prompt: frank, title: double meanings in "the next big thing" flash fiction

“If you’re the last of your kind,” I asked tentatively, gently as I could, “and it’s been that way for ages?” “Both of which I’m,” Frank interposed, “reasonably certain.” “So why do so many randos keep spotting yetis all over the world? Himalayas, the Adirondacks, the Cascades.” “Ninety-nine out of a hundred,” he smiled, “wasn’t us. Not the genuine articles. They’re, I don’t know,” Frank stirred his cold drink back into homogeny, “bears? Gorillas? Jackasses in Hallowe’en costumes? The fever dreams of attention seekers and legitimately deluded psychotics? Meeting me doesn’t prove that the most of it isn’t still complete and utter goddamned lunacy.”

“Just because there is a little bit of magic in the world doesn’t mean there’s actually a lot,” Frank paused to reconsider for a moment, then shrugged, “conversely, though, just because there’s only that little bit, it doesn’t mean there’s none, either.” Thank God Frank was patient with me, I think he just enjoyed the notion of having someone else to unload his truth upon. “Despite that handful of discrete pockets, small instances of magic there are on the Earth, the dominant majority of the things you people believe supernatural are simply bullshit, utter bull-shittery. Delusions or really obvious scams or both and usually both.” Our waitress approached with a fresh pot of coffee and he politely accepted another refill, “Gracias, senora.” and turned back toward me with a full cup.

“A few turning out genuine doesn’t change the fact the rest were just con-jobs or hallucinations.”

She refilled my mug as well, paying us no mind. Whether from a less than total understanding of English, the obscurant effects of The Curse of the Thirty Mile Zone or the thankless exhaustions of waiting tables in some all-night diner, who knows. Maybe all of the above at once. Maybe the latter two of those aren’t so different at all. “Thank you, ma’am,” I nodded and she moved along.

“I’d have to paraphrase Bill Shakespeare…” Frank cleared his throat for effect, the barest hint of an animalistic growl at the back of his massive throat as he did, “There are less things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in all of our bullshit wishful thinking.”

“The Bard would have loved the word bullshit if it had only been around back then,” I offered, “he would’ve luxuriated in it, the same way Mark Twain just bathed in the word goddamned.”

“They’re good words,” Frank agreed, “you guys have a lot more interesting curses than we ever had. Especially in English and Mandarin. It’s not surprising the dominating steamroller cultures end up having really powerful swears. We had forty words for trees but, damn, you folks really know how to insult each other.” I could not tell you if his admiration for our vulgarities was or wasn’t actually sincere. Maybe the two interpretations aren’t different in any way that matters.

Frankly, if even one curse ever was actually magic, our curse words must surely be magical too.