Since I’m stuck deep in the Post-holiday blues and am almost too tired from them to care, have a bit of flash fiction. If I’m still this down tomorrow, I promise I’ll post some poetry instead.

I wrote this piece a few years ago, while spending a summer working on a show being put on at my college. It was Les Miserables, and this piece was the result of a challenge from one of my coworkers, who took a rather antagonistic (but still appreciated) role in encouraging me to write. He wanted me to write something about someone with a cell phone in the French Revolution, so I obliged. I had a thing for flash fiction warm-ups that summer, so I did this while preparing to write that night and he loved it. I hope you enjoy it and that you’re avoiding any kind of holiday-related blues.

With a crack and flash, guns fired. Someone screamed. Someone died. A cannon roared in the distance. Part of the barricade exploded and fell in as the cannons facing them blazed and belched their iron-fisted demands of surrender or death. Revolutionaries screamed in defiance with their last breath, refusing to retreat or take down their red flag.

Deedle-oo-doo deedle-oo-doo deedle-oo-doo-dee.

“HOLD”

Absolute silence. Nothing moved.

“Mark, if your cell phone goes off one more time during rehearsal I am going to throw you both in the river!” The director waved his arms as he yelled and started pacing through the theater.

Everybody but Mark pulled their cell phones from their pockets and ignored the irate director. Not a single person held a gun, but every pair of hands held a cell phone. Who can ignore the call to revolution, much a less a call from a friend?