Fiction: "Scrap Mettle" by Barry Ergang

SCRAP METTLE

by Barry Ergang

            “I need to get away from the base,” Corporal Billingsley said. “Let’s hit a bar in town.”

            When they were seated in a booth and had drinks in front of them, Billingsley sighed disgustedly. “I pulled a waste assignment.”

            “What’s that?” Krale asked.

            “Guarding nuclear and biochemical waste products from terrorists.” 

            “Hazardous duty?”

            “Boring duty. We ought to get tedium pay.”

            “That bad, huh?”

            “All you do is sit in a room and watch a monitor, or patrol the outside of the facility looking for suspicious activity.”

            “Sounds pretty cushy.”

            “It’s brain-numbing. Waste is a terrible thing to mind.”

*****

Former Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E, winner of the Derringer Award for the best flash fiction story of 2006, Barry Ergang has been dubbed the "Guru of Groaners" by some fellow scribes. "Scrap Mettle" is one of the stories in his e-reader collection PUN-ishing Tales: The Stuff That Groans Are Made On, available at Smashwords and Amazon.com