Boatload of Fools

Phil the Post-it Note

2007-06-18T22:14:00.001-07:00

There was a post it note named Phil. Phil had a terrible memory. All he would ever be able to remember was one thing, and he had no control over what it was he would remembered. Once Phil remembered something, he could never remember anything new again. It would be a moment as if the hand of god - or the person who owned the notepad - suddenly wrote something upon his mind. One day, Phil would be lying on a table, trying not to stick to strongly to a surface - you know, to keep his options open - when suddenly the pen would come.

From then on, Phil would never be able to remember anything new. If something new did enter into his mind, Phil knew from listening to the elder post it notes in the pad Many a day, things would be come confused, like lines of writing overlapping. Soon there would be too much, and the crumpling would occur. None of the other post it notes knew what it was like to crumple, just that one day you would either be whisked away to guard what they were inscribed to know or that they would be crumpled.

As a result, all post it notes lived in fear of being crumpled because one condition didn't sound like it would be too different a life- mostly just sticking to surfaces and rustling in breezes - while the other sounded vastly different.

Like all other post-it notes, Phil was afraid of change. His body spent such time at rest, only occasionally fluttering at the edge - crunched as he in the post-it note queue - and the concept of rapid and continued motion frightened Phil. He didn't know how he would regain control of his being once the crumpling began, and he - and the other post it notes - knew how ineffectual his one defence, the paper cut, could be. No one who lashed out at the mysterious force that crumpled ever came back a live.

To be continued...

Down from the corner of Mulberry and Penobscot

2006-09-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

The brontosaurus trotted down Mulberry street. With one step, its head swung right and its tail left. With the next step, its head swung left and its tail right. And so forth. Head and tail a like clubbed cars, telephone poles, lampposts, trees (like crepe myrtles), mailboxes, pedestrians, small dogs, and the ghosts of travelling salesmen trampled to death by the brontosauruses of the days of yore.

Of course, brontosauruses, famed for the miniscule size of their brain and the presence of a second brain in the rump to control the tail are not known for giving too much thought to larger matters of the world. This is illustrated by the fact that the head always goes one way the tail other. Many biologists might tell you that the opposing sway of the head and tail are a matter of balance. Those biologists are wrong and just plain stupid.

But not as stupid as brontosauruses, and likely not so happy either. After all there are the sayings, "happy as a brontosaurus" and "cheer up like a brontosaurus," and "there's no such thing as a sad brontosaurus." People always think brontosauruses must be too big to feel anything, and if they do it probably has to do with the constant need to eat. This particular brontosaurus, the one on Mulberry street, is in fact travelling down Mulberry Street towards Penobscot Street, and this particular day happens to be trash day. The brontosaurus stops every driveway to eat a special basket of wilted lettuce and other assorted vegetable remains that each neighbor dutifully leaves out next to the regular trash.

The neighbors would tell you that they leave the baskets of greens out because they love to take care of all of nature's creatures, the neighborhood brontosauruses most of all. They would never admit, especially not on national TV, that they hate the brontosauruses because the brontosauruses, THIS brontosaurus in the case of Mulberry street, roam the streets because the people kept feeding them. In such regards, the brontosauruses were not any different than backyard squirrels or the racoon who won't stay out of the garage. The main difference was that a spoiled squirrel or racoon would not go on a starved rampage through the suburbs, destroying cars, walls, houses, and pavement with the thunderous march of its footprints and catastrophic hurling of its body weight.

Several neighborhood ordinances attempted to eliminate the brontosaurus problem. The first ordinance required that nobody feed the brontosauruses in the hopes that they would seek sustanence elsewhere. This ordinance resulted in eleven dead and twenty two million dollars in property damage. The second ordinance called for a signed petition to be read allowed to the brontosauruses explaining that even on good days their presence caused thousands of dollars worth of damage, and would they kindly take their destruction elsewhere. Every resident signed the petition. The brontosauruses ate the petitions straight from the hands of the messangers. The cost to the city was the price of approximately one ream of paper and about two hundred man hours of signature aquiring labor. The third ordinance called for the creation of a central dumping ground for all vegatable refuse in the hopes that drawing all the brontosauruses to a consistent and strategically chosen feeding area would minimize both feeding damage and general brontosaurus free roaming. This experiment caused the city to discover that despite the scattered and apparently independent roaming of many brontosauruses, possibly encouraged by a lack of natural predators, brontosauruses were truly by nature pack animals. The alpha brontosaurus siezed control of the feeding pile, and the lower brontosauruses rampaged through the suburbs hoping to gain the alphas favor by making the main pile bigger. Damage resulted on the same level as that caused by the first ordinance.

The fourth ordinance called for the town and county police force to recruit a band of armed civilian volunteers in order to attempt to bring down or drive out the brontosaurus herd. This ordinance proved to be the most financially efficient as it saved the area the salaries of the numerous officers who lost their lives and opened up the job positions of the recently deceased citizenry to less fortunate individuals who were ambitious enough to apply. However, the ordinance was imediately repealed after the infamous B-Day massacre. Certainly, no one in the city council expected brontosauruses to turn so viscious when shot with armor piercing rounds.

The fifth ordinance, the first one to fail the vote, suggested that the entire town be relocated several miles to the east to a suitable sight in the hopes that the territoriality of the herd was the cause of their roaming. In a 4-3 vote, the prevailing argument suggested that the brontosauruses may have intially arrived in the area in search of a central herd territory, but that the consistent and readily available supplies of food ensured that they would be unable to survive on their own and would arrive in the newly resettled town in a starved and desperate state.

The final ordinance necessitated that the residents left a bucket of vegetable greens out once a week.

Chett and Sarah sat on a swinging bench on their porch on Mulberry Street. They held hands and watched the brontosaurus gracefully dip its head into the bucket on their driveway. It lifted its head, leaves of lettuce falling away from the sides of its mouth.

"So much like a cow," Chett says. "The way its mouth moves."

"What do you suppose they eat the rest of the week?" Sarah says.

No one really knew. No one wanted to know. All Chett and Sarah knew was that if they did their part, if they lived their lives in accordance to the law, the worst they could expect was a few hundred dollars of damage to their car, a few hundred dollars of damage to their lawn, and a variable amount of damage to the street and sidewalk per week. Unless of course, the brontosauruses tail knocked open the fire hydrant like it did two months before. Other than that though, that and the constant breaking of windows due to the thunderous shaking produced by the animals foot steps, all Chett and Sarah had to due was leave a bucket on their end of the driveway and make sweet love late in the evenings to baritone singers who laid their vox over bass guitar and a hand drum set to brass melodies.

"I really love you," Chett says, taking Sarah's hand in his.

"I really love you to," Sarah says. "Do you think this is a good neighborhooed to raise children?"

Mrs. Norman across the street and two blocks up pushes her stroller out of her front door, as if right on cue. The brontosaurus lifts its head from the bucket and looks over to Mrs. Norman. It swings its head towards and into the stroller. Leaving a Mrs. Norman's baby howling and newly naked, the brontosaurus swallows the babies clothing and goes back to its buckets.

"Of course my love," Chett says. "We're gonna have a healthy litter. Have you checked on the eggs this morning?"

Sarah opens the hatch in her stomach. She pats Chett on the cheek with playful condesencion. "Every five minutes."

Like little brontosaurus eggs, Chett thinks as he looks at the eggs in Sarah's storage compartment. He leans forward, hovering his face over Sarah's belly. He knows what an act of will it takes for Sarah to supress her instincts and not kill him for getting so close to her eggs. He breathes his hot breath gently on the eggs. It's almost like touching them, he thinks. I wish I could touch them, but then she really would kill me and I can't say that I'd blame her.

When he leans back from the clutch, Sarah closes her stomach and relaxes. She slides her hand back under Chetts, and together they watch the brontosaurus rear onto its hind legs to the top of a tree. Chett sighs, and wonders what his children will look like as they hatch from their eggs, climb onto his lap, and begin to eat him to build their strength. Those first days will be crucial, Chett thinks, I'll need to start fattening myself up.

pertaining to the recent lack of activity.

2006-05-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

Although it might appear that writing on this page, as on my other blogs, has stalled out. However, such is not the case. As of late, I have been sidetracked with a blog writing project that has absorbed all of my fictional energies (blog fictional energies anyway). To read this project, go to the list of links on the right side. Click on "write, then think" and read the post entitled "F for fetus" and all its attached comments. You will find a lengthy and hopefully funny story that is the joint collaboration between myself and the author of "write, then think". However, if you wish to post any comments of your own, please post them to this blog as we are keeping the comment space on "write, then think" exclusively dedicated to the continuation of the story. Happy reading!

Detective Story

2006-04-10T13:50:00.000-07:00

When the lightening crashes, the cheap venetian blinds over the window let in bars of light across my desk like a TV with a broken something. The black funnel shaded lamp wobbles on its chain for no particular reason other than the neat effect it has on the lighting. I pop the top of my zippo with a snap and flick the flint to buzz a flame with that little hiss of air sucking into ignition. The white of the ember ember of the cigarette reflects off the glass, illuminating the little running bubbles.

Then there is a knock on the door. Even from here, I can see the shadow of an eye trying to look in through the peephole. You have a peephole long enough, you notice these sorts of things.

"It's open," I call through a throat thick with bourbon and whiskey, the glass empty but fuming with traces of alcohol on a file envelope labeled "Case - Gordon."

The door opens, and a dame walks in with her brown hair tossed over one shoulder and wearing a black trench coat with a hem that cuts off half way down the thigh. Her lips are full and pouty, a dark shade of gray. Her skin is an ashen shade of white with deep shadows on her eyes. Her cigarette trails white smoke as she plants her hand on her hip and leans against the door frame like she was meant to be there, a statue and a silhouette all at once. The kind of statue you’d like to wake up next to as long as she wasn’t made of marble or had an inflation tube on the back of her neck.

"Can I help you, mam?"

She sticks her head forward and places her other hand on her hip, pouting her lips out.

"You're the only one who can help me."

I puff my cigarette and run my finger around the rim of my dark gray fedora. I reach for the empty glass on the table but stop myself. The bottle of rum is on the filing cabinet by the door. The whiskey and bourbon on the table on the far side of the room. I know that if I am going to get to the bottom of this, I must deal with things one thing at a time, especially if I’m going to get to the bottom of this in a way that leads to me getting her into bed.

I run my eyes up and down her body like a cheap gumshoe, waiting for her to continue.

"And?"

"You're the only one who can help me."

I reach for the glass again, close my fingers around it and lift before I am thwarted again by its emptiness. Unsure of what to do with the glass and feeling a bit awkward by the attractive woman's off-kilter repetition, I slip the glass into my trouser pocket in a surreptitious manner. I can tell already that this is going to be a difficult encounter and I am already doubting whether or not I’ll be able to get her into bed.

“Okay. We’ve established that much.”

She straightens. Smoothes her coat down her sumptuous, pale thighs.

“My husband is missing. You’re the only one who can help me.”

I nod, soberly and realize that I am rapidly approaching sobriety because of the distance between myself and the alcohol and the presence of this dame. Bracing myself for the possibility that this woman has come to my office for more than soliciting sex, I decide that the best course of action is to sit, so I sit on the silver chair and pull myself into the black desk.

“And how can I help you with that?”

She scrunches up her little button nose and a crease appears between her penciled eyebrows.

“Well, you can find him for starters. You’re the only one who can help me.”

“Can we continue this without any further repetitions of ‘you’re the only one who can help me’?”

“If that’s the way you’d like it.”

Then she slides the little padded chair from beside the file cabinet, and the light hanging over my desk wobbles mysteriously on its chain, again producing that curious effect of moving shadows. She crosses her thigh over her knee, preventing me from trying to glance up the bottom of the trench coat. I can’t even tell if she’s wearing anything under that coat.

“So...you’re husband is missing and you want me to find him?”

“Well what did you expect? It’s not like I’m trying to solicit sex.”

I shrug. Disappointing. I figure at least rules of social protocol can relax.

“Well, before we start talking, could you be a dear and hop to the file cabinet and grab me that bottle of rum?”

Confusion on her face as she complies. A touch of irritation. If I wasn’t going to get sex before, I certainly won’t now. She bangs the bottle bottom against the table as she sets it down.

“Can we get down to business now?”

“Well, first tell me why you think I can help.”

“You don’t want to know his name? Where I last saw him? How else will you know if it’s a case you can handle?”

“Case?”

She takes the bottle, pops the plug and swigs. A trickle of rum runs down her thin. The murky gray liquid totters in the bottle.

“Are you just playing hard ball or what? Or is this some trick?”

“What are you talking about? Why are you here? You’re not even wet. It’s pouring outside.”

“Trench coats keep you dry,” she says. “Speaking of which, why aren’t you wearing one?”

I look down on myself. I’m wearing gray jeans and a black and white checkered shirt. The checkers seem to cast shadows in the wobble of the overhead light.

“Should I be? I’m indoors.”

The woman opens one of the pockets of her trench coat and pulls out a folded bunch of papers. She flips through them.

“This conversation isn’t going at all according to my script.”

“You brought a script?”

“Well you don’t enter a detectives office without some preconceived notions of what is going to be said, now do you?”

“Detective?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What makes you think I’m a detective?”

"Well, there's a file folder on the desk, for starters."

I look down at the gray folder.

"That's a red herring."

She shrugs.

“We are in black and white, aren’t we?”

She had me there. Maybe I was a detective. But if so, were was my gun? I didn’t feel particularly hard-boiled unless you counted by now rather confused hard on.

“I guess I can be a detective for you.”

She looks around frantically. Then straight into my eyes. The kind of gaze that makes you want to tear your shirt open and howl at the moon like some lost, wild beast.

“Give me your glass” she says.

“My glass?”

“In your pocket.”

I shrug, pull out the glass and slide it across the table. She takes the bottle of rum, pours two fingers into the glass and sloshes it in my face. I was right. Long night ahead. And not in the good way.

“Not if you’re going to make it sound so dirty.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t be all ‘I guess I can be a detective for you.’”

I wipe my chin with my palm, then suck the rum out of the collar of my shirt. I haven’t even started being a detective and I already suspect that I’m not going to be a very good one.

“Well what should I say then?”

She opens her script.

I wave my hand.

“Look, I’m sorry you’re husband is missing, but I just don’t think this scene is working for me.”

She pouts a second.

“You feel it too, huh?”

I nod. We both stand up and shake hands.

“It was really nice meeting you,” I say. “Sorry I can’t be more help. You might want to try next door. That guy is real gritty.”

“I’ll do that,” She says. “Sorry I threw a drink in your face.”

“Cheap stuff anyway.”

She walks to the door, looks over her shoulder and blows me a kiss. I catch it and shove it down the front of my pants. Then she is gone forever, like a wind in the desert with the name of Sarah.

I step back over to the window. Yep. It’s a dark and stormy night.

For those who still check

2006-03-22T22:28:00.000-08:00

I swear more posts will come soon. I've been too swamped in writing poetry to think fiction, though my brain has been rebelling as of late and the seeds of weird stories are starting to sprout. Be patient until after April 3rd and then I will resume here.

The Loneliest Surface to Air Missile in the World: An Encore Presenation

2006-02-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

***author's note: I hand wrote a fairly amusing film-noir style detective comedy piece, but I have been too lazy to type it up. So instead, I present you with an encore presentation of the following story. It originally appeared on Fishheadalchemy, but it was really what inspired me to rethink the concept of this page and start writing the stories you have found here for the last couple of months. Enjoy:

Let me tell you about Sam. Sam was a missile, the loneliest surface to air missile in all the world. Sam sat forever at the bottom of the silo. He waited day in and day out for his turn to launch. Tears ran down his fins from his nose casing as he watching buddy after buddy zip out from the earth on a bed of flames to a firy destruction in the skies above.

So glorious, Sam thought, to launch from the earth on a bed of fire and collide with another object to detonate in the sky in an even bigger and more destructive fireball than the one that launched me.

Sam thinks about launching every day, about the blue sky, about the trees growing smaller before he blew up. Sam cries everynight as one by one his friends fly away to their beautiful, firey deaths.

"What's the point of being a missile if not to be launched? Can there be a God if there is nothing for me to blow up?"

These are the questions Sam asks day in day out. The other missiles that hadn't been launched long grew tired of hearing Sam's whining and made themselves go dud. As night set on the silo shortly before the end of the summer and the last rays from the sun backed out of the hole like a dying flame, Sam wondered if he could just launch himself.

Could he fire without purpose to detonate in the sky? Would his explosion be just as glorious?

Sam didn't have the answer. He just waited and waited until one day one of his red guiding fins fell away from the side of his propulsion housing. One of his internal sensors shut down and another indicated that his fuel had been contaminated. The months past, and then the years, and so did war after war, and Sam's housing began to corrode and his nose lost its shine.

One day, some technicians opened a door at the base of Sam's silo dressed in white coats smudged with grease and carrying clipboards.

"Looks like this one's got to be junked too," the first technician said.

"Yeah, too bad they didn't launch this one when the war was still hot," the second technician said. "I bet this was one damn fine missile.

"You got that right," the first technician said. "He would have blow'd up good. They don't make them like this no more."

"They don't fight wars like this anymore," the second technician said, shaking his head.

Neither technician knew it, but tears rolling down Sam's side through the rust and the corrosion. Neither of them knew it, but they'd broken Sam's internal guidance chip with grief, and he had become a dud despite his determination to stay volatile. When Sam was disassembled and deposited in a weapons disposal facility, he was too sad to notice. He just didn't know which was more meaningless, to be laid to waste or to detonate in the sky atop a pillar of smoke and flame without a target.

The End

The Cod God

2006-01-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

Because Cod are difficult to distinguish between, being alike in shape and color and most intellectual respects, this cod will be referred to as Cod A. I realize that this places intrinsic limitations on character development and perhaps on the reader's ability to empathize with Cod A, but shouldn't escape your notice that Cod A is in fact a cod, therefore a fish, and sometimes I wonder or not whether we should really attempt emotional resonance with a fish. We might hit some sort of fin frequency and suddenly find ourselves mutating in our beds sprouting dorsal appendages while flopping on the box spring in a vain attempt to draw water through our newly formed gills.

So there was Cod A swimming in the stream that ran from the hill to the pond while thinking "bottom feed, bottom feed" or something like that in fish thought. Now, the stream from the hill, which will hearafter be referred to as hill 1 for the purpose of geographical distinction with hill 2 which is on the otherside of the fence, that runs to pond alpha, such designated because it likes to be such designated, was a nice stream as streams go, lush at the bottom with the water greens that sprouted between the rocks. Insects with broad leg spans liked to glide over the surface of the eddies. Mosquitos hatched their eggs among the reeds along the north shore right at the elbow bend. Crawdads darted from alcove to alcove along the bottom, swift despite the inflexibility of their armor.

And of course, there were plenty of Cod swimming up and down the current, cod named Cod C, Cod L, Cod X, and Cod P. Cod A was a young cod, not long ago hatched in pond alpha. From birth, Cod A found it was adept at the national past time of Cod across the world which was swimming up and down streams. The local team swam from Pond Alpha to Hill 1. Then they swam back. Since Cod have a poor sense of time and little to no rational thought or memory, there was no method of measurement between cods, just the knowledge that one cod was a good cod while another cod was a bad cod.

And of course, while they swam, all cod kept an eye out for the Cod God. The Cod God is not to be confused with the God Cod that rules over the Cod afterlife with an iron fin. Instead, the Cod God was a legend among Cod, appearing in the form of the most brilliant gleaming light. The Cod God transported cod to the Cod God. Most recently, it was Cod D who ascended to glory and righteousness from the pond. Cod L had an inkling that it might be next, but Cod X believed that honor to be its and it alone.

Not that the Cod actually communicated any of this to each other, or even really thought about it to themselves since, as already stated, Cod possess little to no capacity for thought. Most likely they think "water feels nice," and "BRIGHT THING!!!" And, of course, sometimes they vomit.

So Cod A swam from Hill 1 to Pond Alpha and was planning on swimming back to hill 1, when it realized that something was different about the water. Something was warmer. Brighter. A greater amount of silt than usual was kicked up by little creatures stirring at the bottom, and Cod A was overwhelmed with the impulse to bottom feed while thinking something resembling "water feeds nice."

Off among the rushes, Cod X swam in figure eights around its perspective egg laying site.

Cods C, L, and P were all on their way to Hill 1.

And Cod A snorfled among the green plants at the bottom of pond alpha, vaguely aware that something about the water was different. More electric, like the effervescence of opportunity healing the mysterious rift of the chaos of nature. Of course, we already know what Cod A couldn't comprehend which is that we have lowered the Cod God into the water and lie in wait on the slats of a rowboat to transport a cod by means of the Cod God to bask in the glory of the God Cod on the slats of our boat, the very slats upon which we are lying.

Of course, we, not being cods, really know nothing of the Cod God or the God Cod. We are here for dinner. For sport. You might be here for the moment you beat the Cod senseless with your oar to stop its insescent flapping. I don't know about you. We really don't know each other well being fishing buddies from work, catching a few minutes of chat over cigarettes on breakdown. Even then we talk mostly about Cod.

But you might say that we are the unknowing vessels for the Cod God, transmitting meaning into the water in the form of the purposeful touch of human presence. Thinking about frying up a nice juicy Cod.

And of course, though we know that cod are below us swimming in pond Alpha, we don't realize that Cod A is snorfling for bottom dregs among the greens, that the flap of cod A's tail against the water that sends microsurge currents through the depths. We don't know the frenzy those microsurges cause in the microscopic pond alpha dwellers.

"I can't wait to fry a fish," you say.

"Them fish will be good," I say.

Neither of us says anything about the undercurrents of our actions, let alone the microcurrents of Cod A's tail. We don't say anything about the disillusionment we will cause in Cod L and Cod X if we catch Cod A, nothing about the vacuum we will leave in the food chain balance vacuum the absence of such an important consumer will leave.

But of course, we don't catch Cod A. We go home empty handed and hungry, our lures wet and dripping and baitless. None of us, the fish included realize that Cod A will forever be unaware of a slight, barely cogniscent nagging that it missed the great chance of its youth to ascend to meet the God Cod on the hooks and barbs of the shiny and metallic Cod God.

Audition

2005-12-20T23:06:00.000-08:00

The number of auditioners is larger than I expected, but they are all built low to the ground. We all fasted for the weeks prior to the audition in order to reduce our gelatin to a proportion similar to the starting point of the previous Blobs in the previous Blob films. I myself passed up devouring some of the most tempting sheep and a most bewitching cow on a farm road not far from where my meteorite landed. Even now, I avoid the buffet which is lavishly composed of some of the most delectable exhumed remains of B-horror film extras who have succumbed to the years, to alcoholism, to various cancers caused by the excessive smoking of cigarettes. The centerpiece is the hardest to resist: the well-garnished head and torso of the whithered old man who mysteriously warned the lackadaisical teens of their impending doom. So far, no one has touched the centerpiece, though I can tell that The Blot and The Ploop are watching it quite avaricly.

When I read the ad in the paper calling for gelatinous masses to audition for the lead role in yet another remake of the Blob, my protoplasm jiggled with excitement. Since the remake in 1988 when I was freshly crashed to the earth, I had long given up any hope of acting stardom, instead religating my aspirations to the possibility of a one-day remake of The Return of the Blob or even the Son of the Blob. I must admit that the Son of the Blob confuses me considerably since I have yet to ascertain any means by which us gelatinous masses can procreate. If anything, I could see two gelatinous masses merging into one before I can see any act of replication. Perhaps one of us could be divided in two by a large falling object during one of our rampages, but even then I'd still be uncertain as to whether or not the two "new" blobs would constitute offspring or just two of the same blob. Really, it's pretty hard to differentiate between gelatinous masses to begin with, so we've all taken to ingesting placards with our names on them that are made of materials impervious to our digestive processes.

In this way, I can tell that it is The Wad who jiggles in the corner by the plastic ficas tree, gelatinous tentacles rhythmically plucking leaves from the branches and drawing them into its central mass. The Heap and The Goop linger near the doorway patiently dissolving the fabric of one of the Producers coats from the rack. If they get caught, it will likely reduce their chances of being cast. Producers are kind of particular about their clothing being devoured. Perhaps it makes them afraid that they themselves might be devoured if they upset the gelatinous mass in question. And one thing is certain: with the number of gelatinous masses who have showed up to this audition, there is significant likelihood that several of us will depart quite upset. It's not like they remake the Blob every day. In fact, the possibility of rejection motivated rampage may be the reason why so few Blob films are made. Funny that Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street Films never ran into such obstacles. Then again, the amount of deaths accountable to either Freddy or Jason has nothing on the number of deaths a determined gelatinous mass can rack up on a good day.

So I mosey over towards the buffet table and pulsate next to a cytoplasmic lump named The Lump. Gelatinous masses don't speak, but we can cause cellular composites within us to glow in phospherescent patterns something akin to morse code.

"So how long since you descended from space?" I asked.

The Lump pulled an ankle bone from one of the spreads on the buffet and said, "Oh quite a few years now. I was an alternate for the original Return of the Blob, so I'm hoping someone will remember me and give me a break."

"Wow," I said, "so you worked with The Clot? What was that like?"

The Lump puffed up its gelatin and said, "Clot's a primadona. Thought its plasmic membrane was shinier than everyone else's."

"I guess that's not suprising, getting to play the actual Blob and all," I said.

"Yeah, I might have thought different of the Clot if I'd met it before it got famous."

"I know one thing," I said, "if I get the part, I'm going to remember all the little gelatinous masses who were kept me on my protoplasm since I crashed to the earth."

"I'm sure they all say that," The Lump said and turned its attention to a scrumptious shoulder blade.

I myself plucked down a full leg to ensure that I would dissolve enough calories to be at peak pulsation during my audition. Good pulsation was something that the producers would certainly look for. I wished their was a mirror so I could check the shine on my own protoplasmic membrane. Through under the table I saw the Wad blink to the Heap that the original, THE ORIGINAL, Blob, the one and the only true BLOB was signed as acting advisor to the lead part, and my cytoplasm mass nearly expanded into rampage growth state as I imagined myself working under the mentorship of the real Blob. It took a supreme act of well and the expulsion of the leg I'd been eating from my central mass to prevent making a bad scene.

All I can do is pulsate and wait. I glance from the Heap to the Wad to the Ploop to the Lump. Suddenly it occured to me that we all shared the same roots. Encased in our respective meteors, we all crashed to the earth trailing fire. All of us caused an explosion of rock and rubble and thrust our feeding tentacles through our cosmic encasements and dragged ourselves through the forests and valleys. I realized that even if I didn't get the part, that if I didn't get to work with The Blob, I was just as valid of a gelatinous mass as the Blob itself.

Success didn't matter if one devoured and rampaged as any good gelatinous mass should be expected. Was all our cytoplasm not red? If we were shot, did we not chase down our assailants and break down the molecular structure of their component parts? If we were deposited on the North Pole did we not Freeze? I needed to become my own Blob before I could portray The Blob.

As the secratarial gelatinous mass entered the room through the door to the place where the producers awaited, a clipboard floating within its membrane, I decided that I would depart from the audition. I would let the other gelatinous masses attempt to find their identities and validation through the identity of another gelatinous mass. I would make myself a name out in the city. In the streets. My rampage would be the greatest rampage ever known, and the next film staring a gelatinous mass would be about me. It would have no title because I had swallowed no placard. It would be truth. It would be me.

Before I left, as The Wad disappeared into the audition space, I did swipe the entire corpse of the doomsaying old man.

The Dustocaust

2005-12-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

The sun beamed through the curtains of Mrs. Winter's house, illuminating a fine mist of dust in the path between the glass and the floor. Mrs. Winter was not the best of house keepers, saving her efforts for one great cleaning rampage at the end of November so she could settle into her easy chair in front of the bay window and watch the snowfall without sneezing and itching. Of course, Mrs. Winter did not know what those floating specks of dust knew, that the cost of Mrs. Winter's comfort was a microscopic holocaust, a great purge of the dust, dust mites, lint, lint balls, and little grains of dirt that settled on into the threads of the carpet, on top of the TV, in front of and behind the knicknacks and curious on the shelves. Milo knew, though, of the coming Holocaust as he basked in the sparkling radiance of his fellow dust particles in the light of the window.

The coming November would not be Milo's first Dustocaust. He had survived the winter before on the brass molding of the kitchen chandelier, watching in terrified anguish as first the vacuum, that the Swiffer, than the feather duster cut hell bent swaths of destruction through the thin layers of communities that had settled over everything in piece and harmony. William the breadcrumb was mercilously flung into a trash can along with Paul the frayed string and Sandy the bit of rolled up paper. The trash bag, itself coated with thriving little dust particles, was then ripped from the can and stuffed down the incinerator chute where millions of little beings cried out in horror and pain before the flames devoured their tiny bodies. Milo felt powerless as he watched the systematic destruction, as each floor tile, every wood panel, and every lacquered surface was stripped clean.

So Milo drifted in fear as much he he did in leisure, surrounded by so many ignorant dust particles around him. He wanted to pursuade the whole community, the whole world, that something must be done about the approaching disaster, but since dust does not have a developed language, he found himself frustrated in his inability.

As Milo wafted, the front door opened, and the draft sent the whole dust cloud into a swirling frenzy. Mr. Winter's had come home from the turnip field. Mr. Winters was seen by many of the dusts, particularly Milo the dust as a sort of emissary, a promise of compromise. Every time Mr. Winter's trudged in from tilling the turnip field, he shook off thousand of dirt particles, little sparkling bits of sand, and in general left a trail of thriving filth across the room, straight to his easy chair which faced the TV, perpendicular to Mrs. Winter's reclined.

Mrs. Winter's entered from the bedroom hallway.

"Bob," she said, "how many times have I told you to throw your filthy clothes straight into the wash?"

Cruel, cold Mrs. Winters.

But Bob said, "Honey, I'm tired. I've been tilling the turnip field all day and I just want to settle into my easy chair and watch the TV."

If dust could applause, Milo and the others would have done so, as they watched the argument, which unfolded as countless others had, with great interest.

"It doesn't take much to get out of your clothes and wash the dirt off," Mrs. Winters said. "And besides, why on earth do you keep tilling the turnip field? It's nearly November."

Milo felt sad in his dust heart, knowing that Mr. Winters meant well, but that, as always, he wouldn't have a response.

"That turnip soil's got to be tilled, that's all," Mr. Winters mumbled, pulling himself out of his chair. The motion shook more dirt and dust onto the chair upholstery, at least saving some of the newcomers from a violent and soapy demise. "Fix me a glass of turnip juice while I get changed."

Mrs. Winters shook her head and ambled to the kitchen while Mr. Winters shook his head and ambled to the laundry room.

If Milo had a head, he would have shaken it too. Some of the dust mites had heads, and they did shake theirs. Milo sometimes envied the dust mites because they were able to run if they had to while he himself could only drift on the house currents and land where he might. Milo know how lucky he had been to drift onto the brass chandelier and often cursed the strong wind that knocked him loose the day the tree fell and the branch punched through the window.

When Mr. Winter's came back in, dust free and in clean linens, Milo drifted around in the air lifted on the shoulders of unseen, gentle currents caused by moving bodies. Milo also envied the little lint balls that clung to Mr. Winter's clothes because when they tangled in the threads of the carpet, the held on better than the dust did. Of course, Milo had no way of knowing that most lint balls got swept away in the wash or trapped in the lint filter of the drier. From there, the lint balls met the familiar, horrible fate in the incinerator. If Milo had known more about houses, he also might have wondered why this house had an incinerator instead of a trash service, but unfortunately some questions are beyond even the most astute piece of dust.

It was about the lint balls on Mr. Winter's shirt that Milo dwelt his thoughts on the rest of the evening, so much so that he didn't notice that Mr. Winter's breathing stopped shortly after he sat down. Mrs. Winter's didn't notice either. Mad at her husband, she simply snapped a goodnight towards him as she strode off to bed, never even having brought him his glass of turnip juice. If she had, she might have saved him, because turnips have great powers to help our health, so Mr. Winters always said. Mr. Winters had believed that if he drank his turnip juice every day, he would live forever. True or not, Mrs. Winters would be plagued with guilt for her husband's death on account of lack of turnip juice.

Milo of course didn't understand any of that. Milo just assumed that Mr. Winters had fallen asleep on the couch. Even when Mr. Winters hadn't moved by morning, Milo simply thought Mr. Winters was chosing to be really still, like Milo had atop the brass chandelier. Maybe people needed breezes too, Milo thought, envying the dust mites even more. As such, Milo didn't understand why Mrs. Winters cried so hard in the morning, holding her husband's feet, clutching his legs, pounding her fists on the carpet. Milo was concerned with the dust clouds that poofed from the carpet with each impact, the new clouds that were tracked in as the men came and took Mr. Winters away. Milo did wonder why so many more people than usual were going out to the turnip field since Mr. Winter had managed it so long by himself, but Milo didn't ask beyond that.

Milo wasn't even concerned at first when Mrs. Winter stopped coming into the living room, barely noticed that she stopped coming into the house at all. Milo was too busy frollicking with the other dust in the light streaming through the window.

Until the Great Stillness came. Without Mr. and Mrs. Winters, there was nothing to move the air in the house. The heating system was off, so Milo slowly drifted lower and lower in the air, until one day he settled on the carpet next to a dust mite named Jackie.

"What happened to the wind?" Milo thought about asking Jackie, inable to ask since dust doesn't talk.

"The wind is gone," Milo assumed that Jackie would have said. "The Winters are gone, so the wind is gone."

"But I want to drift in the window," Milo would have said in response.

"You can't drift in the window without the Winters," Milo knew was Jackie's answer too that. Dust mites were so smart because of their superior anatomical development.

Jackie crawled nimbly away and disappeared under the television set, putting an end to the imagined conversation.

More and more dust began to settled around Milo, but a profound sadness filled him. A sadness so profound that Milo didn't even notice when November came and went without a dustocaust. Instead, Milo noticed that the dust mites began to die, deprived of their diet of human skin flakes. None of the dust flew gaily in the air anymore. Everything was turning gray.

On the morning that the city cut the power to the house, Milo suddenly understood that our simple joys are the results of our great tragedies.

Zombie Thomas Finds a Brain

2005-10-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Zombie Thomas stood at the mouth of his sewer pipe in the hillside as the evening settled onto the shoulders of the horizon and the last of the afternoon breeze blew strands of hair from his remaining tufts. He habitually checked the tattered and battered watch on his wrist although he could not read the watch face, no longer understood the concept of time, and couldn’t remember that the thing on his wrist was a watch. Even if he could knew any of those three things, he still might not have realized that the watch has stopped working when he smashed it on a rock as he attempted to stumble forward to catch a fleeing dog. On several occasions he had tried to remove the thing from his wrist but his failing coordination could not pull the little tab out of the hole in his band. The best he had managed was to break one of the tendons out of his mushy, gray skin.

About 100 feet down the hillside in the next sewer pipe down, Zombie Reynolds tottered off the pipe lip and crashed into a thicket. Branches tore some of the remaining rags off Zombie Reynolds’ torso as Zombie Thomas looked over.

“Nnnnnnn?” Zombie Thomas said.

Zombie Reynolds lifted a hand in the air, his pinky finger attached by a thin strand of skin.

“Rrrrrrr,” Zombie Reynolds said.

Zombie Thomas shuffled off the lip of his pipe, his shin cracking at the impact but not quite giving way. Zombie Thomas could not remember how long it was since Zombie Stewart had sunk his teeth into his thigh, but he did know that he was becoming increasingly deteriorated. Zombie Stewart had already fallen apart, dropping his right arm, then his left foot, clawing himself through the grass until his head toppled off his shoulders and his torso fell into a stagnant heap.

Most of Zombie Thomas’ zombie friends were gone now because most of the humans were gone. Most of the humans gone meant most of the brains were gone and that the brains that were left were usually too fast or too smart to catch. That man with the shotgun has fought his way through a whole crowd, first the boom after boom sending rib cages flying out backs, spinal columns decimated. When the shells ran out, the gun butt did the rest of the work bashing skulls, shattering knees, leaving zombie after zombie in a pile of decomposing ooze no longer structured enough to stand. That man, the last man Zombie Thomas had seen in days had single handedly defeated almost thirty zombies.

This was a matter that weighed heavily on Zombie Thomas, and as he scuffed across the drainage ditch, he cried out, “Grrrrrraa.”

By the time Zombie Thomas reached Zombie Reynolds, Zombie Reynolds had managed to regain his feet, though most of his teeth had jostled out of socket with the fall.

“Lllllll,” Zombie Reynolds said.

“Eeeeee,” Zombie Thomas said.

Together, they ambled, arms held forward, elbows locked. Zombie Thomas felt a little better for the company. Zombie always felt better in company, often choosing to shuffle down streets or across parking lots in throngs. There was a solidarity to Zombie communal life that Zombie Thomas could almost remember he preferred over his prior life. When one Zombie got a bite of a brain, they all got a bite of a brain.

In the distance, Zombie Thomas saw Zombie Tanya in her pink one strap shirt with her purse in one hand and her lower jaw in the other. Zombie Tanya always seemed to know where a good milling about was going on, so Zombie Thomas pointed to her and said, “Nyyyyaaaaa.”

“Ooooooobbbbbbbb,” Zombie Reynolds said, and they set to rearrange their direction of perambulation towards Zombie Tanya.

Zombie Tanya reached the street that connected to the service road that ran to the drainage ditch Zombies Thomas and Reynolds lived along, and the drag of her flat soled walking shoes shifted from a ‘rustle, rustle’ to a ‘scrape, scrape.’

Zombie Thomas and Reynolds reached the street right behind her.

“JJJJRrrrrrr” Zombie Thomas called to Zombie Tanya.

Zombie Tanya did not stop, but she waved her arm in a forward pin wheel like she was lobbing a ball and said “UUUuuuuuuu.”

They had not made it twenty feet down the street when an overwhelming fear filled them as the glow of headlights appeared down the road. All three zombies began to fumble towards the shoulder inch by inch when the appearance of headlights from the other direction, approaching the curve where the drainage ditch service road joined.

The three zombies froze, uncertain of what to do, unable to accommodate information coming from both directions. The headlights swelled and grew. A machine gun fired from the window of the first car. Two Zombies that Zombie Thomas had not seen in the shadows a little down the road spun as bullets struck them, body parts and clothing shreds flying in all directions. The other vehicle opened fire with a hand gun, and two bullets whizzed past Zombie Thomas’ head.

As the vehicles reached the curve from opposite directions at the same time, something clicked in Zombie Thomas although he did not understand what.

The headlights vanished simultaneously as a truck and a van collided head on. Glass and metal shrapnel shot out. A chunk of chrome embedded in Zombie Reynolds adbodemen.

“Oooooovvvvvv,” Zombie Reynolds said.

The driver of the van flew through the windshield and over the roof of the truck. His head burst into thousands of pieces and a gooey splash as it struck the asphalt. Zombie Reynolds and Zombie Tanya shuffled immediately and slowly towards the corpse. Zombie Thomas approached the truck.

The passenger had been smashed in half by the dashboard and the steering column had been driven through the chest of the driver. Somehow, a tiny bit of life still clung within the driver. He wobbled his head in a slow turn to face Zombie Thomas, eyes wide, mouth bleeding.

“Lydia?” The truck driver said. “Is that you Lydia?”

Zombie Thomas reached in through the broken window and took the truck drivers face in his hands, bending his neck so that the driver’s forehead approached his mouth. When Zombie Thomas’ teeth sunk into the driver’s forehead, the driver whimpered and fell silent. Zombie Thomas worked his way through the driver’s skull, carefully avoiding any direct damage to the brain though uncertain why he would do so. When the top of the drivers head had been carefully removed, Zombie Thomas removed the brain entirely with one hand.

With his other hand, Zombie Thomas took hold of his thickest hair tuft and pulled his skull casing open. He pulled out his own brain and let the new brain fall into its place. Thoughts and memories flooded into Zombie Thomas, the thoughts and memories of a man named Torbald Johnson. A former stock manager at a supermarket. Hadn’t seen his wife since it all went down with the zombies. Didn’t know if she had made it to one of the escape camps. She had given him a watch, the only thing he had to remember her by.

Zombie Thomas looked to his wrist and undid the watch strap. The watch had stopped at 10:47 on October 23. Zombie Thomas let the watch fall. Already the new thoughts were beginning to fade as they always did, stronger than they had ever been since he replaced his whole brain, but fading nonetheless.

The passenger’s machine gun was on the dashboard. Zombie Thomas took the machine gun and blew Zombie Reynolds and Zombie Tanya to pieces. He then placed the barrel under his own chin. It was Zombie Thomas who spoke, not the brains of Torbald Johnson when Zombie
Thomas said, “Lydia.”

And pulled the trigger.

Robot on a Toilet

2005-09-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Zinc IV the Clawbot sat on a toilet. The toilet was on a pedastool in the middle of a toilet store. Women in frumpy dresses and men wearing plaid stopped before Zinc IV the Clawbot and stared at him, puzzled expressions, wrinkled brows, their ears twitching as Zinc IV clicked his pincers together to pass the time. That was all Zinc IV really had, his pincers and free time.

At closing time at the end of each day, as the lights clicked off one by one and the air conditioner thunked its shut-off thunk, Zinc IV the Clawbot clicked his pincers together while his eye servos tracked the white haired store owner, the doddering old men with all his canine teeth missing. The old man walked from shelf to shelf with an orange dyed feather duster, dusting off the toilets, the flush assemblies, the gold plated handles, and the case containing the platinum seats.

It was a brisk business, the old man's toilet business, the old man's toilet business, selling everything a savvy toilet buyer could ask for from pneumatic pump plungers and bristled extensions with fiber optic cameras designed to display the clog on a television screen before it was cleared out down to your standard toilet bolts, toilet paper, toilet brushes, electric seat warmers, and silent flushing mechanisms. One of the high end toilets had a TV built into the tank and had a contoured seat designed for the excreter to sit facing backwards.

The old man dusted all of this, wiped the fingerprints of children from the enamel, every night. Some nights Zinc IV the Clawbot watched as the old man suddenly pinched shut his nose and ran into the store room to fetch the mop and bucket because some rude customer had decided to take one of the toilets for a test drive. Zinc IV the Clawbot always saw the test drives as they happened, but since he wasn't programmed to do anything but click his pincers together and sit on a toilet, he was powerless.

However, something was happening that Zinc IV the Clawbot wasn't programmed for. He was starting to realize things, certain things about sitting on a toilet, about being gawked at by pimple faced customers and young couples who held hands and talked about buying the type of toilet that would hold a room together. The first thing that Zinc IV realized, largely from watching customers take toilets for test drives, was that despite the fact that his metal body was shaped similarly to the humans who salivated over porcelian and despite the fact that he was properly situated upon his toilet perch, Zinc IV was incapable of making use of the toilet. Just thinking about it made his pincers click.

Zinc IV the Clawbot also understood that he wasn't for sale. He overheard a conversation between the white haired store owner and three men in white lab coats holding black attache cases. Those three men had offered the old man figure after figure, taking out check books and holding forth multiple checks sometimes as seperate offers and sometimes as simultaneous offers. The old man refused, and Zinc IV understood. He was worthless and couldn't be sold. He had less value than the stained toilets teenagers took for testdrives. Even those could be sold at a discount.

Zinc IV clicked his pincers. The old man was coming with the duster and a can of robot polish. Used to be, Zinc IV the Clawbot looked forward to his robot polish scrub down, but the more he realized, the more he wanted to rust, for his pincers to fall of at the next click. The little red lights in Zinc IV's eyes started to intensify and dim, a slow pulse with the rhythm of a beating heart.

The old man sprayed Zinc IV's chest with polish and began wiping in a slow circular motion. Zinc IV clicked his pincers and thought about being watched by a baby in a stroller who just threw up on itself, by a decripit customer talking to the owner about his problems with constipation, a troubled man with a business suit asking about the durability of the toilet bowls in regards to more forceful bowel movements caused by indigestion and spicy foods.

The old man polished Zinc IV's shoulders, his arms. Zinc IV clicked his pincers and realized that if he were simply to close his pincers on the old man's throat, his internal hydrolics would exert sufficient pressure to snip the white haired head clean off.

The old man stopped, set his bottle and rag down at his feet, and straightened.

"You do such a good job Zinc IV," the old man said. "No robot ever sat a toilet as well as you."

Zinc IV clicked his pincers, and the old man leaned forward and kissed Zinc IV on the pincer hinge. There was little Zinc for could do except not click his pinsers and let the pulsating light of his eyes stabalize into their normal sofy and steady glow.

The old man patted Zinc IV on the shoulder, smiled and said, "Well Zinc, I'll see you in the morning when we open."

As the old man locked up the front door from the outside with his jangling keys, Zinc IV didn't just realize, he understood. He shut down his hydrolic functions, switched off his central gear systems. His primary cognition system hummed softly as he thought an infinite loop of why it was he sat on his toilet.

How Chaz Became a Stupid Dumbass Motherf***er

2005-09-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

Chaz was a stupid dumbass. He sat all day long in the living room of his one bedroom apartment in his dumb, plaid lazy boy with the holes worn through the armrest upholstery. He stared alternately between the holes in his drywall, the beer bottles stuffed with cigarette butts on his cracked coffee table, and stupid programs on his TV thinking about ways in which he could be an ass. He thought about tripping the old ladies with bad hips on the landings in the stairwells. He thought about going to concerts with steel toed boots on to break people's shins in the mosh pits. He thought about stealing all the toilet paper and toilet seats out of public restrooms.

It is important to remember that at this point Chaz was only a stupid dumbass, and, although he had already started down this path and didn't yet know it, he was on his way to becoming a motherf***er. Now, a motherf***er literally is someone who f***s mothers, and therefore becomes a destructive instrument towards families, leaving entire households torn apart and children traumatized. Chaz had indeed f***ed mothers in the past and tore apart households leaving children traumatized, but that is not the type of motherf***er we are concerned with here.

The type of motherf***er we are concerning with is someone who willfully commits acts just as destructive as a literal motherf***er but leaves out the actual f***ing of the mothers. This is why it is equally important to remember that Chaz WAS already a stupid dumbass because it takes an ass who is both dumb and stupid (there's a compounding effect going on here) to become a motherf***er of any kind, but particularly the type of motherf***er who can be considered a motherf***er without actually f***ing mothers.

So one day Chaz was sitting in his recliner staring at a urine stain he had left in his carpet during a night of stupid drunkeness feeling himself grow dumber as he drank beer mixed with vodka when he noticed that the wind and rain were picking up outside to the point where branches were ripping off trees and blowing through car windows and those blue post office mailboxes were sailing through the air to crash against houses in an explosion of letters. Seeing the destruction outside, knowing it would only get worse, Chaz decided that it was his chance to really be an ass instead of just thinking about it, so he grabbed his assault rifle and headed out into the street of New Orleans. What Chaz didn't realize was that one becomes an ass not through action but thinking and that his decision to leave his house fully armed was already bordering on making him a metaphorical motherf***er.

Chaz walked several blocks until he found a high building with no other high buildings around it and he went through the doorway which the storm had already broken. He made his way up to the top of the stairwell and camped out on the landing, all the while wishing that some old lady with a bad hip would come up the stairs carrying food and water so that he could trip her and steal her food and water. As the storm howled on around him, he smiled to himself thinking, "this is it. Now I can be an ass." Of course, we all know what he was really doing.

When the winds had slowed and an eerie quiet filled the city along with flood waters from the broken levees, Chaz knew his time had come. He got up on the roof and looked out over the edge, tracking the sights of his assault rifle along the street below. People straggled in and out of collapsing houses holding their pets and their hand bags, looking around as if they'd been hit by bricks. When they first shot fired and missed, ricocheting off a car bumper, the people ducked. The second shot sent them fleeing back into their houses.

Chaz had become a motherf***er and he felt the surge of power that motherf***ers feel, the surge of power that makes them think what they are doing is a good thing.

In the distance, Chaz heard the thud of air blowing from the blades of a helicopter and he figured that his ultimate target had come. He drew bead and fired. Like most motherf***ers he was a horrible shot though and his bullets hit nothing but air and did little but get the attention of the helicopter.

Poor, stupid, dumbassed, Motherf***ing Chaz.

The helicopter swooped in low, the anger clear through the windshield on the faces of the pilot, etched on the faces of the crew leaning out the open side hatches. The blades of the helicopter tilted as the craft neared Chaz, and Chaz fired his rifle wildly in the air as the whirring frenzy tore him into thousands of pieces like the confetti they throw in Mardi Gras.

Hal's Hell

2005-08-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

They were watching him. Hal knew they were watching him, whether from a camera hidden in the cieling panels or the two way mirror on the wall. Listening devices were surely concealed in the threads of the carpet. Once they're onto you, Hal thought, there is simply no escaping PBS, no way to protect your answers on crossword puzzles.

The air conditioner kicked on. Obviously, a PBS spy had taken the moment to click the metal disc of a stethoscope to the wood of the door, was crouched eye level with the doorknob. If they recorded the sounds of his pencil carefully enough, they'd be able to deduce the strokes the graphite made, to recognize the characters in their words.

Somewhere in the building, Hal realized, there would be a little windowless office lit by a dangling overhead light shielded by a green, funnel shaped shade. At a dinged table in the circle of the light would sit four to six men in brown woolen suits, brown belts, and brown loafers. Each had their own puzzles set on clipboards on the table, each would chew the eraser of the pen until they knew what the answers were.

And it was from the answers that they would deduce the clues.

When they had the clues they would have Hal.

Sweat ran down Hal's temple and dripped from his chin to his lap.

What if they already knew?

Clues lead to motive and method, and with the motive and method they could solve the puzzles without Hal.

He would become expendable, and then one night, he would be expended in his sleep. He already slept in a kevlar vest, a motor cycle helmet, and metal shanks that he'd stolen from the British Museum of Medieval History.

The tip of Hal's pencil broke writing a five letter word for a green salad vegetable.

Hal screamed.

Footsteps thudded down the hall, and two PBS men aiming nine millimeter pistols with silencers screwed onto the barrels kicked in the door wearing navy blue jumpsuits.

Hal took two to the chest, two to the head. He was knocked back out of his seat, the chair fell over.

The PBS men stepped to either side of Hal's body.

"You messed up, Hal," the one on his right said.

"You messed up big," the other said.

Muzzles flashed over and over, and Hal's gurgled breaths stopped. His foot twitched.

On the way out of the room, one of the PBS men snatched Hal's puzzle off the table.

"We have the clues now," he said.

"Damn straight," the other said.

The door closed, locked, and the sound of hammers reverberated in the room as the PBS team nailed the door shut.

By the next morning, plaster coated the entry, and it would be less than a month before everyone forgot that Hal's office had ever existed.

The End

The Glory of Steve

2005-08-11T18:36:00.000-07:00

Steve thrust his sword high into the sky, his forehead sweating, his mouth tight.

This was it. This was his moment.

The watermelon before him would be cleaved in two with one mighty stroke, spilling its red water-blood and black seeds all over the picnic table.

His children watched in awe and terror as the stroke fell.

Steve bellowed at the top of his lungs as the blade embedded in the wood, and he whipped his head about as pulp chunks and rind burst across his face.

The parents of the other members of the soccer team slowly got up from their benches, shielding their sons and daughters with their arms, backing slowly towards the parking lot as they fished car keys out of pockets and purses.

His daughter tugged at his wife's skirt hem, eyes wide, breathing shallow.

Steve thrust his fingers into the watermelon half and shoved a fistfull into his own mouth before flinging another chunk at one of the retreating parents.

"You see what I'm about?" Steve roared. "You see where I'm taking this?"

A woman cried out.

A dog barked through an open car window from the backseat.

A grown man hid behind a trashcan, peeking around the corner.

Steve finally felt like the man he knew he was always meant to be.

THE END

Mabry

2005-07-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

Mabry sequences amino acids in the basement of a research center in the Canadian tundra. His job is to design a better person by manipulating amino acid sequences and tracing gene-trait causality paths. His research is not meant for implementation, but for documentation and computer simulation. Mabry often complains that the quality of gene combinations is subjective. Sometimes he says that he’s never met someone he considers better than anyone else, so he has no basis of reference. He sleeps in a barracks bunk surrounded by the other members of his project team. All male, they have no wives, no children, no sex in eight years. Every person the team has designed is a woman. Nothing exists in their world beyond work except a few polar bears and thirty something different names for snow.

The Anonymous Father

2005-07-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

In 1983, a man named Wallace sold a beige Buick to a woman named Krystal. Wallace knew full-well that the pre-sale repairs he’d commissioned would give before less than a month of driving. He knew full well that Krystal would curse him for a swindler once a mechanic pronounced a priest’s sentence on the engine of the Grand Marquis, and he still asked her phone number, asked her out to dinner. Wallace knew how to smile to make people think him genuine. His smile was his meal ticket, and if he sold a car and got a phone number, he was pretty much being paid for sex. Krystal smiled shyly, pinked only a little pinker than her brushed on blush, pulled out a pen. He only dialed once, spent enough of his her money on the date, and pretended he lost control before he could pull out since ‘condoms took away too much of the feeling.’ He quit his job and changed his name when he heard about babies, the twins.

The Department Store of Love

2005-07-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

Henry and Amber held hands as they ambled across the white lines of the empty parking lot to the front door of the store. They stopped on the automatic open sensor, turned to each other and embraced, their kiss steaming, their breath fogging out their nostrils on the cold as their tongues danced to the beats of their hearts. They fell away from each other, gazed into each other’s hazelnut eyes.
“I love you, my beloved,” Henry said.
“I love you too,” Amber said.
Finally, they smiled goodbye, entered the store, and glided in opposite directions as the doors glided shut behind them.
Henry worked in hardware, Amber in housewares. They met in the candy aisle on Amber’s first day, and their first date consisted of coffee at the picnic display during their lunch break. They kicked off their shoes and curled their toes on the Astroturf.
Store policy prohibited dating among employees, so Mr. Melvin, the store manager, asked them to leave. Henry bought Amber a stuffed frog from toys and proclaimed himself a customer.
Mr. Melvin was not a cold man, and the store had no policy against dating among customers, so he fired them both and promised to rehire them the next day. Henry lost the fifty-cent raise all Payberry employees received at the end of our first month, and they both lost the remainder of the day’s wages. Mr. Melvin sacrificed the time to fill out the paperwork of firing two employees and hiring two previously fired employees. He even over-looked the no food and drink policy for half an hour before he asked them to leave again.
When Henry and Amber reported for hire in the morning, Amber wore an engagement ring. The store had no policy against engaged or married couples working together, except that they couldn’t work in the same department or make any public displays of affection including eye contact.
Six months later, the ceremony proceeded down aisle nine from draperies to jewelry. No question where they bought the rings. Gladys from floral designed the bouquet, but Lawrence from gardens arranged the rest of the flowers. Henry made Mr. Melvin the best man. Fifty-seven customers ceased shopping to watch the ceremony and eat the cake at the reception in furniture. Enrique the cashier liked to joke that after the store closed that night, they held their honeymoon in lingerie. They actually drove to Topeka, Kansas to attend a swing dance convention and witness the world’s largest q-tip.

A man by any other name

2005-06-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Feldman Jack lived out of the back of a moving van that he parked between two elms on a rise that overlooked every house in the new community except Bradley’s. His real name was Jack Feldman, but he changed it legally to Feldman Jack because the government kept listing him that way and he wanted his name to appear correctly in the phone book. His van had the motto “we move shit so you don’t have to,” on the side in stenciled cursive red. Although he owned both a single mattress complete with a box-spring and a three-seat leather couch, he fell asleep in the mouth of the van, one leg and one arm hanging over the edge, his knife and a bar of soap in his lap.

The Chauffeur

2005-06-28T23:27:00.000-07:00

The chauffeur arrived first. A melon of a man in a penguin of a suit, that one. All teeth at the face except a mammoth brow. Coat him in bronze and you’d have one shiny pile of metal under a false-bottomed top hat he likes to pull his rabbits from. Given the best weather, he never leaves a dry spot when he sits. In Cleveland, he bit an ex-con’s arm in a fight over a parking space. Fabric tore. Blood was spilled. He left the man two dollars “for the entertainment.” The day his mother broke her hip, he put her in a shopping cart he wrestled from a homeless man and wheeled her to the emergency room, not stopping for the curbs. He was the champion of anything violent, but always burned the letters he wrote for his causes in effigy before anyone ever read them. He had money once, but he ate it with ranch dressing.

Stained Rug

2005-06-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

Clemens lived in Liverpool. He believed that he had been hexed by witches. Somewhere there was a book that contained a secret five letter word. The letters of this word, when recited in litany, would be a countdown. Every sixty times, the last letter in the sequence was replaced with a clap. When no letters remained, he would clap five times and the spell would be lifted. He searched for thirty years, never finding what he was looking for, when suddenly he felt it all throughout his being that he had no idea what he sought. Not in life, in anything. He had created a fictitious riddle that had no answer, and he had reveled in it like he was Bacchus. “Voltaire!” He cried as he threw Anna Karenina into the chandelier. “You have betrayed me!” Crystal shattered. Shards fell. A piece left a cut down Clemens’ cheek, and he covered his face in his hands. Drops of blood ran down his wrists and fell to the carpet.

Safety and Accountability

2005-06-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

In five years, a man named Quentin that I met briefly in a coffee shop might come to work in a windowless office. His job will be to examine expense receipts in manila envelopes marked “process and file” with a red stamp. He will lick the tip of his pencil before he writes anything. In the bottom right hand drawer of his desk, eighty-seven un-mailed love letters to a woman in Safety and Accountability named Irma Wentshire will lie hidden under boxes of paperclips. Quentin will never know her as more than a page of numbers, but he will fall in love with her expenses. One day, one of his co-workers will go nuts and shoot him in the forehead with an AR-15 assault rifle. The story will run on the evening news, but even though Irma will watch the report while eating dinner, she will never know who Quentin was. The story will say nothing about the letters. Maybe, instead, the story will focus on the killer, on the isolation or childhood trauma that drove him to violence. Irma will think, “What a sad, sad, man. If I had met someone like that, I’d listen and maybe understand just enough to make all the difference in the world.”

The Yeti

2005-06-07T00:19:00.000-07:00

In 1847, a mountaineer in Manitoba claimed that he saw The Yeti. Lost in a winter storm on a plateau, he stumbled into a small village named something that can’t be written with the Western Alphabet. The villagers treated him like he was crazy because they could not understand a word he said. They forced him into a cave past the last hut on the southern slope while he pleaded for water and warmth. It was a miracle he survived the night. In the morning, one of the villagers overheard the man praying in English and in French. The Man with Tools spoke French, the villager thought, though he did not know the name of the language. When the Man with Tools translated the mountaineer’s prayers, four of the tribal warriors took up their spears and stabbed the traveler to death. The traveler had no way of knowing that the tribe’s god too was a jealous god.

The Laser Razor

2005-06-03T23:23:00.000-07:00

In Quebec, a man named Gene shaved with a razor he designed that cut the hair with lasers. Gene was proud of his laser razor, and he hummed while he uses it because it always gives a perfect shave even if he’s not looking in a mirror.
He daydreamed that a voice called from the bathroom doorway. “Gene? Did you remember to get those reports from Protocol?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Cheyanne stepped out of the bathroom and secured the towel under her arm. Cheyanne supervised that branch of the lab and reported bi-monthly to a liaison from the main facility in Ontario.
“Springfield is coming in from Toronto next week, and I need to have my report together before then.”
“Why are you in a towel?” Gene said. “Are you naked under there?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh.”
But that’s the way Gene was, always spoiling his own fantasies. He wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t have his laser razor. He ran a bit of tap water over his face to rinse off the clipped ends, and he slid the razor into its velvet bag. His fingers ran as smoothly over his face as they would over polished ice.

The Wild West

2005-06-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

Maybe this all relates back to Fransesco T. Vincent, or Eight Ring Vince as he came to be called. In 1832, he surfaced in New Mexico, a seller of cotton garments turned gun fighter, most notable because he lacked the middle finger of each hand. To hear him tell it, the fingers were shot off during a skirmish in a mining camp at the spur of a mountain in Nevada. However he lost them, his fame was brief as his impairment slowed his perfect draw just enough. A veteran pistolier named Dervis Wertman, a.k.a. the whirling Dervis, put two bullets in his chest on a dusty afternoon outside a dry goods store that August. His mother shipped his body to a cemetery outside New Ipswich and buried him under the epitaph, “Never less the man.”

The Case of Wendell Parks

2005-06-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

Wendell lived well before the Beatles, but he appreciated music nonetheless. Particularly viola. His daughter hated him because he forced her to learn the Viola. Violin could lead. Piano could lead. Voice could lead. She would not sit third row in the orchestra, but first so the conductor could talk to her. He was a beautiful man, graceful and lithe in arm, stern in face. A fire burned in her heart every time she played, growing larger and colder with each passing day. Six years later, she achieved first chair in the London Symphony Orchestra. On the night of the concert The Prince attended, she stabbed the first chair violinist in the back and then killed his father as he ran to his son. The audience panicked. A Royal guardsman shot the daughter in the face with a musket. Wendell lived the rest of his life in sadness, naïve that he was to blame.

To Protect and Serve

2005-06-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

Kirgo woke up to the buzz of his alarm clock. He picked up the framed picture of the Virgin Mary that stood on his bedside table and kissed her on the forehead. He drew his medal of Saint Christopher out of the drawer by the chain, and before he clasped it around his neck, he kissed that too. Finally, he turned off his alarm, pulled on the pair of sweat pants he set out the night before, and made his bed.

Kirgo’s morning workout consisted of Shouting Practice, followed by Pepper Spray Accuracy, followed by How to Kill a Man.” Shouting Practice entailed standing in front of the mirror and shouting “Stop right there,” “Hold it,” and “If you don’t put that back right now, I’ll have to call the police” until his face and neck flushed red and bulged with veins. Pepper Spray Accuracy meant that he quick-drew the canister from the pouch clipped to the band of his sweat pants while he jumped side to side and shot the rifle-range target he tacked to the wall by the bureau. For How to Kill a Man, Kirgo acted out various scenarios that might arise at work that could necessitate the killing of his opponent. On the mornings he felt particularly confident with shouting, Kirgo merged How to Kill a Man and Shouting Practice into Applied Shouting While Killing.

That morning, Kirgo felt great about shouting practice. He felt so great about it that he added, “Shut the fuck up,” skipped pepper spray aim, and dove straight into Applied Shouting While Killing.

Kirgo slunk down the length of his bed like a SWAT officer, pepper spray held in both hands, aimed up. When he reached the end of the bed, he jumped forward, turning in mid air and extending both arms. “Hold it right there,” he shouted, then added, “Criminal.” The squirt of the pepper spray splattered against the wall, and he pivoted to his right and fired at the target. The red liquid hit low, at neck level, so Kirgo repeated the exercise until he got it right. Scenario two depicted an attempted paper clip theft escalating into an armed robbery. He tackled his coat rack like it was the larcenous gunman, locked his forearm around its throat, and broke the top six inches off.

Feeling slightly over-zealous and drenched with sweat from exertion and tension, Kirgo declared himself fit for action to the mirror and trotted to the shower.