12+ I enjoyed the pub last night, chatting with old friends, and I wish Ellie had joined us. But I should have listened to her, drank less, and popped a blocker. I'll get no sympathy from Ellie today, waking with a hangover and viral thoughts I feel compelled to share.
Darryn looks awful, and I'm glad I stayed home with the children last night. "Hey, Ellie," he croaks, squinting at me through bloodshot slits. "Guess what I heard at the pub?"
Ellie plumps a pillow behind me as I pull myself into a sitting position on the bed. I lean closer to her.
Darryn tries to whisper in my ear. "No thanks," I retort, pushing him back onto the pillow. "I told you I don't want to share any conversations from last night."
"It's not viral, Ellie," I lie.
"You didn't take a neural blocker," I remind Darryn, leaving him sitting on the bed like a scolded toddler to put on coffee in the kitchen and get breakfast for the children.
Ellie deserts me. I feel guilty for trying to trick her into hearing my thoughts, but I'm also desperate to relieve myself of them. "DAD-DY!" Alba and Archie shout, running into the room.
Mummy said not to bother Daddy because he's not feeling well, but I said, "Come on, Archie. Let's cheer up Daddy and ask him to take us to the playground."
"Good morning, sweet peas," I say with a strained smile as the kids jump on the bed. The combination of my hangover, the over-excited kids, and the thoughts pressing on me from last night is not helping my hammering headache.
I sit on the bed beside Daddy, leaning on his pillow, and tell him about my favourite things at the playground. Archie is sitting on Daddy's lap, and Daddy's talking to him. Archie's nodding, but he isn't saying anything. Archie's only little, and he doesn't talk much.
A good father would not do this. He would send his kids from the room and shield them from his thoughts. But I need to unload to someone after last night. Ellie doesn't trust me, and Alba's too chatty to get a word in edgeways. So, please, Archie, listen to me.
"DARRYN!" I scream from the door.
Ellie drops my cup of coffee, and it smashes on the floor.
Mummy looks cross. She runs over and grabs me and Archie.
Ellie carries the kids over the broken cup and out of the room. Alba's crying, but Archie is silent.
I get the children to safety and return to clear away the broken coffee cup. Then, I stand and glare at Darryn.
Ellie's in the doorway, her face flushed red with protective-mother rage.
"HOW COULD YOU?" I shout at Darryn.
Ellie slams the bedroom door, and I slump on the bed, wracked with remorse. I raise my hands and squeeze my temple between my palms, trying to crush the viral thoughts that hopped from someone last night and infected my head.
© 2024 Robert Fairhead
Thanks to Małgorzata Tomczak for sharing the perfect image for this story on Pixabay.
I wrote Viral Thoughts for the October 2024 Not Quite Write Prize run by the Not Quite Write Podcast. The 500-word flash fiction brief was:
- Your story must contain the word PALM, in full with no spaces or interrupting punctuation, or within a longer word (e.g. palmistry or napalm)
- Feature the action of "telling a lie". You don't need to use this exact wording, and you can feature the action prominently or simply as an aside and have it occur before the beginning of your story or after it ends
- Break the writing rule "avoid head-hopping".
I assumed "head-hopping" had something to do with shifting point-of-view (POV) and confirmed this in an article on the Not Quite Write Podcast website:
"Head-hopping" describes a jarring shift in POV within a piece of fiction. One minute, we're getting the insights and observations of our protagonist, and the next, we're observing the protagonist from an outsider's perspective.
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I leaned heavily into breaking the "avoid head-hopping" anti-prompt for Viral Thoughts. However, I tried to make it less jarring for the reader by anchoring my POV changes to Ellie and Alba around Darryn's perspective. I also used different voicings for the three of them. For example, Darryn refers to Alba and Archie as the "kids", Ellie calls them the "children", and Alba sounds like a typical self-centred child.
As for the "viral thoughts", I imagined a virus like COVID, but one that compels the infected to share the thought and spread the virus. An infection Darryn could have prevented by taking a "neural blocker", the equivalent of wearing a mask.
Writing this story in first-person present tense and shifting POVs felt like playing mental ping-pong. But I enjoyed the game and had fun ending it with a head-hopping metaphor.
And while Viral Thoughts didn't "hop" onto the short or longlists for the Not Quite Write Prize, I shared it in my latest short story collection, One Day in the Life of Alex's AI and Other Speculative Fiction.
N.B. My first Not Quite Write Prize story from July 2023 also dealt with internal thoughts, In Her Head.
Robert shares his writing on Tall And True and blogs on his eponymous website, RobertFairhead.com. He also writes and narrates episodes for the Tall And True Short Reads storytelling podcast, which features his short stories, blog posts, and other writing.
Robert's book reviews and other writing have appeared in print and online media. He has published three short story collections — Both Sides of the Story (2020), Twelve Furious Months (2021) and Twelve More Furious Months (2022) —, a microfiction anthology, Tall And True Microfiction (2023), and a collection of speculative fiction, One Day in the Life of Alex's AI and Other Speculative Fiction (2024).
In addition to writing, Robert's favourite pastimes include reading, watching the Sydney Swans Aussie Rules football team with his son, and walking his dog.
He has also enjoyed a one-night stand ... as a stand-up comic.