Urban Volcano

Fiction by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson

Flash fiction

The secret book

I stepped into the subway car, took a seat and extracted Nabokov from my backpack. Before starting my reading I glanced over to the row of seats on the other side of the aisle.

The secret book — Illustration by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson
Illustration by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson

Diagonally across from me sat at a young woman reading Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. My prejudices told me they were an odd couple, the lady and Kurt. The woman looked happy and full of joy. She would be a much better fit for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Next to the woman sat a man reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. A proper gentleman, it seemed, wearing a pinstriped suit and his hair combed back. He looked as if cut from a story about the English upper class. I smiled to myself as I imagined him as one of the guests in Mrs. Dalloway’s dinner party.

I continued my scan along the row of seats and my glance stopped at a woman with a Kindle ebook reader. The smile disappeared from my lips. I did not like ebook readers. It destroyed my favorite pastime activity not being able to know what people were reading.

The flash fiction story The secret book 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.