TACO TUESDAY

The timer started. I’m doing a 15-minute writing sprint with Keiren Westwood, a writer I follow on YouTube. Now, I don’t have a story or even an idea at this moment, so I will free-write and see what comes….

The world situation is bleak. We’ve been at war with Iran for several weeks, with no end in sight. Until now. Because this morning, the President of the United States started another timer — a sort of doomsday clock — precipitously pushing the world to the brink of disaster. 

On his Truth Social media account, he posted, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Yesterday he posted something similar, except he dropped an F-bomb and other profanities, and last week he promised to “bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.” He gave Iran a deadline of 8pm tonight to accept his demands. 

A terrified world watches Trump’s timer ticking towards an extinction event, waiting, hoping, praying that he doesn’t follow through with his genocidal threats. As far as I can figure, the only way to obliterate a country twice the size of Texas is to use nukes.

Yes, atomic bombs with mushroom clouds reaching miles into the sky and fireballs hotter than the surface of the sun. Like the ones we used in Japan at the end of World War II — we have thousands of them. But these are much bigger and more lethal. If we nuke Iran — which doesn’t have nuclear weapons of its own — the USA will become a rogue nation, an international pariah, a treacherous villain forever known as one of the most evil countries to have ever existed. 

It’s 3 pm, and only 5 more hours remain until the 8 pm deadline, after which our president promises to end a civilization that dates back thousands of years to the ancient Persian Empire.

But as I write, I have a spark of hope: Today is TACO TUESDAY! The president is well-known for his TACOs, and perhaps today he will perform his familiar TACO act, because as they say, “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Well, he often does. I sure hope so this evening, for the sake of millions of people who may die if he follows through with his threats.

I’m near the end of the writing sprint, only 3 more minutes to go. These sprints are helpful because they force me to write without editing or self-correction, which I am prone to do. 

Almost there, about 2 minutes left. I doze off as I write because I didn’t sleep well last night. Maybe I’ll take a nap when I’m done, and hope the world we all share is not engulfed in a nuclear hell when I awake.

Two timers tick: this one, which will end my writing sprint in mere seconds; the other one, which may end the world in mere hours.

There’s 25 seconds left on this one…15…10…5, 4, 3, 2, 1, done! Now I pray the other timer ends with a TACO, not a bomb.

*****

500-word flash fiction