So everyone’s going nuts in our fallout shelter, and lemme tell ya
Ninety days into the apocalypse, rumors fly through the Network about a crazy-ass plan: an Open Mic Comedy Night on our comm line. In Morse code.
“Stand-up comedy?” I ask Joy. “Now?”
“Especially now,” she grins. “I’m signing up.”
I admire her courage. She preps a routine. Then the night before the show, there’s another attack. I live; she dies — but not before shoving her script into my hands and mouthing with bloody lips: You do it.
So I do. Her jokes hug the world in dots and dashes, benign bombs and brilliant punchlines wrung from darkness.
Humanity.
We’d survive.
About the author:
M.E. Macuaga is a Japanese Bolivian storyteller and escape room addict whose diverse work can be found now or soon in The Seventh Wave, HAD, Oyster River Pages, Superpresent, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. A finalist for the SmokeLong Quarterly Fellowship, the NYC Midnight competitions, and The Florida Review Editors’ Award in Creative Nonfiction, M.E.’s communities include Tin House, Ragdale, Hedgebrook, Jentel Arts, International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Storyknife.
Find M.E. Macuaga:
Website: curiousstoryprods.com
Insta: @memi_writes
Bluesky: @memi-writes
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