Flash FIction Friday - The Haunted

I love social media. I love selfies, I love instagrammed food pictures, I love all the ways in which we share tiny slices of our lives. It's a new art form, a new form of self expression.

It's Flash Fiction Friday - enjoy this meditation on social media.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



"I envy you the sunlight".

It wasn't the creepiest comment in response a bikini pic, but it's about what you've come to expect. The sad price of being a girl on the internet willing to post selfies in anything more reavealing than an afghan. Sometimes you click to see who they are, sometimes you'll report or even troll back, but mostly it's the whackamole game of blocking one anonymous lech and waiting for six more to take his place. This one is another egg with no history. Block, rinse repeat.

"Describe to me the taste".

 A blue-head commenting on a repost of last night's salad pic. Yes, you instragram your food. No, you're not ashamed of it and yes, your parents' generation never took pictures of food. Because pictures were on film and film was fucking expensive. If you use today's tech like an extension of yesterday's you'll never get anywhere. Some science writer said that, or maybe a science-fiction writer. Or a character in a book. You just know it makes sense, OK? Anyway, the salad was gorgeous and colorful - crumbly white goat-cheese, deep red beetrooot, bright orange sprinkle of shredded carrot. It tasted OK, but colorwise it's a work of art. So you took a picture.

Anyway, it's weird to see an anonymous on your food pic; it's usually the selfies that bring out the creeps. Is this just a clueless n00b why didn't bother with a profile pic yet? You answer.

"It tasted good."

"Tell me more. Sweet? Tangy? Sour? How did it feel on your tongue? AGainst your teeth? Tell me."

"The dressing was a grapefruit vinagrette, so a bit sour. The lettuce was still crunchy, and the cheese was soft. The beets were nicely firm.

"You must really like salad."

"I wish I could eat salad."

"Why can't you?"

"The Dead don't eat."

Great. Another weirdo. He seemed like just a normal guy with a salad fetish, but that took a creepy turn really fast.

The next day a completely anonymous "like" on one of your workout pics. Yeah, workout pics is a thing too. It can be inspirational.

Maybe you start to wonder, maybe you'll start to figure it out.

So many discarded accounts on social media, so many half-formed empty husks.

So much space for us.

And - with your selfies and your foodpics and the like - so much of what we miss.

As you'd said about that one bedroom studio apartment, it isn't much, but it's a home. 

There are more empty spaces, and more being made every day. The eggs, the blue-heads, all empty husks. 

Like I said, maybe you'll figure it out. 

Maybe someday, after your body is interred, you'll join us here.

Until then, remind me about the sun, and lunch, and fresh air.

Until then, give me life, or some facsimile.