Urban Volcano

Fiction by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson

Flash fiction

The Norbert Peterson Tower

Norbert Peterson glided slowly upward from the underground, holding onto the handrail of the escalator. He was on his way to take his first peek at the completed construction of his first skyscraper. The KP-Energy Tower, or the Norbert Peterson Tower as his colleagues called it. It was the tower that could transform his career from being an architect to being a starchitect.

The Norbert Petterson Tower — Illustration by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson
Illustration by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson

Once on the surface, Norbert’s gaze hesitantly followed his design from bottom to top. He crossed the street to get a better angle. He walked backwards down the street with his eyes fixed on his creation.

Norbert shook his head. It did not work. It did not fit in. The building that had looked so good on paper in his studio simply did not scale to a full-size construction.

The flash fiction story The Norbert Peterson Tower is part of the flash fiction collection Flash 52.

Börkur is an avid storyteller with a keen eye for quirky characters, funny dialogs and vivid scenario descriptions. Much of his writing falls within the genre of realistic fiction and his stories are more often than not based on real events in the author’s life. Although the tales contain grains of truth, they are melded with fiction, making the reader curious to know the line between reality and fantasy.