Mini-fiction Monday: With My Kind

CN: Ableism, eugenics
Genre: science fiction

Fun fact: This was the first micro-fiction I had ever written, and it first appears in Stargazing: Microtales from the Cosmos.

They’ll be coming for me. Fine. Anyway, there’s something so satisfying about a high-speed chase through space involving a Crip at the helm.

Huh.

Funny how our leadership brags that our planet’s a galactic god of tech, but they’re oblivious to the spirit of disabled sentients. Whatever. I’m here, alone for the moment, lights off but with life support, staring at the stars.

I’d been scheduled for “restructuring.” Well, the collective They felt people with legs that don’t leg were an impediment to their medical accolades. Being corralled to the Institute (read: institution) with about a hundred others was super fun. Thank goodness for Sheena. Our late-night convos from our bunks made everything bearable.

“You’re a star,” she’d sign. “You need to shine with your own kind.”

I finally had the courage to sign back, “I love you,” the night before they took her away.

She wasn’t voiceless. I heard her screams. The restructuring didn’t take.

So, for the next weeks, I watched. Each security team, what they carried, when they took breaks.

They shouldn’t have left that hoverchair unattended.

Nor the Crip Carrier.

Gorgeous ship, too.

I’m with my own kind now, Sheena.

“I love you.”

With My Kind © 2020 Cait Gordon. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction from the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. For more information, contact Cait Gordon.

A greyscale close-up of me, standing in front of a blank background. I am a white woman with short silver hair cropped closely on the sides. I am wearing dark metallic rimmed glasses with rhinestones on the side. I’m wearing silver hook earrings with flat beads and a plaid shirt.

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and the forthcoming Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Cait also founded the Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the multi-genre disability fiction anthologies Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too.

Featured photo by Philippe Donn on Pexels.com