AS THE EARLY DAYS
Because subtle differences in physics regulations from what most Earther are parochially accustomed, the traveler is suggested to acclimate in the “horizontal” position until local niceties of unreliant gravity, time-keeping, and atmospheric presence become appreciated. Acclimation such will entertain you for no more than two—or for some traveler, twenty or thirty—“days.”
While thus occupied with your appreciation of localness, helpful Pooquar hostelry staffpersons will provide you with lovely hydration and fat-making nutritionals. For your best healths, stint not on your consumption.
TOURING THE OUT-VICINITY
While you delight yourselves in the appreciation of very-known scenics as the Flowing Up Falls of Nagbaf, the Lesser Half Dark Big Hole, the Plain of Many Breath Sucks, and other such lovely vicissitudes, some attention to health and safeness are ordered.
Firstmost, if urgent advised by helpful Pooquar tour leader, immediately disobey not! Your very life endurance may happen. This is especially as pertains to stepping away from lovely trails, consuming unadvised nutritionals, perusing explainers offered by exiled dissident non-persons, or providing unsolicited refreshment to local fauna/flora/other life-beings.
Next, maintenance your lovely all-enwrapping tourist jumpsuit and coverall always. The presentation of the skin, even a small only piece of the skin, is discouraged for health. This from the fad of local life-beings to reproduce by injecting seed-forms into passing faunas, later to germinate and partake of the subcutaneous lipids in achieving bigness. Thus is best always your jumpsuit and coverall with integrity. (Small note: In the event of any rash of discolor or tendrils from the skin please notify immediately your helpful Pooquar tour leader for the swift extirpation.)
In finality, avoid districts of elevated temperature and humidity. In these grow the grubs of local life-beings, who may exhibit unsolicited hunger of lovely Earther visitor.
After leaving the out-vicinities, you should place the above-spoken biologic factual concerns far from your self memories.
OF THE URBAN JOLLITY
In welcome for subsequent your joyful tours of the out-vicinities, the Pooquar peoples of the citified regions will ply you unsparingly with lovely bring-home curios and appliances and also nutritionals without betterment for taste and skin-fat-making. Enjoy all these with loveliness!
In the cities is no great harm for concern of health. But be full of alert to avoiding speech from irksome disagreers with lovely policies of the governings of the Pooquar peoples. Such talkers of stupid are not amiable with the lovely Earther to travel of yourselves across continuum and returning with lovely Pooquar guests. If approached by busybody of imbecile forebodings regarding Earther traveler, heed not but call loud and with strident!
Many are the friendly Pooquar peoples who find lovely the Earther holding of limb extrusions in greeting. When such friendly Pooquar enjoin with protruding outstretched, please enjoy the removing of any encumbrance glove, sleeve, or trouser legs for sharing in the lovely joint-holding of limb parts. Stay fast so long as to experience lovely sensation of pleasant tingling, warmth, and small piercings. All is joy then for your new friend and yourselves.
In rarity, the Earther of sympathy and astute may note a small beautification of the skin with lovely color or perhaps small out-swellings. When such occurs within urbanity, please request of any apothecary for much cream of obscuration, so as to prevent envy and jealous from other Earther during your remaining voyage and after return.
For your final days of the lovely world of the Pooquar peoples, enjoy many sights and tastings while arranging your self memories for later saying to lovely Earther friends to make soon visits of themselves.
AFTER THE RETURNING
To follow your restore of conscious after portal journey, seek out many Earther friends to say of the joy of your most lovely voyage. Remember also to share the many discount traveling coupons provided to you by helpful Pooquar disembarking agents.
After some days from your voyage, many Earther feel a big sad of missing for the lovely world of the Pooquar peoples. This sad may have big heavy of the limbs, paining in abdomen, inside the head strikes, blood-making from here and there, and other such small emotions.
Best for this sad is to retreat with quickness to special place for to arrange your self memories to loveliness. Your special place should have elevated temperature and humidity. Also it will be most healthful to be a place where nearby pass many lovely Earther.
FOR YOUR LOVELY VOYAGE
From these small Health Tips for Traveler the governings of the Pooquar peoples wish yourselves a voyage for joy always after in your self memory. Also having hopes of long joy for the Pooquar peoples to visit the lovely Earth.
The Loom of Doom Galls Mainly in the Tomb
Barry Ergang
This murder is a fishy business, sir,” Detective-Inspector Shad Rowe said. “You’ve been of great assistance to us in the past when it comes to solving bizarre crimes, and I hope you can help us now.”
The Sleuth Extraordinaire, a gaunt hawk-faced man with no official status but possessed of a preternatural faculty for observation and deduction, sat in a chair opposite Rowe’s cluttered desk. He puffed complacently on his pipe, adding to the musty atmosphere of the cramped office. “I’m always pleased to help however I can. But you must give me the details. They’re essential.”
“Of course, sir.” Rowe leaned back in his chair and wiped a hand across his plump, ruddy countenance. “The victim is Lady Vera Muckinfutch.”
“The parliamentarian’s wife?”
“The very one. Her body was discovered early this morning, but the post-mortem indicates she died at approximately half past nine last night. She was strangled.”
“Killed at her estate?”
“That’s one of the rummiest aspects of the case. You see, sir, her body was found in a textile manufacturing factory!”
The Sleuth Extraordinaire’s left eyebrow became a quizzical arch. “Had she ever been there before?”
“As far as her husband, friends, and servants are aware,” Rowe said, “she had not.”
“You said it was one of the peculiar aspects. What are the others?”
“The room in which she was found was locked from the inside. The windows were locked, too, but even if they hadn’t been, they’d be unusable. Each is covered on the outside by a metal grate, and none of the grates had been tampered with. Furthermore, it snowed yesterday, as you know, but the snow stopped falling an hour before Lady Muckinfutch was murdered. There were no footprints beneath the windows of the plant. The snow was undisturbed.”
“And the roof?”
“Snow undisturbed,” said a disconsolate Rowe.
“How was the room entered this morning?”
“The factory manager has a key—the room in question is enormous; it houses the huge looms used in manufacturing.” Rowe held up a cautionary hand. “But before you ask, we vetted the manager thoroughly. He not only has no connection to the victim, he has an unshakeable alibi for the time of the murder.”
“I see.” The Sleuth Extraordinaire drew on his pipe, discovered it had gone out, and took a moment to relight it.
“But that’s not all, sir. Now we come to the oddest part of the business. Lady Muckinfutch’s body was found a few feet away from one of the looms. This particular loom was canted as if it had been shaken loose from its foundation, yet everyone who works in that room swears its position was normal at closing time. An examination showed no obvious signs of tampering, and we certainly had no earthquake in London last night. Every other machine in the room was as it should be.”
Rowe paused long enough to emit a heavy sigh, then said, “Frankly, sir, we’re baffled, and we’re hoping you can make some sense of this.”
The Sleuth Extraordinaire contemplated the pipe smoke that curled among the dust motes in the wintry light slanting through the office windows. “Rest assured, Inspector, I shall give it m
y utmost consideration,” he said, then looked toward the ceiling and murmured wryly, “Thank you, Vera Muckinfutch, for presenting me with the world’s first rocked loom mystery.”
The Souvenir You Most Want
Sue Burke
Miguel smiled at the tourist, a conspicuously glum young man. He had just stepped into the shadow cast by the thatched roof of Miguel’s market stall in San José, Costa Rica. The plain merchandise, gray granite spheres, attracted few customers, so Miguel was pleased to see him and picked up a stone the size of a large grapefruit. The tourist looked at it but kept his sunglasses on.
“This,” Miguel said, still smiling, “is a true mystery of the jungle, the thing you most want. Many tourists are happy to leave the market with common things like carved wood boxes or T-shirts. But that is not why you have come. You want something special.”
The tourist said nothing, but he took off his sunglasses. Miguel heard the young man’s troubles in the same way he heard the voices of the stones. But the stones were happy.
Miguel set down the sphere. “You can touch it.”
The tourist’s fingers twitched, but he did not reach out.
“These stones,” Miguel said, “are of the kind the Diquís Indians made for a thousand years. You have seen them in parks or museums, some as tall as you, no? And I will show you one more stone.”
He reached into his pocket for a two-thousand-colones bill, a crisp new one he kept for this purpose, and held up the picture on the back of the money: In the Costa Rican jungle, a Diquís sphere too large for one man to lift rested among orchids as a jaguar prowled nearby. It was beautiful, and it might be real.
The young man brushed his fingertips against Miguel’s stone as if it might sprout teeth and bite.
“Why did they do it?” Miguel said. “What can the spheres mean that the Indians worked so hard to make them? The Diquís are all dead. We do not know.”
The tourist’s eyes narrowed. In another moment, he might turn away, and that would be a misfortune, Miguel thought, because the stones could do so much.
“We do not know,” Miguel said quickly, “and yet it remains true, whatever they mean. These stones tell me they are the moon, and I think the moon is happier than the sun. The moon changes, she disappears, she moves in day and night, for she is free. You had hopes, but you think the jungle did not change anything for you.”
The young man shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“It is not too late,” Miguel said.
From across the market, a woman yelled, “John, would you hurry up?” The tourist closed his eyes, sighed and began to put his sunglasses back on, then stopped.
“This stone,” Miguel said, “is twelve thousand colones, or fifty American dollars.”
The tourist looked at the sphere, his lips moving silently. He stood up straight. He pulled out his wallet and counted out the cash, and Miguel solemnly handed him the stone. As the young man turned to leave, he waned into a quarter, then a crescent, and finally disappeared for a moment before he slowly came back into view.
‘Til Death do Us Part
Elaine Isaak
Loyal Wife?’” Elizabeth asked, leaning over his shoulder.
Jeremiah straightened up, his stiff back crackling, and let out a puff of breath that misted the autumn air in front of the tiny cabin. His fist tightened around the grip of his hammer. He should have known. He should have realized it would not be the end, even now. A marriage like theirs could not simply fade away. “Loyal,” he echoed. “You promised to wait for me, and here you are. Is it not loyalty?”
Elizabeth folded her arms. Or rather, she tried to, but the winding cloths that wafted around her on an absent breeze tangled her thin hands. “If you say so, darling, but I do think I meant a bit more to you than that. You promised to carve me a bed.”
A tear stung Jeremiah’s eye, and he scrubbed his face with the back of his hand, then let the hammer fall, and it clattered on the stone before him. “Yes, Elizabeth, yes,” he murmured. He sniffled, then sneezed, as the stone dust reached him with its powdery presence.
She stalked back and forth over her grave, her ethereal feet flicking through the fallen leaves and browning grass. October already, and she ought to have had a stone long since. “‘Elizabeth Marie Freemont, born 1789, died 1813, the daughter of Edward and Louise Prescott of the Portsmouth Prescotts,” she dictated, gesturing toward the stone. “It’s a good beginning.”
Propped on another stone beside the grave, the fresh slate bore a delicate tree of life with trailing leaves over a winged skull, symbol of the spirit flown away—or, rather, not quite. Beneath the words she recited and the legend “Loyal Wife,” he still had a few more inches above where the stone must be set into the ground. “What shall I add, beyond this?” He indicated the new words with his chisel.
Elizabeth paused, translucent cloths rippling and distorting the gravestones and trees beyond her. “Darling, I’m perfectly happy with the opening, especially the reference to my family name, it’s perfect, but I feel that ‘Loyal Wife’ makes me seem… diminished.”
The chisel’s point tapped the stone. “You want me to begin again.”
“Don’t I deserve it? Especially after my lonely death in that monstrous house—”
“My parents’ house,” he added.
She lifted her chin, baring that elegant stretch of her neck he had so admired. “And yet…alone, without my beloved.” She pressed a hand to her cheek, and he swore it looked a bit more pale, even granted the translucent nature of a shade.
“I was at war. I was hardly at liberty to—”
“That again!” She jabbed a finger toward him. “As if it were any excuse! I needed you. I was wasting away for the love of you!” Her words echoed into a sob, drawn out upon a wailing breath no mortal throat could produce.
The chisel clunked from his grasp as the letters carved before him wavered. Cold earth seeped through to his knees and his jaw clenched. He rose up, lifted the stone, and tossed it down again upon the heap where it broke into three, the pieces of tree and angel skull tumbling among the hundred other shards, some with trees and some with skulls, some with wings and some with words, her name carved in stark lettering, then in fancy, her birth and death abbreviated then spelled out, her every whim expressed by the strength of his hands.
“Do you know, slate is so old-fashioned. Some of these newer stones—” she gestured toward the other side of the graveyard— “they have such a lovely sheen. Perhaps for the next one—”
“The next one!” he spat. “And the one after? What of the one after that?”
She gave a pretty, ghostly pout. “Perhaps the quarryman can set something aside, just in case.”
“Just…” words failed him, as they had on every stone. Jeremiah wet his lips. “Elizabeth, I have lost count of the stones I’ve made for you! You’ve been gone seventeen years!”
“You do want me to be happy, darling,” she cooed.
Jeremiah faced her, staring through her spectral features, and the truth burst from him. “I don’t care! I care not a pence for your happiness!”
“You awful man! How can you speak so to me, your loving wife?”
“You hectoring horror, you dare to speak to me of love? You are dead and I’m alive—”
“There’s no need to be cruel,” she sniffed.
“Here is love,” he snapped, seizing a slab from the pile. “‘From her loving husband, Jeremiah.’” He flung it onto her grave and she leapt back with a little cry.
“You’ve fallen in love with another, haven’t you?”
“How can I? I live in a shack at your graveside!” He grabbed another shard and shouted its word, “Devotedly!” and smashed it onto her final resting place. Another: “Faithfully!”
Elizabeth wailed, her pale feet growing more pale as she danced about avoiding the stones.
“In honor! A dear wife! In mourning! In love and mourning!” Stones clattered and crashed. They broke again, the gra
ven skulls fractured, wings reduced to feathers, trees of life to tinder upon the flame of his fury. His hands throbbed, his knuckles scraped as he snatched every shattered stone of seventeen years and heaped them up on top of her. “In honor and love! Honored wife! Beloved wife! Faithful wife!” At every blow, her spirit faded. At every shouted word, her figure faded, until he stood at last, blinking at the empty space before him, one last stone clenched in both shaking hands. He placed it at her head, a great weight dissipating into the promise of autumn’s fire. With a sigh, he read its legend: “Rest in peace.”
He turned from the grave and finally walked away.
The Corporation
Megan Todd Boone
As David made a sharp right onto Atlantic Avenue in his highly-coveted silver roadster, for the first time in what felt like days, he could see the writing on the wall. It was over.
He was so tired that the end felt a little like sweet relief. But that didn’t make it any easier. He had built this empire from the ground up. Every transaction he had made was carefully calculated. Each property that he and his company bought, sold, or seized had been done so with such a considered hand, that, as anyone who dealt with David knew, he always played to win.
How had it come to this, his once expansive conglomerate gone all at once in a takeover that anyone would classify as hostile? He would be left with nothing, not even a small house to his name. Hell, he wouldn’t even have a five-dollar bill by the end of the hour. Obviously, he had made some mistakes along the way, but he’d be damned if they’d felt like mistakes at the time. He’d gone with his gut, which was the only piece of advice that he ever remembered his father giving him. He couldn’t help but wonder what his father would say if he were with him now.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction Page 19