An Extract from This Month's Release: Career's End
Career’s End
Written on December 12, for the March 19 entry of 366 Days of Flash Fiction, this piece is about choices, dreams, and the price of achieving them.
The cameras flashed, the whistles screeched, and the crowd roared. The bright lights and sound combined to turn Kali’s world into a blur of dulled-out colors, and only the feel of her assistant’s hand on her arm kept her upright. It was a relief to make it to the car and close that world away.
Even so, Kali just sat in the back seat, and kept her eyes closed, breathing in the silence as the ringing in her ears died away.
“Too much?” Jessica asked, and Kali nodded.
“You’re going to have to get over it, you know.” It was not a question, just another of Jessica’s orders.
“Cancel the concert,” Kali said, and didn’t need to be watching to know how Jessica’s eyes widened, only to narrow in disapproval.
“It’ll mean the end of your career.”
“Please, Jess.”
“No. We think you’ll manage.” Jessica’s tone said Kali had no choice; her assistant’s next words confirmed it. “The doctors say you need to be out there to move forward.”
Moving forward, it was all her team cared about. Where before Kali had once had an inkling she might just be a prized show pony, now she knew. Moving forward, meant forgetting. It meant prancing forward to be shown off to those who’d come to see her perform, and she didn’t want to.
When she was small, Kali had sat on her balcony and watched the stars. She’d counted every vapor trail, and every shuttle that took people up to the transports and exploration vessels orbiting her world. She had begged to be allowed to go with them.
Up until that point, her parents had tolerated what they termed her obsession with the stars. When she asked to train to be part of one of the teams her parents financed, they’d refused, threatening to withdraw funding from the expedition unless she used her talent to make a name for herself.
What they had meant was that she had to use her talent to bolster the family reputation. If she wasn’t going into business for them, then she could be part of their business—or she could forfeit her trust fund and the family name, and then how would she ever get to the stars?
Kali had complied. As a reward, she’d been allowed to continue her studies. When she reached her majority, her parents tried to keep the tethers tight, bribing her with a continued trust fund, and her inheritance—all hedged about with the condition that she keep her career. There’d been nothing to say what her obligations were if the stage exploded around her, while a helicopter spotlighted her on stage and she was kidnapped by guys rappelling from beneath it. Nothing at all.
There’d been nothing that gave her an out, if panic struck whenever cameras flashed, or noise reached a certain level. And one of her professors had finally worked out where her passion lay.
“This is excellent work,” he’d said, and she hadn’t been able to hide her smile of joy. “Are you sure we can’t convince you to come and work for us?”
And Kali had opened her mouth to say she could never work for them, and promptly burst into tears, unable to stop the truth from coming out. He’d listened, and then he’d studied her for a long moment of silence. Finally, he’d said, “How badly do you want to come work with us?”
And Kali had told him, which was why she wasn’t too horrified when the car got six meters down the street and exploded. Kali wasn’t in it, of course. None of them were. Kali had slipped transmitters in the cookies they let her bake as part of her ‘therapy’. The teleporters locked on just fine, and by the time Jessica and the crew got back home, they had no idea which part of the universe Kali had vanished to.
Cover art is by Jake at JCaleb Design, and links to 366 Days of Flash Fiction can be found on Books2 Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0
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