[-short short fiction-]

by Indie

The Great War of 2015 left little behind in its wake. No books, no flags, no photographs. Of course there were human survivors - there always are - because even the most thorough of annihilatory practices leaves unexpected havens somewhere, just as a tornado passing through a street levels one house and leaves the next house unscathed. Those crawling out from under the rubble had other concerns than rescuing the trappings of the failed civilization. The occasional preservation of objects reminiscent of the old times, which did however occur, was attributed to a feeling of nostalgia that has always been a part of humanity, the melancholy cousin of the dream for a better day. These objects were placed in a museum in displays without commentary. The photograph of the boy pledging his allegiance was part of a trinity, found in the abandoned ruins of a stone cellar, the owner, perhaps, dust. The photograph had been used as a bookmark in the Bible, the Bible itself wrapped in a flag.

Inde, © 2005 - 2007 all rights reserved

Please see Inde’s other contributions to The PCQ: Hacker Baby, Vicious Pirates

Inde’s blog, The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy, is an experiment in creativity with daily posts of an original one-minute short story inspired by a found photo. All stories are fictional. The idea is based on the Indeterminacy recordings by John Cage, pairing one-minute short stories with random sounds. His daily stories can be found at: indeterminancy.blogspot.com

about the writer:
Inde is an American - originally from Cincinnati, Ohio - living in Europe since the 80’s. He enjoys avant garde, dadaistic, and surrealistic art, literature and music. He has a special love for comedy. Inde holds a masters in psychology and is employed as knowledge engineer, designing natural language dialogue systems. He’s lucky enough to be married to a wonderful muse and has a son 10 years of age. The photograph in this story is of inde as a child.

Published by the permission of the author in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collections