I hope it will be the handsome prince or even some deluded wind spirit.
Not the veiled woman- no more of her, I beg mentally. Even as I am praying, something falls beside me. It is a gauzy cloth with golden embroidery giving it a luminous hue. Is this a handkerchief the prince threw me to let me know I am his favourite for tonight, or a veil?
I will soon find out. The only thing I have to do is to follow the jasmine scent.
I cover my head with the gossamer cloth and I walk in the labyrinthine corridors of the bottle where I am imprisoned.
Me Time
Steve Dodd
I was sitting next to my friend watching the house band. “Why are we always playing catch-up in reverse?” I said. “Look, blues rock.”
I didn’t notice the old man shamble up and sit next to us. Peripheral vision told he needed a more careful shave. There were silver whiskers stuck in the crevices of his cheeks. When he spoke I realised it was Bob Dylan.
To be cool, we tried not to ask him questions about his career. It was hard to concentrate. We talked about snow storms and guitar magazines. He was nice. Afterwards I walked home through the park trying to capture my thoughts. At half past three I sat on a bench and took out my notebook.
My friend found me writing. Until he spoke I did not know he was a hunchback. “There are bullies,” he said. Then they came. Four preppie geeks. The tallest wore a salmon V-neck and a crew-cut.
“Writing recipes,” he said looming over me.
Neutral expression and no sudden movements, I tried to ameliorate the situation, but he bent over me his hands making fists behind his back. When I stabbed him in the left eye with my pen I was worried about fingerprints.
“See, get back!” I yelled at the three henchmen.
They retreated not so far.
“Want some?” I demanded and twisted the pen in his eyeball.
Oh the cap was back. The blood may spoil most fingerprints but under the cap?
“You go too far,” muttered my friend. Or maybe it was me?
I hoped Bob would understand. The dark bushes were evergreen. The light from passing traffic showed their leaves. My friend tugged my arm. Pulled from the scene I looked back. The tableau by the bench was like a Caravaggio.
“What were you thinking?” he asked.
This is always a good question.
“If we walk long enough, we shall see the sunrise. Then we can go for coffee to stay awake.”
The park is near the pier. We walked in step. My friend cast a crooked shadow. At the shore he struggled to keep his balance on the pebbles. There was a lump under his foot.
Sometimes it is lonely on the beach. In my pocket I felt for my notebook. It felt good to find it there. The cover was tacky with blood. When it dried my fingerprints would be recorded. This was like those times I dressed quickly and was glad my T-shirt had a design on the front so I would know which way was forward.
The dawn was unspectacular because of all the clouds. Weak starts are all right, ask any writer.
The Education of K. in the Land of Falling Fish
Trent Walters
“[M]y education has done me great harm in some ways.... I was educated... [n]ot… in a ruin in the mountains... beside the lake.” — Franz Kafka’s Diary
K., a scarab beetle, was educated in the Zinc Mountains. His school was the magnetic silver fish of the mountain lake— where they clanked together and separated after vigorous fin-wagging.
Not truly a scarab, K. had painted his wings a dark, iridescent emerald green, to make him appear so, and his teachers never thought to question his claim. Still, the easy lie made him uneasy, and he did not hang out with the fish after hours. The fish, being magnetic and attractive to many types depending on one’s alignment, probably would not have minded, but it still shamed him.
K.’s home was a small cave he crawled into when the birds came out, hungry. Not far from his cave, opposite the lake, were the ruins of a Mayan civilization yet to be discovered— at least by humans who’d remained human all their lives.
K. had not always lived in idyllic beauty. In fact, he had been a human among humans, laboring in an assembly line of accountants at a large bank where he had punched numbers into a cruncher and pulled a lever that stamped another number elsewhere. After five years on the job, he was proud of how he’d eroded his father’s debt to the bank. They could see the day loom nearer when they would be free to live as ordinary citizens, even buy a house if not own it.
But during the night some months ago, K. had transformed into a cockroach or some such scuttling bug. What he was he had never bothered to check in the mirror above his dresser drawers.
He could have hung around the apartment, waiting for the doctors to cure something they had never seen or holding his breath for a miracle cure, but knowing himself and his family, he would have stared out the window dreaming of life as it could have been, and his family would have resented him. Better to crawl down a drain, to follow the pipes to the sewer, to seek a crevice in the earth, to crawl deeper and deeper… until he’d crawled out the other side: a small cave with a lakeside view.
K. felt lucky to be alive in a world so much stranger than his former environs. A day’s walk from his cave loomed the blocky pyramid above the squat, stone buildings at its feet. As vines and old growth obscured the pyramid, K. had thought it another mountain until his fishy instructors had informed him otherwise.
Inside the stone village wandered ghosts, milling corn, selling pupusas, arguing and gossiping on street corners. They felt lucky to be alive even though priests, it was rumoured, raped their children before the sacrifices. They laughed tilting back in crude chairs; they ate, drank fermented juice, and talked late into the night. In bed, they murmured and embraced one another against the chill. In the morning they woke and started again.
They didn’t see or ignored K. K. told himself that was a good thing, for they would no doubt sacrifice him as well. K. crawled across their walls, stared down from the ceiling at them, at their dirt floors, at their ghostly discards, and remained until he could stand it no longer, and scuttled back to his cave.
He visited the fish in the morning. They gaped open-mouthed at his stories although they were not surprised. They knew about the village all their lives.
“How?” K. asked.
“We are gods,” said one red-hued fish who was interrupted by a second blue-hued fish: “Albeit fallen ones.”
“I don’t follow,” said K.
“That’s because you can’t. We fell from the heavens as all fish do in Honduras. It gives us a better, loftier perspective.”
K. rotated his tiny legs around his body, which he did when deep in thought. “The limits of credulity are strained at the seams.”
The fish nodded. “So it seems, but you don’t wear clothes, and the Mayans didn’t believe us either. Look where that got them.”
“The Mayan civilization is gone, but their descendants exist.”
“See?”
K. eyed their sage-coloured, bulging eyes and retreated. Why was he listening to fish? K. searched his cave. Maybe he could find the crevice he had crawled out of.
#END#
K.’s Adventures Underground
The Disappearance of K.
The Early Education of K.
Further Adventures of K.
K.’s First Love
The Trial of K.
K.’s First Trip to the Moon
Missing Gautam
Gaurav Monga
1. He received a text message from a woman addressing him as a certain Gautam Uncle, telling him that a taxi driver will be waiting for him at the airport on his arrival. A few minutes later he received a call from the taxi driver, himself, who insisted that even if he was not Gautam uncle, he must be waiting at the airport for a taxi. He said that he was lying on his bed. Then the woman herself called to speak to Gautam uncle, to which he replied that he was not Gautam uncle at all.
While taking a
shower, he thought that perhaps he was Gautam uncle after all, maybe not completely but in some small way. When they called again, he told both of them that he most certainly was Gautam Uncle; it was just that he was not waiting at the airport but was at home having breakfast with his mother.
They stormed into his apartment to find out whether it was true, both the woman and the taxi driver. The taxi driver could never have been sure. He had never seen Gautam Uncle before, and as for the woman, she hadn't either. And so they took Gautam uncle away, of his own volition; he could have never imagined what he had coming when the taxi driver and the woman pulled him out of the yellow-black car and hurled him into the sea.
It had grown dark. His mother, her jaws hanging down, still sat at the dining table, trying to figure out in her own head where Gautam must have gone.
2. He was fixing the wheel of a car which was already finished. Even the engine had missing parts. A passer-by asked him why he was doing it. Gautam looked amazed. He didn't have the slightest clue, himself.
He then stopped to look at the passer-by who was also looking at the wheel. After a few seconds, the passer-by was on his way. Gautam remained, his eyes fixed on the wheel. Then his parents rolled by and stared at him, staring at the wheel. Several hours later, it had grown dark. He put his hat on. He had begun to make his way back home on a road which was on a slant, scared of meeting his parents again. What would they think of him now?
DaniilIvanovichKharms
Joshua S. Walker
DaniilIvanovichKharms walked into a bar.
DaniilIvanovichKharms walked into a bar and said, “Ouch.”
DaniilIvanovichKharms, — sprawling in the beery foamy run-off of others, a bit of blood of his own self, and wood shavings from God only knows where — said:
“Chyortvoz’mi”
(which, I assure you, is a Russian expression unbefitting of genteel company).
And then:
“Yob’ tvoiu mat’”
(which, I ashamedly assure you, is worse still).
Followed with:
“Chubalkarantalblook”
(which, it must be said, had never before been uttered in any language, and certainly never will be again).
And finished with (along with the help of an overzealous editor who desired to provide proper contextual understanding):
“Ouch, the banality [of this anecdotal prison]!” — whereupon DaniilIvanovichKharms removed from his overcoat a pistol (also somewhat besmirched of the beery foamy run-off of others, a bit of blood of his own self, and wood shavings from God only knows where) and shot dead the author of the joke.
“You mean the ‘plagiarist of the joke’,” added DaniilIvanovichKharms to the record, upon which he shot the plagiarist as well, and pronounced:
“Kakoitakoiuspekhkakoi!”
(which, the author and the plagiarist being dead, can no more be rendered into English than into Chukchee Siberian)
and he proceeded to order himself a beer.
“One beer,” DaniilIvanovichKharms said in English, flaunting every convention of linguistic and logical continuity - not to mention the social convention that a joke remain associated with a living author (at least until the point of completion, at which point authors and plagiarists alike are welcome to the floors of any bar across limitless Russia).
“Here you are,” responded the bartender, trying to remember what the order had been after the parenthetical lyrical aside, and also too unsure about his own sudden appearance in a joke without an author or even a plagiarist — that no longer felt anything like a joke — to utter anything other than “here you are.”
(though then our good bartender remembered that a bar would usually take a bartender — even in joke-works of fiction — and so no certainly no one should press inquiries into his undeveloped and — quite honestly — rather poorly-thought-through origin story).
“Here you are,” said the bartender, to provide everyone, including DaniilIvanovichKharms, with some exposition, should their memories or their methods of concentration prove poor.
At this point, it should surprise no one that the bartender speaks English.
And yet it did surprise DaniilIvanovichKharms, who responded in fluent ChukcheeSiberian: “Shparook di dalook,” which he had invented for the occasion.
The bartender, of course, not only understood — for, without an author or plagiarist, there were no readers, and subsequently no one to hold nor dishold, spell nor dispel belief regarding the realistic nature of the unfolding dialogue.
(though scientists assure us that, had the author and plagiarist not perished together earlier in the bar scene, devoted readers would have without doubt made vast inroads in the study of invented Chuckchee Siberian invented for the occasion).
And, in fact, whilst the author’s and the plagiarist’s respective families began to mourn their losses and praise their gains, DaniilIvanovichKharms began a focused study of the invented Chuckchee Siberian invented for the occasion along with the bartender
(though many would later question his motives)
By the second round, the pair were proficient.
By the third round, the pair was composing the invented-Chuckchee-Siberian-invented-for-the-occasion lyrical poetry by which all invented invented-Chuckchee-Siberian-invented-for-the-occasion lyrical poetry would be judged.
By the fourth round, the pair was drunk, and their poetry had become effete, derivative, and decadent, to boot.
“Tragedy!” bespoke the bartender (whose origin story had not become any more crystallised, though, fortunately, there was no one present to care one way or another — subsequent attempted authors being shot on sight).
“Oomkakhroo!” agreed (quite possibly) DaniilIvanovichKharms.
And this line of narrative would have continued indefinitely or (more likely) insufferably had not the hordes of relatives of the good authors and plagiarists — whose bodies were stacked to such a degree that no new characters could possibly be introduced, at least at the bar — had come to terms with their grief and their joy, and had begun fervent study of the relevant wills and last testaments.
After many years, and not a few untold adventures incurred for the expense, they came into possession of the rights, the copyrights, the wrongs, the happenstances, and all sundry entitlements of the joke (which they now referred to as the “intellectual fictionesque lyrical storyline property”), which included:
The bar, the pistol, the bartender, the bodies, the floor (which, while not introduced explicitly until this point, had been implied all along), the movie rights, the cereal box front panels rights, the partial international non-exclusive first-look last-chance double-jeopardy cereal box rear panel rights, and finally: the right to try DaniilIvanovichKharms in a court of law of their own frivolous opinions.
Upon this discovery, DaniilIvanovichKharms was removed from his barstool and his various linguistic adventures.
And given: Tiger Pits. Burning Cauldrons. Massive Robotic Interstellar Interstate Annihilation Fights .
In short: only what was limited by the relatives’ unlimited understanding of what would sell in abstract-form to film producers.
“Ouch,” DaniilIvanovichKharms, now dead fifty ways and counting, said. “The banality.”
While the bartended tended to the bodies, hoping that his endings would be as obscure as his beginnings.
A Very Unusual Request
Paulo Brito
The façade of the 1.2rc2 multi-service company is a real patchwork. Reflection of the survival to three ½ earthquakes, two typhoons, a harpies attack, perhaps the worst occurrence; it has also been the innocent victim, in the octagonal corner on the right side, just after the 1.b update, of the Cerberus bite. It is certainly due to these attacks that the façade doesn’t have a final and updated version.
It is a building that seems to be falling any moment, but which is safer than a Molotov pudding. And it continues to be both a sublime architectural vision to some, and
a frightening aberration to others. We must also add that it has, so it is made to believe, two entrance doors and one of them, introduced in the rc1.b update, placed thirty-five meters from the ground. People can say that this upper door is just to exit, but we all know that doors are made first for entering and only then for exiting. And therefore, that door makes the building, rebuilding, and update of the 1.2rc2 multi-service company headquarters even more mysterious.
It was, thus, through the door on the ground floor, in its v1.0 version, that a man of indecipherable age entered the building and walked briskly to the F1 counter to be received by a lady in her thirties, she seems older, but should politely be given the due consideration.
'I want to order a suicide' stammered our man with determination.
“A suicide? But what a weird request. That’s a task which can and should be held just by you. Among the most requested services and in need of external intervention I can recommend torture, private and public beatings, the latter can even provide a good show and therefore be a source of additional revenue and is, curiously, on sale this week; in our wonderful town we have the 110th annual meeting of the Beater Guild; rape is also part of our exquisite catalogue, or even mutilation. For more discrete treatments I must point out a scare, heartburn or a cold and I can say we have already started to commercialize the 1.1ar cold which comes with diarrhoea and vomiting, our witches have an amazing imagination for biological treatments...”
“No, I want a suicide, not any of those.” The word suicide was almost said in the whining tone of a spoiled child.
“Frankly my dear potential customer...”
“You can call me Nikolao Georgo” interrupted our no longer anonymous customer.
“Continuing, Mr. Nikolao Georgo, I don’t see how we can help. Have I told you about the Crucifixion yet? I love a good crucifixion and the nails used are manufactured by dwarves from the Windy Clot Mountains”. Fiera Valora Vespera, according to the nametag attached to a sober, super sexy black bolero made of real lace cobwebs, Level I Commercial Assistant, continued to report the service list of enterprise 1.2rc2.
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