When I submitted to Books of the Dead Press I also submitted a piece of flash fiction, Push.
It was on the strength of this that the owner of the press bumped Discoredia to the top of his slush pile, and the rest, as they say, is history.
So, if anyone missed it the first time around here it is; Push by J C Michael.
That day made 9/11 look like a fucking picnic. It hit everyone. Shit, it hit everything.
No-one saw it coming. No intelligence. No early warnings. Nobody was immune, nobody was spared, well, maybe a handful of astronauts on the space station we had in those days, but that was it. This was global. A billion Chinese who never gave a rat’s arse about the rest of us certainly gave a shit about what happened that day. Those that lived that is.
I was lucky, a cut forehead, you’ve seen the scar, like Harry bloody Potter, if you know who he is, but nothing worse. The biggest single event in the history of mankind, maybe even the whole damn planet, and all I got was a three inch gash. Like I said, lucky. Lucky the underground car park machine rejected my pound coin, remember those? Lucky it took so long rooting around in the car to find another. A stroke of fortune that kept me inside, below ground.
Over fifty years ago now, but I remember it like yesterday. I was disorientated, pressed against the ceiling, but still registering what I was seeing out through the exit. Everything thrown up into the air; cars, people, a sodding dog. Whole buildings tearing loose of their foundations. Screams cutting the air, loud at first then fading into the distance, before coming closer again, closer until there was the almighty crash back to earth. The sound of metal, stone, flesh and bone, slamming into the ground. I could barely see for dust, and what I could see was twisted out of recognition. More screams, screams of pain. The whole world turned upside down and back again in ten seconds.
Someone told me that in the first five seconds people fell 400 ft into the air, and were doing almost 60 miles per hour when they hit the ground again. True or not, those seconds changed the world. The religious nuts screamed Armageddon. The West blamed the East, the East the West. The conspiracy theorists blamed the scientists, the scientists scratched their heads. Some folk took to strapping themselves down, but not me. If you live in an earthquake zone you don’t live under the table, you just get on with shit and hope it never happens. Now, it’s just a footnote in history. The day gravity decided to push, not pull.
It was on the strength of this that the owner of the press bumped Discoredia to the top of his slush pile, and the rest, as they say, is history.
So, if anyone missed it the first time around here it is; Push by J C Michael.
That day made 9/11 look like a fucking picnic. It hit everyone. Shit, it hit everything.
No-one saw it coming. No intelligence. No early warnings. Nobody was immune, nobody was spared, well, maybe a handful of astronauts on the space station we had in those days, but that was it. This was global. A billion Chinese who never gave a rat’s arse about the rest of us certainly gave a shit about what happened that day. Those that lived that is.
I was lucky, a cut forehead, you’ve seen the scar, like Harry bloody Potter, if you know who he is, but nothing worse. The biggest single event in the history of mankind, maybe even the whole damn planet, and all I got was a three inch gash. Like I said, lucky. Lucky the underground car park machine rejected my pound coin, remember those? Lucky it took so long rooting around in the car to find another. A stroke of fortune that kept me inside, below ground.
Over fifty years ago now, but I remember it like yesterday. I was disorientated, pressed against the ceiling, but still registering what I was seeing out through the exit. Everything thrown up into the air; cars, people, a sodding dog. Whole buildings tearing loose of their foundations. Screams cutting the air, loud at first then fading into the distance, before coming closer again, closer until there was the almighty crash back to earth. The sound of metal, stone, flesh and bone, slamming into the ground. I could barely see for dust, and what I could see was twisted out of recognition. More screams, screams of pain. The whole world turned upside down and back again in ten seconds.
Someone told me that in the first five seconds people fell 400 ft into the air, and were doing almost 60 miles per hour when they hit the ground again. True or not, those seconds changed the world. The religious nuts screamed Armageddon. The West blamed the East, the East the West. The conspiracy theorists blamed the scientists, the scientists scratched their heads. Some folk took to strapping themselves down, but not me. If you live in an earthquake zone you don’t live under the table, you just get on with shit and hope it never happens. Now, it’s just a footnote in history. The day gravity decided to push, not pull.