BY ROBERT MORGAN FISHER
| The man tapped my shoulder. I turned around. It was night, in an alley. His features were blurred, blue-green, indistinct. He may have had a beard or mustache. I don’t know. “I got a bad case of the titty-shits!” he snarled. “The what?!” “TITTY-SHITS! Got ‘em BAD!” I paused—that was my downfall. He punched me in the nose. I was stunned. He found my wallet and fled. I dropped to my knees. The police came. I told them what happened. More or less. When it got to the part about what he’d said, I couldn’t get it out. “He said what?” the woman cop looked up from her notepad. “‘Titty...’” I couldn’t say the whole thing for some reason. It seemed so stupid and silly. Made me feel foolish. |
| Her male partner suppressed a grin. “He said ‘titty’?” Now they were both smiling. “Did he have a weapon?” “Gun or a knife?” They looked at me hopefully. A walkie-talkie crackled. “No,” I said. “Not that I could see.” “So this guy accosts you in an alley—” “—says the word ‘titty’—” They seemed ready to bust out laughing until I said: “Then he hit me.” My nose was visibly swollen, possibly broken. Their attitude shifted back to a more professional tone on the word ‘hit.’ Jerks. “‘Victim assaulted...’” The woman cop wrote it down. They asked more questions, then left. I had to get back to my dorm and make a hundred calls: bank, parents, credit card companies... I kept thinking about my attacker. It’s true, he robbed me with words. I went over the entire exchange in my head. He said that first bit, I responded, then... what? Then he said it again, didn’t he? Completely disarmed me with confusion, with language. Words as weapons. Amazing. That’s the exact moment I decided to become a writer. |
| Robert Morgan Fisher’s fiction has appeared in Gemini Magazine, The Missouri Review Soundbooth Podcast, 0-Dark-Thirty, The Huffington Post, Psychopomp, The Seattle Review, The Spry Literary Journal, 34th Parallel, Spindrift, Bluerailroad and many other publications. He has a story in the forthcoming Night Shade/Skyhorse Books Iraq War anthology, Deserts of Fire and a story coming out in the 2016 edition of Red Wheelbarrow and in The Journal of Microliterature. He’s written for TV, radio and film. Robert holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, where he works as a Book Coach and Writing Specialist. He also develops courses and teaches for Antioch’s online I2P Program. He often writes companion songs to his short stories. Both his music and fiction have won many awards. Robert also voiced the serial killer in the audiobook version of Lauren Beukes’s novel Broken Monsters. (www.robertmorganfisher.com) |
