Tag: short fiction

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Christian Kadluba via Creative Commons

The viral marketing campaign rode waves of jesting, revolted incredulity. Marketing imagery was all spatters of ketchup like blood, bleeding burgers flanked by sinister utensils; fast food prepared by sadists. “The joke is,” said CEO Geoff Ferelis on an investor call, “what we really kill are expectations. The only thing leaving a Murder Burger restaurant dead… is hunger.”

The first in-store death attracted the inevitable attention of the smirking irony beat. That quarter, revenues blew away expectations: lines stretched out the door, people defying the urban legend. Groups of friends would dare each other to sit through a whole meal. They laughed on the way out at how silly they’d been, and remarked at how good the food was. Marketing ate it up.

The second death occurred just over a year later, statistically within the realm of coincidence. Numbers were down that quarter. Ferelis released a video on Facebook assuring customers their worry was unfounded, the restaurants were safe. People remarked, “There’s something strange about his eyes.”

By the time the government intervened, the “free switchblade promotion massacre” was a national tragedy. 62 deaths in 24 states. The blades were supposed to be plastic replicas. The rage remained unexplained.

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Sixteen eyes on wrinkled stalks wriggle in discordant unrest. Their cat-thin pupils dance restlessly, processing the bedroom’s dimensions like a wet utensil. The broad back slides over itself, glistening skin over moist carapace, punctuated by peaks of chitin rising like tempers out of reluctant boils. From the window burns the sterile yellow light of a distant streetlamp, casting a looming, twisted shadow over the bedsheets.

Green Eye Stalk
Brian Smith via Creative Commons

Jointed arms ratchet out of the flanks like myiasis, ropy strands of pale fluid sucking against the motion and squelching softly like squeezed custard. They reach for the tender young face like a caress. The lamprey mouth opens, round lips peeling back revealing concentric rows of barbed, inward facing teeth, the pale pink tissue between catching ambient light from beneath the door. A thin, hollow tongue snakes from the gaping maw and laps at the rubbery lips.

The maw curls into the beginnings of a snarl and then melts upward, a smile. “Good night,” crackles the low and atonal voice, a shopping cart wheel stuck on a stone. “Sleep tight my heart,” she whispers, leaning in close.

The young one fidgets under the blanket, restless, anticipating the kiss and the dreams.

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Sweat
Marek Pokorny via Creative Commons

I don’t mean to suggest that Dominic Delveccio was a remarkable person. His job required security clearance and he took pains to reveal this information to those he met, but the secrets he possessed were of little value. The near-hero he saw in the mirror scarcely resembled the sagging flop of nervous sweat and ill-timed anecdotes I knew.

The air conditioner was out the day he finally triumphed. It was a morning of damp armpits and crinkle-fans made from printer-paper. Everyone made the same joke about Indian summer. Dominic pried a yard of fabric from his generous backside and twirled a pen around his finger. The boss blamed Dom’s team as usual. Dominic’s jaw pulsed beneath a bread dough cheek. Boss got worked up, started in with the cussing and the personal insults.

That reliable gleam of hateful insolence tempered by resignation never left Dominic’s deep-set eyes as he fished in his pocket and pulled out his phone. The boss’ tirade trailed off as he stared at the number with a hint of recognition.

“What’s that?” he demanded.

Dom cracked his neck and said, “I called your mother. She’s been listening. She wants to talk.”

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Blue Sky Moon Set
Anil Narisetti via Creative Commons

Gregory rolled through a cloud, swatting at his flaming pant leg, trying to put it out. Wreckage peppered the sky, bits of smoking debris leaving comet trails of tragedy for the mourning world to collect and debate over. His back was to the approaching Earth, and he didn’t care to see it looming ahead of him, the broken promise of solid ground.

Instead he stared at the sky, considering the white thumbprint of the moon in the blue expanse. Had it always been visible during the day, or was that a product of a gasping ozone layer, of a slow-roasting planet? Off to the side, he noticed a tumbling carton of cheese-flavored crackers. With a reach, he had them in his hand. Processed food, high in preservatives and reconstituted corn and corn byproducts. Once, this might have been the biggest threat to his longevity. He opened the box and chewed a handful. Free of guilt, they weren’t half bad. Making necessary exceptions for the inevitable forthcoming end to his flight, Gregory had to admit, this short interlude was one of the more pleasurable experiences of his predictable existence.

Nice scenery. Absolute comfort. Good food; and a lifetime supply.

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Prosopagnosia
AlbatrossSalidoFdz via Creative Commons

…He fell asleep in my arms.” She says this as if I’m supposed to know who she’s referring to. A lover? A child? A family member succumbing to a disease? This is the moment to ask questions. I only nod my head.

My brain doesn’t process faces correctly. The clinical term is prosopagnosia. I think about the phrase, “The last time I saw …” Every time I see anyone is the first time I meet them. People with distinctive voices become my best friends. I can pick them out of a crowd, as long as they’re talking.

Sonda doesn’t have a distinctive voice. I know it’s her because I recognize her car and she’s one of the few African-American women I know. But I suppose she could be someone I just met. Maybe everyone in the world is playing an elaborate prank, with different actors replacing each other every few days. Often enough to confuse me. “The last time I saw Winnie, I was played by a chubby Irish guy.” Sounds like a funny joke only I’m not laughing.

I never fall asleep in anyone’s arms. I don’t like waking up in stranger’s beds. Every time is the first.

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Dragon and moon
Luis Alejandro Bernal via Creative Commons

Twice upon a time there lived a beautiful princess. As a baby she was stolen from her parents by a greedy dragon who hoarded treasures. The king and queen loved the princess so much, the dragon felt the young child must be the most precious treasure in all the land. So he locked her away in his cavern and she grew up playing in piles of gold, but lonely.

A brave knight set out to rescue the princess. He fought the dragon and though he was courageous, he could not withstand the might of the beast. He was near defeat and he called upon the pixie witch Kismeena to rescue him. Kismeena warned the knight that the price for her services would be steep. The knight did not heed the warning, so Kismeena granted him the strength to defeat the dragon.

The knight and the princess fell madly in love. But as they were married and began their life together, the princess didn’t age. The prince withered and their children grew old.

The princess stayed young. The princess stayed beautiful.

She outlived them all.

And once again she was lonely, without even the dragon to keep her company.

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Evil Bird
Erich Alder via Creative Commons

Remember when Isla and I wandered around the promenade in the crystal rain?

Of course you don’t, we were the only ones alive that day.

We found a sliver of moss-covered glass,

Isla pretended it was a sword, whipping it through the tinkling droplets.

She danced in the empty fountain, engaged in other flights of fancy,

Wondering aloud if she were too old for such displays.

I set about to ease her mind, ended up convincing her to stop.

We ate fruit and laughed at birds,

Never expecting how personally those fowl would take our jests.

They swarmed and bobbed, eyes round and wide and attentive,

Hopping ever closer and we clutched at each other.

Fragile rose beads shattered into spun sugar granules on the black backs,

On the pink beaks, on the crests always moving, moving.

Is there anything worse than splashed crimson red over pink?

Bloody gums, sucking wounds, flecked and unblinking yellow eyes.

Tiny bones crackled under our fleeing feet, stamping songs,

Fans of tight wings battering future nightmares

And the pecks and claws sizzling with insistent rhythms

Saying, Get Away Get Away Get Away Get Away.

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THE SWING is a flail; controlled misery locked on oxygen rails, red tendons and orange aches, a sunrise inside two arms.

THE ORB stands defiant; scooped and haughty this moon on a dais is a king of bowing, dewy, subjugable masses, brazen and unaware.

THE DRIVER never wavers; speeding wind enflames a lone purpose that eradicates the stuffy days and nights of communal coma and cramped castigation.

THE COLLISION will defile a morning; whipped marauder running down a dimpled, unboxed castellan until—with violence and a hollow song—there is transformation.

THE FLIGHT becomes the universe; the third heaven transfixes every eye, erases each arena so, for several inglorious seconds of arc and drift and squint, arithmetic triumphs and potential is once again a horizon.

THE DROP is reflected into every witness; a sleeping royal seeking refuge among the multitudes, a destitute disgrace choking on a desert or drowning out of hubris, or, as a victor, vanishes into vacuity.

THE CHASE, notable for a lack of haste; other regents may be felled, celebration might be called, consolation could ignite, but there will always be a slow pursuit, then reset, then restore and score.

Confidence
itstonyhaha via Creative Commons

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Eye
fructosegums via Creative Commons

I’ve misplaced my feet; somewhere in the fog of dope smoke and white lines and tight shoes and forever dancing, they wandered off. Probably I should go, the best place would be home and the next best thing would be upstairs to my room, but neither has the music and neither has the void. The worst is when you realize the music throbbing in your ears is residual, an echo left from records that have long since been packed into a van and driven off, across a bridge or to a downtown garage. It’s usually the heavy snap of the house lights coming on, the resigned, sober sigh of the bouncer saying, Come on everyone let’s go party’s over.

Then you see it’s only you and the scattered handful of remaining ghouls, sunken cheeked and numb toed, blinking at each other with rheumy eyes and self-loathing smirks. We’ll drift like seeds on a prairie wind.

I find myself in a filthy bathroom stall at some all-night diner. My companion is a greasy pair of hands attached to a blazer with a set of Porche keys in the pocket. In my compact’s mirror, there is lipstick on my teeth.

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He inched along, one step followed by another. Hurry was impossible and determinably uncharacteristic.

Creeping further, a foot at a time, the moon tumbled above. Down here near the earth, the leaves parted or blocked the pale silver light for as long as they sloped overhead. They shifted and moved and broke up the landscape.

Yards passed, and hours, pads of feet falling without sound or thunderously, depending on the listener. Signposts and markers had no place, no function, no significance.

Untitled
Ryan via Creative Commons

As the blanket of black and the restless sounds of the wood both faded, he slowed and stopped and slept. Heat implored hiding from the busy rustling of the sun-cheered mirror shift, active and clattering in its own dissimilar mechanisms. How this bright collection of hours held in it a static enigma, a hot pause in progress and a risk of damning discovery.

Then: cooling, waking, rising, proceeding. He moved, ever forward, miles holding hands with nights. One inch, one step, one moment and then one acre, one journey, one lifetime until at last it was night and sleep and nothing more.