{"id":357,"date":"2006-11-06T07:31:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-06T07:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/flash-fiction-by-alex-keegan\/"},"modified":"2007-01-16T23:56:37","modified_gmt":"2007-01-16T23:56:37","slug":"flash-fiction-by-alex-keegan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/flash-fiction-by-alex-keegan\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing cards with Saddam Hussein"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m playing cards with Saddam Hussein. He&#8217;s picked up English pretty well and he says, &#8220;Charles, Charles, every cloud has a silver lining.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then he says, &#8220;Charles, always look on the bright side of life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Saddam has changed since the sentence and he keeps telling me, it&#8217;s not all sadness. He has told me about the Hanging Gardens, just to the south of us, and when he says &#8220;hanging&#8221;, he doesn&#8217;t flinch, he doesn&#8217;t pause.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were a great civilization, when America only had the redskin,&#8221; he says. &#8220;And we built such beauties that we were talked about the world over.&#8221; He chuckles. &#8220;But now they are difficult to find&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Later he begins to laugh. He tells me about his brother who drowned. A twin. &#8220;He was the bad brother,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Truly bad.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>ABOUT THE AUTHOR:<\/b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/buzzwordsblog\/uploaded_images\/AlexKeegan-758966.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/buzzwordsblog\/uploaded_images\/AlexKeegan-755967.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alexkeegan.com\/\">Alex Keegan<\/a> began writing seriously in 1992, publishing five mystery novels before switching to serious short fiction. He has been published in <i>Atlantic Monthly Unbound,<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archipelago.org\/vol9\/keegan.htm\">Archipelago<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eclectica.org\/v2n6\/keegan_python_pat.html\">Eclectica<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/flash_fiction\/2005\/feb\/you_must_have_known_ambrose.html\">3:AM Magazine<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mississippireview.com\/2000\/011400-keegan.htm\">Mississippi Review<\/a>. He runs a tough internet writing school, &#8220;Boot Camp Keegan&#8221;, and edits <i>Seventh Quark Magazine.<\/i> Born in Wales with an Irish mother, he now lives and writes in Newbury, England where he lives with his wife and two teenage children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Saddam has changed since the sentence and he keeps telling me, it&#8217;s not all sadness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>By <b>Alex Kogan<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flash-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}