Section 5
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[edit] Serendipity
Lying on his bed during the middle of the afternoon, as if willing something to happen, he knew he was frustrated. He had just finished listening to the song for the ninth time on his old C.D. player. Interestingly it was the ninth track on the C.D. Number nine..... number nine..... number nine......
the lyrics buzzed in his head....... "go to the city...go to the city....." Obviously things don't just come to YOU, you have to make them happen....... Except this once !
The doorbell rang. Jim slowly ascended from his mattress and went to answer the door. He shouldn't answer it, as he was in no fit state to talk to anyone for all manner of reasons.
He opened the door and his face must have revealed utter surprise.
The officer was standing there. He put his reflective sunglasses up higher on his head and smiled.
Jim stood staring blankly.
"Ah, Jim. I..... Would you mind if I came in," the officer explained.
Jim shook himself out of his stunned silence. Sure. Come in. He swept all the old magazines and newspapers off his lounge chair and beckoned the officer to take a seat.
"Care for a drink or something?" Jim asked uncertainly.
"No thanks. I have come to ask you a couple of questions about the other day."
"Oh yes?" Jim said with eyebrows slightly raised. Actually only the left eyebrow rose.
"About the video camera surveillance," the officer added hurriedly.
"Oh yes," Jim smiled. "That." There was a faint image of someone on it if I remember? But, you guys are good at blowing it up bigger?" Jim suggested helpfully, whilst looking down at the carpet.
There was a long pause. When Jim eventually looked up, he caught the remnants of an ever-so subtle smile. "Jim, it's about the missing sections." The officer was looking at him with his mouth opened a quarter, giving the impression of approachability.
"Oh," Jim said uncertainly. " I... really can't explain that."
The police officer got up and sat next to Jim and kept speaking. "Jim, did you erase any sections yourself?" The officer asked. His face very close to Jim's own face. He was not being threatening, but the proximity impelled Jim to be candid.
"No sir. I would never do that." Jim was nervous but emphatic on that point. "Did I tell you I have a security camera that films inside my apartment too?" Jim asked quietly.
The officer paled momentarily. "Does... Do, you..... is there anything on it to .... explain why the tape was erased?"
Jim smiled. He was calming down more as the conversation went on. He was enjoying this. Jim could smell the scent of his own cologne and knew that it was filling up the space between them. This was the only cologne Jim liked. It smelt of sandalwood and old cigars. He liked himself when he wore it.
The officer took a deep breath, with his mouth closed, and finished this present topic by saying. "Jim, do you know who owns this building. Is it your employer and does this employer control the security cameras?" The offer briefly rested his hand on Jim's shoulder as he asked these key questions. Jim, for a split second, wondered what it would feel like to be arrested. It would be a disorientating feeling, he imagined. Not that he had done anything to deserve that.
"A man named Mikhael. I have only met him once or twice," Jim smiled.
The conversation ended there.
Fifteen minutes later, the officer descended to his car and drove off.
Jim wondered whether Mikhael might have had something to do with the missing video footage. As his employer, he certainly had access. Jim had never really trusted Mikhael.
[edit] Charlie Goes For A Swim
A small gray cat walks through a tiny cat-sized door, set in the kitchen door, to the Outside.
Once there, he smells a recent canine deposit, hmm, interesting... but not all that interesting. He then ducks through a small hole at the bottom of the fence, and comes out on to the sidewalk. He looks around and sees a dog across the street attached to his human by a leash. The dog is very happily leading his human toward the next street, momentarily pausing every now and again to sniff and raise his leg to leave a calling card. Charlie decides to go the other way, so he turns right and starts walking toward the culvert that's a block and a half away.
About half way there a female human spots Charlie and attempts to make friends with him. Charlie decides she smells ok, not like most female monkey-things! They douse themselves with horrid smelling chemicals for some bizarre reason... probably something to with mating, who knows. But not this one, thank the Divine Pussy for that! So he walks slowly over to her, she kneels and extends her hand to stroke him as he rubs himself against her thigh and lets her hand run down his entire length. He begins to purr a little bit. As she pets him, she bends down a little further and plants her lips on his head, then sort of kneads the top of his head with her lips as a kind of kiss.
Wow, that's weird. They usually don't get that intimate with you that quickly, he thinks. Oh well, humans are strange. After he's done with her, he leaves her kneeling there and walks away. He's got to find that thing. Before it's too late.
Charlie walks on and stops only once, to briefly urinate in a particularly well maintained flower garden in the front lawn of a very nice looking house at the end of the block. When he gets to the culvert, he takes a left and continues walking for a little while.
Then suddenly he sees something and smells something that makes his senses go into overdrive. There on the ground, a human, in a red shirt, blood everywhere. Even over the extreme conflict of scents, gunpowder and other noxious fumes, Charlie knows who it is.
[edit] Picasso on a Realist Day
The banana was yellow and bent. He had expected it to be bent, for most bananas were, but it was the way it was bent that was surprising. The banana was bent into the shape of male genitalia. It really was most peculiar. He wondered what it would taste like - but for some reason he found it difficult to consider eating the phallus-shaped yellow fruit.
Maybe he could use it to make a smoothie, he thought? But he would still feel strange peeling the banana, almost as if he were performing a bizzare circumcision. It was a strange thing to spend his Saturday morning thinking about, he realised, but then it was a very strange banana.
[edit] Viscountless
Jim paused, mid-thought. There was nothing usual in this. He put the pen down, with Carlo and his Ninja assassins from Latvia still spinning in his head. He knew what this reminded him of. He was not a music scientist, and yet he knew that Ella Fitzgerald was the greatest singer there ever lived. He had always been fascinated by the notes of Fitzgerald, who not only sang well, but also dared to make the listener conscious of their part in the music. They expected a note that came next, but when you listened to Ella, one never knew if the following note would be that note or some other marvelous note, higher, lower, longer, shorter, with vibrato or without. You just didn't know, how many times you listened. During the song, the singer made it clear that the song is yours, about your expectations, wishes, desires. The listener is the music, and it is unfolding even as they listen to it. Outrageous. Fascinating. Scandalous.
Jim's friend Georgy interrupted his thoughts: "You know what, Big Jimmy?"
"What, George?"
"Have you ever noticed how natural and good people's sense of humor is?"
"Pardon?" James said in one of those annoying faux French accents.
"I mean, go to most workplaces, and listen. There is natural and full laughter coming from the lunch-room, and from the floor of the shop. Everyday people, in ordinary workplaces across the country are naturally funny, probably better than the fellows we see on the telly."
Jim paused. George had a point there. He recalled his early days in the pizza shop. The two older blokes who trained him, had everyone in fits of laughter most days of most weeks. They were good days. He sighed as he looked back. If you think about pizza you see Naples with its sun, its gulf with the tall pinaster and the volcano. You eat pizza in a hot, comfortable room in semi-darkness. Native Italy is proud of its pizza, even if the country pretends not to be conscious.
Maybe, Jim thought to himself, it is why it is much easier to write humorous things. Maybe it comes naturally. Perhaps it is a diversion from the harsh and the sad, and there is much too much of that. With that thought, and grateful to George for this insight, Jim went back to his manuscript and put a few "arses" and "elbows"; "pups" and "penguins" into the text - just to liven it up.
After surveying his work, Jim smiled as he took up his pen again, ready to go down another tangent. He remembered another famous Calvino story, "The Halved Viscount" in which the protagonist's body is halved by a deep cut. Was Mikhael like that character? He had two important issues: the first was the violence that ruled his world.
Jim wrote: He said to Eva: "My name is Mikhael. Would you like to drink a coffee with me?"
Mikhael's second issue was loneliness. Nevertheless not everybody could enter in his interior space. Now he had to choose and not be chosen. He smiled as Eva answered "Here? I thought we might go somewhere else."
(Then Jim changed tack)...........As the first raindrop hit him square in the eye, Carlo had a sudden flash to the dark times of early childhood which shaped his life. He remembered the plastic womb of his mother, Petri Dish, swimming in nutrients, not a care in the world. It had all come crashing down when Doctor Fillango accidentally dropped a Dorito crumb on his twin brother, killing him instantly with its cheesy edge like a guillotine upon the head of a French aristocrat.
"Simon!!!!!!!!" he had tried to cry, but could not because he had no mouth and he could not scream.
As he had swum around the inseminated corpse of his brother Simon, the child his father always favored because he came last, Carlo had had a flashback of the good times, before he left his father's cruel loins like so much discarded dishwater slipping through the cracks of a manhole.
But now a tear mixed with rainwater ran down Carlo's cheek, and he cried for his brother for the first time, years too late and with malice for the dead. He shook his fist and cursed Doctor Fillango. "Damn you! One day you will get yours, Doctor Fillango! One day you will get yours!"
And so our story comes to a close..... Who say you can close the story ..?
The doctor and all of his friends went for a tour to India...........
[edit] The Missing Paragraph Found
Across the city they trundled. The wallah strained the tiny muscles on his wiry legs to accommodate the rickshaw and Carlo's bulk. The air mixed jasmine scents with rather high-density carbon monoxide. High-rise hotels and electrical shops testified to Bangalore's burgeoning economic self-confidence. Twenty minutes later, the rickshaw wobbled past the aquarium and, five minutes after that, arrived outside a small pet shop where Carlo could see, inside, a wallpaper of fishtanks....
Now he understood that the only thing in life he could desire was that wonderful wallpaper. Oh! If he could only lay his hands on such a beautiful thing! Oh! But he knew that these fantasies could never come true, so he turned back and went away, where he could forget his unreachable desires.
Then, during his escape from himself, he encountered a queer person who asked him : "Why do you escape?" He answered: "Because I cannot face the cruel reality" The queer one slapped hardly poor Carlo, and said: "Fool! Follow your desires, or you will end up like me, a poor idiot that slaps people and gives them useless pieces of advice! Run now! Never, never, never stop yourself, act before you're sleeping with the fishes!"
[edit] How I loved a certain type of fierljeppen
Atop the office building on the corner of Newborne and Imperial streets, people were looking down on to people one last time, as they leapt giving up their life in the hope that something would happen once they die. Everyone watched to see who would be next. Breaking filters off cigarettes and taking strong tokes, before crushing them out on an empty beer can. The living dead, they were often called. Sometimes they changed their minds at the last minute - maybe there were those who changed their mind when it was too late. But there was no way of knowing.
My dad beat my mom twice a day with a wet newspaper. Each time I went out to school she had his portion of news printed on her bones. Sharps hit without meaning. Her body was dull. I realized what was going on, the day, that day I forgot my notebooks...I saw everything and I could not stand how he was treating her, so I tried to defend her... I was not successful. Since that day he began beating me as well.
Suddenly, the sky was filled with the thudding throb-throb-throb of several helicopters coming south from up the river, and all heads at the corner of Newborne and Imperial St turned to watch as three black police gunships swooped low towards the Suicide Slums and blasted away with their rocket pods. The missiles shrieked like a chorus of demons, and towering fireballs of twisting flame and black smoke blossomed above the jagged skyline of the Slums. They knew this day would come.
"Hell on Earth," Minister Wagenknecht muttered as she stood at the window of her tenth-floor City Hall office and watched the carnage begin across the river.
A tear ran down her right cheek, and she turned away.
A few minutes later, as the gunships ceased firing and broke off their attack, a convoy of police armored-personnel-carriers and tanks rumbled down Constitution Avenue into the heart of the blazing Slums, and as they approached Freedom Square angry mobs poured out of surrounding buildings and swarmed towards the oncoming vehicles.
"LIVE FREE OR DIE!" one woman screamed, and she hurled a flaming Molotov cocktail at the leading tank. The leading tank opened fire, bullets ripping open flesh.
"This should not have happened," the commanding officer said, realizing that he should have led the charge instead of an inexperienced officer, young and trigger happy . Most of those in the army knew a Molotov did very little to one of these babies and yet obviously this idiot paid no attention. Now the mob had become infuriated. Time for some tear gas. At least it will calm them down; for now.
On the other side of town a little boy became upset at his game.
"That does it!" Bill was typing furiously now. The images in the room around him had turned to dancing flames, an inferno of emotions as it sought to match his mood! He banged on the keyboard. Send, send, send!
He knew that he was merely marking time, as he was certain he should have his mind elsewhere. But he couldn't think about that. He just couldn't. It was far too shocking, and he was far too worried about his own fate. Did that make him selfish?
"Shut the hell up!" he replied, "Why do I keep thinking this crap?" He was now talking to himself, trying to prevent his brain from thinking about it. The unoriginal clichés just kept pouring out like blood from old, old wounds.
"When You Say Nothing At All" began playing in the background and Jim found tears rolling down his cheeks and dripping onto his polo shirt. "Oh, the pain!" he cried, grief-stricken.
Grabbing his cat, he began to slash his wrists (horizontally, of course) with its claws. Upon finding that it wasn't working, Jim ripped the covers and attempted to tear through the skin with the metal shreds.
"What are you doing, Jim?" a voice boomed from inside his head.
"You stay out of this. I know what I'm doing. And I don’t need you to tell me I'm talking to myself," Jim shouted to himself knowing how pointless it was.
"Fairly true, but you don't have to do this. You must trust your inner voice. You have neglected me for so long with your obsessions and fantasies and spending hours staring at a screen of violence and mayhem."
"What makes me think my own mind can help me?"
"There is much buried here within your own mind. you'd be surprised at just how close you are to happiness. It's just that you need to trust fate. Don't doubt yourself."
Jim pondered this for a moment, the shard of metal still clutched in his hand. He then dropped it and started cleaning up. He always wanted a life less ordinary.
He laughed loudly now that he thought of it. He sure did have a way of turning his life into a comedy. Maybe he'll write about it someday in a book. But that will have to wait for another time.
==
[edit] Paradox
The red car pulled up outside Reggie's, as Chad Thompson put his paper down. He'd been looking at the photos on the sports pages, the healthy athletes blurring in his eyes while he pondered that photo of some ugly pottery. Why would anyone care about a useless piece of clay made by a young Joan Collins, escaped him. A figure slid out of the car and walked around the back of the diner.
"You like 'em smoked? There's nothing like smoked ram chops," the bartender asked. Suddenly there was a movement in the corner of the room, as if everyone had been called to dinner simultaneously. He recognized the smell of punji sticks from a time he did not like to recall in a place where he did not dare to go; not even if it meant seeing her one last time.
A body slowly arose from a dank corner of the cave. There was the sound of slowly dripping water. "Where am I?" ... "Where have I been" ... "oh. ... who am I?" It had the feeling of having been here before. It started to explore and found that cave expanded as it move around in it, the sound of dripping water always there. Eventually, it noticed a small trickle of water running along the cave wall from where the dripping sound originated. It pooled randomly on the floor and formed rivulets as the walls undulated around corners. It started to explore its world... once again.
"Oh my God! Not again!", it thought. "How many times has this happened to me?" This time, it was a man. Last time, a woman. Before that, a child. But every time started with the same cavern in the corner of the room, with the same dripping sound resonating through the chamber.
The mellow sound of a saxophone drifted past the caves, luring it outside.
BOOM!- A brilliant bright light and suddenly Sven was sitting up in bed panting, his sheets covered in sweat. What the heck was that dream, so many stories, none of them made sense but they all seemed so real. Like fragments of past lives on parallel universes. His keen sense of observation (which had been present, he noted, in all other incarnations of himself) unconsciously picked up on something odd. He was animated... And a duck. This did not seem right, but not quite wrong. He looked at his hands, or wings, and noted the strange almost rotoscopish look to them. Was this real? Was he on strychnine? Did he do drugs? His skin tingled as the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He shuddered.
His head was throbbing with pain and every once in a while a white streak of light flew threw his head, sometimes laced with images like him on a picnic with a nice girl (as a human) on the moon, or him solving a sudoku with a pencil that he was moving with his mind. Something wasn't right here. Where Did he belong?
Sven rose from his bed and threw on some duck-clothes. He could see through his window he was in Oudegast this time around, and it was 1:00 pm but the sun wasn't out and the moon shown brightly in the sky. He rode the elevator down from his penthouse and hailed a taxi car. As he stepped into the car a man in a wheelchair ran over his toe and yelled at him through an electronic voice box. "Hey Sven I think I have solved your problem!"
"Yes Rintje?" Sven replied.
"Sven, have you ever heard of the Thialf formula?"
"Is it the formula that turns female German skaters into superwomen?"
Rintje glanced at the watch on his speech machine, "No Sven. Now it is time for you to go. See you in a couple of months. Have fun! Oh and do me a favor, next time you find a non diseased me, bring me back the cure will ya?"
"Sure thing, Rintje" Sven quacked.
[edit] Tango in the early morning
Big James loved to Tango. His primal killing instinct came out when he could dance free fall on the floor. It seems that Jim was a rival to Chad in everything, even in their common insane desire to kill after tangoing. Tangoing to kill; just call me Big. Mr Big. That was his call card, and had been for many years. His followers adored him. Would die for him. Would sacrifice their souls just to see him Tango. Until now. In the same moment another story took place in Hamburger Ham burg. There were a few tiny flats with common bathroom just off the Reperbahn and it was quite dreadful place. None of sane mortals could live there more than two days but there was a woman who has spent here already more than two years of her life. Helena - a girl from Moldova. Originally well raised, smart and pretty, in her 21 years there was not much left of her former existence. ...They met in central square, in the Arabian Deserts. Each one prepared to do duty for his honor. "Ya think ya can beat me Mr B? Ya too big for ya size! U know mah name? I'm the Tango Prisoner!" With that, the little man with the long beard tap danced. Mr B boomed appreciatively. "You tap well, my friend. But tango is not for small children, and you've missed the point entirely with your tapping." The little man stopped and frowned. He flicked his mobile open and beeped a few numbers. After a few shorts and mm-hmms he yeehaed and screamed:" Ya dead Mr G! I Called my lawyer, and ya know what he say? He say I could sue your pants off for a fortune! You slander mah name Mr G! Ah yes!~" James was angry. Who was this lil' fellow challenging him to a Tango fight? He clapped and a few voluptuous women immediately appeared. Classy, polished, with no revealing outfits. That was how he liked his Tango partners. And then the Tango Prisoner whistled and from the sands of the desert, out came 4 cosmetically-enhanced women with Barbie bodies and no underwear. Big James started foaming at the mouth with the sight of these scantily clad dancers. And then the scantily clad dancers started to Tango around him...
And that was all James Big saw as he faded away in an ambulance, to be cut up by a statistics-spouting Sturgeon and assassinated by a woman with an ugly black mink coat. How foolish of him to have thought that this was a set up.
It did not make sense though. Bob knew his identity, but certainly not anyone from around here. No he will find out who did this even if he had to temporarily give up his way of life. Then again, maybe he could use it to his advantage.
Firstly though he would have to get patched up by these second rate doctors. Hopefully they wont screw up to much otherwise he may never get his chance for revenge and he did not want to die just yet.
Back in the central square where the assassination took place, the woman in the ugly black mink coat and the Tango Prisoner met in an outdoor cafe. The breeze was cooling on their skins but at least it was better then the hot afternoon sun that would normally be blazing down upon them by now.
"It is done. That fool will no longer be able to tango any more. You shall be the best tango dancer ever," Said the woman in the ugly black mink coat.
"I must admit that this was easier then I had expected but I must ask you Claudia, are you sure that he has been eliminated?" asked the Tango Prisoner with a slight frown.
"Of course he is. I'm not a sharp shooter for nothing," said Claudia feeling slightly insulted by the Tango Prisoner's comments.
"Then just one more thing then if you don't mind me asking?"
"Sure thing."
"You see if I'm to become the master of tango then I will need a partner. And since you have such a beautiful and full body I was hoping you would be that partner?"
"I'd be delighted but I don't know how to tango."
"That’s quite alright. It is a man's job to lead the woman in this dance."
With that they got up and left the cafe and headed for the nearest camel to take them to the airport, laughing all the way at their private joke. They would be heading for the international tango dance off over in the United States.
(Jim, smiled to himself as he surveyed his page of writing. "I suppose a lot of authors have named characters after themselves before, either obviously or subtly. But, how many authors have named a character after themselves and then killed themselves off in the plot?" Jim was touched by the irony of this and continued writing.....)
