Section 2
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[edit] Murderers and Millionaires
Siobhan had broken her ankle and was having some difficulty staying upright.
She tried to scream several times but Chad kept turning the music up to drown her out or leaning in to kiss her. His breath smelled of fish. She thought he had recently eaten kippers, or maybe it was halibut, or flounder. Everything from the sea is pervasive with a stale salty stench.
Shouldn't her short life be flashing before her eyes? Maybe her life was not really worth having a flashback for; she was after all only 33 and a third, but at this lonesome moment, she felt like 87 and a quarter.
The climax of the dance arrived and Chad was sweating as he led her gracefully across the room and back again before the final dip to signify the end. He leaned in and kissed her full on the mouth, tongue and all. Siobhan felt her body orgasm as the taste of the tides overwhelmed her.
He then released her and watched. She started to feel extremely weak, and her body's convulsions intensified. Poison. She did not have the time to wonder how, only collapsed.
Chad was pleased. Pity that she was unable to dance as well as he could but what could he do? The dance floor for him, was the ocean of life, and he was the great white shark of its waters. He took the dress off his victim as a keepsake, so that he could relive the dance they shared. He had forced her to wear it and watched as she changed her clothes but that did not matter as she seemed rather confused by the whole ordeal. It made no difference though as now she lay there dead, wearing only a white slip and a mismatched fuchsia lace bra.
It was time to flee the scene. He was sure the neighbors would have called the police to complain about the noise and he did not want them to find him here when they found the body. But before he left, he placed a fish scale on the woman's cheek, so that it looked like she was crying, and left his favorite paperback beside the body.
He slid out through the back window and through the side gate into his Austin Mini.
Lieutenant Gerarson surveyed the scene of the crime as various criminology personnel took pictures and samples of pertinent and curious items in Siobhan's room. He already knew that it was the work of a fairy floss eating tough man, and that he most likely left nothing behind, except that stupid fish scale on the victim's cheek. And always the same damned book. It was too hard to determine the origin of one paperback that could have come from anywhere. He had with him a surly, but extremely good looking young police officer, who seemed to take great delight in stopping everyone who went by and checking them for their correct identification papers. He had a cellular phone and would periodically take it out when no one was looking and send a text-message off to some unknown persons.
Sergeant Mathers called Lt. Gerarson from outside.
"One of the neighbors saw a car drive off. They thought the license may have spelled out a type of fungus - but they can't remember which one."
"Ergot, Fly Agaric, Truffle?"
"Well, at least we got the type of car. Any bets this guy ditches the car like all the others?"
"Yeah well, we already know all this. We know that he has a pattern, and that he has a lot of resources. Plus the fact that he can tango."
"This has only been the third murder; maybe we should be looking for a different pattern in all this madness."
"Smart idea. Get right on it and see if you can discover the name of the poison this guy uses."
The officer saluted Gerarson and called back to HQ to relay the instructions to his inferiors. Meanwhile Gerarson had other things to do. Life never seemed so endless as after someone else's death.
[edit] The Validity of Text
It was during one of their late night meetings, after 9 or so cups of coffee that George began to doubt the project. Jim was at the desk in the corner carefully rewriting chapter 9.3, when George blurted out, "What is writing but letters placed next to each other? What makes the word 'the' more valid than the word 'gsj"? It's the arbitrary choice of a society to pick one over the other and decide the rules that follow. Language, essentially, is only a set of symbols constrained by certain arbitrarily agreed upon rules. Semiotics is code like zeros and ones, it is how it is interpreted, contextualized and utilized that give it interpretation, but even that is wildly subjective by its very nature right? Language, he sneered, has to be the biggest sham of human evolution next to the opposable thumb. It's a pity we use it so often to express our personal experience with reality. For it is so co-dependent on the arbitrary creation of somebody else's rules. Is, after all, ntly pasivabjewiller renlenturives der des mards ablemed awsorecestited faxidin g scrodersole sition tendeffung sulanchel ecrar lere domplent???"
Jim sighed and rolled up his sleeves, "George," He said, "Read an introduction to post-structuralism or a little Derrida or Barthes and then get over it. I think we can make realism viable again. I think there's a way to get back our textual innocence. I think I can do it with chapter 9.3"
"Jim, read a little L'Amour and Kant, and come off your philosophical high horse!" George growled under his breath, putting his head in his hands. Jim had attended a few classes at the local polytech on literary and cultural theory and had since developed a tendency to spout. "But this isn't realism, is it? It's metafiction, we're questioning our conventions, we're writing in the margins. Hell, we could even write about you and me being characters in a book authored by thousands of people...besides, when is a text ever "finished"? Isn't that the core of Barthes' concept of the death of the author they teach in grad school? I read of a museum guard in a museum catching a guy after hours defacing a painting, true story. He said "what the hell are you doing?" the guy without turning around answered ‘it isn't finished’…...Turns out it was the artist".
Jim paled and began to breathe rapidly, "I'm not anyone's character." He said, feeling a dull ache of insecurity pass through him.
He knew strychnine was one of the bitterest and easiest to identify poisons, so all that BS about it being odorless and colorless was about to be debunked. He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and read what he had become.
[edit] Oceans of Time
Tony sat at his desk he had lost weight. No longer was he [Big Tony]. The fading light and the feel of the worn leather chair were all too familiar: there'd been many days like this. His mind wandered to a place far from this dusty office and the time when the story first began.
Tony knew only a little about the story of Artie the whale, a memory from years before in a class in college, but he knew enough to realize that Artie had felt so strongly that she had committed herself to this earthly realm, undertaking its hardships and strife, because it was worth it.
Still, he could not bemoan the state of enthrallment he was in. It provided a secondary benefit. It impelled him to write, to write long and to write often. To tap the energy, to transfer it into something ....something........ fecund (he hated the word but it expressed his desire), something life-giving.
He was a writer, and he could not but write..... Everything he saw and felt was only a pen's length from transcription.
And meanwhile, he sought beauty. He longed to engage with this exquisite torture. It was only splashing around in the shallow end, but he knew the dangers, one could come to grief even there. You don't turn your back on the ocean.
Thousands of miles away, another culture, another religion, another country, but still the same feelings, legs kicked freely while Artie sat on the pier, the water slapped relentlessly against the foundations of the pier as he stared out into the twilight. He detected a feint, graying image of himself reflected against the ocher-hued waters, framed by the receding sun. He dreamed sometimes that he was a whale, other times simply that he could be someone else.
He had always been fascinated by that picture of the beautiful young man lying, face down, staring into the stream. Gazing with aching desire at the man he saw reflected. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale, but it haunted him, no it drew him in - Narcissus. Who wouldn't stare into the eyes of beauty and pine away?
This man, wearing no identifying marks, (even his bright red tee-shirt was singularly devoid of any of the usual commercial logos), knew he was trapped.
Once, when not much younger than he was now, he had prided himself in the fact that he judged only by inner qualities. He was not fooled by surface features. Now, he knew not how this had happened, he was enmeshed, seduced and held fast in a gilded cage of his own making. This man, as he sat peacefully, yet sadly, at the waters edge, took some comfort from the fact that he was not alone. It was as if the whole world had gone mad along with him, held under the thrall of beauty. Everyone knew that physical beauty was only skin deep, yet he still longed for connection with this treasure, no matter how shallow it may be.
[edit] Prometheus Unbound
The great Warrior flowed through the battlefield. He was part Tornado, part Jaguar, part Wolverine, and part ballroom dancer. His samurai sword shimmered in his right hand and the nano-engineered molecule sharp dagger was held tightly in his left. Wherever he danced, fountains of blood splashed forth and dismembered bodies fell . He reached the city wall, flew up, over, onto the top, and down a tunnel on the other side. He was victorious against countless soldiers that came at him, one by one, each faster, and more ferocious than the last. Then, he finally reached it, a Ruby and emerald encrusted platinum door glittering before him. The legends claimed it was impenetrable, but he had the key, gained from solving the riddle of the witch, who lived in the giant mushroom.
The door swung open, and there he was, the grand sultan himself, sitting in the midst of his harem of 70 Barbie doll proportioned, genetically engineered women wearing translucent silk lingerie. He motioned the women to leave, mouthed an unintelligible curse in Mongolian, unsheathed both his swords with a blinding glare and charged. The battle ensued swiftly. Swords clattered, water drops were sliced in slow motion, pillars splintered as the two flew back and fourth, then the sultan made a small but fatal mistake. He attempted a feint, but was 1/10 of a second too late. The warrior sliced off his head with his sword, and, before the head hit the ground, skewered it on his dagger like an apple on a shish kebab stick.
The warrior had read the studies undertaken in France during the revolution. He knew that once decapitated, consciousness remained with the victim for 30 seconds. Wasting none of this precious time, he licked the face of the sultans staring head and laughed at him bellowing "It was only a small mistake, but I have the ultimate victory over you! and it has only begun! I will slaughter all your children and impregnate all your women, penetrating them as surely as I have penetrated your head, and you will be genetically erased. I will put myself where you had been in every way imaginable and achieve the ultimate Darwinian conquest of everything that was yours!! HA HA HA!!!" Click...Click...click...Fllllppp!!!
"HEY! NO FAIR! WHY?" hollered Jeremy, poking at his controller impotently in front of a suddenly blank screen "NO!" Helena was emphatic, "This is disgusting, and perverse! Maybe your parents don't know, and don't care, but under my care, I will not permit it!". As she paced away looking for somewhere to lock the DVD away she muttered self righteously to herself "I just don't believe it, just when I think video games have become as sick, and pornographic, and disgusting as I can possibly imagine, they somehow find in the depths of their twisted minds, something even more deranged and psychotic..."
[edit] Jim Looked at the Text
Jim looked excitedly at the text. It proved his theory. The page was filled with a series of letters that looked like words but were really, on closer analysis, just random letters, or were they just bent lines and shapes - like swimming eels or that time he saw a car crash into a wrought iron fence, the lines bent in a series of odd shapes. A closer look told him something about his brain that he had suspected. Words were jumping out - patterns were emerging. If there were any actual words that came out randomly, just by coincidence, his eye and mind would immediately seize upon it. He realized that there was a deep and mysterious connection between the object and the mind as 'meaning-creator.'
It is not just about the message intended or sent, it is very much about the message received. The mind steadfastly and with unfailing determination, is intent on finding any meaning from a stimulus that it can possibly find. The text would come alive if the mind had anything to say on the subject even that email that went around from that study that was horribly misspelled almost to gibberish yet could be read with no hesitation.
Jim smiled, for he had discovered some small thing about the relationship between the writer(or the randomizer), the text, and the receiver. And it was that small revelation, the realization that such a relationship exists, that was helping him, slowly, but ever definitively to come alive again, once more; in his mind, and the minds of all his readers. He/they pressed on.
He recalled something someone once said: a monkey could write a whole book if it was just about combining a series of words or letters. Jim found himself replying: "aha, but it takes a more evolved creature to be able to read and to make meaning of what is there. It is the receiver, the 'appreciator,' the 'beholder,' who determines beauty and art."
Instead of "if a tree fell in the forest," he thought...if/when someone creates something, isn't it the perspective, life experience, temperament and frame of mind of each person that gives it full breath and final form?
(until meeting the next set of eyes...)
[edit] Translation
There was a great German writer, by the name of Karl Rahner, who specialized in the religious area of "Theology". He was so brilliant that his writings were filled with long sentences and complex clauses as well as the extraordinary ability, that comes with the German language, to make new words from the combination of other whole words. Karl's brother once joked, when asked if he had read his brother's latest book (which was written in his native tongue), "I haven't read it yet - I am waiting for the translation in German to come out." (A testament about how difficult the construct of his thought was even in his own language).
It was suggested that the reason for this complex writing was not because he wanted to be 'snobby' or high and mighty, but rather that his grasp on things, so complex, required a complex way of writing to attempt to express the ‘inexpressible.’ Jimmy once wrote an assignment directly quoting Karl Rahner, and was quite impressed with what he thought the famous writer was saying. The assignment came back: "this is good, but I don't think this is what Rahner was trying to say...." Jimmy was not at all put out by this. Rather, it served to impress him more. This man, had written in such a way, that the text revealed insights and thought even greater than the original intention of the author !!! The text, had taken on an ability to teach, to challenge, to inspire even broader than the author's intent. Jim was frightened and amazed by all this.
[edit] Distraction
It's never a good idea to answer a phone while driving, thought Gina, while driving, and that had nothing to do with safety… I should have been in bed by now…
--- She was on her way home, her mind wandering to and fro about Mark and a large pizza she was about to pick up at Big James, when she realized her cell was ringing . Of course it was in her handbag, zipped up, just out of reach on the seat. Aw damn phone… what a hell!! One eye on the road, she reached right, feeling for a handle.
“YES! What?
“A bit nervous baby, aren’t we... know who’s calling?
She couldn’t believe the voice she was hearing…. Actually, she was trying to convince herself that it took some time to recognize it, but really she got it the first second.
“What on earth are… where are you?
“Like it or not, I’m actually back in the city… listen Gina, there’s something I think you need to know. I’m in a pub at (fill in the intersection), you know, the Bryden’s, can you come? I mean, if it’s okay with the geek?
“Why do you think I would want to hear anything you have to say? You remember what happened last time we met, right? Or that memory, among many others, has been washed away with pints of lager and shots of scotch?
“No more of that stuff baby… doctors order… stupid ulcer..
“Ok just say what you have to say and leave me be.
“Well I could easily do that over the phone dear, but than I'll waste the only chance I have to see that lovely face of yours again…
“Forget it, I’m not…
“Genesis.
The pause was genuine.
“Now how do you… ok I’m coming, wait there.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger! What the hell was I thinking …I knew it couldn’t be good… Gina was getting into her usual mantra…Inevitable flashbacks to Copenhagen started to roll in… yelling duel in front of the bar, both drunk, … and Mark, later… One more reason why I would be much better off without ever being there, she thought…
As always, when hungry, she felt dizzy and her vision blurred. She turned, making a sharp left, cutting off a blue van coming the opposite direction, speeding away towards Big James'.
Its almost on the way to Bryden’s, she thought… And there's no traffic, anyways...
--- Why had he to be in the pub where’s never a place to park anywhere near…must be those stupid chicken wings, he used to stuff his face with that junk, thought Gina while walking down the street to the pub, heels of her boots echoing… the sound of those were always calming her down, making herself feel more powerful. Two slices of the large pizza were almost gone by then…
Now why am I wolfing down this pizza like there’s no tomorrow, she said to herself, couldn’t be that nervous? God I’m dying for a pint, those anchovies are killing me…
Her head overwhelmed deliberately with ridiculous, unimportant details, she was pushing away the thought that was occupying her mind ever since she heard that word… Genesis… how the hell he knows about Genesis…. And why now, when it’s almost…
But soon, it will all be over, Gina thought…I’ll be back home, finally…
Yes, she’ll be alone in her bed again, putting herself to sleep, slowly, by plotting up the versions of her life with Mark, each less possible then the other…
But that, too, was a delusion, as she will learn soon after leaving the pub.
[edit] The Da Vinci Cod
It was still dark when Mark got out of bed. He had packed his bag the night before and had laid out his clothes so it only took him a few minutes to get ready. He had been planning this fishing trip for over a month and now that it had begun, his excitement was palpable. He rubbed his hands together briskly, trying to warm up. He felt lucky. He thought, maybe this will be the trip. Maybe this time he would finally catch the Da Vinci cod!. He knew it wouldn't be easy. Many a man had tried to capture him. They had tried different lures, various bait, new fangled rods, everything in their power. But everything had failed.
"Until now," Mark thought, grinning to himself. The full moon shone brightly he Mark took his favorite rod by the bank of the lake. There was no-one else around, he was the only one there.
He paused, closing his eyes - breathing deeply, relaxing. Then, with a practiced flick of the mind he concentrated on the water, sending small circles to undulate across the surface of the pond. The ripples spread, ultimately impacting much more than Mark could ever have anticipated...
[edit] The Road To Bailly Romainvilliers
Gina was a nightbird, though she'd never admit it. She hated getting up in the morning, because it meant going back to the grind. Every morning, she'd go through the same routine of drinking coffee, brushing her teeth (one of her real prides, her teeth. Which, themselves, were not real at all), putting on the clothes she knew would attract maximum attention in the street and on the metro, not to mention at the office, arranging her hair just so, then putting on her knee-high boots before grabbing black leather handbag and stomping out of her apartment in Issy.
Every morning, she'd get the same whistles and enamored cries from the youth in the street. A pack of would-be pushers, age somewhere between eight and twelve, boys and girls alike, they would invariably follow her with a air of envy. She did not seem to care that Mark, her boyfriend might get insanely jealous, he always seemed to be preoccupied with his next planned fishing trip, that is, when he wasn't tangoing. A great tangoer, was Mark, and a great fisher. The boys would pretend not to notice the way her hips swayed, or the way the fabric of her grey sweater accentuated her form. Gina would sometimes gratify them with a nod, even a smile, but would never engage conversation, because she knew where that would lead her. The thing Gina valued more than her perfect body was privacy.
This morning, she left earlier than usually. There were things to be settled. She took the RER. Crossing alleyways wasn't Gina favorite game, but this morning, it was different. Her boss, old Pierre Dewinckel of Dewinckel et fils, good old Pierre had asked to come in early so as to prepare a witness for a deposition. Gina had a knack with nervous people. She always knew how to put them at ease, and Pierre had even hinted at a promotion in the near future, something Gina would welcome, though she suspected it entailed more than just treating witnesses right.
No doubt Pierre would hit the promotion subject again in the near future, among other things. Though he was nearing 60, he was still reasonably attractive, and Gina hadn't got laid in weeks--something she wouldn't admit in the presence of others, not even her best friend, Pamela--, though she let people think what they wanted to think.
The alleyway was darker than she thought, and Gina was careful not to step in puddles of unidentified liquids of various colors and consistency. The boots were made for walking alright, as the song went, but they were also brand new, and had cost her an arm and a leg. Their metal-covered heels hitting the ground in cadence, Gina pushed her way past Dumpsters and scattered refuse. She heard a noise behind her, like a dog foraging in a trash can, and thought, Great, some stray doggie with his snout covered in shit or something; all he had to do was to greet her the way dogs always did, tongue out, a canine smile painted on the face, panting, begging for a stroke and a kind word. "Just what I need", Gina thought.
The first hit took her down to her knees.
The man hit her a second time, on the head, and she thought she was going to puke her croissant, right here and there. She managed to get on all fours and tried to right herself, but a strong hand pushed her back down. Then she heard a man--she thought it was a man--whisper in her ear:
"Vous êtes tranquille, et tout va bien!"
There was an almond scent coming with his breath.
"Must be sick, Weisenheimers disease", she remembered in a second.
"What do you want?" she managed without looking back. She was truly scared, now, and for once, she regretted not acknowledging the youth’s attention, a few minutes back.
"Vous savez ce que je veux. Soyez silencieux! Vous et moi, nous aurons une petite fête, chérie!"
Gina shivered. The man sounded French, but hey, this was Paris, France after all. No surprise there.
"You can't do that to a sister," she ventured.
The man then started to pull her jeans down, and Gina knew that if she didn't do something, anything, right now, she was dead. The man wouldn't let her go, not alive. Plus he seemed to know where she worked, and that was even scarier. She could feel something warm and hard pressing against her buttocks, but before she could do anything, she was flat on her belly again, her face inches from a dog turd. She started whimpering, but the man shushed her with a shove.
"Soyez ouvert!"
Gina nodded yes, and started to prepare for what she knew had been coming her way all along. The man kept on groping her, pulling down her underwear.
"Oui," she heard him say, almost reverently.
A sudden crack, a sharp intake of air, then she felt like a ton of brick had just fallen upon her back. She was pinned to the ground, no matter how hard she tried to move. The man was on top of her, but he didn't move, and she could feel his erection quickly fading. A liquid started oozing on the side of her face. It was warm, and smell of copper. It was red, too. Bright red.
She screamed. "Wrong move," another man's voice said behind her. Gina fainted.
Mr Dimitry, pushed the assailant off Gina and checked her breathing.
He had been successful - This is the third girl he had 'saved today.
Dimitry had saved them from the dangers of the city, (it never took long to find something bad going on in this town) but now their lives would be at the disposal of the "command" and its purposes.
[edit] Traffic, many ways
Red lights, green lights. Driving down the empty streets, Carlos and Tony were debating the merit of having the lights working all night. “Not true”, said Carlos, “that’s because people here don’t know how to drive. You take some poor bastard from god knows where, who’s never seen a car before, and you expect him…” “Whoa, hold it right there!” Tony interrupted, “that’s exactly why I’m thinking that they are more careful, they are adjusting to a new situation…” “Well, sometimes they are too careful. They don’t know what to do.” “Agree, but on the flip side, you have…” At that point a silverfish sedan, coming towards them, turned sharp left just in front of their van, forcing Carlos, who was driving, to step on the brake. “Fucking… now that’s what I’m telling you here. They just don’t…” “Wait, Carlos… well I’ll be… turn left! Hurry!” Carlos jerked the steering wheel left, without checking any of the mirrors, naturally. “Why, you want to chase the guy now? You saw my point all of the sudden?” “No, moron, that was Gina’s car. We haven’t been able to isolate her anywhere, last what, month and the half, and here she is, perfect. Let’s do it before its too late again.”
Carlos accelerated, backing himself further into his seat. “We’ll get her at the park.” His eyes gave a feverish spark.
“Look, she’s stopping… hell its big jim’s place… wait here, let’s see, maybe she’ll be out soon…”
After few minutes, they saw Gina getting back into her car, turning right and leaving in the hurry.
“That’s not the way to her home”, Tony said. “What the hell is going on? Let’s follow her, maybe she’s meeting someone…”
Ten blocks later, they learned that Tony was right. No argument there, Tony was usually right. But, who she was meeting with blew their mind. “She’s got it. And now she knows it.” Carlos said. “But now WE don’t know is it at her place, or with her.”, Tony elaborated further. “We’ll wait till the morning, she’ll be going to see George first thing. Before that happens, we need to get it, witnesses or no.”
-- Leaving the Bryden’s, pale as a ghost, the first thing Gina had in her mind was how to get home as soon as possible. Then, about what she had just heard about Genesis.. “How did I buy that story after all”, she cursed herself… “All that security, double-checking, for a stupid marketing spin on a new book?” Now that she knew what the real purpose for the code she had, she was trembling in the anticipation of the moment in the morning when she will have to face George, end tell him she’s out.
--
[edit] Not an ordinary morning
Sharp, recurring pain in the temples was probably the thing that woke Gina up. At least that was the first thing she felt when she finally managed to open her eyes. It took a while though. Limbs dull, weak, it almost felt good to lie down on the cold pavement, and had not it been for the pain, she would probably float in half awake/half asleep zone a bit longer. What happened, where the man with an almond breath had vanished, she had no knowledge of. The last thing she remembered, she was trying to wiggle away, while he was pulling her hand backward, and that’s when she dropped… Her heart almost jumped out her chest, making her forgetting the pain, making her mind rushing, in panic, towards only one idea: god please let it be somewhere near… And it was. Her handbag was lying there, she grabbed it, ripped it open, and frantically searched for a pack of Kleenex.
“Oh holly bleeding hell… it’s here!!!
She pulled out a couple of tissues, and the paper was there, too. She was thinking about another place to hide it for a second, then just put it into her pocket. What a hell… I’ll make this over today, anyways…
Lifting herself up from the floor, she started to wander what the hell happened… must be somebody watching over me, whose existence I’m not aware of… aliens? Smoker? A man in a black suit? It was funny how the first mental link was to the X-Files, and it’s been a while since she ceased to be dependant on the show…. She walked slowly to the office, unaware of the fact that people were staring at her torn clothes… she was thinking about genesis, and how strange is it.. The whole code, the key to the pattern, can fit onto a piece of paper not bigger than a box of cigarettes. She’ll give it to George today, she decided yesterday, after a meeting at Bryden’s… Its hard to believe how everything, now that she knew all the facts, make perfect sense, making her look like an idiot…But it sure like hell will be an interesting thing to read, she thought… all those monkeys… all that time… She was playing with the idea that, after all, it has to be a postmodern, when they grabbed her, showed an ether-soaked handkerchief in her face, making the outline of every object and shape bent, then blurred. Carlos slide open the door. “Weird, I know this blue van from somewhere… Gina, being the master of irrelevant details, let this last thought fight with the fumes, then let go…
[edit] Les reflections dans l'oeil d'un chien: Or How I Learnt French to Please My Daddy
"Have you never made sense of something after the event?" Jim was getting exasperated again.
George was peering too intently at the text.
"Just leave it!" Jim man barked at him. "I know what you are thinking. No need to say it. Is it only good if it makes linear sense? If I put it in the right order, would that make you comfortable? Never mind the 'kick' you get when a connection dawns on you - out of sequence. Get it?"
George indicated he didn't.
"Well, then. I am not going to explain. Watch !"
Jim put pen to paper again:....
It started off about him, and what really happened, but there was an exhilaration in the fact that at any juncture, the real could (seamlessly) segue into the unreal, or the near-real, or the preposterous.
He walked home across Queen's park, and noticed a police car driving past him very slowly. He was now walking along the footpath and the police car had slowed down to a crawl. Should he look across. He had done nothing wrong. But he recalled what his mother used to say to him and his sister and brothers whenever a police car pulled up beside them on the road, "Don't look at them." Jim could never work out why. His family had always been perfectly law abiding. It was as if she was afraid that even looking at the police would induce them to book us for speeding. Jim laughed to himself, remembering with infinite fondness his mother. He had been taken aback one day when she had broken off once when talking about her recently deceased mother and said "Jimmy, you can never imagine what it is like to lose a parent." Jim had been struck by that for two reasons, Firstly, the loss of a parent still weighed with indescribable sadness for people whose parents were of advanced age. Jim knew that was naive to say it, but that was what he had assumed, that somehow it was easier to lose a loved one when they were older - not so. Secondly, (he hated constructing these first part/ second part dialogues because they were clumsy and also because he usually forgot to bother with any second point), here was his own parent fore-warning him of what it would be like to lose her. She was right. It was unimaginable.
Jim became aware that the police car was still cruising along beside him. He could not help it, he looked sideways at the police officer in the car. There was only one occupant. Jim wasn't scared of being pulled over for questioning. In fact, he admitted to himself, he kind of wished he would be. In that moment, Jim felt, in a depraved way, that he knew why delinquents acted the way they did. At least someone engaged with them. Jim half desired to do something wrong, because at least he wouldn't be invisible. He really felt invisible. And, he was such a good young man that he never rose above the static of life.
He looked with a fixed gaze at the officer in the car beside him. The policeman had an expression on his face that defied words. It was not anger, it was not gentleness, and it was not sadness.... the eyes... they were staring.... (or so he imagined, since they were hidden behind streamlined sunglasses). The mouth was set, with the lips showing the faintest of what might have been a smile. Jim had a blind spot to this particular look. He knew how to interpret everything else.
Jim was suddenly overcome with an inexplicable sense of loneliness and pain. He wanted to call out to the policeman and have him render help, but help with what?
(Jim was aware of George who was reading as he wrote. George was mesmerized by this narrative, but he could also feel that he was fidgeting noticeably, uncomfortable about something in the text).
He had become completely obsessed with police officers. He didn't know why. He had even written a few into the narrative of the text. He had originally called his hero "Lieutenant Cory" but that name was, he was ashamed to say, too interesting, too sensual. He changed it to a name that was sterner, craggier: Gerarson. Yes, Lieutenant Gerarson. He was not overwhelmed by that name.
"What is it with policemen" Jim asked himself. (Jim felt George move off from standing behind, this was too uncomfortable to read for him, but he KNEW George would come back and read this when no one was looking). Jim felt ashamed. He tried to use some pop-psychology on himself. Is it a desire for order, for certainty, for clear application of rules, and right and wrong? Is it just the uniform? Whatever it was, it was driving him crazy. And, for some reason it was drawing them to him like a fly to ointment. Where the carcass is, there, will the eagles be gathered. But, he wasn't DOING anything.
Jim definitely sided with the police in any fictional narrative, yet he always felt that the villain held more attraction.
Jim's pendulous reverie between text and torture was interrupted when the police car came to a complete stop and the man in the car beckoned him over.
Jim's heart started thumping erratically. He could hardly breathe. The fictionalized theme was much more sedate than real life.
"Yes, sir" Jim could hardly speak the words.
"Why are you stuttering? I simply wanted to ask if you live in that building at the end of the street? I don't suspect you of anything." The officer said politely. Jim could see himself reflected in the mirrored sunglasses of the officer. "Yet."
"Yes.....Yes,... officer." Jim was not sure if he should call him 'officer' in this country, but he hated the word constable.
The policeman leaned closer to the window. "I thought so." he smiled. Clearly, Jim thought, he was not as invisible as he thought.
"You do have security cameras in that building?"
"Yes," Jim said eagerly.
"Excellent. And you are the caretaker?"
"Yes, yes sir." Jim replied.
"Good, now, may I have a look. There have been some disappearances recently. Women vanishing. We are concerned that there may be a serial abductor." Jim couldn't escape noticing how he enunciated each syllable of this last word, with deliberate punctuation. Jim watched the officer’s mouth as spoke. Observing the lips rounding out each vowel and consonant.
"I - I'd be happy to show you, const- I mean, officer! They are in my office."
The policeman got out of his car and locked it. In this country they wear hand guns. Metal, and gun oil, metal snaps, and leather. The sight of it both appalled and fascinated Jim. He hated guns, but..... He fumbled with the keys, realizing his palms were sweating profusely.
"We might as well walk, its not far," the policeman said, setting off.
Jim walked behind the officer. He preferred to. His senses overloaded. It never dawned on him that the officer was leading the way to the caretaker’s quarters, although as far as anyone knew, this particular officer had never been to this specific location before. Jim followed meekly. If he could help catch a criminal he would be delighted. But he would find he had to do a bit of explaining when it turned out those whole sections of the security recordings has been blanked out.
Only the faint shape of Carlo, unrecognizable to police or Jim alike, could be seen in one final frame.
Still, Jim enjoyed the chat with the officer in his apartment.
[edit] Line of Inquiries
Lieutenant Gerarson pulled up in his sleek police car. Mark was standing at the curb. Gerarson got out of the car and placed his reflective sunglasses higher on his head. He was with a younger policeman, impossibly good looking, with an aloof attitude. The younger officer never took his sunglasses off his head, but sauntered around to the curb side of the car and parked his bottom up against the car door, folding his arms. His mouth was a straight line. Gerarson, by virtue of the years, had lost his swagger and arrogance and walked around casually and shook hands with Mark and spoke with a friendly and polite tone. Gerarson had been in the job so long, he had nothing to prove.
"Lieutenant, any news?" mark asked nervously. His left eye had developed a pronounced twitch with the stress and lack of sleep.
"No, sorry, Mark. Just a couple of questions, to clarify," Gerarson said as he pulled out his notepad. "What is your occupation?"
"I am a caterer. I specialize in fish that I have caught from one of my secret offshore locations, and freshly cooked. I was at a catering event the night before Gina disappeared." Mark replied.
"Have you got all the relevant fishing licenses?" the handsome young police officer suddenly interjected, still leaning his athletic butt against the police car, with arms tightly folded.
Mark was slightly startled by the intensity of this question and answered more honestly than he should. "Well, actually yes, but frankly, the way the present minister of Fisheries is operating, there are hardly any checks and balances for fishing compared with the past. It has become a real free-for-all."
"What are you thoughts about the rising mercury content in fish having a possible link to the rise of autism in children?" The questioning went on like this for a while, as if sparring, yet never broaching the larger subject.
Mark suddenly thought again of Gina and came back to focusing on the matter of importance. He had never told her how much she meant to him and now......
"That's fine, constable, I will handle this," Gerarson said gently but firmly putting the smooth skinned policeman back in his place. "Mark, When was the last time you saw Gina?"
Mark looked exasperated. "Officer, I have TOLD your men this already.... But anyway, she had gone out by the time I came back from my fishing trip on Tuesday. I saw her briefly when she got up for work, but she never returned. Apparently she never even got to work." The stress was showing on Mark's face. He could not believe this was happening to him.
Lieutenant Gerarson was writing furiously into his notebook. "There are two possibilities, Mark, that we are looking at. There has been a serial killer wandering around, poisons his victims. Although usually he strikes indoors and appears to be at least casually known to the victim."
Mark was stricken with this news.
Lieutenant Gerarson continued. "The other, is very serious but there is a chance she might be still alive: There have been a few women who have vanished. Kidnapped. Unconfirmed intelligence suggests they may be being kidnapped for use in some kind of organized crime ring. It has international implications. They appear to be taken out of the country, but it is unclear how they are doing this undetected."
Mark was becoming hysterical. "Oh, so Gina is either dead or some kind of sex slave. This is pathetic. What are you doing to track her down."
Lieutenant Gerarson, moved closer and tapped Mark on the shoulder with a kind of gentle but gruff comfort.
Relax. These actions and emotions are just characters on a phosphor screen. Nothing you say or do here will appear in your permanent record.
[edit] The Cheshire Dog
"Alice, do you remember me?" Inu asked, smiling.
"Should I?" Alice looked him over carefully.
"Well, they wrote cats out of the story. Said something about there being a Broadway monopoly on the movie rights or some such."
"Anyway, I am Inu, the Cheshire Dog! How do you like my big teeth?"
"All the better to see you with, I guess, Inu. But why do they call you the Cheshire Dog?" Alice asked aloud. She seldom talked to taxidermist specimens, but this one seemed so lifelike, with his big, dark, marble eyeballs.
"Because now you see me, and then you don't!" replied Inu. "It seems that people around here don't like my name, or cats, or the fact that I am a taxidermal specimen. They love to edit all references to the stuffed dog out. It gives them the creeps, so, when I sense that they are around, I do the ol' Cheshire Cat chromosomal blink, and poof! I'm a blue bulldog. See?"
Sure enough, right before Alice's eyes, Inu turned into the most beautiful blue bulldog, then shimmered into a faun like color, before returning to shades of baby blue.
"How did you do that, Inu?"
"The name's Rowdy. When you see Blue, think Rowdy, faun: Rowdynu, and schnauzer: plain ol' Inu again. Unless it is snowing, in which case I am Igloo. And of course when I stiffen up into a specimen, I'm really just 'playing' dead. A few people remember me as Indy, but that was on the first Sunday, and I haven't looked quite the same since then." Inu explained. "After dark, if you want a real adventure, sneak over to the real alternative version of the novel and you will learn that I am actually a brown Great Dane! Can you believe it?!" Inu meowed out loud with laughter.
"How very fascinating! First you are small, then you grow larger, only to shrink back by degrees to your old self again, until you finally slip into your future final state," Alice bit on her lip as she pondered the mystery of life.
"Inu, I am looking for a large white rabbit. Was that you tricking me, a little while ago, that I saw you running down that hole?"
"Don't be silly, Alice, how could that be?" Inu smiled his big toothy grin, as he pulled out a large pocket watch to check the time. "Tricks are for kids, not rabbits!"
[edit] Kick
Carlo felt the strychnine kick in as the familiar creep up his backbone materialized. His senses began to shift as the diamonds in the sky above him turned into snow flakes that slowly drifted downwards. The snow flakes slowly melted into the throw rug. A blue bulldog walked by. People milled around. There was no beer in the fridge. His CD began to jump, then skip, then play hopscotch.
A door closed in his mind. But he knew another would open soon. He could smell blue. He could taste blue. But he couldn't see blue, he could only see white. Everything was white. A cacophony of static.
He realized that he was a truck. He started himself up. Rowdynu, the Blue bulldog sat in his cabin. He could taste the hair in his mouth - the taste of wet dog. His breath.. his exhaust.. was visible in the cold air. He turned his lights on. The dog was a deeper shade of blue.
He decided to take himself for a drive. He drove down the street outside his house. A fresh layer of snow hid all signs previous traffic. The street was a long tunnel, an impossibly long ride to the telephone. As he drove, his thoughts turned to global warming, and how this vehicle, and the thousands of other vehicles, in the hundreds of thousands of other cities, were warming the planet and destroying the atmosphere. And what about all those penguins? There was a telephone out here somewhere. The ringing became overwhelming. He decided to walk. He would leave himself behind. Parked outside, alongside his memories he no longer needed.
As he walked home, a blast of warm air made his skin sting. Snow dripped off his boots into the throw rug. He could see a fish in the sky, glowing as it writhed. He watched, waiting for the fish to talk to him. But it didn't say anything, just gasped in the air. And then there was Liz, biscuit in one hand, pills in the other, standing on the pavement.
"Carlo." It seemed as though that was all she could say. She mumbled the name like a secret prayer, her lips moving, but no words coming out at all. A question he couldn't answer. "It was once too often, Liz," he mumbled. His attention fixed on the small plastic bottle... the yellow pills scattered on the white wet carpet. Then on the dog. For a second on the slushy snow. All that madness. Distortion. Frenzy.
"It was just once too often, Liz," he said again, with finality creeping into his voice and his heart at the same time. His attention fixed for a second on the medicine bottle... the yellow pills scattered out on the snow. Then on the dog. For a second on the slushy snow. All that madness. Distortion. Frenzy.
"You're not dead, yet?" It sounded facetious and somehow he knew it, even as the bridge between reality and what began back there in the house began to crumble.
[edit] The Cardboard Boxer
A pickup truck rolled up to a small coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado as the first gleam of the dawn sun was just beginning to light up the top of the Rockies. Two handsome young American factory workers, looking as though they had walked straight off a Socialist realist propaganda poster got out, took off their overalls, threw them in the back, and entered. A diminutive waitress approached. She gave them a table near the window and then took their orders. "I would like two coffees, black no sugar," said one, looking up at her sullen little face. "And perhaps I'll take a waffle with blueberry syrup too."
They had finished their coffee by the time the waffles arrived, the taste of them turning bitter and acrid on their tongues. "Funny that, I really am in no mood to eat Tuna", said one.
"Strange, that," the other worker responded," I realized myself that I am in no mood for tuna, but even stranger is that this thought occurred to us at all, since it is breakfast and we have ordered waffles with blueberry syrup".
"It is a dissociative mnemonic device, another trick of the capitalist superstructure." The one worker suggested.
"A fool's gambit, if so. There is no money to be made on an aversion to tuna. We are suffering from a simple mass delusion." The other worker looked outside at the dirty mounds of snow. "Perhaps it is the heat."
"Wait, maybe there is money to be made. What is the opposite of tuna? Some sort of citrus fruit, perhaps a berry?" The one worker glanced at his waffles and the potential goldmines they were smothered in.
The other worker scoffed. "Fish do not have opposites. You cannot place negative signs in drift nets and harvest oranges. These are complex devices that cannot be reduced to ideology or math."
"You speak as if math is not an ideology, borne of the tyranny of subtractive logic." The one worker glanced at his waffle, a grid of nine squares by nine, cut circular. "Subtractive logic is the heart of capitalism."
"You and your capitalism. Fuck! That Chad Thompson has really messed up your brain and your heart." They were quiet for a while, and felt how someone they met months ago still made his way between them. Look! There it stood before them, its cliffs falling sheer to rushing streams, magnificent peaks with placid lakes in the background, silent villages in the sunshine. In one word: Colorado! From one of its gorges the imposing tower of a power station stood out against the sky. Many people came here and have been working for many years. In the near town, on a dusty road, there was another snack bar. Inside Keepsake talked to Grant. "Are you gonna go on a trip to Riga?". "Yeah, I've gotta check what's the weather like.". "The device's to remain ours someway". "Chad Thompson can sell it to enemy". "You! Stop talkin' loud". "A waitress with oriental features and sleepy expression glanced at them. "He's one of our side. He already made a packet of money". "We're givin' a crowd a pack of money". "Somebody disappears sometime". "His pack too". A truck went past the bar breaking the silence. "What about those communists in the command?". "Who? Those mashed their middle class, ain't any purpose now". "Well, they wanna win elections".
Meanwhile 9 time zones away, the setting sun shone in through the panorama windows of the second floor of Neo. Mikhael sat in the corner gazing out at the view. La vie est fait de morceaux qui se joint pas, he pondered. The sky was clear over the harbor and the cold was beginning to make itself felt. The bare winds slept on the near hills, with a little snow here and there. The town spread quiet on the right bank of its river, the spans of the New Bridge stood out against the horizon. The Daugava, the old town, and the railway station were laid out beneath him. This was his empire.
Mikhael gave the bartender a slight nod of his head and reached for the phone. Though well known for being ruthless he was also a little slow, the excesses of both his dining that day and the vodka only hindering him further. He took the phone in his hand, then paused. Something was wrong - no one dared call him when he did not expect it, not at this time. He paused... it was... Sahra Wagenknecht... That meant trouble was on its way. Didn't they decide not to call each other? Not until the Big Problem was solved?
He sputtered... "What the hell are you...", "What?" "Yes there is a man in a red shirt here... but look...." "Aha..." His voice dropped, he fell deadly silent, his eyes took on the smooth sheen of a predator. "Ten minutes, ok...". Mikhael checked his wallet. He didn't realize that his cell phone had a digital clock on it so he always used his calendar. He took out his finepoint and circled the date. Ten minutes! He'd be ready! A wry grin came across his face as he threw a 10 Lat note down on the table.
He loved that creepy little tingle in his spine.
Jurek returned from the bathroom, "Never mind, in two minutes it will make no difference... I guess that means you got the call too, let’s do it!" "Two minutes" said Mikhael coldly and calmly looking at his watch.
Jurek nodded. He knew what had to be done, but he couldn't help wondering if there was a better way.
He bent down and set the timer on the detonator for one minute -just time enough to get down the escalator out of the door and to jump out of the way of the falling debris. The explosive charge hidden inside his briefcase was just enough to do the job.
At that moment, in Buenos Aires, a tractor-trailer truck pulled away from a loading dock in the lamp-lit gloom, its driver chewing on the cap of a pen he had just used to sign the shipping manifests. He was doomed. The truck keys must have been in his pocket, but it was too late, the shadowy figure waited above, unseen in the tree, waiting to pounce, its muscles like a spring wound tight...
[edit] Helena
First was the sun and then came the rain on the Reperbahn in Hamburg. A silent woman looked out over the street from her little apartment. She had wanted to spend some time in a foreign country, to experience another culture and learn another language - that's what Helena told her mother and father. She longed to know something beyond her private convent education and the small, picturesque mountain town that had remained hidden away from the world.
She headed to Germany. On the train there she had befriended Mikhael, who had told her of the personal agency he owned and given her his business card, saying she would be ideal for a special job he had on his books. She went there with no idea of what was waiting for her. She ended up in Hamburg, capital of prematurely wrinkled hookers, outdated leopard skin tights and cheap switchblade knives.
They'd burnt her passport, given her drugs and kept her in the flat off the Reperbahn. Helena had not seen Mikhael since his first visit to the flat, when he had raped and beaten her. She had developed a fanatical and violent hatred of him. Yet at the same time she knew that her hopes of ever getting out depended on him. Sahra Wagenknecht was the key, who came to see her on behalf of Mikhael. She could convince Sahra to let her go. They had become friendly. She knew Sarah must feel some sort of compassion for her.
Surprisingly her flat was a not too bad a place - an oasis in this blighted house. Sometimes she even tried to get rid of the addiction. But she was never successful. This evening she tried to sit in her armchair and read a magazine, but her thoughts were restless. She was trying again to stop taking the drugs so readily supplied to her after every client. The cloying nausea of withdrawal was just starting to kick in.
There came a sudden knock at the door, frightening her. After a moment she got up, crossed the room and opened the door. In front of her was a man in a dark gray coat, dark hair, and a pale, nameless face.
"Helena," he said, looking at her in the eyes. She stared at him for a moment, her mouth open. But before she could utter a word he rushed forwards, grabbed her hand and whipped her away.
"What are you doing? Let me be!" she cried as he dragged her across the tangled weedy patch between the house and the pavement. He paused for half a second, turned and gave her a quick once over. "Come, hurry up and do not ask!"
Frightened she followed him. They were running very fast and as they reached the crossroad on the end of the street there was a great explosion behind them. They both turned. The row of flats she was just a minute ago was in ruins, flames leaping from blackened windows, roofs caved in. Helena's ears filled with ringing silence.
"What happened?" she stuttered with tears in her eyes. "I could have died..."
"You are giving me too many questions, girl. Just one after another. There is an answer for everything in this world, you just have to seek patiently," the man said.
"Who are you?" said Helena angry, she started to shiver and sweat. It was here right now. She was really angry that she did not die and had to suffer now.
"I am..." – "...Ka."
"Ka? Huh. Great. I have ever wanted to meet my Ka. I had such a feeling there is something missing in my life." said Helena with a sad smile. Ka grinned. Helena stared at Ka and then at her former house. "How did you know?" She shuddered.
"That's my business... to know..." replied Ka.
Helena burst into tears. "Everything I had ... is gone...and I have to stay here. I do not want to! Do you hear me? I wish I could die. Why did you do that? Why did you save me?" Helena yelled at Ka and her lips went violet.
"Calm down", Ka said gently, but it had no effect. "You must live. We need you. I will let you know later. Now come on..."
"Listen you ...," Helena wanted to give him some names but nothing bad enough came on her mind, " I do not know you and I am not going anywhere with you. I feel miserable because I need my stuff and I am going to get some."
"I will not argue with you." said Ka and made a strange move with his right hand. Then she followed him without knowing why and how.
[edit] Trapped
Gina bawled into her hands. All there was of Gina now was crying. An apocalyptic, diseased crying, one that corrodes a heart and destroys a world. Where was Mark in all this?
That cut her more than the cause of her tears. How did her life turn to shit like this. She was a prisoner. Gina was trapped at the mercy of some awful group. She was a prisoner in her own apartment. The woman next door, whom she was not allowed to speak with, had left the building with a strange man. Gina suspected she too was a prisoner. Her neighbour's name was Helena, or so she believed. Would someone come for her and take her away from all this? Or would this go on forever. Gina thought of Mark. Had he looked for her when she did not return to the apartment they had shared. What did he think had happened to her?
[edit] Wooster?
"I am willing to revise that theory though!" George was backtracking.
"Well, here I was saying that famous writers are taken seriously because they write seriously," George began," but then a name came into my head, and hasn't gone out again......"
"That's beside the point," Jim AND George now chimed in. "But what is the point?" Walry scratched his very round head.
"The point is that Jeeves, and Wooster and the likes are a much loved British institution. The extreme silliness of names such as that do not seem to have done a jot of harm," George finished with glee.
"Yes...... but.." Jimmy hesitated.
"But what? Now it's you with the 'buts'".
"But, the writer of Jeeves and Wooster had to flee to America to escape the wrath of the Brits," Jim said laughing ironically. "The price of silly names!"
"That reminds me," Walry added smiling cheekily, as if he were about to go and add more naughty words to the manuscript when no one was looking. "Remember when we were kids, we used to tease each other for the preposterous names that we gave the characters in the plays we wrote."
"How can I forget," Jim laughed, "Stephen Taskey... and James and Ted Fingersnipps.... and of course my all time favorite, Mark Goodrem Moddisum. ... The initials of which spell MGM after the great movie company... ha. Preposterous."
"But there was one very weird thing that has happened as the years went on," George said lowering his voice.
"What?" Jim and Walry both chimed in this time.
"I have met people with names almost exactly like that. It is as if 'fate' or whatever you like to call it comes up and slaps us on the face and says, 'any silly thing you make up, I will show you that I have already done in reality!"
Jim and Walry nodded in reverent amazement.
[edit] The unseen Sniper
As he drew a tight bead on the subject locked in the crosshairs, it was without a moment's hesitation that he quietly squeezed the trigger. These foolish faceless ghosts had been busy for days on end compiling tables of contents, working out characters, developing threads, editing each other, an endless self consuming loop of creation, consumption and erasure.
As another victim fell prey to the ego sniper, the smugness on his chin was unmistakable. "I did it for their own good. After all, this is a collaborative project, not the province of fools!"
He quietly broke down his weapon and moved to the next location, erased sections at will simply for the criminally easy glee of destruction. Under his arm, a cardboard box, with one yellow frog inside.
Then he go out and he cry:" Al paredoooonnnn... San Miguel"
He was a stranger to her. In her eyes he could see the loneliness of years.
"How much time left to the next bus?" she asked to start the conversation.
"Who knows!" He mumbled.
He then opened the bag and took a cell phone, dialling a number. She was too beautiful to ignore. She doubted that he was a tourist planning board the next bus.
"No, darling" He suddenly said in a loud voice. She was startled.
"How do you know what I was thinking?" she asked in surprise.
"I can read minds," he replied.
"So do you know all about me?"
"Sure," replied and mentioned her 3 children, her husband, Charlie, and her job.
She was shocked.
He took up the phone, "I am calling a hotel."
"For what?"
"To reserve a double room. I am a double agent, and I always have twice the fun!" he winked.
[edit] Mass Confusion (901 Things to Do when Wasted on Smarties)
Artie fell asleep on his keyboard. When he awoke, he looked at the words his head had spelt out on the screen during his slumber -
"On the nature of toads; in general, they are terrestrial animals, rarely entering water, unlike their cousins the frogs. This was Carlo's recollection, when he paused to regard a particularly fat specimen of amphibian that was crouched, in warlike posture, on his knee, as he swam through the dissipating fogs of unconsciousness, back into the hazy mist that qualified as his waking state of mind these days."
It didn't seem to make any sense. Artie selected the 'strychnine' text, and hit 'delete'. He was glad it was gone. If only those fake stories could be the same, if only delete and a finger tip could bring Kim to trust him again, forgive him, spend evenings laughing over huge piles of sea food again.
Artie looked up briefly from his manuscript. Creativity has its own meaning. He had always been fascinated by the likes of David Bowie, an artist in many ways as well as a musician. Artie recalled how Bowie apparently wrote some of his songs by cutting up random words and sentences and then choosing the words in any order. The meaning was random but the effect was often inspired. Jim did not know where this section would relate to the whole, but he marked it off and was quite delighted with it, in its self-contained glory. "Why does someone have to be assumed to be 'on something' just because they write in a surreal and 'fantastical' way?" (Borges,Calvino,Joyce,Vonnegut,Marquez,Pavic, et al sure to spin on these words or at the least grimace and move on with a shrug in the ether of some great beyond) He wished for deep ocean, pressed his eyes tight.
[edit] Stalin Forever
That night, Mrs Brown sat at Stalin's, a pub whose name she could only guess the author had taken at random from the S section of the phone book. The floor had remained sticky, unmopped since a time he could not remember, and the wooden stools chipped and falling apart. The occasional crack of the cue ball breaking the colorful triangle of balls into a flying array reminded him only of the unseen whip that cracked daily the meaningless grind of her life. Because all workers have a meaningless life, as devised by those devious capitalists.
The bar itself which he sat leaning against seemed almost invisible. The warm buttery orange light from the few antiquated hurricane gas lamps hanging above could not reach behind it so that the bar appeared set into the wall, reminding her of the eyes he saw when gazing into the mirror after a sleepless night. It almost seemed to be made of pixels, jagged on the edges like the game world second life, an ill formed dream or hallucination. The bargirl did not talk. She grunted when she was ready to take your order, and made no sound at all when she was tipped. It was perfect. What came next, however, was not part of the perfection. Mrs Brown had not expected it, especially not tonight. Dr. Peter Pepper opened the door casually and strolled in. "He doesn't understand what he's doing," thought Mrs Brown, "You don't stroll into this bar. You peer inside first to make sure no one you know is there. Then you carefully walk in, head down and 2 fingers firmly pressing on your gooch." Dr. Pepper had ruined Mrs Browns night already.
"Browny? You're here again?" Peter said cheerfully. Mrs Brown sighed. She hated that name, and she hated that Peter came here for fun, for something different. Peter had bested her that afternoon, to the thunderous applause of many cats at the old-fashioned musical instrument showdown in Lansing. "I'm always here," Mrs Brown grumbled into her beer.
Peter looked around the room. He couldn't see the bar girl, but assumed she was there, and so sat down next to Mrs Brown.
"Great," thought Mrs Brown, "Now Pepper has everyone calling me that."
A grunt across the bar startled Peter. "I'll take a Glenlivet rocks." He felt the girl move away and heard what he guessed was her blowing caked dust off of the bottle. Mrs Brown didn't move. Peter glanced at her before taking another look around the bar. On the wall opposite the bar there was a television. It hung high against the corner of another wall that jutted out in the middle, separating the room. A few tables lay in the section with the TV while two pool tables stood poorly lit in the other.
The man crossed the street and opened the door of Stalin's. Obliviously unnoticed behind him, the man was narrowly missed by a wildly swerving tractor-trailer hauling a load of cheap Chinese microwave ovens up from Nashville, the squealing tires leaving long, acrid-smelling black streaks across the hot pavement, the outraged trucker hoarsely screaming as his grip on the wheel slipped. Angie looked up, and her jaw dropped.
"Grant?" she said. Shade let his latte drop back to its saucer, looked at this Grant standing at the entrance of his very own ‘o.k. café’ showdown. A white microwave oven, its open door flailing, impacted against the battered newspaper kiosk outside, its shattered plastic shards rattling gently against the café window. He wondered what she was to him, if he was anything to her and if either would ever rotate back into his world after he stood up, walked out and tipped the pair back into whatever story book he was, gratefully, about to leave behind. He stood up and shuffled out between the too close tables, fixing Grant with a bitter stare on his way through for measure. Shade’s lungs gulped for the first hit of Indian summer air. He felt he was sweating from the inside out. He felt giddy. He squeezed his eyes tight shut for a moment, then moved off down the sidewalk, fumbling his cell phone free from his sweat-sticky pants pocket. He was pushing digits on his cell, stepping over the scattered microwave ovens by instinct, when it flashed in his mind again
…a faraway place where the dragons sleep where nobody has a care, where there are ice cream mountains and champagne fountains and… He sucked his thumb where the needle had been, shook his head.. ..Concentrate.. she’s about to… The line on the end of his cell was buzzing. It buzzed, it answered, lipstick and perfume and cold indifference puffed out the speaker like a little black storm cloud into Shade's face. He pictured her in the back of the limo, stroking that infernal dead pet, squeezing the hearts of men.
eine dunkle Gestalt
Well? "He just showed up" And the simpering Cinderella waiting for him? "She'd been waiting for three hours. She looked happy" Good. He's the last one. For you, you’re done. Go back to your cheating wife.
Shade flipped his phone shut, leaned on a wall and looked down at his hands. A tiny, scabbed over puncture wound on the end of his thumb flickered at him like the first star. He squeezed it hard against his forefinger. Pressure built, his thumb reddened, the pinprick popped, a droplet of blood bloomed.
In the cafe, a painful silence hung in the air, a silence more deafening than the roar of the F15s engines that Grant was so used to. Disbelief was a thick cloud that obstructed the view between Grant and Angie.
"We thought you were dead! Where in the world have you been?"
Her voice was raised a couple of octaves, shrill, and penetrating the thick, smog-laden afternoon air.
Then silence. The deafening silence. She was trembling- from happiness or disbelief (more likely), Grant could not tell. He was never a man of many words, and the cat had got his tongue real good this time. He missed her, yet, he didn't know what to say.
And then the gunshots. BANG BANG BANG BANG The gunshots that haunt his dreams even now. They rang through the thick afternoon air, the air filled with the never disappearing smell of beer in that ridiculously small cafe, the Stalin.
It was exactly as you see in those cheesy films all the time, where the speed of film is purposely slowed down so you can see the bullet, its smooth trajectory, its merciless bite. And yet it happened in a split-second.
The briefest of silence, after the gun shot and before all hell bro. Both men lay in a pool of blood, next to their fallen stools. One of the men was wearing a bright red shirt which looked like it was melting all over the floor as the blood spread wider.
Pandora's Box had been opened. And like a microwave oven with the door wrenched off in a high-speed impact with a parking meter, there was no way the lid could be put back on again.
"Excuse me, but when do I get to write what I want to write without it being edited mercilessly?", Idego yelled. After all, Idego had been published and reviewed in the New York times, or was it the Poopton Gazette out of dead rat gulch Iowa, or was it all an audacious fictional voice born out of some writer's break from writing a crouton recipe book for a day job?
Whatever the context, Idego was eaten by a story.
[edit] Old Friends
"Hey, mate, the picture show's down the street." Chad leaned in and glared at Little James from across the cafe table.
"Why would I, being the 12-billion fingered typist, ever want to and see some half-baked, half-cocked, linear, predictable story written by some hack who probably types with 2 fingers?"
Chad leaned in and glared even harder. "I suppose you think that you've got something better in that notepad under your arm there? 12-billion fingered typist, huh? From where I'm standing, looks like you've only got ten. And short, stubby fingers at that. You think you're something so special. You think you’re in control of..."
"I have everything under control. Even you," interrupted James.
"Guess what, Jackson? You win the grand prize for nerve. No one is in control of me. Do you know who I am?" Chad blurted out in his usual way. Never thinking before he spoke.
"I know you better than anyone I've ever written about. You're my..." James trailed off. "Right, well, you probably won't believe me, but you are a character in my story." James tried to finish his thought politely.
Chad was beginning to boil. "Prove it!" Chad demanded.
James scribbled on his manuscript: This two-bit writer will never learn, he thought. Then for some reason, unbeknownst to him, Chad began thinking of the number 71
"Seventy-one." James whispered quietly.
"What did you say!?" Chad exploded.
"Seventy-one," James quietly replied again, "is the number you are thinking of, but you have no idea why."
"And I suppose you do Mr. 12-billion fingers!" Chad said in that mocking tone of his.
James started wolfing down another slice. He scribbled in his notebook once more. Chad began to calm down and take it all in- his existence, his purpose, everything. And soon it all began to make some sense to him. He began to see things James' way.
Chad was silent. "How did you know?"
James did not say a word.
"Fair enough. Pass the glass of Fernet Branca!"
[edit] Chance Encounters
Chad was enjoying his luck at a casino, the number nine was proving very lucky for him tonight, as she walked passed him. At first Chad didn't even notice the creamy white elbow that brushed him slightly as she walked by, nor did he notice the sway in her walk, but as soon as that same banana decided it was it's time to go and broke free from the hat only to fall in Chad drink, she had his full attention.
- "Oh I'm so terribly sorry about that, I've asked the manager to have someone fix this monstrous thing. Things are always falling off." Apologized Cassey with an honest expression on her face.
- "Don't worry 'bout it, said Chad. It was a complementary drink anyway. Besides, I've been known to enjoy a banana or two". Chad poked at the subject.
- "Oh, really? We'll I've got a whole crate in the back, if you want to have some." Cassey replied to a silly flirt.
"Do you like to Tango?" Chad asked solemnly.
