Flash fiction by Jay Chesters
Take A Bite Of The Big Apple
A terrible roar shook the Earth to its molten middle. In the skyscraper’s timeless Art Deco facade, the improbably large dinosaur saw its mirrored reflection. An enemy!
Taking a bite out of the Big Apple’s iconic terraced crown, the behemoth sent a deadly rain of glass, steel, and bricks to the avenue below.
People from all walks of life found common ground in running, screaming, for their lives.
Wholly by coincidence, a conspiracy theorist convention was meeting across the street that day. Upon hearing the news, the conference organisers cancelled the informal breakout sessions. Drastic times called for similar measures; they convened an impromptu emergency panel discussion.
Debate raged like civil war between radical factions. Was it all an authoritarian government false flag power grab, or hallucinogenic fluoride in the tap water?
But on something they did agree, and so they flocked outside with one mind, intent on proving there was no danger.
The leviathan lizard’s attention turned to its prey.
“It’s a hologram, a cheap hoax!” said the overpaid keynote speaker to his acolytes.
The beast separated the speaker’s head from his body with one swift bite. The sickening crunch made any further debate redundant.
On the 31st floor, a menace of stone gargoyles roosted peacefully, their wings outstretched. For decades, they had guarded the building’s corners, sightlessly watching life come and go.
Under the unrelenting monstrous assault, their solemn watch ended with an inelegant swan dive to the street.
As an armoured convoy armed with anti-dinosaur bazookas rolled up 42nd Street, the cinema audience cheered in their seats.
“This is fantastic!” the director turned in his VIP recliner to the man slumped next to him. “When does any film ever get this reaction?”
The writer’s story was a hit, but to him the technicolour picture’s was drab grey. His salted buttermilk popcorn? Flavourless cardboard.
He was inconsolable; he should have known the director wouldn’t get it.
The writer had kissed his late wife at the skyscraper’s 71st-floor observatory on their first date. The building represented his love.
The dinosaur? His raging grief.
Jay Chesters is a Western Australian transplant with a penchant for the peculiar and blurring genres. They come from a long tradition of people who are, at best, today described generously as ‘eccentrics’. Lacking skills in swordfighting, horseback riding, or swordfighting on horseback, and finding few opportunities for getting fired out of cannons, Jay writes stories instead. Jay’s published books are The Cat Who Hated Bird and Year of the Bear. These tales share good company with those in two printed collections from Night Parrot Press and various stories published online. Collectively, Jay explores identity and connection, and the surprising beauty of the human experience. They acknowledge the unceded boodja of the Wadjak Noongar people on which they live and write.
