Johnny America

 

Son of Blob

by

Once a mass of car­nelian rage from be­yond the stars, my old man shrank as decades passed. Cy­cled from cine­plex screens to black-and-white table­top TVs, he lapsed in­to ob­scu­ri­ty, lat­er to be lost among a mil­lion hor­ror clips post­ed online. 

In his prime, he had blot­ted out the sun like a hot air bal­loon—but he looked more and more like an aban­doned beach ball drift­ing out to sea. His com­plex­ion fad­ed to the soft pink of dy­ing cher­ry blos­soms in April, and when the sun dropped shad­ows swal­lowed him as whol­ly as he once had the may­or of Phoenixville.

Doc­tors ran test af­ter test, made him flop along on a tread­mill, quadru­pled his dai­ly dose of fiber, thinned his blood with meds, and for­bade him army men buf­fets. Noth­ing helped. Every day weak­er still, he called me in the mid­dle of the night, afraid there might be truth to ru­mors about re­makes of his story. 

Un­able fi­nal­ly to rec­og­nize in the mir­ror the same spongy form he had be­queathed to me, he prayed to re­cov­er chis­eled fea­tures he nev­er owned. He swore by alien gods that they be­longed to his line alone.

Filed under Fiction on October 4th, 2019

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Jacques Debrot wrote:

Su­per clever — and moving!

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