Give It Up
It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was walking to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized that it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me unsure of the way, I did not yet know my way very well in this town; luckily, a policeman was nearby, I ran up to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: “From me you want to know the way?” “Yes,” I said, “since I cannot find it myself.” “Give it up! Give it up,” he said, and turned away with a sudden jerk, like people who want to be alone with their laughter.
A R Leonard
August 29, 2024 @ 7:06 pm
To take the opposite position of the above comments, this is an efficient piece of writing, particularly its final few words of “like people who want to be alone with their laughter,” which is both multilayered in its own meanings, and forms an inverted mockery of the rest of the piece.
Richard C Winant
August 12, 2024 @ 8:11 pm
Not an impressive story from a usually brilliant writer. It expresses his usual paranoid response to bureaucratic indifference or incompetence, that’s all. Give it up.
Rebecca Halsey
August 13, 2024 @ 8:41 am
Indeed, I have often wondered why my predecessors wanted to post classic flash fiction on the site. Maybe as a way to generate traffic. I’ll have to see if anyone from that era still on staff knows the reason