| Courtesy: flickr.com |
Today’s Prompt:
You are
walking to your car when you pass a boy selling newspapers on the street. He doesn’t
look like he’s getting any customers, so you buy a copy, only to discover that
it’s dated a week from today. And one particular story makes you realize you
need to take action—now.
Word Count: 1,026
“You in the mood for a peculiar spin?”
“As long as you keep the beer coming I’m down for any
kind of story.”
Sam and Utuk (/who took/) sat
by the counter of the Drunkard’s
Boulevard, a pub at the end of the street and just around the corner.
“I just got out the public library you know the one
standing by that mini stadium where we used to go watch our high school team
battle other teams in soccer competition. I was walking to my car when I spotted
this kid selling newspapers. The way he stood there with his papers struck me as
funny. That was before I observed nobody was buying. I noticed folks actually,
walk up to the kid, grab a paper, glance through, and then… scuttle away. It was
like all of a sudden they remembered an important meeting they had to attend
and they were running late. It pricked my curiosity.”
“Uh, uh.” Utuk wasn’t looking or listening to Sam anymore.
He’d given his attention to something at the door. “Yo, Sam, check out the
sister who just walked in.”
Sam followed Utuk’s gaze and felt
disgust fill his mind. “Ain’t that the girl who almost got your ass busted last
time we were here?”
“So what? It’s just a harmless stare. Ain’t nothing to
it.”
“Whatever. Let’s get back to my story that’s the only
harmless thing around here.”
“Ain’t it the same story where you had a flat and had
to park your car some place and hike it home?”
“Nope. This one’s different.”
Sam and Utuk had been friends
since their high school days. They stuck together after they left school. They were
the low profile kind of guys. They knew most of the people here nevertheless,
they were prone to go out through the backdoor than make a show of themselves. Sam
wrote fiction focusing on the Sci-Fi genre and Utuk was a journalist.
“You don’t say,” said Utuk. “Is it important?”
“Of course, it’s fairly important.”
Sam gave a so-so gesture with
his head and puckered his lips for good measure. And they both chuckled. The bartender
came up and filled their glasses.
“You know, Joe, someday you’ll get us bombed,” Utuk said
to the bartender. “We’ll end up spending the night up on your counter.”
“That’ll be a fatal
pleasure,” the bartender said and walked away.
“I’m surprised I never mentioned the story to you
before today,” Sam said. “That kid’s papers, like I mentioned earlier, seemed
to put off customers than attract them. Folks took one look at his papers and
zapped!” Sam punctuated his statement with a snap of his fingers.
“Maybe, it was full of reports of the apocalypse,” Utuk
piped in.
“Yeah, there were lots of such stories in the paper.”
“What the…?” Utuk uttered in absolute awe.
“Naw, just joking.” Sam waved it away.
“Let’s drink to that. It’s not every day one hears
you make a joke.” Utuk sipped on his beer.
Sam ignored him. “I walked up
to the kid and took one of the papers out of his hand. ‘What do you have there?’
I asked him. ‘Today’s papers, sir.’ ‘Today’s paper,’ I said. ‘Ain’t it a little
late in the day for that or is it the Evening
News?’ The kid appeared uncomfortable with that question. I took one look
at the headlines and I knew why all those folks had to zippety-zippety zap
after they took one glance at the papers.”
“Why did they do it? Was it old newspaper? Was it
dirty? Why?”
“The paper was dated a week from that day.”
Utuk cracked up. His bellow thunderous
and wild heads turned in the pub. He almost got his neck broken when he took a
fall off the stool.
“Oh jumping macros,” Utuk said after he got over his
laughter.
“That’s macaroni,” Sam corrected.
“Yeah, macros for short,” Utuk said.
“Since when?”
“Just now. Since it was all next week’s news, why the
hell would anybody wanna read that stuff?”
“The stock market?” Sam suggested.
“Well, you ain’t saying none of the guys who put an
egg in their shoes and beat it were investors or had interest in the stock
market, are you?”
“Not exactly, but I did make something of the whole
mess?”
“You? You bought the paper?”
“Bought it and gained a considerable success with it.
I get updates from @writersdigest
delivered right to my android. And for the past few days leading to my
encounter with that kid whom speaking of, I’ve not set eyes on again since that
day, I’ve been receiving tweets about this Writers
Digest annual short story writing competition which was going to close a
few days from the evening I met the kid. I saw a news article in that newspaper
where the Curiosity Rover discovered alien life forms on Mars. So I wrote it as
fiction and submitted it as my story.”
“That’s called cheating.”
“No, it’s called creativity.”
“Did you win?”
“I submitted the story to the Sci-Fi category; they
thought I was prophetic when the real story came out in the news. Of course, I won”
“Did you spill your guts about the source of your
story?”
“Why the hell should I? I have the world by the tail cause
of that story, it’s the reason I got published in the first place. You don’t expect
me to throw a lifetime career out the window.”
“What about the newspaper. What did you do with it?”
“For the life of me, I can’t tell where I kept it. It
just disappeared.”
“There might be consequences, have you though about
that? Such mysteries don’t just happen.”
“You know,” Sam said, looking totally serious. “I’ve
been thinking about that lately. Maybe, I should call up the editors at WD and let
them in the whole way the source of my winning story.”
“You really believe you should do that?” Utuk’s eyes
grew wide.
“Why not? It’s called coming clean,” said Sam with
indifference.
“No, it’s called stupidity.”
Utuk said.
“Whatever you say, boss,” Sam said and gulped his
beer. “Whatever you say,” he repeated.
Eneh
Akpan
June 30, 2013
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