{"id":2015,"date":"2012-03-29T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=2015"},"modified":"2012-03-29T11:00:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T16:00:27","slug":"cardboard-people-flash-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=2015","title":{"rendered":"Cardboard People (Flash Fiction)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/paco_calvino\/3105322521\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Elise was a dancer, a twirler, a self-motivated mover.\u00a0 Even as a baby she never sat still, and her mom fondly recalls how her feet fascinated her.\u00a0 The possibilities of human movement excited her.\u00a0 She hated all of science until Anatomy and Physiology, which taught her to think of every new way she could orchestrate her muscles and orient her bones.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, her fascination received benign neglect from the Masters, who decide which children are trouble makers and which must be left to blossom.\u00a0 The troublemakers have their motions severely restricted, via a combination of surgical and chemical nerve overrides.\u00a0 Elise thought that to be one of the Restricted would be horrible, that she would die if she couldn\u2019t dance as she wanted.\u00a0 Her friend\u00a0 Hector said it\u2019s not so\u00a0 bad, he can still think whatever he wants and write whatever he wants so he has his free speech rights.\u00a0 Just can\u2019t punch things, can\u2019t pull triggers, that sort of thing.\u00a0 She felt bad for Hector but didn\u2019t want him to feel her pity, so she didn\u2019t talk about it with him<\/p>\n

But she was nearing the end of high school, and she needed to do a senior project.\u00a0 What better to do than to override the possibilities of the Restricted?\u00a0 Her brother James pointed out, rightly, that those she wanted to reach would never attend a recital in the fancy hall where she took lessons.\u00a0 No, her project must be in the street.<\/p>\n

She elected to stage a morning happening, on the sidewalk where she turned to go to school.\u00a0 She also elected a schoolgirl costume, a plaid skirt, a white collared shirt, to emphasize her audience.\u00a0 James warned her that she might have no audience as a school girl where school girls usually walked.\u00a0 She frowned, then agreed. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u201cLet\u2019s make an audience, then, you and me.\u00a0 We\u2019ll print some people out on cardboard posters and stand them around.\u00a0 Cardboard People!\u00a0 That\u2019s the name of the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

It stuck.\u00a0 They created seven or eight life-size cutouts of a fake audience, both to emphasize the theme of the show, and also to draw attention to the fact of the performance.<\/p>\n

\n

She asked Hector to come to the show, and to bring his friends.\u00a0 Her faculty sponsor and family invited, all that remained was to design her dance.<\/p>\n

The morning of her show dawned.\u00a0 She and James carted the beginning audience to the chosen site quite early, before the main traffic began; still, they attracted a lot of attention, and with the help of the simulated audience she drew quite a large group.\u00a0 A discreet music player hid between the cutouts, and suddenly blasted hip-hop into the morning air.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The dance began with trigger pulls and punches, with violence, with Elise miming every way a human figure could enact violence. Her actions split the air but managed to communicate vivacity and passion.\u00a0 People in the audience unconsciously began to move along with her, and James noticed many who tried but could not follow her.<\/p>\n

But the music changed, and so did her dance.\u00a0 And the results of Elise\u2019s careful preparation became clear:\u00a0 she danced in ways that all could do, stopping meticulously to mime a nervous boundary, to skirt around the edges of the Restricted capabilities.\u00a0 And all the people saw, and all the people could move along with her, Restricted and free alike, and there was a dancing mob that morning on the corner of 9th<\/sup> and Locust, before the Masters could shut it down.<\/p>\n

When the sirens began, Elise realized she had provoked more of a reaction than she expected, and she was about to join the ranks of Restriction.\u00a0 But she realized as well that no matter what they did to her, no matter which pathways they blocked, she would find a way around it, she would scuttle over barricades and burrow under walls.\u00a0 They could not stop her dance, and she did not fear the punishment that was to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elise was a dancer, a twirler, a self-motivated mover.\u00a0 Even as a baby she never sat still, and her mom fondly recalls how her feet fascinated her.\u00a0 The possibilities of human movement excited her.\u00a0 She hated all of science until Anatomy and Physiology, which taught her to think of every new way she could orchestrate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15,146,251,422,932],"class_list":["post-2015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-1000-words","tag-cardboard-people","tag-dancing","tag-flash-fiction","tag-restriction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}