LOBSTER BATH BY GUSTAVO BONDONI
"You know they boil the lobsters alive, don’t you?” she said. It slipped out, impossible for her to control.
"The water starts out cold, and then they increase the temperature and kill the poor creature when it gets hot enough.”
Marc from legal was seated right in front of her, big, blustery, red. He nodded while he chewed. “Yeah. It’s to keep them from getting scared and ruining the flavor.”
A couple of the other guys had the decency to look guilty. Not Marc. He speared another gobbet, dipped, chewed and made the face again.
Lobster Bath is the seventeenth of our announced features, a flash fiction piece that boils to a dramatic - and satisfying - confrontation. With Flash Fiction, we aim to highlight smaller pieces rampant with imagination and experimentation.
Rita doesn't quite fit in with her co-workers. She never liked their attitude towards anything: not towards animals, not towards women, not towards company expense accounts. And especially not towards her. So when one of them makes advances after a company dinner, she is well prepared to accept them... on her own terms.
Rita never liked their attitude towards anything: not towards animals, not towards women, not towards company expense accounts. And especially not towards her.
Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer with over three hundred stories published in fifteen countries, in seven languages. He is a member of Codex and an Active Member of SFWA. His latest novel is Test Site Horror (2020). He has also published two other monster books: Ice Station: Death (2019) and Jungle Lab Terror (2020), three science fiction novels: Incursion (2017), Outside (2017) and Siege (2016) and an e-book novella entitled Branch. His short fiction is collected in Pale Reflection (2020), Off the Beaten Path (2019) Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011).
In 2019, Gustavo was awarded second place in the Jim Baen Memorial Contest and in 2018 he received a Judges Commendation (and second place) in The James White Award. He was also a 2019 finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest.
His website can be found at www.gustavobondoni.com where you can learn more about his various projects, both current and upcoming.
