June 18, 2012

From “The Sweater War” by Freddie Moorehed

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Colette Hays had gotten it from her mother: a Christmas sweater too ugly for even a bad sweater party (if such things had existed in 1978). It was in the pattern of an American flag, with alternating stripes of red, white, and green with hollyjolly brown for the canton. Each stripe was filled with knit Santa hats, snowflakes, and mistletoe leaves, while the canton’s stars were represented by little jingle bells that each hung by their own little yarn string.

After wearing it once for the benefit of Mama Sears and enduring a rash for three days afterwards, Colette gave it as a gift to her sister-in-law Josie Sears the following Christmas. Josie couldn’t fail to grasp the significance of this, living as she did in Florida. It was duly rewrapped and presented to Colette for Christmas 1980.

Colette decided that it was time for escalation. Using a vacuum sealer that her husband used for meat products, she packed the infernal sweater like a cut of subprime beef and returned it to Josie. For her part, Josie carefully removed the item from its packaging and twisted it into a PVC pipe that her husband, who ran a plumbing supply business, sealed at both ends.

The contest escalated gradually but steadily, and by 1990 had reached proportions large enough to be mentioned in local newspapers. Always careful never to damage the sweater, the women had delivered it to the other soldered into a coffee can, sealed in cement, welded into a safe, crunched into a car (a 1975 Chevy Vega that had been reduced to a 2-foot square cube), and covered in molten glass.

The last straw came when Josie tried to cover the sweater in a protective asbestos glove and set it into solid steel. The seams failed and the sweater caught on fire. In keeping with the friendly (and at times not-so-friendly) rivalry that had developed, Josie returned the ashes to Colette mixed with potting soil…and a note inviting her to share any produce that grew from it.

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June 13, 2012

From “Teddy Mauser, For Whom All Urban Legends Are True” by G. Lloyd Cornwall

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[At a party, people are passing around bowls of candy and cans of soda pop. TEDDY is offered a can and refuses, holding up his hands.]

TEDDY: Whoa, better not drink that Coke. I just ate a bunch of Pop Rocks and I might explode.

[The girl next to him rolls her eyes.]

ELISABETH: Don’t be a wuss, buddy. That’s just an urban legend!

TEDDY: Yes, but I’m Teddy Mauser, the guy for whom all urban legends are true.

[music begins as TEDDY looks sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: He’s Teddy, Teddy Mauser
For him all urban legends are true
He’s Teddy, Teddy Mauser
And he never quite knows what to do

[TEDDY is driving a car at night in the rain. He pulls over to pick up a hitchhiker]

SINGERS: The hitchhiker in the back is really a ghost
Just trying to get from A to B

[The hitchhiker floats into the car three feet off the ground. A bolt of lightning reveals a pasty and rotted complexion. TEDDY shrugs and looks sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: He’s picked up seventeen and that’s not a boast
Of course no one else can see

[TEDDY pulls a temporary tattoo out of a pack of Dallas Cowboys sports cards. He licks the back and presses it to his skin]

SINGERS: Temporary tattoos all have LSD on the back
Licking them gets it started

[The world suddenly goes tie-dyed and pink elephants and Robert Crumb prints in vivid colors attack TEDDY. He wakes up in an underpass wearing a stewardess’ uniform, shrugs, and looks sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: Unhinging his sanity by more than a crack
When for pink elephant world he’s departed

[TEDDY purchases a pack of bubble gum at a gas station and throws all eight pieces into his mouth at once]

SINGERS: There’s always spider eggs in his Bubble Yum
They taste as good as you’d think

[TEDDY gags and spits out a mouthful of baby spiders. He gropes for another piece of candy, and takes an Air Head taffy, shucking the wrapper and biting in deeply as if to clear his palate. A moment later he gags again and spits out a mouthful of baby scorpions before turning and looking sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: It would maybe be better not to chew any gum
But the eggs are in anything sugary and pink

[Music ends as scene returns to the party]

ELISABETH: I don’t believe that for a second, loser. Drink up!

TEDDY: Well, all right. What’s the worst that could happen?

[TEDDY drinks the soda and smiles. A moment later he lets loose a deafening belch and his abdomen explodes, coating all the onlookers with viscera]

SINGERS: He’s Teddy, Teddy Mauser
And for him all urban legends are true!

[TEDDY shrugs and looks sheepishly into the camera]

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June 8, 2012

From “Oh No You Katydidn’t” by Hobb Herbert Williams

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“Well, I’ll tell you,” the katydid whispered. “But you’re not going to like it. Promise you won’t squish me if you don’t like it.”

Emilee rubbed her ear near where the insect was perched. “I never squash anything that talks. That’s my policy and it’s served me well.”

“Very well. I’ve never left this cavern, you see, but I hear a lot of things from the others in the common patois of insects and other arthropods,” the katydid said. “You’re in the thermal caverns of Bakutis, deep below Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica, many unfathomable leagues from the nearest settlement of your kind.”

Emilee’s hand dropped. “What?”

“Yes, I realize those are the human names for these features,” the katydid continued, “but you must understand that we small ones have little use for names and are happy to use human ones when the need arises. Why, some of the humans who have visited us in the past have even named parts of the caves. I can show you to their dessicated remains if you’d like.”

Overcome with revulsion, Emilee flicked the katydid off her ear.

“You promised!” it cried.

“I never said anything about flicking!” Emilee cried apologetically. “Sorry!”

 

June 7, 2012

From “The Ray Emus Home for Mary Sues” by Alice Bridgette

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[a man in a white lab coat strides toward the camera]

EMUS: Hi, I’m Dr. Ray Emus. Wikipedia defines a “Mary Sue” as “a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader,” and they are rightly spurned and despised by all. But what happens to them when the fanfic ends and they save the Enterprise?

[the camera follows EMUS into what looks like a hospital ward, filled with people getting intravenous fluids as well as varysing stages of physical therapy]

EMUS: That’s why I started the Ray Emus Home for Mary Sues. We act as a hospital, detox, and halfway house to help these miserable, paper-thin literary creatures find respect for themselves and a purpose in life.

[EMUS gestures to a nearby young woman in a frayed sweater vest]

EMUS: Mary here started life as a thinly written Gryffindor in a wretched Harry Potter fanfic.

MARY: I was created solely so a 14-year-old girl could vicariously kiss Draco Malfoy, even though he’s a freaking toolbox!

EMUS: But thanks to our therapy and outpatient treatment sessions, Mary now works as an extra in Harlequin romances.

MARY: I still have no characteristics, but at least people take me seriously as a barista or bus driver in the background! I can finally sleep at night.

[EMUS moves outside, where largely indistinguishable young people in hospital gowns are sitting on benches amid topiary sculptures or playing pickup basketball]

EMUS: But we can’t do it alone. Hundreds of new Mary Sues are generated every month, especially in the crucial prom season. We need donations from people like you to keep helping thinly-written narrative stand-ins for insecure authors. People like Harry here.

[a young man with a disturbingly familiar look approaches the camera]

HARRY: A lot of people said that coming from a past like mine, in an unauthorized erotic Doctor Who novella, I didn’t have a future. But thanks to Dr. Emus and 100 hours of weekly therapy sessions, I’m beginning to develop actual personality flaws and rough edges. Also the night terrors have ceased!

EMUS: Don’t wait. There are so many in need, and every donation matters. For less than cost of a cup of coffee each day, you can allow the Home to help a single unwitting Cylon find inner peace and minimum wage work as a skeptical investigator in a James Patterson novel.

[music swells and the Home’s logo appears on the screen]

EMUS: The Ray Emus Home for Mary Sues. The prose may be unbearable but their lives don’t have to be.

 

June 6, 2012

From “Manticore & Sons Pawnbrokers” by Issac Y. Maez

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If it wasn’t one thing it was another.

“What have we got here?” Harriet said, grumpy. She’d spent all morning trying to find an online buyer for a plasma screen TV that had a tendency to distort picture and color. It had looked good enough when the thing had been pawned, but Harriet was sure the shop was going to take a $500 bath on the thing.

A younger woman, college age, had come in with an item wrapped in brown paper. “You guys buy and sell everything, right?”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “You tell me,” she said, pointing to a buzzing neon sign that read WE BUY AND SELL ANYTHING in the front window, wedged between an electric guitar and a Mossberg 500 with the firing pin removed.

“Okay,” the girl said. She pulled off the paper and set a heavy wooden staff on the countertop. “What’ll you give me for this magic staff?”

Harriet sighed and fished for her jeweler’s eyepiece. “What is this, oak?” she said.

“Ash,” the girl said. “It’s an heirloom, a 1927 Wandchester with the optional black onyx gem and leyline engravings.”

“A ’27? Hardly,” Harriet groused. “See the mark here, on the butt? Wandchester didn’t use that until after the war. It’s a ’48 or maybe a ’51.”

The woman reddened. “Okay, it might not be as old as Gammy said it was, but it’s still a top of the line staff. That’s real black onyx and the carvings make the staff shatterproof.”

Harriet took a closer look. “Either you don’t know what you’re talking about or you’re trying to bankrupt me, kid. That stone’s a cheap one, obsidian. You ever see an old Wandchester catalog? Obsidian’s at the bottom, cheapest stone that’ll hold a charge. And this enchantment? It’s custom-engraved all right, but it’s for stain maintenance, not shatterproofery. Again, cheapest one in the catalog.”

“Are you sure about that?” the girl said, sounding wounded.

“Look, I bought a 1901 Tiffany staff last week for thirty-two thousand dollars, kid. I know what I’m talking about.” Harriet looked her customer in the eye. “I’ll give you $250 cash for it or pawn it for a $500 loan payable in 90 days.”

“Even if what you say is true, it’s still a good piece!” the girl cried. “It’s old and in great shape.”

“The shaft in nicked, the enchantment is wearing off in three places, and the obsidian is being held in with cheap-ass glue.”

“Can you give me at least $1000 for a pawn?” the girl said. “I won’t need it until the new term starts and I’ve gotta make rent!”

“$600. Final offer,” Harriet said. “It’s a buyer’s market, and unless you want it ground up for pixie dust by weight that’s the best you’re going to get.”

 

June 4, 2012

From “In A Weird Place” by Hazel Pace Santiago

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This post is part of the June 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “weird worlds”.

“You’re sure this is the entryway to the High King’s Causeway?” Jennie said. “It looks more like a graffiti-covered outhouse that was so far beyond human control it was simply abandoned.”

The Fáidh took a fresh puff of pipeweed and coughed. “Who’s to say it can’t be both? As anyone who was at Woodstock will agree, an outhouse’s worth lies not without but within. Though some nose-plugging may be advised; remind me to tell you the harrowing tale of Outhouse Row at Woodstock ’94 someday.”

Jennie stuck out her tongue. “Ew. Remind me not to listen.”

“I’ll need absolute concentration to coax the link back from the the Gentle Embrace, unless you fancy using the next terminus over which is a sewer runoff pipe. Keep the others quiet.” The Fáidh breathed deeply from his pipe once more, swayed gently, and began the ritual.

To Jennie it looked like he was pressing his hands to that unspeakable surface and singing the Rolling Stones in a loud, out-of-tune voice. “I’m just mortal clay, what do I know?” she sighed. In the meantime, it occurred to her that the Fáidh’s request might be a tad difficult.

Syke the androdryad paced sullenly near the wall, looking uncomfortable in the track suit Jennie had thrown on him and glaring at any of the tourists and other passersby who stared at the fig sapling poking out of his knapsack. “Oy, clay!” he cried at one particularly pernicious starer. “What are you glaring at? The son of Oxylus and Hamadryas isn’t a spectacle for rubbernecking clay like yourself!”

Jennie rushed over to calm him down. Considering that the fig tree was his actual substance, and the young man only its metaphysical spirit given form, she tried not to be too rough (or, heaven forbid, knock any leaves off the sapling). When Syke grabbed the offending tourist by his Arsenal FC jersey, though, Jennie all but tackled him as she pushed them apart.

Behind her, Jennie could make out Cary the motile caryatid column accosting another passerby. As a 3000-year-old stone statue, Cary’s disguise was already flimsy: thrift store clothes, foundation makeup, a hat and sunglasses. Cary’d reminded Jennie of a sorority girl earlier, gushing over the fabrics and weaves of people who had visited the Orb of Prophecy the column had been sworn to guard (until it was stolen out from under her). Now Cary was acting like one, trying to persuade a tourist to swap a designer top for a bulk thrift store sweater.

“Oh, that’s such a cute top! Is it sea silk or maybe saffron or gold thread? I just love fabrics, all kinds, every kind, always, forever! Do you think I could try it on? You can have my ratty old secondhand dump sweater for collateral; it’d look so cute on you! But not as cute at that top would look on me…”

Jennie had barely set the Arsenal FC fan on his way before she had to sprint over and keep Cary from bodily snatching the poor tourist’s clothes—easier said than done when the statue weighed somewhere north of a thousand pounds. But she was able to interject herself in such a way that the harried pedestrian could make her escape.

“At least tell me where you got it!” Cary cried forlornly to no reply.

Jennie corralled the two mythological malefactors back to the Fáidh just as the older man completed his incantation. Muttering something about he and Jennie having very different definitions of “quiet,” he flung the outhouse door open, revealing not an unspeakable loo but a long stone corridor paved with hexagons and lit by the lazily drifting blue fireflies. The Fáidh entered, as did Syke and Cary.

Jennie hesitated on the threshold. “I’m about to follow a stoner wizard, an angry young fig tree, and a sorority girl made from solid marble through an outhouse door into a mythical realm to follow a wax model of Éamon de Valera that stole from me in the National Irish Wax Museum. Somewhere, somehow, my decision-making paradigm took a real turn for the weird.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
dclary (comic)
Proach
MelodySRV
pyrosama
areteus
Diana_Rajchel
writingismypassion
randi.lee
magicmint
Sweetwheat
AFord
dclary (blog)

 

May 22, 2012

From “Näher’s Device” by Klaus Bäcker Mühlbach

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“What’s that you’ve got there, Dr. Näher?” a student asked.

Näher looked at the circuit board, dotted with lights and switches, under his arm. “Oh, just a piece of a little science project I am tinkering with in my spare time.”

The student smiled. “Like the Tesla coil you showed us in class?”

“Something like that, yes,” Näher said, tapping his nose.

Inside the campus superconductor center, Stanley the security guard called out a friendly greeting. “Dr. Näher! More bits and bobs for your hobby project?”

“Yes indeed, Stanley,” said Näher. He flipped the guard a candy bar from the vending machine downstairs. “No need to tell Dr. Kuntz about my hobby work, as usual.”

“If you say so, Doc. Ask me, worst he’d do is tell you to take it home.”

Outside Näher’s lab, one of the custodians was buffing the floor. “Any chance of getting in there to clean, Dr. Näher?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not, Emily. The danger of static contamination, you see. I’m sure you understand.”

“All right, but you know I’m going to keep asking until you at least let me go over it with a lint brush.”

Näher shifted his circuit board to his other hand as he fished for his keys. “I have no doubt, Emily,” he said with a smile. “I have no doubt.”

Once inside, he strode deep into the bowels of the device that had consumed nearly every waking moment of the last ten years. The circuit board slid easily into the last open space in the master control panel; the lights and switches glowed to life as power coursed through them.

“And now, at last,” Näher laughed. “To unleash it.”

He flipped open the clear cover on the master button. It was bright red, glowing, and had a simple label: DOOM!

 

May 21, 2012

From “The Sticky-Note Directive” by J. Margeret Muncie

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Oh sure, there had been some oddities. The fact that the higher-ups never appeared, communicating only by email, intercom, and sticky note. The fact that there were always free parking spaces in the company lot, parking spaces being about as common on Manhattan as Republicans. The fact that all of the other cube-jockeys always seemed to be there before Jaz arrived and stayed after she left.

But hey, she had talked herself out of any suspicions along those lines. Jaz was, after all, working at one of the most prestigious law firms in New York and by extension the civilized world. It didn’t matter that she was an intern acting as a glorified secretary; she was getting face time and experience and even a modest stipend (unlike most internships which treated people like chattel laborers). In a few months’ time it would all be worth it: the long hours of studying, the stupefying student dept, the lack of a social or romantic life after eighth grade or so, all of it.

Then one morning Jaz found a sticky-note directive from above in the usual place on her monitor: “Please report to the 23rd floor conference room for an urgent meeting.”

Sighing, Jaz had resolved to check her messages before she went. She’d accidentally been included in a company-wide blast email, which usually excluded her, and popped it open:

“Directive: Secure all entrances and exits and report to the 23rd floor conference room for our yearly success and team-building meeting. Bring the virgin/maiden sacrifice if you see her. Convocation and dinner to follow.”

 

May 18, 2012

From “Drill Sergeant Poindexter” by Adam McMahon Fischer

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The drill instructor was a younger man, well-muscled, wearing a pair of thick black eyeglasses beneath his campaign hat. His dark skin glistened in the 100-degree sunshine, and there was a Decepticon badge on his lapel.

“It doesn’t matter what my name is; you crotchjockeys don’t have the brain cells to say it without making my ancestors howl worse than your parents when they saw your SAT scores,” he barked. “Just call me Sergeant Poindexter. I joined up because I wanted to boss around the jockstrap sniffers that used to snap decent people with towels. So saddle up, my precious unorganized grabastic amphibians, because I am the Kwisatz Haderach and my name is a killing word!”

Some of the recruits exchanged nervous glances. One seemed about to ask a question; the sergeant quickly stepped in front of him, nose to nose. “From now on you speak only when spoken to. You talk out of turn and I will pluck a strand of your hair and give it to the voodoo chaplain to curse you with crotch sores, yea unto the seventh generation! You got that, padawan?”

“Y-yes sir!” the unfortunate recruit stammered.

“I am not ‘sir,'” howled the sergeant, “‘sir’ is your deputy basketball coach or whoever else in your life regularly handled your balls. You will call me ‘Sergeant’ or so help me I will mow you redneck zombies down like George Romero and keep your heads in my icebox next to Zuul! That clear, you piss-poor pack of level one fighters?”

“Yes sergeant!”

“Come on, now, sound off like you got a pair! How’s Cobra Commander going to know you’re coming if you can’t even squeeze out a decent ‘yo Joe?’ All of you, in unison!”

“Yes sergeant!” the men cried at what could hardly be described as the same time.

“My job is to weed out all you letter-jackets who are too dumb for even the United States armed forces,” the sergeant continued. “I asked for a bunch of Imperial Stormtroopers, and I got you! I don’t need to see your identification, I know you’re not the recruits we’re looking for. You’re clueless as a bunch of Microsoft dancing paperclips and twice as annoying; but you popped up and by God I’m going to bend you into shape even if I have to rewrite the source code. You grok me?”

“Yes sergeant!” the men answered once more, a bit more in unison.

“From now on, you maggots are my own personal Pokémon: I throw down, and you do what I say without question. You don’t need to know how to do anything but follow orders, say your own name, and learn to like getting repeatedly shoved in the balls. You are the lowest form of life on Earth, all equally worthless. A flu virus in a Chinese hooker contributes more to society. Are your feelings on this matter clear? Let me hear it again, Recruitmons!”

“Yes, sergeant!”

With apologies to Stanley Kubrick and Skippy.

 

May 17, 2012

From “Acute Bufomorphic Osculitis” by Derrick Dalton Burch

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Jameson huffed on his cheap, mean cigarette. “It was a mystery for a long time, but now it’s pretty much an open secret: the royal family has a genetic predisposition to acute bufomorphic osculitis.”

“Acute…what?” The strong local Cinnibarian liquor was making Cartyr’s ears buzz, but he was still reasonably sure that the last thing Jameson said would have come out as gibberish to the stone-cold sober.

“Did they just throw you into this assignment out of grammar school, or what?” the elder journalist groused. “Acute bufomorphic osculitis is when someone with massive inborn magical potential–specifically, for alteration or mutaremagicae–and can’t control it. Different families have different strains of osculitis, probably dating from whatever forebear had the mutation in the first place.”

Cartyr sipped his local firewater. “That doesn’t explain why the princesses can never marry.”

“It’s sex-linked, so only the ladies can get it. Men are just carriers.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s something in the big book of reporting about getting to the damn point,” Cartyr cried, thrusting his pencil at his blank reporter’s notebook. “You still haven’t told me what buffomoronic occultis is!”

“Guess you never had any Latin in grammar school either.” Jameson ground out his coarse smoke and lit a new one from the ashes. “It means that anyone the Cinnibarian princesses kiss turns into a toad, and that any toad the princesses kiss turns into a man. Or, I suppose, woman.”

 

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