Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

114

Revolting Characters

Jan here was depicted by the author as “a thief with filthy habits and a murderer, too if only he had the backbone.” Claims that ever since he was created, he ain't been able to find work anywhere's else. Is it any wonder with a reference like that? A right just grievance, our Jan has, if you ask me. Do ye concur?

Bad as that is, what the penman done to him, he done ten times worse to some of us. Ain't that so brethren and sisterns?

It's truer than you say, old man. The master wrote me down as a gluttonous and perverted moneylender, but—now hold on, hold, let me finish—I'm none of those things, except in his fiction. But you make my point for me. YOU see me as what he created, not what I can be. “Even Shylock would be disgusted by his vile depravity,”

that's my reference. So, who do you think is gonna give me a chance for another role? I'm branded, tainted, imprisoned in a plaster cast.

Aye. Maybe what he says is true, but I wouldn't borrow the time of day from im, and I sure wouldn't have im in my house with my wife and younguns, and if I ever seen im in their company I'd kill im.

Mine is ten times worse. I figured prominently in the opening pages of the writer's so-called apocryphal history. It was 18th century France, and he had me play the villain—though I didn't get to enjoy any of the villainy, only the punishment. For three brutal pages, I was drawn and quartered, and my organs were carved out of my belly and thrust in my face so I could witness the progress of my own death. It was gruesome even for those times. The author achieved notoriety and became a minor celebrity. But I was con-demned to the world of Hollywood slashers. So, I'm like Sisyphus, only I get cut up and put back together again, endlessly.