Hope Budny-Clymer
Jon Tribble Memorial Winner
I stood waiting for my train. There was an electric feeling of anticipation in the air–it seemed like everyone was waiting for something to happen. All around me were giant, flesh-eating flies, but I wasn’t worried. They took the midnight train going anywhere quite often. Racism–err, speciesism, in this case, is always a bad thing. As upstanding members of society, we have to make sure the flies are treated just the same as us, even if they have the tendency to strip a full-grown man of his skin in under thirty seconds. The train tracks were empty. A crowd of actual humans were starting to assemble, carrying picket signs and wearing scowls. One seemed to hold a beer bottle in his hand, the beginnings of a Molotov cocktail. Things were quickly getting unruly. The people were chanting something, but I couldn’t make it out. The buzzing of several flies was drowning them out. Some of the giant flesh-eating flies were growing increasingly uncomfortable, and a few just got up and left, as did many of the humans in the station. One was buzzing angrily to a human girl about taxes. He seemed really mad about those taxes. The protesters continued chanting. They were starting to march down the train tracks now.
“Damn,” said the guy standing next to me. “The 8:15 is gonna be late.”
Protests still happened often. Freedom of speech is a right, but so is the freedom to ignore it. The flesh eating flies were part of society now, and we as humans just had to accept that. I had thought maybe humanity was finally on the right track– we’d been working towards an end to civil injustices for centuries now, and when the giant flies came along, we seemingly welcomed them with open arms. They were a great help to humanity in the war against the aliens. Of course, there were some groups who were against the flies, but there’s always some crazy bastards against everyone and everything. Some people thought them unnatural and tried to avoid them as much as possible, but they were still (begrudgingly, by some) treated equal, or so I thought.
Unfortunately, Molotov cocktail-man must have decided things weren’t getting spicy enough, so he threw the lit bottle into a trash can. The trash ignited instantly, sending large plumes of dark smoke into the air. The protest went from peaceful to a riot pretty soon after that. The chants devolved into screams. Then I noticed that several flesh-eating flies were part of the group. Everyone was screaming about taxes.
Oh wait, this wasn’t a protest about the flies.
This was about the tax on beer.
My bad.