Flash Fiction

On the landscape called the down, the heat is often unbearable. Broken down antennae and receiving dishes litter the view and anyone travelling here would have often been best warned to stay away. But never the less some do venture across the pockmarked plain. Steel and osmotic skeleton mark their way and drink their resolve.

This was where Joe, often known as Pokey Joe, found himself. Alone and battered amid the history scarred structures. He did not know how he had got there. Last thing he remembered was the nightclub. No. No. The clubs in the nightclub and the faces, the leering faces. Then his face started hurting, then he realised how hot it was, then he realised how thirsty he was. He looked around, the horizon was nowhere to be seen. He gulped dry air.

Being a somebody was all he’d ever wanted, not to be called Pokey by people he’d never even met. But now he was merely an unknown somewhere.

He never moved again and as he lay there to die, almost willingly, he heard the metallic radio voices of the uninterred dishes and antennae speak to one another. Joe. Joe. His name was Joe.