Homophone - Flash Fiction - by Tony Dawson

 

Homophone

Flash Fiction 

by Tony Dawson

I’m the right-hand man of a gay gangland boss. He has an ornate pink telephone in his office, which he jocularly refers to as his ‘homophone’. As you can tell, the boss has a sense of humour as well as an interest in things linguistic and for this reason he hired a phonetician as his messenger boy. However, the hiring turned out to be a mistake and today the phonetician is to be eliminated.

So here we are, the phonetician and I and a couple of henchmen, on the boss’s yacht in the middle of the bay. The victim is pale and shaking as he realizes what is about to befall him, although he can’t understand why.

“The boss has always liked me, especially the way I look,” he pleaded. “Only this morning I heard him say: ‘That phonetician, what a waist!’”

“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” I muttered. “What he actually said was: ‘That phonetician, what a waste!’ You, dear boy, were supposed to convey his messages with clarity, like when he told you to waive Bugsy Malone’s death sentence, in the presence of the enforcer.”

“But I did,” whimpered the phonetician. I sighed. “No you didn’t, you dumb pillock. You waved the death sentence in front of the enforcer, who then shot poor Bugsy dead. That’s why you’re on this boat in the middle of the bay.”

“But I heard the boss talking down the phone to you and he distinctly said, ‘Wait and see’,” the phonetician replied desperately.

“That’s the trouble with you phoneticians. You see everything in phonetic symbols. If only you could learn to write like other people, you might not be in this mess. What he actually said was: ‘Weight and sea’. It was shorthand, so to speak, for ‘Fit the phonetician with concrete boots and throw him over the side’. Why do you think the boss calls his phone a ‘homophone’?”

Splash!

 

Tony Dawson, an Englishman, has lived in Seville since 1989, having had careers in higher education in both England and Spain. He’s published poems in print in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, Pure Slush, Otherwise Engaged Literary and Arts Journal Volume 10 Winter 2022, Our Changing Earth Vol. 1 and some forthcoming in Quilled Ink Review; online at London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, Home Planet News, Cajun Mutt Press, Poetry and Covid, and Loch Raven Review. He’s published flash fiction in print in Chiron Review, Pure Slush and Otherwise Engaged Literary and Arts Journal Volume 10 Winter 2022; online at Literally Stories, and Syndic Literary Journal. Both genres have also been published in Home Planet News in Spanish.