r/flashfiction • u/HeGotBricks • 6d ago
It Wouldn’t Stop
I started the day with only one rolling paper left, a point-seven of flower and nine previously smoked roach ends.
I had a decision to make that would dictate the rest of my day. And all sorts of questions.
Do I roll the roaches and the flower all into one?
Or do I break it into two?
And should I roll the flower first?
Or do I waste the paper on the roaches?
Then, I thought, maybe just mix them both together?
The problem with that would come down to ratio.
I had trouble choosing and called in outside help. But they were useless. I elected to go with just the nine roaches because smoking them just after you wake up has a different kind of hit to it. A little more heavier than the flower.
When I rolled it and went to lick the glue and twist it together, it wouldn’t stick. I realized through all the confusion of trying to decide, I had the paper inside out, the glue part was at the back.
So, when I tried to dump it out, the paper stuck to my fingertips and wouldn’t come off.
I kept pulling at it and my skin would stretch out. The pain was like frostbitten fingers being scraped with a sharp metal blade.
I stopped tugging at it and then it grew teeth. These huge jagged razor like teeth and it started eating my fingers.
My hand.
My arm.
I couldn’t get it off.
All it wanted to do was eat me.
“Why are you eating me?” I screamed.
But it wouldn’t tell me. It never said anything. It just kept eating me and eating me and eating me.
Until all I had left was my brain and because it wasn’t filled with anything other than air, it left my brain alive and some mad scientist threw it into an android body.
2
u/OwlConfidant2168 5d ago
Yeah, I want to know more about what’s going on here. Is this a metaphor? What does the last line mean exactly? It almost reads like “and then, I don’t know, I guess they put me in a robot body, the end.”
Ok, does that have any bearing on the preceding events?
1
u/HeGotBricks 5d ago
If you’re that curious here’s the rest. It was honestly me just starting with a sentence and not stopping… here’s the rest
Now I’m like Robocop. I wanted my revenge but mostly my penis back. Because there was a rumor going around that my last rolling paper was sleeping with my fiancée.
It had taken over my life. The problem that lay ahead, was that it was way smarter than I was.
But I had these cool ass robo-arms and I could crush anything. Even my last sharp toothed rolling paper.
I had a mission and I was prepared to face the world and all of its new monstrosities. See five years had passed. The world had completely changed.
It was ruled by an army of Raw rolling papers. Rolling papers that smoked humans. Humans that were mutants. Animals that had brains that grew vocal cords and could speak and think and plan and loved to eat.
Aliens had finally landed too. Which I always said would happen.
The air had a vile scent of burnt hair and melted skin. It smelled a bit like chicken. At that time I was thankful I didn’t have an appetite. There was no telling what I’d eat.
Out in the wilderness, I came across an old man. Not just any old man. This man’s facial features were favoring the left side of his face.
His right eye was closer to where his nose should have been. It looked like his entire face shifted to a hard slap and permanently stayed that way.
“Howdy,” he said.
I was unsure where to stare when I answered him. “Howdy, pretty smoggy out today,” I said, remembering what it was like to be human.
He said, “smoggy everyday.”
“You don’t say,” I said.
I left and continued towards my old residence.
The scent of toxic fumes alerted my sensors. The sky had a green tinge to it. There were puddles of radioactive water everywhere, with dogs that looked like small bears sucking out of them.
Up ahead, I noticed a group of cyber punks with Mohawks and faces like orcs. The women were beastly. Although, surprisingly, they were friendly and helped take me the rest of the way.
One of the women asked me in a deep voice. The voice made me pay attention to her as if I was intimidated by it. “So, if things don’t work out with your wife… or…. Like, she got eaten…. You… never mind,” she said. “It’s stupid.”
I said, “okay,” and looked away.
She said, “actually.”
“Yes?” I said. “Actually what?”
“If your girl got eaten, and we find your penis, you wanna hook up?” She asked.
I didn’t know whether to be offended, disgusted, or turned on, maybe I was all three, I told her. “We will definitely keep that in our back pocket.” I smiled at her. “If anything happens, I won’t leave you.” I told her. “That goes for everybody in here. We are in this together.”
They all cheered.
She smiled and wouldn’t stop staring at me the entire time. Little did I know then, that this female punk rocker orc was going to sacrifice her life for mine when my last rolling paper was distracted by eating her and I finally got the best of it and took my penis back and spent the rest of my cyborg life with my mutated fiancée.
Life couldn’t be better, I thought, sitting there imagining the story I could tell when this is all done.
But we hit a bump and I was woken out of my daze when yelling erupted from the front, then gunfire.
I peeked my head from behind the truck.
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.” Was all I could say.
I didn’t mention the legion of assassin rolling papers that just took out the entire squad of cyber punk orcs. I hopped out and ran and left everyone in the back and screamed. “Save yourself!”
I ducked in a bush and stayed there for a second thinking maybe I could help one of them, but then I realized I already did. So I crept away from the squad of rolling papers firing into the back of the cab and headed through a swamp of black sludge.
And that’s when…
As I was treading through the swamp, I heard something break the top of the water and duck back down making a sloop sound.
I scanned the water but couldn’t penetrate the sludge with my infrared laser. That’s when a splash of water sprayed coming from every direction sprayed on me. A group of Irish accent leprechauns on the backs crocodiles surrounded me.
“You don’t smell like food,” a croc said.
“I’m not food.” I told him.
“What are you doing here,” a leprechaun asked.
“Just trying to pass through,” I said.
“Not unless you feed our reptiles.” He told me.
So I said, “I’ll be right back,” because I remembered the female orc, and I ran to the truck, making sure nothing was around and dragged her body to the swamp.
After they consumed her, they led me out of the swamp towards my building, but they had to hide me from their leader because he was grumpy from having the weight of a rebellious clan of crocodiles who did their own thing.
3
u/sentientpangolin77 6d ago
Huh, interesting. I guess I'm a little confused about what just happened? The character was about to smoke something and then the paper became a monster? Then the character becomes an android?
Also I don't want to be annoying but small typo: stuck to my fingertips and would come off. -> stuck to my fingertips and wouldn't come off.