Fiction | Dystopia

Thank You | A flash fiction story

93 of 💯

Shit watched Jax on top of the small flatbed trailer, unloading all the junk they’d gotten from the Fringe. He was handing metal sheets, pipes, and cables to Shit, Maya, and the others.

These were their building materials, the stuff they were going to use to expand their little settlement, to build a village out of the lonely cocoons Jax had found so long ago, to build New Hope. Maya had chosen the name.

Maya and her fancy words. Fuck her.

If you looked at Jax standing tall on the trailer, you’d see a monster of a man, brown muscles glistening in the relentless sun of the Wastelands. That was not what Shit saw, though. He didn’t see a monster. He saw a hero. Shit wanted to tell him that, but he couldn’t find the… what were they called? Words.

Members of their band came and went, grabbing stuff from Jax’s powerful hands and separating the material into different piles. Shit watched his leader, enthralled. Oh, how he wished he was as good with words as Maya.

She had caught him watching Jax multiple times. Last night, she had told him that was weird.

“You don’t get it,” Shit said. “Jax’s a hero. The best. The leader of the band! Jax… saved Shit.”

“You should tell him,” she said.

Shit eyed her in silence.

“Just say ‘thank you,’” she said. “Don’t be a coward.”

Maya didn’t like Shit. She picked on him. Laughed at him. She didn’t respect him. But this time, it almost looked like she was being earnest.

“Fuck off, Maya,” Shit said. Then he left in his chimpanzee-like walk, hunched over his knuckles.

How could he say it? How would he even express a feeling so strong, so indescribable? What if he fucked up?

Shit can’t, he thought as he watched Jax on top of the trailer, working hard to build a better place for them.

Maya elbowed Shit, as if materializing behind him.

“Tell him,” she whispered.

He glared and shook his head. How could he talk to Jax? Almighty Jax, standing tall over his people, the desert sun shining behind his head in a halo.

Maya elbowed him again, making him stumble. A sudden anger took over him. He was ready to tell her to fuck off. Then he saw her eyes. She was being earnest.

The more he looked at her, the more something unknown bubbled up inside him. Trust. Courage. It boiled in his core until it erupted out of him.

“Jax!” he called.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at Shit.

“What?” Jax said, his posture perfectly straight above them all, powerful and imposing.

Shit fumbled for words, sweat running down the side of his head, his knuckles burning on the hot sand.

“Thank you!” he blurted out.

Jax watched him for a second. Then he stepped down from the trailer and approached Shit, towering over the little man. He crouched, piercing black eyes on Shit’s.

Shit was scared but, at the same time, paradoxically, a deep sense of peace filled his soul. This was what Jax did. This was his aura, as if Shit was in the presence of a god, and he knew this supreme being could kill him with a snap of his fingers. But he wouldn’t. Shit knew he wouldn’t. He could see it in his eyes.

Everyone in the camp was watching. Jax gave Shit a careful nod, their eyes locked in profound understanding.

A watery fire went down Shit’s chest and flooded his heart with an inexplicable sensation. All emotions burned inside him at the same time. Love, fear, submission, hope, happiness, and even anger — at himself, for not doing this earlier.

He was so overwhelmed he just burst into a sobbing cry.

He had done it. He had finally done it. Even if it was with humble words, he had finally said it.

Jax got up without a word. Then he said, “Maya, help me move the metal sheets north. We need them there.”

He moved away and left Shit behind, the little man’s tears raining down on the ground between his hands.

He looked up and, through the tears, he saw Maya. For the first time ever, she was smiling at him. It was a warm, fond smile, a kind of smile he had never seen on her.

“Good job,” she told him, and then she grabbed a metal sheet and followed Jax.

There was a lot of work to be done. They had to build New Hope.

< Aerotica 80085 | Thank You | Dogg0 >

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I feel like Shit — please, note the capitalization. Sometimes it’s hard to say “thank you.” It’s hard to express exactly what you’re feeling.

If you speak more than one language, you know translation is not a one-to-one process. There are some English words that would need a bunch of Portuguese words to be properly translated, and there are Portuguese words I don’t even know how to translate into English. There are words that paint the Mona Lisa in their own language, but become stick figures when translated.

Feelings follow the same rule. Words are great, but they can only go so far when expressing the feelings they’re trying to capture. As writers, our job is to bridge that gap, which is an extremely hard thing to do.

I’ve been going through a rough patch, and I wanted to say thank you to a few people who have helped. Some said supportive words directly to me, while others used their words to keep creating, which inspire me to go back to creating too. I don’t like mass-tagging people, so I’ll refrain from that.

I wanted to write something meaningful, something beautiful. The thing is, I didn’t really know how to do that. So I thought going back to Anchora was the best way to do it, to show-don’t-tell that their words made a difference. I’m not sure how good of a job this post does at doing that, but I’ve decided to start being nicer to myself, so I’ll just accept this as the best I could do, and be thankful for that.

So, following the example of Shit: thank you.

Maybe I’ll be able to add a few more stories to Anchora in the upcoming weeks. Thanks to you, I have renewed hope.

PS: Sorry this heartfelt message had to be carried by a character named Shit, but that’s how life happens sometimes. It’s the best I have at the moment and, for once, I’m happy with it.