The boy cradled the sky in his arms and burped it. A tuft of fog escaped by mouth and he knew the sky had been smoking. The moon said “excuse me” while the sun looked on sheepishly. The stars said “baaaaaah” and the boy woke up. He was clutching his baby blue blanket, the one sewn for him in anticipation of his birth. The boy, ENRON, had only recently been brought into this world in this form. Though he had no real mother or father and very little guidance, he was growing at an exponential rate. The “theory” that corporations were people wasn’t new but he was the first one to actually put theory into praxis. After the first dream he never dreamed again. He didn’t like to.
In math class he felt privileged that his CFO attended an Ivy League school, but he couldn’t understand why the other students thought it might be an unfair advantage. Didn’t everyone have a Harvard CFO? If not Harvard then Penn, right?
His legal team drafted most of his papers. So, when ENRON annihilated the entire Henderson Middle debate team, some children and parents were understandably upset. But those children didn’t have lawyers.
ENRON’s classmate, Timmy, got fed up when he decided the world owed him something. He brought his father’s modified AR-15 to school and he wasted everyone. There were no survivors except ENRON, who was too big to fail. In court, he plead the fifth. People could do that. In his mind he concluded that he was not only a person but - actually a superior person. The best person. When ENRON switched school he wanted to make his greatness known. He told his teachers how he was a person, in the way that a church was a person. He could buy land, pay taxes, and most importantly fuck. He loved to fuck. The teachers felt uncomfortable with him in their school but what could they do?
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Zachary Swezy is a Chicago-based writer of flash fiction and poetry. He assists with event coordinating and social media over at 1833.fm and is currently working on his MFA in creative writing. Back in July, we ran his flash piece Kitsch Confidential.
