a liar named truth
a flash fiction piece.
They call Truth to the podium with the kind of hush that follows a funeral.
A single spotlight cuts the dark interior of the amphitheater.
"Truth will deliver the final address at the Centennial of Reckoning."
That’s what they’ve named it. A ceremony a century in the making, yet none can say what they’re truly reckoning with. A hundred years of carving her into marble monuments and gilding her name on banners, while asking nothing of the woman behind it all.
The stage is all stone and ceremony—sacred and sterile. A curved marble lectern rises at the center, backlit by a projection screen. Her name gleams in gold serif: Truth A. F. L.
Not even a last name. Just the acronym she forgot the meaning of, lifetimes ago.
She straightens the collar of her blue coat. Blue for clarity. Blue for memory.
Her shoes echo on the steps as she climbs to the podium. Truth does not want to be here. But they have summoned her. Again.
“Come tell us what we are,” they say.
“Speak us clean,” they whisper.
“Make sense of this,” they beg,
even as they deny her water, rest, refuge.
Truth clears her throat. The microphone crackles.
“It is an honor,” she lies, “to be here.”
A rustle of applause. Relief. They love when Truth begins like this.
“I have spent a century walking with you, weeping with you, warning you.”
She is lying again. Not about the warning and the weeping—but about being with.
She has always walked ahead of them. Alone.
Truth scans the crowd. She can no longer make out their faces, but she can feel them: expectant, hungry, rehearsed in their reverence.
The crowd is a sea of surging supposition.
“Truth is not always easy to bear,” she continues, her voice even. “But it is the foundation of healing. It is the first step toward transformation.”
She’s said those words before. They were hers once.
But now they feel like propane fumes waiting for a match.
Flash—
She’s seventeen again, standing in front of her classmates, telling the story of what was waiting for her in the dark.
The teacher nods with a glassy eye. Says,“That’s powerful. But maybe keep some of the details to yourself next time?”
Flash—
She’s twenty-eight, and speaking to HR.
“We all carry burdens.”
The rep smiles.
Truth is left holding her rage in both hands, unsure where to set it down.
Flash—
She’s thirty-four, and talking to her mother: “I don’t think I love him anymore, Ma.”
A face much like her own stares back.
But her mother is Hurt.
Hurt says,
“But who will love you…?”
Truth realizes the answer is: no one.
She’s back in the present. The podium cold beneath her palms.
“We’ve come so far,” she sprinkles the words over the microphone like acid rain.
But inside:
LIE.
LIE.
LIE.
Truth falters. A flicker in the mic. She breathes.
Maybe she’ll say it.
Maybe today will be the day.
“I am tired,” she admits.
A murmur in the crowd. They didn’t expect this. This isn’t the Truth they rehearsed.
She pulls courage from her grip on the podium.
“I lie,” she says suddenly. “I lie all the time.”
A pause.
“I lie when I say I’m honored to be here. I lie when I say we’ve made progress. I lie when I speak of Hope. Hope lives in a halfway-house!”
There are gasps. Shifts in seats. One blurry face starts clapping nervously, unsure if this is still part of the performance.
Truth’s eyes begin to brim.
“I lie because when I told the truth,
you left me bleeding.”
She lets the silence stretch. And stretch.
Until it begins to writhe like a living thing beneath her.
“You ask me for Truth.
But you are not ready to hear her!”
The faces below are hissing now. Like snakes before the strike. The amphitheater begins to boil.
One voice, sharp and masked by the dark, calls out:
“Stay in your place, Truth!”
She breathes into the challenge.
“I don’t remember what my voice sounds like
when it isn’t shaped by your need.”
Somewhere deep in the rafters, a crack splits stone.
The crowd surges forward.
Combusting.
Writhing.
Seething beneath her.
The final words slip from her lips:
“Thank you.”
The stage lights flicker.
The crowd crescendos.
Truth walks off stage.
This time, she doesn’t look back.
Not even when the lights go out.
Not even when the crowd bursts forth.
Love y’all. Mean it. If you love me back, Buy Me A Book!
FURTHER READING
if all we do is save ourselves, is that enough?
i. Just because doing right by Black women would save everybody, does that make Black women obligated to save everybody?
