked like sackcloth.

One of the tiny people wore a powdered wig and waved a gavel with great force.

Court is in session, he sneered. What do you plead?

“Not guilty,” Bernice said, burning with guilt. She lit a cigarette so that it would burn instead.

Order! Order! shouted the tiny pervert judge, coughing. Then he was coughing too hard to speak anymore. The tiny people choked on the cigarette smoke.

They all fell over, dead. Bernice was a mass murderer. Plus, her cigarette was finished.

“Fuck, now I’m horny,” Bernice said. She always had sex after smoking.

The original tiny pervert stood and flipped open his trench coat, showcasing his tiny, crushed, yet fully erect penis. His testicles were shaved and looked like tiny cueballs. His guts pooled underneath him.

“I thought you were dead,” said Bernice.

He shrugged. He grabbed the base of his penis and swung it around in a helicopter motion, waggling his eyebrows.

You wanna take it for a ride? he asked.

Bernice considered. “Are the rest of you alive too?”

As one, all the dead tiny perverts stood and opened their trench coats.

“Come on, then,” said Bernice, and led them into the bedroom.

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