Huron Bundles was the fastest speed speaker in the world. He read the bible in two seconds. The Quran in three. It did not matter the language, or if he even understood the words at all, Huron would speak them at a breakneck speed.

Some people said that Huron’s profession was useless. That nobody could understand him. Or, worst of all, that he was a fraud who just made a bunch of sounds and flipped through books.

Huron found all of these things offensive, and he wasn’t afraid to let people know it. Unfortunately, he didn’t think anyone could understand his comebacks either. With them being so quick and all.

That was the key to being the greatest speed speaker in the world. Consistency. If you allowed yourself to slow down for even a second, you’d lose your speed. Huron could not afford to lose his speed.

In fact, Huron could not afford most things. It was very hard to get a job when you spoke so fast. He kept submitting resumes, but whenever he’d interview at a place, he could tell he was outpacing the interviewer.

Huron mainly got by working for pharmaceutical ads. Whenever there’d be a bunch of really nasty side effects the companies would need to warn people about, they’d call Huron to give an overview.

Huron did not feel great about this, but he didn’t have many other options.

He’d tried to get into auctioneering, but even there he’d simply been too fast.

People would come up to him and say,

“Huron, this is ridiculous, you need to slow down a bit.” But Huron would simply sigh and rattle off a million different ways to say no and hope they’d understand some of it.

At times Huron did want to slow down. He wasn’t stupid after all; he understood that he was probably speaking too fast. But he had pride too. Being the fastest speaker in the world meant something to him. The relationship with the guys from the Guinness Book of World Records meant something to him.

He couldn’t just give up. Couldn’t he?

He was kind of in a rough patch of life. He’d recently been fired off of a rapper’s song because he’d rapped too fast and left the actual beat behind. Then, he’d heard about something called speed dating.

Huron had figured that would be the perfect place for him. But turns out, he was even too fast for that. Huron would cycle through entire conversations before the woman sitting in front of him could get out her name.

Then he’d been kicked out because the staff had thought he was making fun of a Middle Eastern woman’s accent. Huron, of course, had not been, they had simply misunderstood his rushed words.

Although in all fairness he had been making fun of the Asian waiters. But that was neither here nor there.

Huron walked home from the speed dating event, pondering his life decisions. Was this the cost of being the greatest at something?

Huron had always thought being great would be fun. That it would bring enjoyment to his life. Some fun. Or maybe even friends who weren’t constantly timing his speech.

He glanced at the glass window of a technology repair shop next to him, meeting the eyes of his own reflection. Huron gazed at himself for several minutes.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Then the shop owner told him he needed to move along.

In desperation, Huron told the man his life story. How he had fallen on these hard times.

The man waved his arms and said with an accent,

“Too slow, no understand.” Then the man shut the door.

Huron stared at the door in disbelief for several more minutes. The repairman’s words echoed through his brain. Too slow.

There were only two possibilities as to what that could mean.

On the one hand, Huron figured the man may have misspoke. English was almost certainly his second language, so perhaps he had simply mixed up the two words.

On the other, the man was saying that Huron was still not fast enough. That he could increase his speed. Talk even faster.

Huron pulled out his phone and texted every single person he had in it. Usually, he’d send a voice memo, but he wanted to make sure everybody understood.

Big show tomorrow. Corner of third and sixth. Bring a camera and a stopwatch.

The next morning, Huron waited on the corner. He realized that he hadn’t set an exact time for the event, so he ended up having to wait till the afternoon for anyone to arrive. It didn’t bother Huron very much, however, since he used the time to practice.

Eventually, people showed up. First, it was his mother and Greg, his stepfather. He nodded to them both. Shortly after, a modest group of others showed up. A pharmaceutical rep he had met at a commercial once. A few of the Guinness guys. Even the Middle Eastern woman from the speed dating event.

He wasn’t sure how she’d known about his big event, since he hadn’t had any way of contacting her, but he smiled at her nonetheless.

She flipped him off.

“Right Huron,” Greg, his stepfather said, “What is this all about?”

Greg was always so impatient.

Huron stepped onto the apple crate he had brought with him, and announced his plan; to break the sound barrier with his very words.

The group looked at him in confusion. Huron wasn’t sure over what he said, or how he had said it. He decided to just get on with it either way.

Huron began speaking as fast as he could. The words flowing out of his mouth at breakneck speeds. The Guinness guys timed him with impressed looks on their faces.

You haven’t seen anything yet, Huron thought before he began talking faster.

His mother’s face was shocked. Then it slowly morphed into one of panic.

“You’re speaking too fast,” she said, “you’ll hurt yourself!”

I responded by speaking even faster. The applecart beneath me began to shake. My face turned a shade of purple as I ran low on air.

Then I turned it on to a whole different level. My words became subsonic. What had once just sounded too muddled to understand, became too fast to hear at all.

The Middle Eastern woman has an astounded expression on her face. I think she’s finally starting to realize that I am not doing some weird imitation of her language. She begins to clap slowly.

I look at the boys from Guinness and they’re hooting and hollering. One of them shows me calculations he’s drawn up; I’m going faster than an intercontinental ballistic missile.

I don’t know why he knows how fast those go, but I’m too busy to think about it. I realize I can ratchet up the speed even more.

I make eye contact with my mom. She’s hugging Greg and sobbing. I wink at her and lean fully onto my voice’s throttle. I look her in the eyes and say, “Love you, Mom.”

Then I am absorbed by a warp in the timestream itself. My voice’s speed has ripped a hole through our very dimension and brought me along with it.

Luminous beings stare at my sudden appearance. They appear to be sitting around a table.

“Hello,” I say, faster than ever.

“How’s it going,” one of the creatures says. I realize with a start that these creatures can understand me.

There is a cigar sticking out of one of the beings’ ethereal forms, smoke emanates from him as he speaks,

“We’re playing Texas hold 'em if you want to join?”

“Okay,” I say, “But I don’t have any money.”

“That’s alright, we’re just playing for fun anyway.”