THE RED PIER
When I saw you alone and crying, the dark swallowing up your form,
I thought I must be dreaming.
Somehow I always catch you in fallen light;
You were standing in the shadows by the reeds.
You looked so loose and spare; so thin,
I held my voice so as not to give a shock.
What compelled you, my friend,
To come back here of all places?
Where nobody wants you?
Your face looked bad – as if it had been cut from stained glass,
Or perhaps just cut.
You stood on the dock watching night come loose –
Red spattered pants and shoes and all.
Then you walked the pier my father had built all the way to the edge –
Toes hooked overboard in black Doc Martin’s,
Arms all akimbo, and I thought you were beautiful.
You looked torn asunder, well beyond repair,
And still you kept your vigor
Well beyond the vertical of water.
I had to smile.
I think I loved you then.
But the water made squiggles like spiders creeping
And your eyes went blank as scrims,
So I watched you implode instead.
My hand was on your shoulder and then it was not.
You bent down till your knees kissed the boards,
Till your head could go no lower.
You placed your face just above the flat slats
And you hissed something harsh, a name, a number, a need.
Somebody broke out the shotgun
And your body slipped in, your limbs twisting a cypher.
But just before you were struck
When you turned and reached out for me –
I saw the whites of your eyes open wide
And your lips crack a rich, competent smile.
You waved goodbye from your small, avid perch
While your chest folded in from wild report.
The sun failed.
The dock turned a rich, lusty red.
And we shuttered our thoughts and crept home.
A STORM WILL SETTLE UPON ME
After seventy miles of nothing much, I was finally there. I turned down a dusty gravel road, passed a cow farm and a windmill, and took a hard right onto the overgrown two-track that lead to our cabin. The lake was now a full-fledged marsh – a victim of overzealous DNR influences – and full of nothing but carp, otherwise everything seemed vastly untouched. When I rounded the last curve, there it was, the family cabin. I took the old key and scraped it into the rusty Hoyt lock. I jiggled it as in days of old and popped the swollen door open with my knee. There wasn’t much to it. A main room, a kitchen, porch and two bedrooms that managed to all overlook the lake. We were at the tip of what was charmingly called “The Peninsula;” and it looked exactly as I’d left it twenty-five years ago when I’d turned eighteen, turned my back on them, and headed off to war.
One of the blinds snapped up with a snick, and light filled the room. I am confronted by an accusatory collection of trinkets and tchotchkes lounging in the small of a dissolute afternoon. Glass figurines of dogs and ducks are stationed everywhere as are angels in flight; as are the invisible thoughts of sad landscapes painted by amateurs. I suck in the mold and dust and losses of those remote twenty years and tell myself to buck up.
Everything is old – rotten actually, from the ceaseless push of the marsh that waits for all things to be rendered back into microbes. The walls hang with disease and I sneeze. My palm is now full of snot, which seems fitting. My Dockers are already crapped up from the road, so I transfer the effluent there. After years of highs and lows, I know for a fact I am home.
Even the smell remains, which you would think would have cleared out by now but it’s in the walls themselves and will never leave. The haunted ichor of Pall Malls and cherry pipe smoke trips across the ceiling. Oh, ho, I say, it is all mine now. To the last brace.
The trinkets break their queer posturing and bow in my direction. Porcelain and glass figurines mix it up with tin and iron toys, which tip forward and rasp hello. Some flutter wickedly assembled hands. Others, like ashtrays and tumblers and swizzle sticks, trolleys and teacups and magic flutes, smirk and squint with cracked and glazed glee at the sad man before them. I’ve come back searching for magic, for this is the last place I’d left it.
The afternoon sun is performing its usual walk-about. It exhales its hot and windblown cares, stirring the trees to muttering. The birds have gone. A storm will settle on the lake in a few hours, but for now, the sun saunters across the grass in its deadly/lovely fashion and I am taken back to other storms, and to my father’s private fixation. He was a medium man, faintly blond and clean-shaven, strong, and vigorous and rather funny. The winds in this part of Wisconsin could kick up to gale force and the rain, fall in bucketful’s, but it was the demonic thunder that drove him to distraction. He’d contort and grimace as the rains fell. He’d trundle back and forth though the smallish rooms muttering just above a whisper: “I hate these goddamned things.” I, in my flip-flops, would slip-slap behind him giggling and pulling his shirt – but the best was yet to come. A crack of lightening would bang across the sky and we would count out loud, one, two, three . . . until the cataclysm struck.
When the thunder came he’d jump up and down, then bounce two-footed across the floor – swearing all the while – “Jesus Fucking Christ On a Stick . . . I HATE that shit!” This is what I waited for all summer, this mad explosion of harmless expletives followed in kind, with stamping, hopping and hooting – all over a measly few bolts and booms. How I adored him then. He’d grab my hand and say to me, my broad smile beaming impish joy, “Mikey, now don’t be scared,” and he’d plop me onto the ratty faux-Victorian yellow velvet couch where we could watch “Sixty-Minutes,” or “The Movie of the Week”. My mother would try to soothe his wracked nerves with an imperiously timbred, “Now Calm Down, Bob,” which did nothing of the sort. His performance was utter bliss for a small child unafraid of such wonders.
In real life the sun was climbing the back of my neck and a wasp had made it in behind me, making my weaving hands it’s business. I snapped out of my reverie and took a breath. I made my legs move to the back room, the wasp trailing behind. I’m a bit nervous. All this past is tearing at my frayed nerves, which have turned to mush from drink and drugs and too much bad luck. Twenty-year old challenges rise from underneath musty beds and passing thin walls. I cross the threshold to the room that holds the portable potty, (there is no running water – we were too close to the lake,) and along side it stands a massive armoire, full of my father’s mysteries. Here was history slathered in linseed oil and joined in three dimensions. I pulled the cumbersome doors open. His white leather ducks lay crooked at the bottom of it all, and the air huffed out of me. Now scuffed, cracked and broken, these were once Important Shoes. He was a killer dresser; a successful advertising exec specializing in political elections. He wore these very shoes to fifty-dollar chicken dinners and spring voter rallies, where he walked next to the politicos – mostly to victory. Those devilish shoes adorned dandified light blue seersucker suits and white Panama hats with beautiful bands. Later, he used them for their fine leather soles – to high tail it up the ladder and shingle the roof.
I eased them out from between croquette mallets and wire wickets and slipped them on. I stared into the darkness where the smell of varnish and thick, heavy sheets of old wood still penetrated the air. My hands ran over the cut-off shorts and goofy Mexican serapes he loved to wear. They teased apart endless hangers full of Men’s Arrow shirts; ransacked the pockets of his old hobo pants with rope belt and finally, my hands grasped the unmistakably dense wool of my fathers great Captain’s coat from WWll. Oh, this grand trench; with its snazzy epaulettes and lapels and pins; its broad, imposing shoulders and shaped and cuffed sleeves, its belted waist and flaring skirt that brushed the calves . . . ah, romance. I crushed its history against my chest and cried. I had come seeking magic and I found it; stored and stashed in memory. I slipped the coat on in the eighty-degree heat and felt nothing but a blessed cool. In the waiting air of a coming storm, my father’s hand fell in mine.
MINDWARP FICTION by V V S. . . .143. . . .(A SHORT STORY)
And Girl takes a breath. In. Out. In. Lungs catch and stutter and she moves from under the portico on steady legs. The light is calm and flat. Yellow blossoms spring from brown earth and delicate motes fall in an elaborate dance of everything. “Where is my brother . . .?” she whispers. Tones tilt-shift and light throws itself sideways. Hues come undone in bafflement, disjointed to the bone. Girl laughs. It was the Funeral House that did it, messed up the rendering leaving things thin. It kicked her in some way, watching the roof tiles slide. Made her smile. Girl clasped an ancient Oreo between her jaws and held on.
The house reared away from her laughter, a disembodied caretaker given notice of theft. The ancients of Funeral House, in their burrowed and dreaming nooks, slumbered on. Girl dropped adamantine thoughts at my feet and I came awake. The Old Ones fell from my hands into the crimson stellar sands.
Pearl thoughts, stitch-dropped and loose, touched my skin as my hands reached for her flesh. The sun was falling upward and I cried out. In the rising shadows her conchshelled ear unfolded from a gellid and luminous cheek. Starry eyes – asleep – awake – asleep – peeked from beneath brazen lashes. Girl took a last, long look. The sun dreamed, but of nothing from this earth.
THE WITNESS
Short story written in collaboration with photograph by bibire.deviantart.com/ as prompt.
THE WITNESS…Words by Valerie: metamage.deviantart.com/
ALLUVIUS………Colors by Jon: bibire.deviantart.com/
My god.” the woman hissed, as the dark world behind cleaved in two. Twin bolts of bloody neon-white light shot out, illuminating a path. “It’s constructing a way through the woods . . .”
Emily sat motionless in the cockpit of her Ford Illuminati and considered. Red dummy-lights flared, telling their own story of engine maleficence and she smirked in collusion. Her drinking had stalled the car. She knew she shouldn’t have stolen that bottle from that dorky convenience store but the people were so lame; so stupid . . . she couldn’t resist. She’d tucked it beneath her coat and struck a fashionesta pose at the counter, hand on the other side of the hip to extend the line of the jacket and hide the evidence. She paid for a pack of Early Native rolled cigarettes and gum with a five and change and walked out.
Now a long whence from nowhere she’d stopped dead-smack in the middle of the road, having ridden the white line of an unknown, abandoned and dull as shit highway for some time. The bottle of Chivas was a third gone; the gum chewed and remanded to the underside of the steering column. The last bit of coke sat next to her in its glassine envelope, in full solicitation mode. She stopped the car in the middle of fuck all to make nasal adjustments. Emily kept the ignition turned and the radio blasting with non-committal static. Emily took a long drink, and knocked the remains down to a quarter. In the greyed out cockpit of the Illuminati the red engine light stared. She ignored the implications and wiped her mouth delicately with painted fingertips. Emily turned her head. Something was crawling around in there. Her mind was a muck of symbols, and pictures flooded her cerebral cortex. She turned to the light she’d caught in the vanity mirror. The back of her car was ablaze and doubled beams of protean energy spooled from her taillights into the distance; in a graphic commentary on the beginning or end of all times.
Emily slotted the bottle, her cigarettes and remaining coke in the deep left pocket of her midnight blue hoody. She left the vaguely warm insides of the car and stepped out. She zipped her jacket. Fuck it, it’s cold, she thought. She removed the bottle and took it in hand. Mass murderers and rapists were everywhere these days.
The night sky roared. The back-up lights of her Ford Illuminati were obviously ground zero for some kind of military incursion to suit some mind-shattering and invasive or organizing end. Emily watched the two matched battalions of light stride away from the car in martial precision. They zigzagged through the trees, carving an indescribable path. These photon-bolted armies were on a mission, Emily thought, and she somehow was enmeshed in its business.
The stuttering corridor looked like a catwalk for a black light discotheque. Emily knew how to walk one of those, so she rolled her shoulders back, put on a look of insouciance, thrust her hips out of their sockets and said, “Fuck. You.” The ramp into darkness made no comment. She strode through the trees and the high grass whipped her jeans. Moisture clotted her clothes. She looked for the moon but it was disgruntled . . . it was hiding behind the clouds. Not even he would be a witness.
She felt quickened, as messages came and went, leaving whiffs of something behind. She knew she was to look for a special plant in a body of water, which sounded like a lot of rot to her. Emily of cool conscience and colder heart thought this experience mighty distasteful. She certainly did not approve of water unless it was sparkling, in alcohol, or contained somewhere bitching in a first-class resort where it was warmed, refined and bleached to all hell and back. Nature was full of outrageous things she wanted no part of. Emily told whatever it was skootching her onward, to grow up – to go screw itself.
The world grew darker as she plodded on and Emily took a moment to take stock. She could see nothing but the shifting bullets of light on either side of her. The rest of the world might well have been blasted away and she’d never know. She wondered how she could tell if it was. Emily took a swig of stolen whisky and lit a cigarette uncompromised with pollutants. She put a bit of coke on the nail of her right pinky and took a hit. Things became much clearer. She began to chant the words to ‘These Boots Were Made for Walking’ by Nancy Sinatra. A kind of advanced photon bombardment prodded her on.
The bombardment got into her hair, which pissed her off, and messed with her vision. The corridor opened. It put forth the proposition of a straight line for her to walk and the thousand, thousand troops of scintillating energy faded, leaving her on the edge of a disgusting and smelly pond and there she stood; wasted and bare to the bones. Everything looked disgustingly normal for the outdoors. She noted she was no longer cold; in fact she was very, very hot.
Emily took off her jacket. She put her drugs on the rock near the water and laid the jacked down for her to prop upon. She had no time for this, she thought, and she recalled the many other things she could be doing. As she mused she removed the remains of her clothes, folding them neatly and stacking them on the wet grass.
Emily found herself alive with her hands in the water. Unnamable and creepy things from the brackish edge of the pond were clutched securely in hand and she finely laid them on the stone in some kind of cosmic order. She assumed her position – that of a flying buttress extended over water, and her arms plunged again; in and out of the cold depths. Emily doesn’t give a flying fuck for what she is doing, but she can’t seem to stop this disinterment, either. Emily believes the pond is thinking. There still is no moon.
The tips of her fingers play, breaking the tensile surface of the pond. She pushes through that straining barrier to sink her hands all the way down. They are dark and alien and fishy. The cold has numbed her hands. She has no idea whose they are. They twitch and twitter and she slides them down slimy stalks to reach delicate bulbs. Emily taps out something with beats – blind and foreign spells are sent through fluid reed fortresses and saw-grass redoubts. She searches for necessary charms. She is in the right place. There is power here.
She upends the world of the pond, and silt swirls in ambivalent spirals. She dislodges tender roots. She is squatting on a flat rock. Her feet are braced and sure, but something unseen and unwanted brushes her skin and she yanks her hands out. She loses her balance, and falls into the drink, headfirst. When her head bursts from the water, strange forms pummel the air with sound and fury. Bats wing out and birds scatter from their rest. Emily reaches for the reeds, then the shore, then the stone, and crawls out of the watery womb. She thinks maybe she should start a fire but then she forgets and goes to sleep instead. The cold insinuates. It mounts her like a furious lover and pricks and pokes her unconscious flesh with knives.
Her hands have become hard and her thoughts bent toys she cannot repair, but she is awake at least, and alive. A metallic taste bloodies her mouth. She thinks once or twice about death and wonders why she isn’t. The water weeds are rhymed with frost. Jesus, Emily thinks, how long have I been here?
A barbed mind flickers and Emily tracks the whining incursion. A mosquito reads her blood signature and settles limply on her thigh. She snaps it aloft with finger and thumb then applies splotches of mud in amusing patterns. Something has left her blank and empty . . . but still here. Her heart beats, but it beats to an unfamiliar drummer. She tries to remind herself she doesn’t like nature but her toes curl in pleasure. Emily forces bits of roots into her mouth and into anywhere that can contain them. She has to walk. She looks down and her body is moss green . . . barnacle black . . . cyanide blue. She has become the thief of all false dawns.
Emily’s face evens out. Harsh lines disappear, especially around the mouth. The crevices on her forehead above her eyes ease away. There is a moment of peace and she walks on, on flat feet broken from high-heels. They have become something else. She has become something else. It, she, walks on two bended stalks; its bowling-ball head peering and leering into the water.
Emily’s body temperature is dropping. She and the thing that has commandeered her body stand knee-deep in almost frozen muck. She sort of likes this non-existence. No worries about rent or bad men or lousy modeling jobs now that she is past thirty. It is soothing in an absent kind of way. No whoop. She smiles, looking down upon her ridiculous legs she once thought of as money in the bank. Ice water clings to her knees and she thinks how nice and sparkly it all is. The part of her that is Emily imagines going home. She’ll lug her newfound relics in and introduce them to her cat, Simon-says. He is a ferocious hunter and will be enthralled. He will stalk her smell and it will be enough to drive him slightly insane. The Grey Mouser will paw her flesh for frogs, for fish, for fronds. She will lay her treasures down and he will carry bits and pieces in his teeth to better homes, probably under the bed to be forgotten, but the smell will remind him of glorious things.
Her mind snaps in place behind some kind of curtain. The feel of muck pulls her narrow feet. She is up to her knees in the pond, by some odd flowers that seem to bloom only in the night. They are beautiful and strange and she thinks they are probably not endemic to this planet. The murky earth swirls in uncompromising patterns and she stands at rigid attention. She waits. She is the holy traveler. The bloodwater fills the back channels of her heart.
There! There! The head of the flower by her hand opens to the night. It extends its stamen and pistils and sends unworldly pheromones into the air. She wonders what sort of thing will propagate it and is quite sure she doesn’t want to know. Emily stands chilled and watches passively, having been raped and bled of social consequence. Her skin is a lovely blue. The wind touches her . . . whispers her name. She wants . . . she can’t remember what she wants. She thinks of some cat somewhere and scratches her nose.
The rim of dawn breaks hard and a quarter-inch of pond shivers. The water’s tensile strength does duty as highway, for all the pond-road truckers seeking breakfast or love or death. Beetle/aphid/spider/fly; all feet and wings and snouts, take to the roads on their way to somewhere else. Emily shoots out her hand and snares a beetle. She puts in in her mouth and it skitters around a bit. She crunches, swallows and waits.
A blunt shape, a messenger; descends from the heavens. He’s come at this young hour for the fishing, and in response to a call she did not know she issued. All is mad honking and thumping of bombastic wings, then the world is stilled and the bird falls into its dive. The sun bangs through the trees and its missiles make mincemeat of the schmutzy dark. The duck body-slams that hard-cut water and the pond explodes in neon greens and blues. Contrails form off his elegant flesh and travel all the way to the shore. The army of dawn clears the morning of refuse in long, lingering strokes that travelled all the way from the stars to be here, now.
The night springs away as bowed heads with bright eyes and aerodynamic frames search the pond for silvery things. A flared tail carves the air surely for the millionth time. This courier for fluid perfection is a go-between, a messenger who’s body is designed to transport one part water to a hundred parts air and disseminate them up to the stars and down to the earth below. Emily watches from her secret mind and smiles. The other watches too, for the exchange of information from sender to receiver, from the seeker of death to the gifted of life. A blind, yellow eye strikes the messenger fast and hard and its magnificent rays bounce off millions of fractals of water that reconstruct the world, again and again. It is the show to end all shows, for the minds and micro-mornings of small intelligences, everywhere.
Emily watches a male Mallard take a nose-dive into the shining water. It comes up with a fish flapping in protest of a hostile universe. The bird will feast, then rest. It does not care that it shattered the world of others to eat; it will no doubt form a feast for another. With every beat of its wings, with every tilt of its crown of shimmering light, it sings . . . “I am home, I am home, I am home.”
MINDWARP FICTION by V V S . . . I, Homunculus, a Short Story
I, Homunculus
White ribs gleam like soft pearls and hands the size of roast doves
Rattle the lock of his skeleton cage.
The bone-curves are wet.
His enormous head and outrageous feet glisten and glam
in a numinous, tissued night.
Dangling balls curve away.
They are heavy and impolite.
They drag over every spongy crevice.
He hates them.
Very much.
He is drowning in massy darkness.
He was well and truly alone, terrible in his solitude.
He scored his breasts and turned to pare the flesh
From his head snick, snick.
And by the way . . . he is not,
Not Not Not. He is not a Homo
He is Homunculus.
The thump-bumpity-bump heart stops.
He pokes and pokes and pokes.
It stutters and fires badly.
Trembling fingers undo the Catch,
The Lock,
The Ward.
The Latch of Invisible Things
He once thought Invincible.
Kachunk goes the Crank.
He Cracks the Cage.
Light and Air.
There is
And light.
Breasts of Bone splint shatter
Among dross and grossly maligned things.
He is crazy to get out of here.
The rib cage goes eeeeek as he splits it open.
He dives through blue/black blood causeways.
And aims for the mouth.
He will escape.
Teeth will go crunch.
Past the calcium fences now fractured
He is in a world of burning light,
Tossed sunward. Big bag of balls and all.
Flames burn off Excess of Enormous Head
Plantainian Feet
Dingle Dangle Spheres.
He is a hot vent of ill wind looking for good eats.
The body on a couch is a Girly-girl –
Goldy-locks formerly with wolfy things in her breast.
And she’s looking pretty bad.
His cage of bone prison,
The one that arched whitely around the redded, thumping, beast
(That (almost) ceaseless organ grinder of tuneless tunes)
Well . . .
It played all night and day . . . and now it’s dead.
He shattered that girly-girl’s notions
Of straightened and pretty pearled white teeth.
When he eased from the cage
And dropped the lock
And fled through toothy bars,
He was sucked out and up,
Out past the red mouth and embittered tongue,
Past the lips that cursed.
The sun sucked his juices.
He fled and like Icarus, melted;
Burned to a grimy snit.
He won’t do that again.
Instead, he will invade and invert processes recently dead.
He will tune up the thumpty-bump.
Homunculus aims his drippy arms and droplet feet at the left key hole of the nose
Which is a grotto of muck and hair and ooze.
And he slides his way down into
The glotted glottis.
Mr. Gigantous Head no more.
He is transformed.
The sun ate him well, but left a spark.
He is not trapped in a bone candy cage with vents, hi ho!
He is free to roam the currents of flesh
Where a juicy berry waits to be plucked.
He shucked her heart like a bad suit, and ah, my . . .
The Silence.
He is all fluidic charm and needs no introduction.
He knows this messy girly-clump inside and out.
He can make her
Or break her
Or turn her inside out.
What fun.
He floats like a Pike in bubbles of blood.
Homunculus rebuilds her with leaky parts
Or different parts.
His parts.
She will be abloody brilliant but
There will be no thumpity-bump.
It drove him crazy, that blood punting thing.
The girl on the couch is dead but she will not know it for a while.
He will not tell her.
It will be a nice surprise
For when she gets her teeth fixed.
PSYCHOPOMP
FAARQ AND THE VESSEL OF TIME
If God is for us, who can be against us?
–The Holy Bible
A lock was keyed and the gates to Nothing Much cracked open. A bead of Light once disguised as a dog bared its phantasmagorical teeth and burst through layers of rich flesh, of mealy bone, into something rather else. He leapt to where ‘up’ was and nipped at nothings in the not-very air. The world was not and he was not and what was, happened to be something else entirely.
Cosmic winds threw vast netted constructs to catch him; to suck him into undoubted traps and vile imprisonments and he learned there was only one direction, that of away. Doggish manners ran him and star-kibble fed him and he grinned a doggishstar grin because he remembered himself. He was Faarq, the once Great Pitbull King of Detroit and yes, he still was that only different. He was now something ululating and maniacal; a pulsing stardogball of intent and forward thrust. He was dead, yes, but free – even from convivial fleas, and that was all to the good. But as Faarq ran, he also began to fall and not to soon (but soon enough,) a crackling and heaving palsy of colliding particles swallowed him whole. Things snapped in every non-direction.
Faarq knew a trap when he was in one and as that trap grew around him, the past he thought he’d left behind drilled in behind his ghost eyes and into his roiling ghost gut and he thought . . . this a very strange predicament for a dead dog. It was not a good thing that had him.
* * *
Maax42 dropped his hand to where the beast’s nose had been and Faarq started out of time. The bead of light that was the fiercest of former dogkings whimpered, then fell away from the invisible man’s hand and back inside the thing that had him. And as he fell an evanescent artifact of wrongness bled. He whined as he and the thing that ate him scattered crazed light into the empty Nothing Much.
Faarq saw his death repeated in vainglorious fleshs and he whined and bit and shot skyward, a pit bull shaped bullet fired madly at the stars. A million specks of the recently dead gleamed and gently drifted. Alone, in ones or twos or sympathetic groups they fluttered, filling the realms of heaven in a kind of empty etheric dust.
The bad thing flung its leash and Faarq dug his stellar paws in and thrust against the force that held him. That force, much greater and much older, simply ran over him and he was consumed, but not quite digested. Faarq looked (again and again,) out of wounded eyes into ribbons unspooling of pulsing, dichotomous time. Now he was not-just-Faarq the dogking, but also a Tesseracted Thing, plunging willy-nilly through god knows Not Much.
Space may be spare but it is not empty and Faarq and the thing that rode him sputtered and spilled across the universe, only to fall into an unfelt (due to the commotion) gravity well and they, it, dropped like a rock onto a new land.
Everyone was irritable. Faarq was the bit of dust in the pearl, aggravating and annoying the Tesseract of Time. He was an infinitesimal nugget of smarts within an incomprehensible whole. Faarq rose and fell, a tide of dog within an ocean of event horizons.
* * *
Maax42 found the battered dog-thing while hunting bits of chaos, which were left to roam among the many junk fields of Nothing Much; Not Here. The strange vision-thing had wedged itself into a busted Conceptual Framework and couldn’t weasel out.
Time was massive. It was heavy. But boy, could it tell a story and as Maax42 peered through the layers he spied the Dogstar Faarq falling again and again, stuck reeling in the middle of everything. The poor soul was torn asunder – gotten dead – again and again. It was merciless, revolting, fascinating. The poor dog was impaled, in and out of time.
“Hot damn,” Maax42 whispered, “I haven’t felt death in an age.” He pushed his hands into the frothing broth and felt the kick of it. Forgotten limbs were grown and severed, guttering sight was found and lost and whole, bubbling beings, oozed with time and mortality. It was exhilarating and it embroiled his senses. It was massive and profoundly tempting for someone to indulge, someone who usually just ate light.
“This is the answer to everything!” Maax42 said. He leaned into the field of withered dreams and kicked the doomed Conceptual Framework apart. Maax freed the time-tract Tesseract and the wilting Stardog within, and took them home.
BLOODLINES
Aloren, a five foot eight and loose-limbed unisex bombshell; dropdead and all that, red of hair, lustrous of skin now gone pale, down and drawn and cancelled out of the largess of what was a beautiful, if thirty-five, piece of ass, and damn, damn, damn, getting no sleep as of late and jittery for no reason yet so very tired, tired, tired – to the depths of her, tired.
Her body is in revolt. Her head is on fire and her stomach, tied into double and triple knots, into lakes full of acid, erupts and flings its goo against her pinkish walls. It tells her of impending things. She wishes she could blink her eyes and make these nasty sensations go away or at least get somehow, some help, from the blank medicine cabinet, but no, she, it, is empty of all remedies. Her day has just begun and she hasn’t even downed the crust of a bagel.
Her insides are burning with knowledge and the results of last night’s fish sandwich. Indigestion courses through her (upsetting her fine constitution,) and she feels blood racing away from her core, chilling the tips of her fingers, making her pale face even paler. Her blood continues to take flight, pulling heat with it . . . and the pressure is pushed elsewhere.
She sees the veins in her hands pulse with incoming and outgoing tides, of data streams written in liquid red and soon her body is singing, its blood having its way with her. The canals of life, artery to vein, vein to capillary, race onward carrying messages of great import. The rush and tumult is too much. Pressure is building. Her head is filled and lights are flashing – warning – warning – incoming . . .
A wisp of a vein bursts behind her eyes. Her brain is engorged with a thousand lights. Her mind is full of fissures. She tears the bristles out of the hard acrylic flat of her hairbrush as her hands and body dance, contort in convulsions, curl in collusion and she loses the thread – all threads. They break apart and fractured filaments force themselves down new channels, digging trenches into the rudderless rose of her collapsing brain. Lesser and lesser, or greater and greater trajectories erupt and definitions of things unspool, their strands distanced and dislocated . . . destroyed.
She can see the broken strings of “things.” Some are teacups and ponies, yesterday’s jumpsuit and tomorrow’s telecommute. Riffs of what was sings down lost pathways. She attempts to untangle the mire but she can only resurrect the most menial of mental images, without names to label what is. Roots and shoots, tubers and tendrils – stones cracking, whack, whack, within her head, like the vessel that popped off, translate into fissures venting pent-up steam – hot gasses from unknown zones burst through ocean sea river floors and flood the remaining twists and turns of her tender flesh. Oxygen also floods the system. She can feel gusts and blusters. Nameless winds brush memory down and away into cubbies/corners never accessed. The tiny tears are bleeding her of who and what and all of her wherewithal.
Pressurized air batters her brain stem and circles higher – rat a tat a tat – a Kalashnikov on steroids popping blasting obliterating wholes into holes. The corpus collosum collapses. Already in two factions, its duty to ferry information from right to left to right, to translate data from impulse – from thinking to sensation to mental image is slowed to the rate of molten iron and now pulsing fire devours what is left of her and her hands reach out. She cannot feel her hands.
Her hands reach out and there is odd information at the ready. Strange information. Incalculable information, much too grand to accept . . . and yet.
She knows she is touching vast fault-lines. She feels gigantic tectonic plates shift and ripple. A cat-o-nine tail of electrical impulse curls from the flick, and click click click – her spine clacks and clatters in strange alignment. In what remains of her mind’s inner eye, she has become very large. She is outside in. Her scattered senses knock together as she pierces through layers of time. Not her time, no. She is covered in eons. The pores of her skin metamorph into continents – oceans – mountains – that range beyond reckoning. Stars fall into her hands.
She is following some blind event horizon that is following her; wherein she is the center. Time is shaking, breaking apart, as are all things of substance – unless, her fingers locate the recalcitrant and juddering core; trace the clatter to that which first shifted – the myriad, combative tectonic plates that surface the world, like the cataclysmic veins in her splitting head– if she can pinch and push and douse the fires of . . . the fires of falling apart . . . well, then. What if?
She feels around for the fault-lines rumbling, roaring, crushing her bones into mulch. Within her, without her, plateaus and plains and valleys do battle to the death in thrilling supersonic collisions. She stretches her lengthy rubberwoman arms past the savannahs of Zimbubueland, tipping the edges of continents. Her toes know what to do. They curl around coastlines and her hands grip the lost mountain ranges of Knuptwup in a delicate double-handshake. She separates masses that have cantilevered over and under during the battle of the senses, having made quite a mess of a nice twist of brain. Her stomach begins to settle.
She stretches a column of land, tearing roots and shoots and releases the pressure of trapped blood within her. The level of the sea aligns with her dropping blood pressure – it nips down an inch or five and the flooded shores and lost coasts rise up. The skeletons of a thousand, thousand broken structures also rise up – the twisted rebar of buildings; houses churches office parks playgrounds dance halls and taverns, condominiums with outrageous maintenance fees sea-side resorts fitted out with individual cabanas trusty roads, avenues, lanes, hillocks and brambles, weeping willows resurrected so they may weep once more and roads and roads and roads that had collapsed and crumbled begin to refine and realign as blood finds a way to flow around and through the tumbled mountain of burst dreams.
Her fingers stretch and she reaches to pat each hair in place. The continents settle under her touch. Rivers have found new passage and begin to seep into new soil.
Night falls. It is time for the stars. The stars in her eyes close and all the lost things from here and there gather. They whisper to themselves, goodnight.
HOMICIDE.FUN
Tinker looked up just as the movie ran out and the final iconic image of Gloria Swanson filled the screen. The strings swell, her face cracks and that over-applied mouth gibbers with mammoth rubber lips. He is glad he fell asleep. Molly is curled up in the lounge chair, snoozing. Something rattles under her blanket.
The ocean crashes its lolling mysteries, accompanied by the clanking and clunking of things beating up their rotting pier. Twelve beer cans flank the coffee table. It is 3 am. The info-commercials will soon begin their nightly clabber and the lemony scent of oil dispersant floats in from the shore. He’d spent twelve hours removing tar balls from the shoreline. He, too, has that luscious lemony scent, no matter how furiously he washes up.
Tinker reaches for the remote control, when a garish nest of words bursts upon the screen. Out of that squiggly mass come the words . . . “HOMICID.FUN.”
Tinker holds the remote still. He is in frozen rabbit mode. Mr. Corporate America punches out of a newly dug, pretend grave. He brushes off his tailored suit, steps to the gravel walkway and bestows his hand to all, as if a gift. His nails are professionally buffed.
“My fellow Americans,” Begins Mr. Smooth, “Have you noticed an odor coming from your flower beds? Have you observed the undead using your garbage cans for their fallen bits? Have you met others recently deceased extending their hands not in friendship, No Sir! but in financial need after chronic indulging in personal exit strategies?” (An image of over-priced caskets and lush floral arrangements fill the screen.) “Well, say no more. I am the Executive Director and CEO of HOMICID.FUN, Mr. A. Fraid at your service.”
Tinker pauses the screen with the remote and turns to his girl-friend. “Um, Molly? Wake up. Oh, Jesus, there is something seriously fucked up here.” Tinker grabs Molly’s foot to wiggle her awake and it comes off in his hand. He gags, drops the offending part and backs away; upsetting the tray-table of tiny star-wars figures he’s rehabbing from Hurricane Matilda.
“Oh, Shit.” He says. He jams the foot back onto a very pale ankle, but it won’t stick and he lets it fall to the floor. He is not feeling very well. Tinker un-pauses the screen and a Government bulletin splashes on in intense colors and a riot of graphics. A striking Eurasian woman knocks the microphone three times with her ExtendZ fingernails and begins.
“This is Natasha Yigimorti with NEWZ FOR YOUZ @ FOXBOX.NOW! and I bring you this late-breaking story.
“Well Folks, the coastal shores of the United States are the latest to feel the pinch of the recently undead.” (Images of just-plain-folks poking out of various receptacles flashes upon the screen.) Ms. Yigimorti walks up to a young man who is threatening a rather florid and pinkish dead person, who is shaking off clods of earth.
“What do you think of this latest development Sir?” She asks.
“Well, I hated him alive. I don’t think I’m gonna like him any better dead!” the young man says. “And he’s not staying at my house, no way . . . even if he did leave me a million dollars for planting him in the backyard. There is a limit I say!” Ms. Yigimorti sagely nods her head in agreement.
Tinker hears a slight tick, tick, tick coming from the kitchen. The sound of extra-long finger nails, tinking upon glass. The television goes white, then black, then the logo for HOMICID.FUN flashes across the screen once again.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
“Hi there! It’s me, CEO A. Fraid of HOMICID.FUN, the finest name in Personal Offensive De-animation Kits (PODAK) welcoming you to the wonderful world of E-Z Dead Control. We’re hitting the coast with a BANG, with the best in Self-Defense NeoBiologicals and Post-Dead Service Plans available in the World! Our first global introduction to ridding backyards and bedrooms everywhere of those pesky dead folk! Why, you may have one in your living room right now! What to do? Well my friends, call our toll-free eight-hundred number at the bottom of the screen and in seven to ten days we’ll send our line of anti-animators . . . right to your door. That’s right folks. To your very door.”
Tinker grabs the cell phone and starts dialing as a thump comes from the basement. He knew he shouldn’t have buried Aunti Em in the root cellar, but the costs these days – astronomical! The television switches to an image of a concrete bunker with A. Fraid, sitting on a plaid couch.
“#1 NEWZ Blogaspherist Mr. Lu Ming-Shoo here, with this pre-recorded interview.
“I interviewed HOMICID.FUN’s CEO, Mr. A. Fraid from his bunker in Pittsburgh via webcam.
“Good Mourning to you Mr. Fraid.”
“Good Mourning my ass, Mr. Shoo. My mission is to make it a very bad mourning indeed for some of our more ripe neighbors!
“Indeed, Mr. Fraid. DO go on.”
”Thank you Mr. Shoo. HOMICID.FUN is proud to announce our newest line of sprays, emollients, balms and bombs to help the common man retain control over the tardy dead. Our products are safe for all ages (but safer for some than others. Please note all consumer warnings on the side of the can.”) He displays an industrial-sized pesticide spray and nozzle attachment. He twists the can, showing an extensive list of warnings. He holds it for the camera for two beats and throws it over his shoulder.
Mr. Fraid jumps up from his poochy couch and points a finger at the audience.
“REMEMBER! Whichever side of the crypt you’re on, HOMICID.FUN has what ails you!” He grins ninety-nine very white teeth into the screen.
“Our line of sure-fire products are designed to rid the world of the scourge of our times. The horseman may be riding again, but you, my friends, can saddle-up ahead of the parade!”
Molly begins to moan under the blanket Tinker has thrown on top of her and the TV natters on.
“For those who choose to remain in the back-ground, I introduce “DREADHEADD 4-U-2!” Mr. HOMICIDE.FUN continues, “simply slide our Sta-open Stim-Pak into said undead head-slot and watch it work! In minutes, pre-conditioned, fully loaded blood stream chthonics will whoop them flat. Watch them jump that mortal coil for good this time with our money-back, guaranteed, Stim-cell Whopper! Proven to work within 24 hours, or as I say . . . Your Money Back! Of course as always, we recommend the sword and the torch after all interventions as “just-in-time” safety measures.
“And!” (The screen flashes an eight-hundred number to Call Right Now!) “As a Bonus for First-Time Customers Only, We’ll reserve your First-Dead Space On Earth for your personal flat-line. As I always say . . . Don’t be caught below with no place to go!”
CEO Fraid does a two-step over to his 1964 gold Cadillac and Tinker blinks. He hates Cadillacs. Mr. F. pulls a banner out of the back of the car.
“Finally! We’re happy to announce the winner of our new slogan contest, Annabelle Trumball of Roanoke, New Jersey, who summed up our philosophy perfectly with these fine words . . . (he holds the banner still across his sculpted chest and smiles.) “Death,” he says, “Who Needs It?” (Canned applause fills the room.) “Annabelle will receive a full assortment of our latest products and her very own Stand-up Dead Cubicle lovingly stored in the basement of HOMICID.FUN’S Corporate Headquarters, until her untimely, ends.
A flashing “Call Now!” prompt runs at the bottom of the screen as Molly limps to the door. Tinker retrieves the A-K 47 he lovingly keeps in the closet.
“Click.” Goes the A-K 47. “Bang.” Goes Tinker.
A Certain Swell
There is darkness behind her eyes. It is profound, sad, and growing. She cannot contain it. It takes up more and more room and extends beyond her thinking. Soft black pooches raccoon otherwise pale, blue-veined lids. A certain swell complicates things. Her skin is stretched tight and hard. She is resistant, defiant, sacrificed upon the press of time. Almost thin to the bone, her belly aches. Thoughts meander in search of meaning, beyond It and its requirements. Her days are spent foraging – certain leaves are particularly desirable. They taste bad but nothing else will do. She has stopped trying to explain. He, her husband, already thinks she has lost her mind. She has refused to see an Obstetrician. The days are adding up. She refuses everything he has to give and morns.
He feels nothing. There are no sensations, not even as he brushes the hair out of her hooded eyes. He is voracious and driven – his armor thick and unrelenting. Her assault upon his manhood crushed him and his fury is unmatched. There is nothing between them but the occasional press of flesh and that none too often. His thoughts tumble. She has taken to leaving the house at all hours . . . in search of food, she says. How absurd. He opens the cabinets. There is plenty of food. She refuses to see an Obstetrician.
Fear is her carriage. The light fails as she walks, her shadow weird and ungainly. The car is left some miles away. She is in her third trimester and only seven pounds over. She sees seven pounds of alien; swimming in an alien sea. There was a visitation. There was congress. She woke in the dark to penetration. She did not know Walking Sticks had penises or that they could get so large. She is drawn to the pond where dreams grow as big as houses. Her mind tries to shoo way the demands of the interloper but they are long and sharp, like his limbs, and they are fecund – like his spoor. Small holes are pierced in her brain and things multiply. It is unfortunate she is infested. She will never be alone again.
He steeps in his fear like old tea. He tries to wring every last molecule of sense out of what is senseless and untouchable form. She will come back, he thinks, when she is done – done with ‘her drive,’ whatever that means. After she exhausts her options . . . after her options exhaust her. He barks out a laugh and tidies up the kitchen. Thoughts go back and back again. How she hates pregnancy and how he hates her. He remembers that special night so well. Why can’t she? Thoughts assault as he dries the dishes and anger punches holes in his otherwise orderly mind. In his daydreams he smacks her face. He beats the shit out of her delusions, which are shaped like a certain insect he has forgotten the name of. He makes her admit It is his and smiles when she does. He will be a perfect father. She will be a crazy mother. She will never be left alone, not for a minute.
At the pond there are tall reeds. She will go to them and take off her shoes, her socks, her pants, her cotton underwear. She will go amongst the reeds. She will make a nest. She arrives just as clouds overtake the sun. It will be cold, she thinks. The reeds are everywhere until the water buries them in deeper currents. She bashes down the green shoots with her feet so she may squat amongst them without interference. Is there a reason for doing so? It is what must be done, she thinks. She is told she may keep on her shirt and jacket. Her gratitude knows no bounds. She squats, and there is a whip-tale thrashing in her gut. Knife-like protuberances make edges she can follow with her hand as something travels downward. Bile rises in her throat. She disgorges everything she has ever eaten. Her mind says push and out slides something strange and unbeautiful. It peers at her through a transparent sac. It clicks with snapping mandibles. She stands to leave, to run, but her hand is made to thrust down into the grotesquerie. She must tear the caul, but her hands cannot rend the slippery bloodless skin. She must use her teeth. There. A small tear – it is enough. He slips out into the water. He has her eyes and something of her brain. She is released. She leaves the cover of thrushes and runs half-naked to shore. Her clothes are wet. There is much pain, but the worst is over.
At home it begins to turn into night and he worries. What if she leaves him? He will fight her for custody, if needs come to musts. The psychiatrist says it is a temporary psychosis. A conversion disorder. Once the baby is born she will straighten out, the doctor says. He is exhausted with fury and his house husbandry. He will make a nest in the bed and catch some sleep. He takes off his clothes. He surrounds himself with softness. The pillows extend three feet all around. He imagines a helicopter landing; all soft and sweet after a hard journey, and he smiles. This image does not strike him as unusual. Settling on his stomach, he turns his head to the darkening night. He doses lightly and still does not hear the window screen clatter to the floor. This is followed by a kind of clicking – chittering – buzzing; but he pays no attention. His head is not working right. He sees an insect thing poised on his window ledge. It is all limbs . . .four of them; and fins and wings with a narrow body and triangular head. It lands on the pillows just like a helicopter touching down. There is a flutter in the air and he is cold. When it lands it barely impresses upon the surface of his thoughts. He does have one thought though – he could break it in two – crack its fragile bones to pieces with one hand. It is unfortunate his hands do not work. He is lying face down on the mattress. When he finally turns his head he sees something like a penis and there is pain. He is impaled. Time passes and he wakes. Things are covered in blood. He is covered in blood. He trips on satin pillows while looking for clothes. There is blood, yes, but perhaps the worst is over.
Another Member of the Salt-water Fish for Everyone Club
Micus Narkaby, nine years old, grasped the football patterned dust ruffle by his dirty nails, and thrust his lank-haired head underneath his bed. He sneezed, and wiped his nose on his Dispicables, extra-large Tee-shirt. His treasured box of Graphic Novels was “hidden” behind by his old tennis shoes, Binny the stuffed bear, a couple pairs of skanky underwear, a zillion marbles, and other junk artfully placed to keep his mother (and secret others,) from ever reaching his prize possessions. Little did they know this was a rouse, a dupe, a switcheroo. The “casually” placed box wrapped in a black ribbon and covered with skull and cross-bones stickers contained his old collection of Batman, Fantastic Four and Plastic-man comics. The real stash was set in a cut-out space he had made in the sheet-rock, with his mother’s set of Japanese Ginsu Knives. They were guaranteed to cut through anything.
With just his head and shoulders jutting under the frame, he ran his fingers in a secret pattern over every object . . . even the underwear. The placement and relationship between items must be exact within quintuplimeters. Like a life or death chess match played with Real Men, he analyzed each position. His genetically enhanced, remote controlled night-vision irises, which opened or closed depending on the amount of available light, made everything crystal clear.
“Bastards!” He sub-vocalized. His enemies had subtly shifted his possessions while he was asleep, just to fuck with him. One wrong move and he would have been vaporized. Micus X5, (his code-name,) would have to master a whole new set of parameters to run the gauntlet. He laughed at their puny attempts to thwart him.
When he next awoke, it was the evening and he had been asleep on top of the sheets. He was relieved that even while unconscious, his training had kicked in. He had avoided the obvious trap of going beneath the covers. “Never go beneath the covers.” The Ninja Survival Manual, Second Edition, page 15, had warned him.
Micus X5 was an arch assassin. Once again, he must make his way through the snake-pit of deception that lay under the guise of his bed-set. He gymnastically maneuvered his body through the transformed, dust-bunny-scape of ever-changing, killer laser beams. If somehow his super-fine, sculpted body failed him, he would be sizzling dead meat.
These security measures and counter-measures were never-ending, but he must defeat them, to fulfill his latest objective. Each time he accessed the time/space portal under his bed, he was one step closer to the assassination of the President of the Corporatocracy of the United States. The hidden box of Graphic Novels contained his nightly instructions. It must not be touched by any other hands but his. His hands were uniquely encoded with special secretions that oozed out his identifiers.
His had just today received the specially randomized email from IWannaPlay@deviant.net.net, which had given him the latest approved method of execution. Micus X5 had then most untypically gone with his mother to the Safeway Grocery Store. He purchased (with his own money,) several specially-marked box of Tri-colored Neon Jell-O Brand Wigglers. He told his mother there were points to be won inside each box towards a neat-o prize.
The President happened to have Tri-colored Neon Jell-O Brand Wigglers every night with dinner. Micus X5 was to materialize in the pantry of the Presidential Kitchen, and replace all boxes of said product with packages laced with Super-nano technology, that would make Mr. Corporatocracy a virtual (and real) puppet controlled by Micus X5’s employers, known only as the Chaossifiers.
Returning home from his shopping expedition, his mother, innocent in all manner of deception, handed him a piece of mail he had been waiting for. It was part of his “cover.” It was a letter with a gold seal, welcoming him as a full-fledged member of the Salt-water Fish For Everyone Club. His mother smiled her goofy mother smile, and said, “How Exciting, Mikey, open it up!” She sat expectantly in her chair, so proud of her son’s interests.
“Oh, Gee, Mom, I’ve really been looking forward to this,” He brightly exclaimed, playing the fool. He slid his finger under the gold seal. A razor-sharp edge bit into his finger. He could feel the poisons racing through his system. As he fell to the floor, he heard his mother say, “Well Mikey, at least now you’ll be able to sleep under the covers . . . for a very long time.” She bent down to retrieve the postcard.
USED UP & LOST
SMYL April 25, 2010
This story came out of the Outstanding you’ve-got-to-do-this Flash Fiction website: http://www.showmeyourlits.com. You’ve got 90 minutes to write and submit and qualify for fabulous prizes. Ya gotta do this. You’ll be amazed by what you have inside that crazy head of yours.
The clock starts ticking and behold! A selection of prompts await your evil voice. Mystical Offerings, so be careful what you pick!
I wrote this off of this two sentence prompt:
“If I had a nickel I’d find a game.
If I won a dollar I’d make it rain.”
Sheelaa was deranged. I knew it as soon as I seen her. I’d just gotten outta Custer’s Bar and Last Stand after losing $500 on darts, and the low hills were just misting over. A weird light made them shine like used-up starlets. It was a bright/dark meant to hide the wrinkles in ole eyes and show-off the cleavage and all of its dips. Just to make an introduction, I brought the lightshow to this gal’s attention and she said it looked like the undersides of a tinfoil airplane. I knew right then we was to get along. She said her name was “Sheelaa from Mobeela, Alabeema.”
“Hookay.” I said. “My friends call me Noodge.”
I notices her ‘cuz, she was hanging at the bus-stop, naming the busses out loud. That girl. That’s jail-house shit, in my book.
“That one’s Pookey,” She ‘tol me. “The next will be Melville, then Sherman, and Hank E. Williams.” She was gonna wait for Hank before she scooted. Well, it was twenty after four, p.m. and she was alone, naming busses. No spring chicken, obviously nuts. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a long time, and a bath was outta the question. So’s I asked her spontaneous-like, if she wanted to keep a gent company. I had nothing to do. Why not?
She says . . .”You the Gent?”
“Yup,” I says.
“Hookay, then,” She says, “A girl can’t be too careful.”
I ‘tol you, she was special. Like this: she had this sparkly pinky ring that kept falling off her finger. She’d spin it around and it’d drop off. She’d pick it up and slide it back on. This went on a while, just me watching. So’s I asked. I asked, “Why not put it on the other finger? The bigger one? The one it might, like, fit?” She screwed up her reddish eyes and looked at me.
“It wouldn’t be a pinky ring, then.” She said.
Well, there ain’t nothin you can say to that.
I like picking up the kooks. They make life interesting. When I was in the Joint I was known for protecting those poor four-eyed wonkers that would slink in one afternoon offa the two o’clock drop. I’d grab ‘em before some no-neck laid his hands on the damned fool and turned him into a napkin ring, if you know what I mean. So’s maybe it’s a habit. I don’t know.
I’d made $3500 on the Tri-Fecta at Smersdon Hills Park the other afternoon and thought, what the fuck, lets go easy-like. I kept my nose to myself and we grabbed a cab to a used car lot and I picked up a beat-up ‘ol Ford Pinto. I didn’t think any of those were left. Only $700. I figured it must be a good omen cuz they were pieces of crap in the 80’s. It was a miracle. This one still ran.
Sheelaa had a pile of shit. I mean A. Pile. Of. SHIT! All kinds of nonsense she’d picked up on her ways. We’d stuffed the cab trunk FULL. Bags and Bags. All sorts of bags. I’d thought it was just garbage some fool had thrown down at the bus stop. But noooo.
“It’s Sheelaa’s pride and Oy” I says to the cabby. He laughed, but you shoulda seen the looks he gave us. He was thinking of the next vacuum hose he’d have to shell out for. I gave him a twenny for his time. I’m nice when I’m flush.
Man, but it was strange crap. Old dusty cellophane from snak-packs, tiny twists of tinfoil from week-old barbecues . . . twigs, for God’s sakes. I mean, anything. Anything at all. She tells me she needs this stuff ‘cuz she flies on the backs of angels and you never know what the ticket price is gonna be. Hookay. I let that alone. I asks her if she wants to go anywhere special-like. I take care of my lost souls, I gotta admit.
She had no plans, she said. She could live anywhere, she said. “Ok.” I sez, “Lets see.”
I decided we would head up to the mountains, ‘ol Colorado way, do some gambling. Hear the tink, tink of those crazy machines. I don’t like it much now that you don’t get no actual coins if you win a pull at a one-armed bandit. Now a two-bit curl of paper comes out of a slot instead of the fall of coins at your fingertips. That’s no fun. But, hey, it was a destination and pretty soon we’d be in the mountains, me and Sheelaa.
She said not to worry about no money (like I would . . ., huh.) ‘cuz she was an artist with garbage. Any kind. Could be brand-new or old as shit. Didn’t matter to Sheelaa. She told me a story about making purses out of tire retreads. I dunno. That sounds like more riding on angels stuff. Awww, well, who cares? We all tell a big one, now and again.
But man! Some of the things she did, whoooo! She was a busy one. She’s camp out in the tiny back seat of the Pinto, for Christ’s sake, with all her stuff, and pretty soon something would come out of it. Mostly hats, some belts, a couple ‘a pairs of socks. But mostly, she made these crazy hats in the back of the car, while I’d be buzzing on a fifth of something up front. She’d weave them together out of bits of nothing – like those birds on National Geographic. I’d watch out of my rear-view, and damned if she didn’t do it. Blam! A hat of many colors and shines. One for every day of the week. You couldn’t help but be amazed, and lourdy, did they sell. Shit. Just proves there’s a shill for everything.
We’d set up on the side of the road. Any road. I found us an old card table at the St.Vincent’s, and we’d haul her shit out of the mouth of that Pinto. She’d throw a poncho on top as kind of a nice thing, like she took care and shit, and set those sparkly things out to glitter in the sun. Didn’t matter where we landed. Coulda been Egypt. Something about those hats was magic.
A Jaguar stopped, no kidding, and out comes this Latin lover and his peroxide blond, and she’s a oohing and ahhing and trying everything on in the rear view of the Jag and he’s like, “These are just marvelous, oh, my, I love the one with the popsicles.” The guy was fruiter than a nut. They bought five and told Sheelaa she should go to San Francisco and show her hats in La La Land. Art Galleries and shit. I could tell by her smirk, she thought this was the looniest idea yet.
“Why would I do a thing like that when I have a sure thing here”? She says. She’d ask shit like that all the time. The woman was a piece of work, I tell you.
Well, nothing lasts. I lost her going up the canyons when we stopped at a truck stop for a shower and some booze. I admit, I took a long one. It’d been a while, and I like smelling sweet. When I came out the Pinto was empty. Not a scrap. Her sack of shit, oh, sorry, her “stock,” poncho and garbage bag of clothes were gone.
There musta been thirty rigs, this being a sleep-over, and what was I gonna do . . . knock on doors? Nah. She left the card table and $42.35. Nice, huh?
Sylvan Sneed and Billy Bland, Aboard the Glam Rock Hip.Ship, Take on God’s Chuckle
2nd ROUND ENTRY for: NYC MIDNIGHT FLASH FICTION CONTEST
PROMPTS:
ACTION/ADVENTURE (GENRE)
BLIMP (PRIMARY LOCATION)
TOMBSTONE (INSERTION TERM)
This piece was written for the second phase of the NYC Flash Fiction Contest. It’s a bit too extreme for them,
but maybe not for you.
The Nostalgia Police were after them. The clock of Cock N Bull read fourteen thirty-one. Not much time left. They had painted the Holy Roller Air Ship, Gods Arm, with a scandalous version of “Kent State Lives!” and instead of institutional Preacher Black ™ it was now dressed in multi-colored glossings and gibbering shades of brown and Piss Me/ Yellow. Bubble shaped hearts and flowers, filled with burbles from a lost generation, cascaded everywhere – even on the tail pipe.
They were Evil.
They were Mad.
They were Hippies.
The Air Ship God’s Chuckle contained The Criss/Cross Christ Meeting House, whose members were in deep discussion. Sylvan Sneed and Billy Boast, (former Non Members) felt the need to knoodle their epochal beliefs on God’s Chuckle head, those run of the mill abolitionists of all Things Timely.)
Sylvan Sneed looked down at his hands, neatly zippoed into (circa) 1969 handcuffs. (The metal ones.) He stood, Elton John heels swaying, right next to Billy Bland, (who, as usual, was naked.) Sylvan grinned as the Goddess Miley Cyrus propped her Miley Twirk.Ship heels on his shoulders. She, from Long Ago, was a slave to THE MAN, as he had been. (He worked in a Foot Locker Shoe.Store for seventy-two hours. She was a TV Ho.) Miley would join his fight if she could Re-Low her Down, which was presently out of commission. The Miley Ship twanked, unable to capture the rhythm of the times. He held her foot so she could flash some Leg N Breast at the cop, then she twirked out of existence. Officer McCracky gripped his prized black rubber hose, and glowered. He sagged suspiciously against the Institutional Blue, tombstone shaped, Wall O Justice.
75 people had Drop Shipped in for Sneed’s latest pre-warped performance and they were hopping mad. Sneed had promised . . . Motley Crue! (Motley Crue was trapped in 1984.) Neither Sneed, nor Hip.Ship’s powers of, could unstick them.
That’s what he got for believing his own hype, Sneed thought. Could’ve Cross checked. Pulled a time warp out of Hip.Ship’s droot . . . let it thaw to the appropriate whizzle . . . but no! His bones N jones was supposed to be enough. That was what . . . “THEY” . . . said. “Faaaaack.” He said. “This is a constitutional issue, after all!”
“Retro/Universes Are Against God’s Constitution!” Sam Savior cried. “They lead to mixing oddiments that have no right being mixed! Haven’t we gone through the hell of peas and potatoes malingering on lightly glazed plates? Milk and cookies . . . co-habitatuating in unininnular glass? I ask you . . .does God approve of Mixery?”
The Congregation errrrred. “Sylvan Sneed’s Glam Rock Hip.Ship must be stopped!” Sniveled Sam Savior, stomping his forceful feet. “No Fun For Anyone, in Ought Oh. One!” He cried. “We adhere to the A-location of All Things, as stated in our updated How to Keep the Universe Flying Handbook (Saints.N.49er’s,) autographed by Brett Farve (twenty-second comeback tour) (Satin-finish edition.)
* * * * *
Sylvan and Billy stepped from the Glam Rock Hip.Ship into Trans Terminal Time (Banger Sewer/Line.) They lingered between here and now. Everything dribbled. Sylvan malingered an institutional white, Crayola world, (minus 63 colors.) Billy put the period at the end of a question mark and the Hip.Ship labeled it Epoch.47/Universe. The Trans-Terminal was empty, except for a bevy (two) of Time Kops. They awaited Sneed and Bland’s arrival at Terminal T.
Time Kops were roly-poly eggs on sticks that carried their ships inside cracked shells. Their eyes googled, making Sylvan a bit air sick, but who was he to deride those who dislocate themselves for the sake of the norm? “Sylvan, you and Billy come peaceable now,” Time.Kop1 mumblered, “We’ll just hook ‘ol Hip.Ship up to the Quay and zoom! We’ll scoot you home. You can be eating [i]Poodles N Things[/i] before you blink your God Damned Eyes.”
Sylvan said “I Think Not!” Colors leaked out of glam ship’s hide. Billy noodled France, 1942. Time.Kop2 rushed Billy, who stepped aside, and Time.Kop2 fell, screaming, all the way into Brown Fedora, sized 10 with matching Great Coat (42 Long.) (Epoch: St. Petersburg, Russia, 1922.) One could hear the egg crack.
“Nowhere to go but up, Hip,” Billy said, repairing the mess in the finish and remembering to slide his hands into Hip.Ship’s Vacuum Scuddifier. Sneed sneezed and a hole appeared. “Well, gul durn it, Sneed!” Billy said. The members of Motely Crue stuck their heads through the hole, patted Hip.Ship good morning and pulled themselves into time. “Woulda. Shoulda. Coulda,” Sneed lamented. “Where were you during my Time/In? Huh?”
“Right next to you bruddah,” Billy gaffed. He had the curlicue handcuffs to prove it.
“Arrrrrrgh!” Cried Time.Kop1, (who had snuck aboard Glam Rock Hip.Ship on a lunch-plate.) Sneed looked into his bibbily eyes and made them sniggle. He felt much better. Time.Kop1 sunk into the Crème Brule/Sauce with a single “Glub”.
Billy snapped his fingers. All manner of chaos stopped, waiting upon his orders.
Suddenly, Air Ship God’s.Chuckle and The Criss/Cross Christ Meeting House filled with all manner of beings. Secret wishes, wrapped in Plastic Floofle, appeared right next to Sylven Sneed and Billy Bragg who were busy thumpitee bumpiteeing and wheezing prayers for plain bananas, no nuts. The Floofle contained goggles of women with hourglass figures and really tall hair. There were men of tight pants, sporting regulation bulges, and big hair, too. All the Plastic Floofles ripped, simultaneously, and the glaflorious goodnesses of Sex Kittendoms (boy and girl,) circa 1970, oozed out. The congregation was Rapturous. And to make matters worse, the glaforious ones cavorted (and coveted) their bland and blooked, un-fun counterparts. Even Savior Sam had to take pause to grasp the (ahem,) implications. The Babs and Georges yearned to fill every one with Groovy Love, oozing and whoozing out of all pores and orifices. A disco ball descended. What to do? What to do? Flared jeans and elephant bells were faackin’ EVERYWHERE! They got down and boogied.
Sneed and Billy rolled out of their handcuffs, high jinxing and prankster prancing in rainbow colors, to the Luv-in Ship, their other ride. They pulled institutional vinyl blue/gravestones in with them, leaving all Time-Kops lost, in vanilla dreams.
Billy and Sneed took over the Universe. It ran just fine.
Another Member of the Salt-water Fish for Everyone Club
A TWISTED TALE OF TREACHERY
Micus Narkaby, nine years old, grasped the football patterned dust ruffle by his dirty nails, and thrust his lank-haired head underneath his bed. He sneezed, and wiped his nose on his Dispicables, extra-large Tee-shirt. His treasured box of Graphic Novels was “hidden” behind by his old tennis shoes, Binny the stuffed bear, a couple pairs of skanky underwear, a zillion marbles, and other junk artfully placed to keep his mother (and secret others,) from ever reaching his prize possessions. Little did they know this was a rouse, a dupe, a switcheroo. The “casually” placed box wrapped in a black ribbon and covered with skull and cross-bones stickers contained his old collection of Batman, Fantastic Four and Plastic-man comics. The real stash was set in a cut-out space he had made in the sheet-rock, with his mother’s set of Japanese Ginsu Knives. They were guaranteed to cut through anything.
With just his head and shoulders jutting under the frame, he ran his fingers in a secret pattern over every object . . . even the underwear. The placement and relationship between items must be exact within quintuplimeters. Like a life or death chess match played with Real Men, he analyzed each position. His genetically enhanced, remote controlled night-vision irises, which opened or closed depending on the amount of available light, made everything crystal clear.
“Bastards!” He sub-vocalized. His enemies had subtly shifted his possessions while he was asleep, just to fuck with him. One wrong move and he would have been vaporized. Micus X5, (his code-name,) would have to master a whole new set of parameters to run the gauntlet. He laughed at their puny attempts to thwart him.
When he next awoke, it was the evening and he had been asleep on top of the sheets. He was relieved that even while unconscious, his training had kicked in. He had avoided the obvious trap of going beneath the covers. “Never go beneath the covers.” The Ninja Survival Manual, Second Edition, page 15, had warned him.
Micus X5 was an arch assassin. Once again, he must make his way through the snake-pit of deception that lay under the guise of his bed-set. He gymnastically maneuvered his body through the transformed, dust-bunny-scape of ever-changing, killer laser beams. If somehow his super-fine, sculpted body failed him, he would be sizzling dead meat.
These security measures and counter-measures were never-ending, but he must defeat them, to fulfill his latest objective. Each time he accessed the time/space portal under his bed, he was one step closer to the assassination of the President of the Corporatocracy of the United States. The hidden box of Graphic Novels contained his nightly instructions. It must not be touched by any other hands but his. His hands were uniquely encoded with special secretions that oozed out his identifiers.
His had just today received the specially randomized email from IWannaPlay@deviant.net.net, which had given him the latest approved method of execution. Micus X5 had then most untypically gone with his mother to the Safeway Grocery Store. He purchased (with his own money,) several specially-marked box of Tri-colored Neon Jell-O Brand Wigglers. He told his mother there were points to be won inside each box towards a neat-o prize.
The President happened to have Tri-colored Neon Jell-O Brand Wigglers every night with dinner. Micus X5 was to materialize in the pantry of the Presidential Kitchen, and replace all boxes of said product with packages laced with Super-nano technology, that would make Mr. Corporatocracy a virtual (and real) puppet controlled by Micus X5’s employers, known only as the Chaossifiers.
Returning home from his shopping expedition, his mother, innocent in all manner of deception, handed him a piece of mail he had been waiting for. It was part of his “cover.” It was a letter with a gold seal, welcoming him as a full-fledged member of the Salt-water Fish For Everyone Club. His mother smiled her goofy mother smile, and said, “How Exciting, Mikey, open it up!” She sat expectantly in her chair, so proud of her son’s interests.
“Oh, Gee, Mom, I’ve really been looking forward to this,” He brightly exclaimed, playing the fool. He slid his finger under the gold seal. A razor-sharp edge bit into his finger. He could feel the poisons racing through his system. As he fell to the floor, he heard his mother say, “Well Mikey, at least now you’ll be able to sleep under the covers . . . for a very long time.” She bent down to retrieve the postcard.
PSYCHOPOMP (formerly Carnage.) Novel in Foment. Chapter One.
This bookling was haphazardly christened CARNAGE when I first posted it. It doesn’t fit and I want to change the focus before I put up chapter two. I here by give it it’s second name: PSYCHOPOMP. Of course this has been used before – I can think of one right off the bat by Brian Lumley. Obviously this will not be the last title change, but it puts the title in the right ballpark for the adventures within.
Thanks all.
V
PSYCHOPOMP
______________________ CHAPTER ONE[VS1]
INTRODUCING . . . MISS MEDIA! The Down-low Diva of Dirty Data, the Crowning Queen of Memes and one hell of a babe on the Vid Floor; Miss Mass Hysteria in My Living Room . . . I give you in the flesh
. . . Media!
Media waits for the Prompt to flash and when it stops she’s on every entertainment platform in the world. She is in a catwoman costume. She has a tail. Her agile hand dangles a set of keys hanging from unsheathed nails. The keys are ornate and bit map rendered in beautifully cast gold from a pattern stolen from the Vatican. There are six. They are on a ring encased in platinum and diamonds and the set hangs from the crook of her little blue finger.
The observing eye . . . the observing eye that is your eye, is frozen open. Your Avatar stumbles upon terraces of sculpted data, unable to draw away from its glitter. It is knowledge made flesh and it tempts at every turn, but you know your way, and you will not be daunted by cheap marketing tricks. As you step down upon data made flesh you cause patterns to ripple out. They are as aware as foxes. They coalesce and ripple away from you and you return your attention to the mystical hand. Her hand has become the world, and as the world is remade, you eagerly insert your key into the temple lock.There is a thick and satisfying thunk. The Game opens and Pac-man figures gang-bang the opening credits, exposing further depths.
You shunt them into temp storage so you don’t have to bother and click the yes box on the player release form. It slides into a sturdy grey file cabinet of indefinite era. Your hand pushes the drawer closed and you wait, considering your options. You are playing The Six Keys of Miss Media’s Garden of Earthly Delights; the most heavily populated Mass-Rez Game on the planet. Just a moment or perhaps eons ago you had two choices – the Blue or Red Hand. This time you chose the blue with the dangling keys. You can’t wait to see what she’ll do to you. Every time is new at Miss Media‘s.
Media’s Blue Hand is prim and the color of the dust of Shiva. From it descend six keys. Pull one and make a selection. The chosen metronomic key slaps into your hand. Colors bleed off under the gold. You’ve pulled the sex-dream key. Prepare yourself. Worlds of tacky carpet and crappy coffee and horrible people drop away. You are at work and must steal the time to ride so you do. There is an acceptable .25 second stutter between key-strokes graciously allowed by your employer, SCANEEZ Accelerated, as down-time. .25 seconds is all you need to be blasted away. The transfer is made and a statement is signed which releases any of your emergent data to the calc arm of the Miss Media franchise. It is sent to your file cabinet.
You have injected yourself with Media. Your name is Peter Polaris. You are at work. What you have done is highly illegal and, thus, thrilling. Miss Media says ‘There will be no data trail’ and you believe her. She says she needs you; this too, you believe. When you see her you see God.
The glossy candy-girl image dissolves under a wash of star-stuff and she hangs in the air before you and you metaphorically fuck her like a bunny. She is magnificently blue. She is Shiva hunting a new world and you are a tick, riding upon her flank.
The break-your-balls Advertising Bot of Media.HardCOre sashays a million miles to stand before the high-rez doors of the temple. Its bust-line inflates with scurrilous rants (Bigger! Plumper! Newer!) and it sends scouts out to scrub data from willing brains. Mile-high heels click over bits and bites as it shunts One Time Offers through cortical stems. This is what Peter is fucking.
A Burble of fractillating data crawls from the datastream and inserts its teeth into the A.B.’s delicately sculpted ankles. With every bite there is now a familiar ping. She sends minions across the plane of her knee to assault the intruder and fails to upend the beast. Her armies are absorbed by the Burble. She runs. She carries the pinging, gnawing messenger across mutating vistas. Her eyes measure the ambient creature’s bandwidth and is astonished. She now knows this is a bite of great opportunity, this gnawing demon. She will have to decode the invitation . . . or the threat.
Media becomes very still. She scratches a metaphorical itch, then finishes her lunch. She tips the peak of what she thinks of as her head up, and touches the blinding silver light of the Ionosphere.
END CHAPTER ONE
[VS1]MISS MEDIA
THE HUNT – Literary Fiction
I watch his delicate hands shift the deck like rolling silver. He’s tricksy today, playing the showman. Running a shill. He’ll fan and break the royalty – faces out, faces in – and they’ll leap from hand to hand as slick as anything. You’d never know he was sick.
He finishes with the classic 52 card waterfall, then collapses them in order to deal the next round. He holds my gaze with ball-baring eyes. The cards are tossed in direct arcs upon the battered table. I take two; he takes one. Whack, whack. A grin unfolds. It trips his cheeks up. The corners of his eyes crease. He’s giving me “the sign” . . . letting me in on the action.
Another round of two-man Poker with the master. He sits quiet. Contained. The suit and tie combo are gone. He’s in sweats now. And the hat? Well. I have the hat.
He’s a brilliant bullshitter and he keeps a nonsensical patter going as I try to catch the trick. It’s been a long time. I can just follow his hands as they seduce cards from the bottom of the deck. Oh, father ‘o mine, I haven’t seen you in years. The cards fall from his hands and I pick them up.
Mr. Avery P. Constantine; fat, bald and barrel-chested. Big voice, soft smile. Buffed and polished fingernails – an early affectation. Back in the day he wore almost-in-style, three-piece suits. Pressed, but old. Clean, but old. His favored two, (one checked, one grey striped,) had extra detailing. On the back sides of both left sleeves (where nobody looks,) a playing card sized swatch of material was mated and a slit formed, where the wrist meets the table. This same slit will be found in coat linings just above the belt, over the heart, under the lapels and on the inside of the dress pants where the coccyx hits. These are called ‘gaffs’ by the pros and every card sharp uses them, even today.
He also sported a prop to unconsciously “impress a certain life-script” upon the stooges . . . a plain gold wedding band. If pressed, he’d show the inscription while pretending to be drunk: “Eileen . . . My Heart’s Desire,” it read. He got it in the long-ago, at Jimmi’s Hock’n’Shop on Main. It cost him eight bucks in 1962. It was authentic rube-swallow. He thought it gave him a look of tattered grandeur . . . that and the hat. His real ring had seventeen diamonds in platinum and was kept in a false pocket. Showcasing that would have been a bad tell; well below his skills level, but he never left home without it. He might have to make a return trip to Jimmi’s Hock’n’Shop for the next run . . . or to pay the rent.
And the ever-present hat. He never hocked that! It was his lucky hand-wove won-at-a-poker-game while busted flat White Panama Hat; from honest-to-god Panama. He wore it dropped forward and slunk over his brow; a kind of protective colorant. The brim forced his eyes into shadow. He’d never look directly at people, he’d look around them . . . or through them. He used those cornflower blue orbs sparingly . . . and for effect. They were as hot as glittering diamonds. He used them whenever a mark started shifting, looking scared like he wanted to leave. My father would fluff up his testosterone level, push the hat back just a bit and reveal those transparent, steel-blue eyes. One look would nail that guy to the chair. It was beautiful. It was like a summons to war.
When I was ten years-old I began learning the con. I made some money; showed shit off to my friends, you know. Kid stuff. I had the basic moves. I did a passable bottom-deal, but I really busted caps with craps. The weighted die Constantine gave me didn’t hurt. I had a nice career for a while. One morning I was rocking before school. I had five kids losing their lunch money and everything was swell until one of them called me a cheat. I couldn’t let that pass, so I busted his head. I got expelled. Mom was totally pissed. She threatened me with reform school, so I hid my light and lucky dice under a basket until Constantine let me sit in on a few of his afternoon games. I’d be the rube, the unschooled player, and I’d win or lose according to script. Nobody thought a little kid could be cheating, I was just incredibly lucky . . . until I wasn’t. I got to keep five precent of the winnings.
When he took your money it was smooth, and only, only, after he’d greased your wheels to a high shine. The fool would think, “I’m on a fucking roll now, baby!” and the dough would fly. Constantine made wild but small bets to keep everything cooking. The mark won piddling pots (just enough to keep the itch alive,) and just as he felt like an honest-to-god poker player, Constantine would crash the curtain and squash him. He was so good at it though, so deft, the mark never knew the game was done. My old man was a consummate actor – he could be such a toady! He’d convince a guy he’d had a good night after losing thirty thousand! You could hear the guy thinking . . . “I may have lost my wad, but damn, I was so CLOSE! I would’ve beat that bastard if only . . . (fill in the blank.) My dad would say “Never make a mark feel bad, kid,” especially after losing thirty thousand dollars.
My mom was a dancer when she met Constantine. She liked the life then, rolling from casino to casino; hitting the after-hours parties in Chicago, mixing it up with sharks. She kept it up for years, even after I came along. And then it stopped being fun.
I think I was around eleven when we came home from an afternoon party to an empty apartment. Constantine had hocked everything – my baseball glove, our dinette set, her jewelry, the dishes . . . really, everything. That was it for mom. She called it quits with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We moved in with her parents and a long, dull, stretch of time unrolled. Constantine mostly stayed out of our way. I saw him sporadically for a few years until he was gone. Left for the Bahamas or something . . . until now. I find him now, in this crappy nursing home. Rotting. Broken. Still shuffling cards.
Ah, shit, it’s getting late. The light is failing; it is flat and empty. It’s seeping out of the room like a puckered balloon. The tables and chairs are in shadows and me with them. I pull a cigarette out of my pocket until I remember I can’t do that in here, so I brush non-existent lint from my coat. I need something to do with my hands. I can’t look at him. These old people. They’re more like cartoon cutouts printed on shuttered, white paper shades.
The old man hits the linoleum with his cane three times. I pick up my cards.
I’d stopped by the Home on Seventeenth Street because he asked me to. My old man. Out of the blue. I get a fucking card from him, in the mail, for my forty-second birthday. It came equipped with a ten-dollar bill and three aces. I was in the neighborhood, so . . . you know . . . I stopped. Obviously I won’t tell mom just who’s come home to roost, she’d fucking die. He looks ok. Walks with that cane – bad hip – refuses surgery.
My wife must wonder where I am. Can’t use a cell-phone in here – too many pacemakers. He never had a room phone installed . . . “Who’d I call?” he asked.
He’s taking the deal again even though it’s my turn. He stops halfway and holds the cards; no, clutches the cards. I’m a little concerned. His knuckles tremor and are bone white. I hate this shit . . . seeing people old and sick and on the brink. I’m embarrassed I came. I suck in some air and my polluted lungs rattle. He looks up. Hearing’s still good.
The day room is nice and spit-shiny. Plastic plants hang from plastic hangers, adding a little plastic color to an otherwise plastic room. The place is loaded with wheelchairs, some with occupants. A few of the mobile inmates hang around cracking jokes. Everybody looks lost; alone and exposed. A sprightly nurse with pink hair wanders from soul to soul carrying a lot of stuff – clipboard, lotion, magazines, aspirin – the nuts and bolts of her vocation. She checks a catheter bag, a bum hip, then starts dealing medicines from a trolley she pulls behind her. Muzak lifts and falls. We are the only ones making noise, and it is mostly the slap of cards on laminated pine that interrupts the silence. I scat a running commentary on the deals and our scores and our bluffs. My father grunts, then whups me blind.
Constantine’s eyes have a strange shine. The fading light has robbed us of color. It’s left me with two faded blue lumps which stare at me and at nothing in particular. I look up and a gold umbra from the last of the day strikes the hairs of his head and transforms them from soot-grey to canary yellow; and an image of how he was flutters across my mind. A hinky cough pulls me back. His breath is coming a-huh, a-huh, a-huh and his eyes are pin-balling inside his head. He seems to be ferreting out danger with sharp looks. Me? I wonder? Am I the danger?
The muzak stops with a weird thump and I am approached by the shuffling of rubber-soled feet. My stomach crawls a bit. There is something wrong in those bright, bright, eyes. My father’s mouth falls open, than closes and spittle crawls from the corner of his pale mouth. He asks a silent question. The aluminum chair he’s on squeaks. Old Connie’s hands move. They slide around and through the cards . . . one last show, slip, slap, slip. The nurse is next to him with a cup of brightly-colored pills. “Mr. Constantine?” She says. He concentrates on cartoon faces – those paste-board Kings and Jacks and Queens and tries to decipher numbers all out-of-order. I watch the backs of those cards – a finely rendered 1960’s portrait of Irish Setters on point, in a field hunting. A suck-up smile crosses the nurse’s lips and she moves on, leaving pills and a small cup of imitation Sprite behind.
His eyes whack back and forth and then they are bombed-out shells. I think maybe this is an old con – the psychotic route and he’s setting a trick – planning to astonish his long-lost son, but the cards have turned. His fingers clutch but the deck has a mind of its own – it shivers against his tendons like a captive bird. He squawks, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” in an teetering voice and myriad limbs jump and jerk. It’s cards vs. Constantine and for once, he has a bad hand.
Constantine looks scared. I’ve never before seen ‘scared’ on him. His eyes are small bright pennies and vague questions roar over wrinkled hills, only to settle into empty vacancy. His nose lifts. He smells a trap. The cards finally erupt. They dance mid-flight, in pasteboard chaos; and on the way down they strike my face, my lap. They flop on the floor; slide under chairs . . . they have escaped. Proud Irish Setters and de-throned Kings and bad-ass aces flaunt their freedom. Only the two Jokers remain, calm and collected. They sit on the pressboard table, ready for the gaff. Constantine glares at the hands that betrayed him and slams them against the aluminum chair until the nurse comes. He has forgotten me, and numbness takes his limbs. His mind is loose and falling. Constantine’s stick-figure muscles go flat; his eyes soften like butter, and he is gone from me. Not dead, just gone, and I slip away, too. I slide out of my hard chair as the help converges and I make my get-away. He doesn’t need me. That man’s never needed me. I don’t know why I came.
NYC MIDNIGHT FLASH CHALLENGE #13 – ENTRY 1 PROMPTS: FANTASY, PUMPKIN, TREE HOUSE
A lone man remains after cataclysm and turns to the trees for solace.
The Valley of Trees
0.9/3002
Dearest Diary,
Oh, Terror! ToMn the Dreadful descends upon This Poor world and His Shadow is Everywhere!
For twenty-three days the storms Pummeled This House perched atop our Valley Of Trees, and finally The Cataclysm of Rains have stopped. By Luck and Good Will this Manse was built of Stone and still the rooms are Beswampt. The walls tip Inward and all Fragile Things Lay broken in Heaps. I am Full Of Disquiet.
The Trees . . . they are Silent!
0.9/3004
Dear Diary,
I am a Coward. It took me Two Days to summon Courage Enough to leave these walls. Finally I left this foolish Stone Ship and dared Walk Outside. Oh, shock! I walked past the tilting colonnades and saw nothing, nothing but water. My house crumbles. My many acres of good earth lay buried under the weight of unending water. Only a few feet or so remain above the sea. I am as good as Shipwrecked.
The Waters pulse Grey and Featureless and the Dead, they bide their time under a preternatural Slick Of Corruption. The moon utters Pink.
I peel the waves with my Eyes and fall Sick.
0.9/3007 R.I.P
I lay Unconscious for Three Days by my Count. I suffered awake to find My Dear Wife of 0.0.17 Broms, Matilda Acrean nee’ Helmsbark, (aged ought-ought twenty) . . . dead. It was the Linger of ToMn’s Ichor, I think, that crushed her Fragile Soul. I am Bereft without My Wife. She was sick for long and long, still her Passing Is For The Better . . . she was a Sensitive Soul. She would not Tolerate this new world.
I cannot Bury My Bride. The bit of Ground not drowned under is but Muck. I laid Her on the Tides to Sink or Swim. May this new Lord Forgive such Transgressions.
Addendum:
The night is still. A disordered Flock of Gelkins flew past the pale coral moon while I stood and sobbed. Their boisterous noises were the pinging of Sonar in a landless Dawn.
0.9/3008
Forgive me my Indiscretions, Dear Diary. I took to Drink last night. I am Alone.
The Salmon Light Frightens beyond Imagining.
The food is mostly gone.
0.9/3009
Oh My Dear Friend,
I woke to Birds . . . the plaintive Song of the Bosfling and the High-pitched Whee of the Waxwerk kept me alive. How Buoyed I am to hear their chatter! With Heightened Hope I make my way into the wavering day.
I raced to the rear of the mansion where our family kept its fortunes and Our Trees, My Glorious Arbor Of Blosphor! It is ripped asunder and Plunged head-first into the Loamy Mud. All is Inverse! My triumphant Princes now hang willy-nilly, their Spiny Roots thrusting for Sky; their crowns lingering God knows Where. All color is Submerged. Can there be no Viridescence left to stroke the Sky to Bloom? I can see only grey.
I peer at the morass of roots and All is atangle. One cannot tell where one Giant Begins and another ends! Their massive root structures have interlocked in Astonishing ways, as if all this time they were Of One Piece! Those strange, grasping Tendrils, both thick and pale, bend and weave in Stultifying Confusion.
My Lord. The Devastation.
Why I Have Been Spared?
0.9/3010
My Only Companion,
I used my father’s Drotny Knife in a most Ungracious way today. In the howl of the flat morning light the Kitchen Collapsed! I have not had the Heart to sort through the Refuse. Still, I was very Hungry. I Tore open the Pumpkin Matilda had gayfully placed on the Segwood Cabinet in my rooms. It was mere Decoration, but full of Meaty Goodness, albeit a bit Black inside. I consumed the seeds Raw and for a day could not Move for the Cramps until circumstances forced Precipitous Action.
The mortar between Stones and the Stones themselves are Crumbling. My house is falling away and the Stink Of Mold is making me ill. I Must Take to the Trees, even if they Refuse to Sing! It is my Only Salvation, but tonight I will sleep with the Stars.
0.9/3011
I scanned my Forest Empire, quiescent in the tides. A denuded crown had burst to the Surface. I will Use it as a Scaffold and Build a Bridge of Doors across the water to the Body of snarled roots; those flopping limbs who Curl on the Joyless Seas. There I shall Seek Succor.
I have built a bit of a perch. I note the many Various Bugs that travel branches did not all die, for the birds are eating, eating, eating. Good For Them. I see a new form of Supping ahead of me.
I am Astonished by the Stillness. It Is Magnificent, if not Frightening.
0.9/3012
The Lord Is Bountiful. My things are landed Awaiting Transport inward. I have some Food, Potable Water and a Brazier for cooking.
The Interior has Revealed a Snug Chamber with a rooted floor and woven walls. Ideal for This Traveller. The Roseate Light wends its way through the limbs, but it is quite Vague. After some hours, I was able to Carve A Window of sorts through the many layers. By this is I will judge the rise and fall of the world. What is left of It.
A variety of Birds Follow me into my New Chamber. I sit on my Rooted Floor, momentarily content. My hand falls through the cracks and a small tendril winds upon my arm. There is a small hum.
Published in Lucid Fiction Chap Book – 2013
Bloodlines
By V. Saichek
Aloren, a five foot eight and loose-limbed unisex bombshell; dropdead and all that, red of hair, lustrous of skin now gone pale, down and drawn and cancelled out of the largess of what was a beautiful, if thirty-five, piece of ass, and damn, damn, damn, getting no sleep as of late and jittery for no reason yet so very tired, tired, tired – to the depths of her, tired.
Her body is in revolt. Her head is on fire and her stomach, tied into double and triple knots, into lakes full of acid, erupts and flings its goo against her pinkish walls. It tells her of impending things. She wishes she could blink her eyes and make these nasty sensations go away or at least get somehow, some help, from the blank medicine cabinet, but no, she, it, is empty of all remedies. Her day has just begun and she hasn’t even downed the crust of a bagel.
Her insides are burning with knowledge and the results of last night’s fish sandwich. Indigestion courses through her (upsetting her fine constitution,) and she feels blood racing away from her core, chilling the tips of her fingers, making her pale face even paler. Her blood continues to take flight, pulling heat with it . . . and the pressure is pushed elsewhere.
She sees the veins in her hands pulse with incoming and outgoing tides, of data streams written in liquid red and soon her body is singing, its blood having its way with her. The canals of life, artery to vein, vein to capillary, race onward carrying messages of great import. The rush and tumult is too much. Pressure is building. Her head is filled and lights are flashing – warning – warning – incoming . . .
A wisp of a vein bursts behind her eyes. Her brain is engorged with a thousand lights. Her mind is full of fissures. She tears the bristles out of the hard acrylic flat of her hairbrush as her hands and body dance, contort in convulsions, curl in collusion and she loses the thread – all threads. They break apart and fractured filaments force themselves down new channels, digging trenches into the rudderless rose of her collapsing brain. Lesser and lesser, or greater and greater trajectories erupt and definitions of things unspool, their strands distanced and dislocated . . . destroyed.
She can see the broken strings of “things.” Some are teacups and ponies, yesterday’s jumpsuit and tomorrow’s telecommute. Riffs of what was sings down lost pathways. She attempts to untangle the mire but she can only resurrect the most menial of mental images, without names to label what is. Roots and shoots, tubers and tendrils – stones cracking, whack, whack, within her head, like the vessel that popped off, translate into fissures venting pent-up steam – hot gasses from unknown zones burst through ocean sea river floors and flood the remaining twists and turns of her tender flesh. Oxygen also floods the system. She can feel gusts and blusters. Nameless winds brush memory down and away into cubbies/corners never accessed. The tiny tears are bleeding her of who and what and all of her wherewithal.
Pressurized air batters her brain stem and circles higher – rat a tat a tat – a Kalashnikov on steroids popping blasting obliterating wholes into holes. The corpus collosum collapses. Already in two factions, its duty to ferry information from right to left to right, to translate data from impulse – from thinking to sensation to mental image is slowed to the rate of molten iron and now pulsing fire devours what is left of her and her hands reach out. She cannot feel her hands.
Her hands reach out and there is odd information at the ready. Strange information. Incalculable information, much too grand to accept . . . and yet.
She knows she is touching vast fault-lines. She feels gigantic tectonic plates shift and ripple. A cat-o-nine tail of electrical impulse curls from the flick, and click click click – her spine clacks and clatters in strange alignment. In what remains of her mind’s inner eye, she has become very large. She is outside in. Her scattered senses knock together as she pierces through layers of time. Not her time, no. She is covered in eons. The pores of her skin metamorph into continents – oceans – mountains – that range beyond reckoning. Stars fall into her hands.
She is following some blind event horizon that is following her; wherein she is the center. Time is shaking, breaking apart, as are all things of substance – unless, her fingers locate the recalcitrant and juddering core; trace the clatter to that which first shifted – the myriad, combative tectonic plates that surface the world, like the cataclysmic veins in her splitting head– if she can pinch and push and douse the fires of . . . the fires of falling apart . . . well, then. What if?
She feels around for the fault-lines rumbling, roaring, crushing her bones into mulch. Within her, without her, plateaus and plains and valleys do battle to the death in thrilling supersonic collisions. She stretches her lengthy rubberwoman arms past the savannahs of Zimbubueland, tipping the edges of continents. Her toes know what to do. They curl around coastlines and her hands grip the lost mountain ranges of Knuptwup in a delicate double-handshake. She separates masses that have cantilevered over and under during the battle of the senses, having made quite a mess of a nice twist of brain. Her stomach begins to settle.
She stretches a column of land, tearing roots and shoots and releases the pressure of trapped blood within her. The level of the sea aligns with her dropping blood pressure – it nips down an inch or five and the flooded shores and lost coasts rise up. The skeletons of a thousand, thousand broken structures also rise up – the twisted rebar of buildings; houses churches office parks playgrounds dance halls and taverns, condominiums with outrageous maintenance fees sea-side resorts fitted out with individual cabanas trusty roads, avenues, lanes, hillocks and brambles, weeping willows resurrected so they may weep once more and roads and roads and roads that had collapsed and crumbled begin to refine and realign as blood finds a way to flow around and through the tumbled mountain of burst dreams.
Her fingers stretch and she reaches to pat each hair in place. The continents settle under her touch. Rivers have found new passage and begin to seep into new soil.
Night falls. It is time for the stars. The stars in her eyes close and all the lost things from here and there gather. They whisper to themselves, goodnight.
Magixx 