Daily Drabble: “Fountain of Clay”

“Fountain of Clay”

If there is a way, the way will be found by the person who seeks it least but knows it best. The key to the door exists in all life at once but not in anyone species or individual at any one moment. The door to the way is composed of the absence of diversity but can only materialize in the presence of infinite variation. The way leads forward that is all.

“Where did you find this again?”

“A shard, a clay pot fragment, we pulled it out of the third hut.”

“And you’re sure it was in written in English?”

“Yes.”

“Will you read it again?”

“Simon! I’ve read it to you three times now, and I’ve…only got one bar left.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll be there in the morning.”

Dr. Underfoot put his one on the ground next to the dig and sat. The walls were fifteen feet deep. The tests had dated the rock, sediment, and shards, at the floor back some 15,000 years. The sharp curved pot fragment still in his had included a hand drawn picture of man holding a sign upon which were written the words he’d quoted to Simon.

“Nothing good will come of this,” he muttered, “Nothing good at all.”

He climbed back down the latter and placed the shard with the other odd fragments all with the same man and the same sign, but each in a different language. The more he studied the pile the looser his mind felt, as if he’d taken a sleeping aid. In his addled condition, Dr. Underfoot began, as if by instinct, arranging the shards about the inside of dig. There were too many pieces to count, every time he took one from the pile, two more appeared in its place.

When the entire floor was filled with clay fragments, Dr. Underfoot stopped. He took a long breath in through his nose, exhaling through his mouth. He spun around and around until he fell to his knees.

Madness came over Dr. Underfoot. He pounced the mound of shards breaking them with his fists. His hand soon bloodied, but he felt he was making progress and that the mound was decreasing in size. Then a light shown down on him, and he looked up into its brilliance.

“Dr., are you okay?”

“Who are you? Where are you?”

“It’s Reaves. I’m up here.”

Dr. Underfoot look at his clean hands and then around the earth floor. Only one potshard lay in ruins in the dirt.

“Reaves, help me out of this hole please. I need a drink.”

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Daily Drabble: “Vacation Pickup”

Looking down the escalator at the mobs of people moving like ants over a discarded apple, I panic. There is no escape. The stairs move in only one direction, and I’m trapped amidst a Michelin Man-sized family unit consisting of four-point-five: Mom, in blue feeding number point-five from a bottle; Dad, in his hunter orange cameo hat ogling Minnesota teenage mall-fashion; Richard, in all black sitting down probably pondering how to set the Mall of America on fire while spinning his lip ring; and I’m in my favorite pair of jean desperately trying to look cute.

Then Dad, God, I love him, says, “George, just because were in the Twin Cities doesn’t mean they’re all gay like you. City boys have this thing called,” he pauses, “Honey what was that you told me about the Twin Cities boys liking to…you know…dress all fantasy like.”

“Metro…”

Dad finishes, “sexual. Yeah, metro sexual.” He looks at me as we disembark from the escalator, “So, don’t hit on every hot guy you see okay.”

I’m devastated that my Dad thinks that he’s doing me a favor by taking a vacation to the Mall of America, so that I can try to pick up boys while they shop. God! I love him for trying.

“Boys, text us when you’re ready for lunch,” Mom calls as she heads into a Bath and Body Works.

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My story "Last Act" published by "the wry writer"

Check it out! - "Last Act." the wry writer, Sept. 18, 2009

Daily Drabble: "Apophis"

"Apophis"

April 13, 2029 – Astrophysicist, Nico Marquardt predicted that Apophis would probably, a 1 in 450 chance to collide with one of our 40,000 orbiting satellites. In the cosmic game of pool, any collision would cause a deviation in Apophis’ solar orbit. In this game of nine-ball, were number three, blue, pristine, and bursting with life, and our satellites are imperfections in the felt. We’ve all played on a ratty table, line up the called shot to have it ruined by a rip or a crease in the felt, altering the directionality of the queue ball by millimeters, fouling the shot.

Who, if you believe in a who, or whatever force put Apophis, an asteroid mass of solid iron and indium 320 meters in diameter and weighing in at 200 billion tons, into motion must be pretty pissed off right about now. At 3:20 AM Central Time this morning, Apophis impacted with not one but two communication satellites, one American and one Japanese. Due to the odds, 1 in 450, too close for comfort as galactic measurements go, but a bad bet, like tossing your money to the wind. There are rumors that some joker took those odds in Vegas and is now very well to do.

When Apophis hit the first satellite, its course deviated ever so slightly, not unlike an unmanned eighteen-wheeler hitting a skunk. Those few degrees put Apophis on a direct course with the second satellite, and again Apophis’ course shifted. Astrophysicists have been hard a work ever since recalculating Apophis’ orbit. Would those two collisions take Apophis galactic orbit further away from earth or closer, when it next approached in 2036?

December 15, 2037 – I will be the first to admit that we missed it. We were so concerned with humanity’s exponential environmental footstep that we forgot to look up. Environmental Scientists were completely focused on our conservation efforts to maintain our rapidly diminishing natural capital that we overlooked the approaching global apocalypse. It is our mission to observe, record, and test collected data, making recommendations based on probabilities to our governments concerning a myriad of natural phenomenon in which humans adversely influencing.

We wrongly left space and all of its mysteries to the astrophysicists believing that they had enough sense to extrapolate and apply their findings, using disciplines beyond physics. However, and this is a problem with science, we forget the interconnectedness of life and tend to put blinders on, so that we can focus, become respected experts in our chosen fields. It was the environmental scientist’s job to make connections between disciplines, experts in no one field, generalists pulling from every scientific field to better understand and manage our natural resources and services.

However, the extent of our relationship with astrophysicists and astronomers started and ended with the sun and the moon. The sun and sunlight, solar capital, fuels all life. Without solar capital, all of earth’s natural systems would cease to function, a massive shutdown on an ecological scale. We even came up with a category for solar capital, perpetual. Solar capital is perpetual, meaning that it would continue to provide energy on a scale the human mind can’t comprehend, having some six billion years left as our sun completes its life cycle.

We should have been more interested in what the astrophysicists and astronomers were saying about Apophis, but we ignored them. They put out peer-reviewed articles, gave lectures, and went on national television to prepare us for the near miss. They focused on harmful exposure to radiation as Apophis’ orbital gravity influenced atmosphere as it passed by.

No one thought to ask if Apophis had enough mass and inertia to do more than weaken the atmosphere temporality as it passed by, closer than the moon’s orbit. No one ever dreamed that it would cause an axial shift in earth’s rotation. Even a year later, it seems impossible that a marble’s velocity could move a basketball, gravity or no gravity, but shift the earth it did, so that what we knew as the equatorial latitude, 0 degrees, shifted so that is now runs latitude 60 degrees north to 60 degrees south. The axial prime meridian now sits 60 degrees east to 60 degrees west longitude.

It is December 15 in Minneapolis, MN, and the thermometer reads 35 C (95 F).

Inspirational Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1012941/asteroid-risk-hitting-earth

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Daily Drabble: “Longhorn’s Hacienda”

DANGER, the alarm’s vocabulator prattled in its cowboy drawl, TWO MINUTES BEFORE Y’ALL’S AIR'S DONE GONE. It paused for three seconds before repeating an updated message.

The escape pod, lovingly nicknamed Longhorn’s Hacienda so that its occupants didn’t linger on the fact that they were suck in a Life-support Hatch, floating somewhere in the Milky Way beyond Pluto. Someone had even taken the time to decorate this L.H. in a southwestern theme featuring a mural of a rodeo clown popping his head out of a barrel and red chili pepper shaped cushions.

YOU BEST BE GETTIN’ A MOVE ON, AIR’S DONE USED UP.

Through the one window, Earth was nothing more than a pinprick of blue that came in and out of view as the L.H rotated. Darkness interrupted by specks of light made the inside sparkle like an inverted disco ball from a bygone era. The idea of a southwestern DiscoTech in space was lost upon the system’s alarm

I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND. I KNOW Y’ALL STILL IN HERE, BUT I CAN’T FOR THE LIFE OF ME FIGURE OUT HOW Y’ALL ARE STILL BREATHING.

There was a long period of silence while the system scanned for life. It knew life existed within its gullet. It confirmed life those life signs over and over again. If its readings were accurate, and it had no reason to doubt itself, it was chalked full of life. There was so much life that its seams were about to hemorrhage.

GOSH! I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING, BUT STOP! PLEASE STOP!

The L.H. burst, and like a piñata expelling sweet life in all directions.

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Daily Drabble: "Last Act"

I was inspired to write a Daily Drabble by Tonya Moore’s post Join the Daily Drabble Challenge on Twitter: #dailydrabble #microfiction

Here is my bit of Fiction for today:

“Last Act”

Like bad song lyrics, the audience’s hecklings replayed in his mind, a white-noise background to dying screams as he swiftly moved through the front row. The stage a distant memory, an oasis forgotten, he had brought his ‘A’ game. He wasn’t one of those hacks seeking five minutes of fame on the blooper reel for millions of home viewers to yuck at. He was a serious artist, a hacky sack’n, juggling wizard worthy of a Who song immortalizing his skills.

A woman dressed in an elegant robin’s egg dress, white pearls around her slender stressed neck, tried to jump over her seat in the next row. Her black heel caught between the purple cushions causing her to wrench her knee and fall face first into the floor. Her screams were cut short as George the Juggler put his wingtip into her eye and stomped down on her head as if he were comedy legend Gallagher and she was an over ripe watermelon.

George wasn’t smiling, he believed himself a sane man. He was a talented man, a man that would not be the laughing stock of millions and millions of crumb bum dreamless couch potatoes. No. He was going to be remembered for something else completely. He would remembered as the man who killed David Hasselhoff, Sharron Osborne, the other two “America’s Got Talent” judges, and a few members of the audience.

“Stop!” A security guard leveled his gun at George the Juggler. The guard shook his head as George bent over to pick something up from the floor. “Don’t do it.”

George didn’t listen. He knew that this would be the last performance of his life. He wanted this performance to be remembered forever. He held up his bloodied hands, holding three heads, Hasselhoff, Osborne, and some guy with a yellow mustache of the likes not seen since Wild Bill Hickok’s. He moved out from the aisle and began juggling.

“Laugh at me now,” he said.

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THE MALL OF CTHULHU by Seamus Cooper

I would like to suggest that Cooper’s “The Mall of Cthulhu” is Lovecraft light, but that is not to say that the novel wasn’t a romping good time. Ha! I think that my brain has melted, just a little – that double negative was horrifically stupefying. What I wanted to say was that Cooper’s “The Mall of Cthulhu” is a romping good time, but just a trashy like a good harlequin romance.

Ted, a coffee slinging barista, has had a rough life. When he was in college, he slaughtered an entire sorority and burned to the ground. For the record, the sorority girls were vampires, but Ted had to chop the head off a good friend. Ted was never quite the same after that night, or perhaps he mental and emotional growth was stunted, doomed to forever be an inappropriate sex-crazed first year.

Ted’s wise cracking lewd and sexist comments removed me from the dream-story experience several times throughout the novel, but his puppy-like loyalty and his superhero ability to run towards trouble eventually won me over. I guess I just want more from characters than perpetual pulsating libidos. Ted whines so often about not getting laid that when he finally does have sex, in R’lyeh no less, I almost wanted to cheer, hoping that he would drop it, but no; there seems to be nothing to do in R’lyeh but have sex.

While in R’lyeh, wandering alone and desperately seeking Cthulhu out of boredom, Ted admires the scenery, which Seamus reduces to horrific comments about the mind numbingly impossible geometry. I wanted more. Lovecraft was sparse in his details about the Dreamlands, but he was still able to paint a picture that sent tingles up my spine. The descriptions seemed too comical, almost Looney Toons. However, there was one moment in R’lyeh that had me rolling in laughter. Ted had successfully climbed on top of Cthulhu’s head and danced in an attempt to wake him, ending his oppressive boredom.

Despite my disappointments, “The Mall of Cthulhu” is a fun quick read. I’m notoriously slow reader of novels, but I devoured this one in less then two days, about four hours. I’m a complete sucker for Lovecraft inspired fiction. I’ve even written a short story or two that were directly inspired by the Mythos. So, I guess what I’m saying is that I really did enjoy the coffee novel despite Ted.

Question: is “The Mall of Cthulhu” worth buying?

Answer: from one cultist to the next – YES.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Cooper, Seamus. “The Mall of Cthulhu.” San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2009

LITTLE WHITE MOUSE OMNIBUS by Paul Sizer

I feel like I’ve been living in the dark. How could the work of Paul Sizer have escaped me for so long? B.P.M. and Moped Army were lucky library accidents that introduced me to, first and foremost, a talented story teller. Sizer’s stories are full of heart, and he pays close attention to his characters’ emotional cores, which just isn’t found in other graphic novels.

Take, for example, “Filthy Jake” Armani, a tattooed air-biker who is as big as an ox and as mean as any back-alley thug. Armani, through a bizarre in counter with Loo (the main character) becomes a loyal friend, who shows tender side as he struggles to return a panda bear key chain.

Loo is Little White Mouse (a father’s nickname for her), a sixteen year-old girl on her way to the Galactic Science Academy along with her sister. However, the ship that she is on does not make it to Academy. Loo ends up stranded, alone, on a deep space asteroid mine. Heart broken at the loss of her sister, Loo endeavors to resurrect her by downloading her sister’s brainwaves into a homemade android.

Sizer’s graphic novel explores what it means to be alone, truly alone. How would you cope if you were stranded alone? Being stranded alone is typically a story line championed as a motif in male coming of age stories, Call of the Wild or Hatchet, but Loo’s cold deep space adventure proves that surviving on your own, alone leaves no one unchanged.

For me, the brilliant part of Loo’s adventure begins when she leaves the asteroid and must confront the emotional changes she’s undergone. To foil her changes, she meets a young man trapped by his need for perfection and a talented young woman trapped in a degrading profession. Through these interactions Loo comes to terms with how blessed her life has been, and she tries to reach out to these people though a new found sense of morality and personal justice.

If ever there was a graphic novel that approached literature status, Sizer’s Little White Mouse is one of them. You should not miss your opportunity to indulge in his work.

Sizer, Paul. “Little White Mouse: Omnibus: The Complete Little White Mouse.” Café Digital Comics, 2006

THE SOULLESS MACHINE REVIEW August 2009

HAPPY ENDINGS by Margaret Atwood

Extras:
HOPE ON A TIGHTROPE by Cornel West
THE WEATHER MAKERS by Tim Flannery
BURNOUT by Rebecca Donner
B.P.M.: BEATS PER MINUTE by Paul Sizer