[FICTION]

[11/14/25]

SpoIler Alert

by Alex Kies

Here’s what happened:

I was having coffee with a friend, and the conversation never quite got off the ground. I attempted several opening gambits, but she was distracted and uncommunicative. After 20 minutes of that, I finally said, “What’s happening with you? You’re miles away!”

Her demeanor collapsed: “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that something happened yesterday, and I can’t shake it.”

“What happened? Are you all right? Is it something you want to discuss?”

“I don’t want to burden you with it,” she said. “It’s too much… all the gory details.”

She wouldn’t discuss it in the coffee shop, so we walked around the block, where passersby were in motion and so eavesdropping was more conspicuous.

“My mother called me and told me what happened with… with… you know what.”

“And what happened with that?” I asked gently.

“I don’t know how she found out. I didn’t ask, but she told me what happens at the end.”

Despite some overwhelming misgivings, I persisted: “And what is that?”

“Are you sure you want to know? You don’t want to find out for yourself?”

“Oh, who gives a shit?” I said. “It’s happening one way or the other.”

And she told me, and that’s how I found out.

Lots of people say they don’t mind knowing what happens, that they still enjoy the whole thing anyway. Not me. As soon as I knew, it wrecked everything for me. Nothing is exciting anymore, knowing what happens.

The worst part of knowing is having to tell or not tell other people. My mother, for instance, was very clear: “If you ever find out, do not tell me. I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to know if you know.”

“But—”

She clapped hands over her ears and said, “La la la la la la la.”

The quality of our conversation was somewhat diminished thereafter. But these are the stakes.

Someone asked me on a date once if I knew, and I thought it might work to my advantage to admit that I did and to offer to disclose it to her. So I disclosed it. There was not a second date.

One of my buddies and I were drinking once and he asked. I wanted to share it with someone who I trusted and I cared about and vice versa, and he never said anything about it, but I could tell it took the wind out of his sails. I was not surprised.

It became a game I played with people in my life. There was a guy at work. Like other jobs these days, we only really needed pens occasionally. Always when one of those moments came, the pen you kept around at your desk didn’t have any ink. So I loaned one to him. I didn’t anticipate getting it back, and he wasn’t a coworker I cared for overmuch, and I said to him, “You know what happens to people who don’t return pens?” He didn’t know how to respond, so I spared him a lame rejoinder: “Well, I do,” and filled him in. I left him with a wink and a pen that probably only had a few sentences left in it. I knew he wouldn’t be asking me any favors again.

The ignorant don’t know how lucky they are in some ways, and yet they can’t help getting all bent out of shape about it. When I was one of them, I was ambivalent. I knew I would get around to finding out eventually. I wanted it to occur naturally and not to manufacture an epiphany. I always figured it was a need-to-know thing. But now I knew what happened, and my ambivalence had been replaced with a devil may care attitude. Sometimes I just told people, by accident, of course. People whom I knew wouldn’t appreciate the revelation.

But everything comes around eventually. I’d let it slip—that I knew—too many times, and had earned a reputation around the neighborhood for a lackadaisical employment of that secret truth.

And one day I was walking down the street and came around the corner and was suddenly face to face with a gaggle of truth-seekers in their young teens, eyes bugging out of their heads, trying to see if what I knew showed in my eyes.

One towards the back gasped. “There he is!”

“Get him!” yelled the kid standing next to the biggest kid, and they were on me like ravening dogs. “TELL US!” they howled. “TELL US WHAT HAPPENS!”

I ran as fast and far as I could, dodging around corners to try to get them to overshoot and lose steam rounding on me, but they were way younger than me. And there was so many of them. “Please!” I called out over my shoulder as my side cramped. “I can’t! Ask your parents!”

Soon they had me cornered, and I turned to a much larger crowd than I’d originally faced. There were people of all ages now. Some of them glared at me, resentful, and others stared eagerly.

“Leave me alone!”

“Tell us!” they called out. “Tell us what happens at the end!”

“No, please, I beg you,” I begged them. “It’s not worth it—trust me!”

“Listen to him! He thinks we’re better off not knowing!” a woman told the others.

“You are! I swear!”

“Who does this guy think he is anyway?” someone wanted to know. “Tell us!”

They pressed in on me, clamoring for the answer: “What happens?” “Tell us!” “We want to know! We demand to know!” “We have a right to know! We have a right to know what happens! It’s happening to us too, you know!”

“Fine!” I screamed. “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you what happens!”

They backed up a few paces and stared at me, expectantly, almost drooling for truth.

“You want to know what happens? Fine by me! I’ll tell you what happens, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

I paused and looked around at their faces and my anger dissipated. They were in anticipatory stasis, ready to manifest whatever form their inchoate emotions would take after they heard what happened. I would be the last to see them before they were like me, people who knew.

“This,” I said quietly. They leaned in. “This is what happens. This is it.”

They looked around at each other murmuring. However they imagined what happened, none imagined this. “This?” “This is what happens?” “That’s it?” “What a rip-off!”

I knew how they felt. I’d been through it all before and there was nothing to do but to let them wear themselves out.

They descended quickly from disappointment to abandon. The most aggressive were locked up with each other, while the more passive ones soiled their clothes and tore out their hair and clawed at themselves. They wailed and shouted, and I watched and listened.

“Please,” a woman clinging to me begged, as if to make me take it back. “This sucks! What the fuck? What is this? What’s happening?”

ALEX KIES is an Eagle Scout from the Twin Cities and an Apprentice with Carpenter's Local 4 in the Quad Cities. He's an editor with RatTrap Magazine, and his work has appeared in Filth, Apocalypse Confidential, and Highlights for Kids. @alexvkies on Instagram.