The World Is Ending in Tampa, Florida!

flash fiction by Paige Blackburn

From luxury boats or the local news, the greater population of Tampa watched their city shift, then sink, Atlantis-style, and slide deep into the only darkness we do not know.

Hundreds of Tampa children watched in wonder and asked their mothers if octopuses were going to sleep in their beds. Hundreds of Tampa mothers didn’t know how to answer that question. Only one Tampa child asked her mother where they were going to live now. Her name was Judy. Judy’s mother finished her cigarette, flicked it into the ocean, and replied simply, “Somewhere else.”