2021 – A Spaced Odyssey

Here’s another submission to the "Stranger(s) In A Strange Land" project: flash fiction about and for refugees. http://la-granota.com/stranger.htm As the person who perversely set the word limit at 486 and not 500, it was with chagrin that I found myself obliged to erase treasured sentences in order to squeeze it in (exactly 486 words, not counting the title… though Word® counts *** as a word)!

2021 – A Spaced Odyssey

Chuck Tremble was fully living up to his name: trembling with fever and chucking up over the side of the zodiac. He was also pretty spaced out.

All three were symptoms of food poisoning – probably from half a fishburger that he’d fought a rat over, in a Miami dumpster. An ocean swell from the Atlantic and fumes from the outboard motor only aggravated his misery.

Tremble – once a most influential global-warming denier, helping to fill the President’s cabinet with Oil Industry CEOs – was fleeing the USA after the Oil Bubble had burst, crashing the stock market and turning the dollar, rouble (Russia had been heavily dependent on Arctic oil and gas revenues), and pound sterling into wastepaper. In the ensuing riots, many of his friends and associates (including cabinet members) had been hanged from Wall Street lampposts.

Talk about friends in high places!

Tremble had escaped lynching by trading two buildings for a new face, and three more for a hideout until the scars healed. Then his assets had been frozen.

Bitter irony: son of an immigrant, former husband to two others, Tremble, the vociferous anti-immigrant fanatic, was now himself a refugee.

Second irony: the Mexican border fence (not his idea, admittedly, but one that he’d embraced and fought political battles for) had stopped his fleeing overland.

So here he was, crowded into a rubber boat with two dozen other refugees; and – because ironies always come in threes – praying to God that the Godless Commies would grant asylum to a vicious capitalist.

At least he had the ace of diamonds up his sleeve!

***

He came to on a beach, three Cuban soldiers leaning over him. His head still rolled on ocean waves.

“I want the best medical treatment. Private room. I can pay.”

“Your yanqui dollars are no good here, señor… or anywhere else. Besides, all health services are free in Cuba… for everyone.”

Tremble had the dry heaves and almost blacked out again. This was an emergency. He had to reveal his secret. “I want the best, I tell you! Bag of diamonds. In the lining of my coat sleeve.”

“You aren’t wearing a coat, señor. It’s high summer. You’re delirious.”

The coronel spoke: “We know who you are, señor…”

“My name is Charles Tremble. I’m…”

“Your friend tried to buy preferential treatment with photos of you before and after surgery. After you’ve recovered, you’ll be assigned to the same sugarcane plantation. You’ll be happy to be reunited, no doubt.

“By rights,” she added, “we should hand you over to The Hague for trial for crimes against Humanity. But your rôle in bankrupting the two super-powers, as well as the formerly great Britain and Saudi Arabia, led to the stoppage of covert funding for international terrorism, and is greatly appreciated around the world. People joke about nominating you for the Nobel Peace Prize!”

Four ambulances arrived. The soldiers straightened up.

“Welcome to Cuba, señor Trump!”