By Carl Bettis

This story wants to be told, but the audience won’t let it, because the story has no conflict.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” the audience chants.

“No,” the story insists, “I’m not that kind of tale. Listen, there’s a boy—”

“Hero or villain?” the audience wants to know.

“He’s average,” the story says, “in all sorts of ways. But he dreams of effervescent oceans and chattering cobras, of uranium tigers wearing lead masks. And there’s a girl—”

“Whom he loves!” the audience yells, jumping up and down. “But something’s in their way!”

“No,” the story continues, “they’re friends. This girl has only one dream—”

“To marry someone else!”

“Yes,” the story sighs, “to marry somebody else. To marry you, in fact. Which she did, and the officiant lived happily ever after.”

“Well, that was abrupt,” the audience says.

In Paris for their honeymoon, the audience is disappointed in the Louvre.

                                                   *   *   *

Carl Bettis is a writer and software engineer in the Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He publishes the online horror zine tiny frights (tinyfrights.com) and serves on the Riverfront Readings Committee (riverfrontreadings.com). His work has been published in many places, including I-70 Review, Thorny Locust, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthologies Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine Editions, 2005), The Whirlybird Anthology of Kansas City Writers (Whirlybird Press, 2012), and Quick Shivers from the Midwest (DailyNightmare.com, 2017). Find out more at carlbettis.com.