Detroit
21 Feb 2019Today’s prompt: “Write a short story that is set in Detroit in 1956, in which a car floor mat plays a crucial role.” [As with the Argentina one, the floor mat will only have a minor role.]
Nineteen-fifty-six. White racists were freaking out about the uppity blacks who were boycotting the buses in Montgomery and attending the University of Alabama. Joseph McCarthy was still freaking out about Communists, though nobody really believed him any more. And nobody was freaking out about cults attempting to usher in the death of everyone on Earth by waking the Elder Gods, though they probably should have been.
None of those things concern you that much. You’re just a factory worker building T-Birds in Detroit. You don’t understand much about popular culture these days. You don’t get those beatniks with their weird-ass poetry, or the kids with their Elvis records, or everybody in the art world with their obsession with big pictures with nothing but paint splatters on them, Christ, a kid could do that. But you do get why people love the Thunderbird. God, that car is gorgeous.
Today you left your coat at work. You don’t want to freeze tomorrow morning, so after dinner, you drive back to the factory to get it. And there, next to the conveyor belts, is this bunch of weirdos in black robes standing in a circle and chanting. You catch a few words before they see you and stop.
“Uh,” you say. “What’s Cthulhu?”
They swarm toward you. You back up the way you went, then bolt for the door. Your hand is on the door handle, when out of nowhere a woman in a robe smacks you in the face with a rubber floor mat. You’re thrown off balance for a second – just long enough for them to grab you.
Ford started doing crash tests two years ago. The one they put you in is a lot bloodier than usual.