Some things are afoot (while other things ahand) in the F-Vac camp, so I won’t be posting for a bit. I have some things in the works that will make your RSS reader implode from the mere mention of it. So, you might need to reinstall it if you’re reading this.
The writer was thrown in prison on vague charges. She had promised in previous writings that in such circumstances she would take her own life. The jailers, cautiously familiar with her treasonous invectives, allowed her a small blade and wagered in low voices on her sincerity.
After an extended and unsupervised cigarette break, the guard on duty found her unmoving without drop of blood surrounding her on the grimy floor. Though all of her books were burned, the eulogistic words written in blood on her prison walls were not forgotten by the guard, who kept a hidden journal of forbidden convictions.
Chris gazed down at the streets below from his office window. The block a few streets over had been cordoned off for at least a month now. The barren gray building yawned higher into the low-floating dark clouds which threatened to unload with no warning.
He went back to his computer and started deleting the stripped-down directory structure on the abandoned app. When the last few files were being erased, there was a loud series of muffled booms outside and his screen turned horribly blue.
He swore profusely and returned to his windows in frustration. The clouds over the debris had vanished.
I wrote a little story for one of my A Grand Design posts over at Buzzgrinder. It came out to exactly 100 words, unintentionally, at least by Wordpress’ word count engine. Odd.
It’s quoted below, but you don’t get the full effect without seeing the artwork.
I’ve been getting some dental work done lately. Last time, the dentist — while injecting that sweet, sweet anesthetic into my jaw — casually asked me, “So yeah. Hey, you seen Olofsson’s latest?”
“Nughkth,” I said.
“Yeah brah,” he said enthusiastically. The drill whirred indiscriminately around my mouth. “New Severed Savior. The cover looks a lot like what I’m seeing now down here in your bicuspid.”
He pulled a few broken teeth out with the nerves still attached. He stretched them out to the other side of the room.
“Uhkghyah?” I remarked. Then I passed out from the loss of blood.
Every day of the year a man stood outside my house and just stared blankly ahead. In the baking heat of summer, through the blustery winds of autumn, to the bitter, biting cold of winter he was there.
One day in early spring he vanished. There was a note on my door:
“I have kept myself from robbing your household. Please allow for provisions on my behalf that I may continue to not do so. I will return in two weeks. If payment is not issued I will take it by compulsion and imprison you in my house. Thank you.”
The frighteningly large bird hatched miniature large birds in early April. Nightly, in late summer, Kimberly snuck into the nest on the tip of the promontory to pluck feathers from the dozens of the sleeping, human-sized chicks.
When she thought she gathered enough, Kimberly tailored the suit and jumped off the mile-high cliff near her parents’ house. Shortly after realizing that her plan was failing, the mother bird swooped down and snatched her before Kimberly hit the rocky shore. The bird stole her to her nest and would not let her leave her foster brothers and sisters who were also flightless.
Axioms, propositions, and proofs appeared at the back door after supper. Dr. Hathaway brought them inside and set them before the study’s fireplace, in the middle of our circle. We attacked our pipes with vigorous abandon while our anecdotes issued forth in whimsy.
Dusk to dark. We attended to metaphysically unpacking our guests. The grounded lot of them were woefully impotent: pale, unmoving, timid. They broadcast signs of life and spectrum when we offered ourselves to one another in cautious discourse. They unfolded — blossoming — nearing the cobalt-blue midnight as we consorted with Reason and argued as friends often do.