Worthing Flash

Looking Into The Future by William Kitcher I created an app for my phone that takes a photo of what people will look like in fifty years. People said it was cute, but also disturbing, and they thought it was a trick. When I saw my friends fifty years later, I was old. So were they. I maintained better than they did because I already understood what I was going to look like. They looked much older and kind of scared because they’d seen the future, didn’t believe it, came to understand it was real, and didn’t like what they had been or had become.

Thumbnail Sketch by William Kitcher   I was sitting on a park bench as I often do, doing nothing, staring into the sky, and attempting to stop original thoughts from intruding. I don’t like thoughts; they scare me because I don’t really understand what’s happening anymore. I was studying my thumbnail, thinking that was the best way to make my mind go blank. But things never work out for me. Sitting on my thumbnail was a little man looking at his own thumbnail. When I looked more closely, what he was looking at was an even tinier man. And that littler man was looking at his thumbnail. The littlest man I could see looked up at the man on my thumbnail. The little man on my thumbnail looked up at me. I said, “What?” The little man on my thumbnail ignored my question and returned to looking at the littler man on his thumbnail. The littler man on his thumbnail resumed looking at his own thumbnail. My best guess was that this tiny tiny man was looking at someone on hi...

by William Kitcher I miss the old days when you knew that a classic old joke would be understood by an audience. If a sketch comedy group performed while Schubert’s “Trout Quintet” was playing and concluded it with people slapping each other with fish, I’m sure that the audience would think it had something to do with Monty Python’s Fish-Slapping Dance, if, in fact, they actually knew who Monty Python were. Ah, sad times. I miss the days when a cigarette smoker asked you for a match, and you could respond, “No one even comes close” or “Your face, my arse”, and receive a slight smile of recognition. No, my friends, the times they are a-changin’, to quote a Nobel Prize-winning writer. Not many people use matches anymore. To be honest, I miss the times when a lot of people smoked. I hardly ever smoke but sometimes I like to have one, and I’m not happy when I have to wander the streets for hours in order to find a person who smokes, and attempt to bum one. Buying a pack...

I wrote this piece called “the plastic surgeon’s patient” for the sole purpose of having my computer respond to me after I make a few changes to it: do you want to save the changes to the plastic surgeon’s patient? by William Kitcher    

by William Kitcher Radios crackled from Corpus Christi to Iqaluit as the announcer began. “Hello, baseball fans and radio listeners all across the U.S. of A., and on ships at sea, and those places in Canada that have radios. This is your roving reporter, Mutt Singleton, coming to you from New York City, and what a great treat we have in store for you. This program is brought to you by the First National Bank of Syracuse where our motto on deposits is: ‘You put it in, and you take it out when you’re satisfied.’ Ladies and gentlemen, what an honor it is for me to tell you that Babe Ruth, the Bambino, The Sultan of Swat, the Monarch of Mash, the King of Crush, is returning to St. Jude’s Hospital, where little Billy Johnson has no idea that the Babe is coming back to visit him after promising to hit a home run for him, and delivering on that promise. Yes, St. Jude’s Hospital, named after the patron saint of lost causes. And here are Babe and one of the beautiful nurses at the doo...