Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Short Fiction: Caught Up

Two close friends were walking down Liberty Avenue, deep in conversation. It doesn't matter what they were talking about, because it's all bullshit, but the two were engaged in talk, they had bonded with an environmentally safe, easily dissolved adhesive and they both loved clever bistros. Both men were married, to women, and they didn't care if people thought they were a gay couple. It isn't a pejorative  Their views on life would be perfectly acceptable if this was happening now, but it was back when a certain someone was living there. Round '91. The dark side.

It was theater. The two men had seen a show together at the Benedum Theater.  It was splendid;  they both laughed, cried and thought about what they saw and heard on stage. It had been a gala afternoon for them.

They were deep in a conversation about A Street Car Named Desire, which is why they didn't see the procession a few blocks ahead, in front of Planned Parenthood. There were people standing in front. As the men filed through them, they were taken by surprise.

The pro-lifers were carrying baby coffins around, pacing in a figure eight pattern, lenghtwise up and down the sidewalk. There should have been an ordinance against this, because it was obstructive. When the men cleared the on lookers, they were caught, separately, in the two enclosures formed by the figure eight composed of pro-lifers, carrying baby coffins. Separated from each other, and trapped inside twin orbs of resistance to abortion, they could only stand captive as the dotted line of fanatics carried their little caskets.

Both men were thinking the same thing, that if that sideways symbol of infinity would go away and let them finish talking about Street Car, it would be grand. The curtain fell on their like-minded thinking. They died. The pro-lifers had planned a show-stopping demonstration, something they hadn't tried before. One of them gave the signal, and the figure eight stopped walking, raised their coffins over their heads, and began slamming them on the protester in front of them, beating each other and the caskets to splinters. It worked out perfectly, with the caskets all busting up at the same time, and it looked spectacular. Nobody's casket was a dud, but the two theater buffs panicked, started hitting people, and had to be shot by police. 

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