In a world where emotions are no longer free, one encounter promises to reignite something long forgotten…
This micro-fiction piece comes from the word prompt “joy.”
I’ll admit, I may have gone a little overboard with the metaphor game on this one, but the result was an excellent workout for my creative muscles.
As writers, we often push boundaries, especially when working with evocative themes like joy—something so raw and untamed.
In this piece, I leaned into metaphor to bring that untamed joy to life, wrapping it in mystery and danger, and letting it collide with a world that has forgotten what it means to truly feel.
The metaphors not only carry the theme but breathe energy into the piece itself.
The Last Dealer
The city cracked like a tooth under a flickering streetlamp sky. Neon signs sputtered above storefronts selling distractions by the gram—VR nostalgia, kiss-for-rent androids, bureaucratic apathy wrapped in recycled optimism. I moved through it like a rumor, collar up, boots slick with alley grease and last night’s sins.
People didn’t feel anymore. Not really. Emotion was a liability—got in the way of progress, made the gears grind. The suits outlawed it decades ago, replaced it with designer contentment, the kind that didn’t leave scars or start revolutions.
But something was still moving in the cracks. A pulse. A whisper.
They called her Echo. Or Velvet. Or sometimes nothing at all. Just a scent in the wind—burnt honey and jasmine cigarettes. No one could agree on her face, but everyone remembered the aftermath. Color bleeding back into things. Laughter with teeth. A heartbeat like thunder in a quiet church.
I found her on a Thursday, behind a condemned theater that used to house broken jazz. She leaned against the brick like she owned it, like it was just another ex-lover. Leather coat, eyes like melted film reels. She didn’t speak, just raised an eyebrow, and I knew she was the one.
I said, “I want it.”
She smiled, slow as sin. “You sure?”
I nodded. Too tired to lie. Too hungry to care.
She reached into her coat and pulled out a vial the size of a bullet. Inside: something golden and alive. It shimmered like static, like memory, like everything I’d ever wanted and forgotten.
“Last one,” she said. “Take it, and there’s no going back.”
I didn’t ask what it was. You don’t ask the executioner what kind of rope they use.
I took the hit.
And the world detonated.
Not like a bomb. Not pain. Not fear. Something else. Something primal. It hit me in the chest like a childhood song, like warm hands in winter, like driving too fast with the windows down and no one waiting at home.
I felt it. Not the fake stuff. Not simulation. The raw, incandescent scream of being alive. The joy that comes before language. The joy that burns cities down because it refuses to stay small.
I laughed. Loud. Ugly. Free.
She watched, unmoved, like she’d seen it a hundred times.
Then she handed me her coat.
“It’s yours now,” she said. “I’m done.”
“What?” I stammered. “Why me?”
She leaned in close, voice soft as a needle drop. “Because joy is dangerous. It’s fire. And the world’s forgotten how to burn. But you remember now.”
Then she was gone—folded into the fog like a cigarette dream.
And I stood there in her place, heart pounding, coat heavy on my shoulders, the last dealer in a city built on numb.
People started coming. Broken ones. Hollow ones. Hungry.
I didn’t speak. Just looked at them.
And waited for the next one to say:
“I want it.”
(c) Eric Montgomery
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