keyword: accusation, title: the indifference of heaven in "the next big thing" flash fiction

“You’re a miracle, you’re… impossible,” the scientist yelled, but not as a compliment or even a statement of fact, it was an accusation, “I’m only normal. Christ, I’m far less than normal.”

I asked Frank why Ben Eisen could see him as he was, if Los Angeles had broken the scientist’s heart allowing him to see the truth. “No,” Frank eventually decided, “it was all of the drugs. To stave off tremors like his, you need damnably strong medicine.”

“You’re scaring the customers,” the yeti whispered, “have respect for the hustle, if not for me, at least for my friends.” Frank gestured toward the Michael Jackson impersonator cajoling tourists to stay for pictures. “At least let’s make this private.”

Dr. Eisen nodded, vibrating with illness and rage, and followed past old wax museums where the dead, living and fictional all stand together in the almost-real, past Guinness and Ripley’s where the flimsy frauds and genuine freaks are functionally indistinguishable, to the bench behind what was once a White Castle for New York transplants, then Dunkin for New Englanders, later on a Chick-Fil-A for Southerners, who knows what it’ll be whenever you read this.

“I’m not here to blow your cover,” his trembling no longer psychological, just neurological, “I don’t care if you’re an alien or Harry Henderson, but I saw you get hit by a bus and walk it off. I’m dying. My nerves are mutinous, I need some of whatever you are. I won’t alert the History Channel. I’ll say my samples are from dead horses at Santa Anita. I don’t care what you are. I care that I am, that I continue to be.”

Half that he believed the desperate promise and half that it might put a pause on the stalking, Frank relented, let Eisen take a hair sample and some blood. Ben had a syringe on his person because of course he did. He carried it on him at all times ever since the tour-bus crash, just in case. The same reason I buy lottery tickets, just in case.

Frank the sasquatch knew it wouldn’t be enough for Eisen, his healing wasn’t biological, it was magic. There were no answers in the letters of Frank’s DNA, but it’d buy him months of peace. Hell, maybe he’d be soon too ill to keep following him around. But it wouldn’t work, wouldn’t be enough for Eisen, any more than autographs rub fame off onto you. An autograph feels like proof that your Celebrity Dreamland exists for a bit, but after a while, you’ll see it’s just ink on paper. Just meaningless letters and a stranger’s day ruined, not enough to make you one them.

“You’re a miracle, I’m less than nothing.” Every lay-off, break-up, rejection letter, I wanted to make that accusation too. Can’t you spare one slice of it? Can’t you just make me magic too? That city, those women, my idols, I wanted to beg them the same. But it was never enough for me, neither.