El Jefe
Nanofiction
This story originally appeared in Quick Fiction Volume 6 in October 2004.
Francisco Franco Bahmonde had been dying for months, but loyalty, he swore, kept his body alive.
“Señor,” said the doctor, “your illnesses are many: bronchopneumonia, thrombophlebitis, ulcers, endotoxic shock, the inability to pass feces . . . .” The tiresome list went on. And so Franco would suffer like never before — some mornings, he imagined, like poor García Lorca, or a bit like the fallen of Guernica. At the sound of a wheeze his old wife, Carmen, would rest her ear against his cold amphibian lips. “Quiero ver la televisión,” the great leader would squeak, and Carmen would turn on the news.
El Bando Nacional would still dress him up and set him on balconies, overlooking plazas full of people. The Franco-born men could be recognized by their interminably creased brows, by the wool-skirted women elbow-locked at their sides. “¡Viva España!” the crowd would cheer, their arms stretched upward in a fine fascist blessing. Yet in the night, Franco’s yellow eyes would roll. How hard it was to die.
Jen Heller is based in Boston. Her stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Brevity & Echo: An Anthology of Short-Short Stories.
