by Gary Fincke
While walking with him along the river, Art’s colleague revealed that aliens were speeding their way via a time tunnel that opened near the stones he’d built into something like an altar. The universe, he said, is throated. One mouth empties here. By day, he taught two languages. This night, though, he was teaching Art how the world will end, the sky fogged in by so many visitors that everyone, not just the chosen few, will suffer an abduction that includes an intimate physical exam. After the cloud lifts, the world will teem with nothing but celebrities, all of them so identically famous and frantic for attention that the aliens, from a distance, will watch Armageddon begin and quickly end.
Gary Fincke’s latest flash collection is The History of the Baker’s Dozen (Pelekinesis 2024). He is co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction.
