The camera is too close. The Oval Office feels smaller than it should. The President sits at the desk; leaning forward, elbows on polished wood, tie loosened. His eyes aren’t looking at the lens. He’s staring just past it, like he’s trying to find someone in the shadows behind the camera.
Silence.
Then, he begins: not like a rehearsed speech, but like a confession.
‘I didn’t want to give this speech…’
The broadcast crackles, cutting across continents. In a high-rise in Tokyo, a woman stops mid-step and presses her phone to her ear. In Lagos, a street vendor kills the music on his radio. In Liverpool, a retired engineer pours tea, hand trembling as he grips the mug.
As the President speaks, split-screen vignettes flicker on the television screen: U.S. fighter jets scraping the night sky over the Atlantic; a bunker under Warsaw with flickering lights and maps pinned by trembling hands; protesters in Berlin clutching signs reading ‘Not Again.’
His voice lowers, ‘This war won’t just be fought overseas, it’ll be felt in our homes, our hearts … every day.’
A schoolgirl in rural Nebraska watches her father weep silently in the next room. A Russian soldier lights a cigarette he doesn’t smoke. A grandmother in Seoul packs canned food with methodical dread.
The President’s final words echo out, ‘I’m sorry.’
He stands. The camera doesn’t fade; it lingers, catching the way his shoulders slump as he turns away.
Then: Black screen. Title appears slowly, white against the void.
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Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 