“The Eclipse is Running Late” by Andrew Careaga, a FREE short story
Thanksgiving is almost upon us — for those who participate. If you need a break during the Thanksgiving holiday, a reprieve, some quiet time from the hustle and bustle, how about a short and humorous read? How about a short story by Missouri author Andrew Careaga titled “The Eclipse is Running Late?”
You can read the story below or download an ebook copy from the store and take it with you off the grid for turkey day. Either way, it’s free and on the house, like your aunt’s corn casserole.
Meet Andrew Careaga
Andrew Careaga is a recently retired gentleman who spent the majority of his career in marketing and communications. I first met Andrew at Missouri University of Science and Technology where we both worked, albeit in different departments. Our work overlapped sometimes, as I helped spearhead marketing and communications efforts in our department (then called the Video Communications Center). He had been on hiatus, you might say, from fiction through his career as a marketing person, but now in retirement he’s slipped back into the fiction game writing short stories and working on a book or two. Let’s all wish him the best of luck on his journey to finishing and publishing his first book during retirement.
He’s also dang good with a guitar.
You can find Andrew Careaga across the web in these places:
Andy Writes! (blog)
The media and everyone is ready for an eclipse of the sun. Glasses on. The scheduled time arrives, but someone is late.
Rated G: Clean, wholesome fun.
What you get: An epub file that is DRM free and should work on most PCs, eReaders, and mobile devices.
After you've finished reading, please come back and leave a review or comment below.
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Copyright © 2024 by Andrew Careaga.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) or used in the training of AI, for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. For permission requests, write to the author, with subject “The Eclipse is Running Late” at the following email address: andrew.careaga@gmail.com.
“The Eclipse is Running Late”
A Short Story by Andrew Careaga
For some reason – a scheduling mix-up, or a meeting running long, or some other cosmic bureaucratic glitch – the eclipse is running late.
The sun is furious and firing off solar flares in impotent rage as it awaits the tiny speck, the moon, to arrive for its moment in the sun, its five minutes of fame. This was to be a team effort. A well-orchestrated collaboration, like Lennon and McCartney or Rodgers and Hammerstein.
On planet earth, clusters of humans from Mazatlán, in southwest Mexico, to Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, grow anxious, perturbed, nervous, frightened. They check their watches and smartphones, tap their feet, sigh heavily, and wonder why there is a delay. They had not planned for this. Hipsters and hippies who synced their carefully curated playlists to ensure Pink Floyd would play at just the right moment are agitated. The hoteliers, restaurateurs, bartenders and sommeliers along the path of totality, their customers, and all the AirBnB and Vrbo and bed and breakfast clients, the campers under clear blue skies, the gawkers who drove for hours and whose cars and pickup trucks and vans now line the sides of highways as they sit restless in their lawn chairs, the shop owners who closed early, the schoolchildren on playgrounds with their pinhole-camera science projects, their befuddled teachers and principals, the addled astrophysicists, the throngs of college students – all are angsty and disconcerted as the appointed time passes without the expected celestial spectacle. They fold their arms and pace and check their phones as they await the moon’s arrival across the sky, dancing in like Ginger Rogers, backward and in high heels. Any moment now, the moon will slide into view, all apologies – Sorry I’m late; the traffic was terrible! – but ready to get on with the show and erase the sunlight, to cast the earthlings’ puny strip of land into a deep purple darkness, to cause the birds to grow silent and the crickets to chirp, if only for five minutes, in the dark interregnum of the day.
Still, nothing.
The news media, with their satellite trucks crowding the streets and parking lots in Austin, Dallas, Mountain Home, Cape Girardeau, and points east, curse this disruption of their programming, frustrated by the lack of information to report. Podcasters and social media pundits and verified influencers on Twitter (I mean X, but nobody calls it X) fling hot takes and reheated, repackaged conspiracy theories into the digital ether. Alien invasion? Deep State plot? A well-orchestrated distraction by the government?
In Washington, D.C., the White House spokesperson addresses the press corps, expressing the government’s grave concern and issuing assurances that all appropriate federal agencies are investigating the matter. The head of NASA vows to get to the bottom of it, and one reporter in the gaggle asks if this could be the work of a hostile alien race. “Is Putin behind this?” asks another. The breaking news, as CNN and Fox and MSNBC all report, is that there is no news, no eclipse, as the millions staring blankly up at the blue sky along the path of totality are well aware, but the news anchors all assure viewers they are closely monitoring the situation, so please stay tuned for updates as their crews, and the crews of mid- and small-market stations, newspapers, and radio stations all along the band of totality shove microphones into the faces of eclipse gawkers-in-waiting, all wearing their NASA-approved viewers (“Sir, we can’t interview you if you’re not wearing your glasses”), for their comment, their opinion, just something – anything – to fill air time or webpages or social media feeds while they wait, while we all wait, for the moon’s appearance – surely it will be any minute now – or for answers from somebody, whoever is supposed to be in charge, whoever is supposed to be accountable, as to why this great, hyped gig in the sky hasn’t happened yet, why it is not on schedule and why it is disrupting ours, and demandingly demand answers, as though the sun and the moon revolve around us.
THE END
Please sound off in the comments to let Andrew know what you thought of his story. And as always, keep it respectful.
