184-189

Last month I banged out six pieces of flash fiction and here they are in order:

"The Hip of Theseus" - A guy replaces ALL of his body parts.

"Life is so Strange" - A woman foresees her life is about to come to a violent end.

"Time's Archipelago" - An old man travels to the past and might be stuck in his ten-year-old body.

"Life in the City" - A woman summons Life and uses it to do her bidding.

"My God, It's Full of Stars," - Stars keep appearing in the night sky at an alarming rate.

"A Break in the Action" - A couple find themselves in a lull in a real-life action movie.

Some Links, With Politics (And Questions On Plurals)

I don't do bunches of links very often but here are some:

You Are Being Lied To About Pirates by Johann Hari
I'm one of those guys who is likely to take the side of the little guy over the government or the corporation, to the point where I may not condone violence but I certainly understand it. In general, if the little guy is getting screwed by the government and the corporation together, he usually has only one way of getting what he wants. I don't like terrorism, but I understand it. It's war on a shoestring budget. When you're in a corner, you do what you gotta do. Throw me some hate mail if you like. The only difference between what we've done in Iraq and what the dildos (should that be dildoes?) did on 9/11 is a matter of scale.

Underland Press
I haven't really looked into this site, but the NPR story today seemed mildly interesting.

Flash Scribe
Another joint that takes Flash Fiction. They're interested in doing series (how do I pluralize something that's already plural? serieses?) in flashes. Now that's interesting. I've got an idea for a flash fiction series. I'd considered doing it here on the blog, just haven't gotten to it yet. It would be based on one of the flash pieces I've already run here. The only challenge is, the concept is insane and the stories would be as well, so could I keep up my interest in it, and could I keep the readers interest? I'll have to write a few and figure out if I want to do more.

Blonde Roots
Heard about this on NPR today as well. It's an alternative history novel about Africans enslaving Europeans in the New World. Again, the little guy thing, this appeals to me. The book's not out for a couple of weeks. I've often fantasized about the Europeans coming to a New World in which the natives are technologically superior and beat their white asses down and maybe go to find out where they came from. I don't think I'd be interested in writing it. I just like to think about it. We've loved making Nazis the bad guys in American pop culture for seventy years now, but we act as if we didn't perpetrate our own Holocaust right here. Who knew my links would taste so politically skewed?

I Have Two Mouths And Feel No Need To Scream At The Moment, Thank You Very Much

I HAVE TWO MOUTHS AND FEEL NO NEED TO SCREAM AT THE MOMENT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

No sir, things are going great. My mouths are the lives of the party, I tell you. I can smooch two ladies at the same time. Who wouldn't want some of that?

I can eat twice as fast. Of course, you want to coordinate that chew. I can't tell you how many times my mother yelled at me when I was a wee and I'd shovel her gravy-laden chow into one maw just to have it plop out the other. I'd retire to my corner and suck both thumbs. It's all controlled now. Only happens at family gatherings, my version of the breathalizer. When half of my shirt is covered in beer, it's time to stop drinking.

I can whistle in harmony with myself. Same for kazooing and harmonicazing. I can sing while enjoying a juicy stick of gum. Yes, I know the juice is really just my spit, but did you ever stop to think that makes my gums twice as juicy? A-HA!

You think you're special? Let's see you put your hand through your face. Without bleeding, I mean. Yeah, yeah, screw your petty arguments. Twice the floss and twice the paste, twice the dental bills and twice the gingivitis. Try twice the smiles. Sixty-four shining, blinding pearlies. Two times the cheeses. Look at all those people taking my picture! I look twice as happy as you ever could. At you I stick out both my tongues. Or, if not directly at you, certainly to either side.

That's two two true. Twice the tongues. Oh, hear me, my cubby, when those lollipops reminisce with their kin up and to the left in Lolly Heaven, they'll know what it has been to be properly well sucked! And speaking of . . .

A C-cup to the left and another to the right. A Double-Bubble double suckle, "Two CCs, stat!" and after that every stand is a two-nighter. They love that deep Frenchy soul sucking kiss while sweet whispered nothings tickle their ears.

So you scream, little one mouth. You with both the ability and the reason to. With two sets of taste buds my life is just too sweet.

THE ONION PELTER (A GHOST STORY)

THE ONION PELTER (A GHOST STORY)
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Vic pelted onions at his enemies. His friends and family said:

"Hey, you shouldn't do that." And because they said that, they too became his enemies.

He pelted onions at them.

Did I mention there was a ghost?

We

WE
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

After tens of thousands of years in our present form, we finally realized that maybe, like us, humanity itself was a multi-cellular creature and all of us, well, we were just cells. We started watching us, then, real close, to see what we were up to. Looked kinda fuzzy from here. Of course, we pointed out, our cells, the little ones that make up our individual bodies, you know, blood cells, bone cells, skin cells, they probably couldn't see what was going on in the big picture from their perspective either.

We thought, well, maybe, trying to see what we're on about is actually throwing it all off. We agreed, but then replied, if we could understand what the hell we were up to, we're a damned sight better than we were.

We made ourselves feel bad with that, so we just went back to selling shoes and killing ourselves.

Herb, Accelerated

HERB, ACCELERATED
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Herb could only count to four because he always wore mittens. The world, full of more than four things, overwhelmed him. He cried. Once, when a low flying snowball tore the mitten from his hand, the world suddenly became a more manageable place. The things that were grouped in more than seven were far less than the things that were grouped in more than four. Herb felt that his intelligence had increased by seventy-five percent. He lorded it over his friends, shunned his wife for never believing in him. Never again would he re-mitten his red, numbed hand. Of course, it never occurred to him to remove the other mitten. For even sporting seventy-five percent more brain power, he was still pretty dumb.

Vermit

Warning: Rated G for Gross




VERMIT
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

“It’s called vermit,” Danny offered, “Not vomit. When you throw up a bunch of frogs like that, I mean.”

I didn’t care what it was called. I just wanted to get this taste out of my mouth. I blew my nose again, so hard I thought I’d have a stroke right there on the salesroom room floor. It didn’t do any good. I still felt one of them wriggling around in my sinuses.

“Those are pollywogs,” Carol said, pointing the toe of her shoe at my puke.

“Still vermit,” Danny said. “You been eatin’ tadpoles, Marcus?”

“It’s the curse,” I said. I shuddered. My nose burned and dripped with . . . Snot? Bile?

The salesman edged ever closer. Royal blue shirt and stars and stripes tie. Still figuring out how to deal with us and my mess.

I waved him closer. “C’mon over. Watch your step. I apologize. I’ll be happy to clean it up. I don’t s’pose you guys sell wet vacs?”

“No sir.”

“It’s my wife,” I said, which made him look at Carol. “No. That’s not a wife, that’s Carol.” Carol kneed me, almost sending me face first into my own biological spill. I regained my balance but not without putting my right boot into it. The little squiggles had stopped swimming around in there, at least. “Wife’s some kinda Super-Wiccan or something, I don’t know. Cursed me this morning.”

This he understood. He had those tired, baggy eyes that explained him. “Going through a divorce?”

“Man, I wish. Nah, I just forgot to put my clothes in the machine last night.”

He nodded. “Say no more. I’ll get paper towels and a garbage bag.”

My August 19th

John Scalzi ran himself a contest on his heavily-trafficked blog, Whatever, last week. In it, he asked his adherents to describe the events of August 19, 1994. To make it short, I didn't win. To make it longer, here's my entry:


It was a bright night, August 19, 1994. Two moons worth of bright, owing to that same mirror in the sky that made Gemini spring into quadruplets. My son was just eighteen months old and I remember holding his tubby body up close to my face while we waved upward. We couldn’t see ourselves up there but we greeted us just the same. The whole neighborhood had spilled all over the street, impromptu barbecues and cheap fireworks going up all around us. We’d gotten the Independence Day we’d missed a month and a half before because the damned city said wildfire risks were too high with the drought.

It was a night of miracles. Every fifth dog burst into life-affirming green flames. Through the neighbor’s window we saw Clinton’s speech for the fifth time that day. Behind dusty slats he declared that our war with Uzbekistan was over and tomorrow was to be a spaghetti holiday. Hell, at that point I didn’t care that he was in bed with Big Semolina. The draft notices we’d just received that day for my only boy and his unconceived sister were now null and void.

Although the celebrations went on for many hours all over the world, the night ended for us when creepy Tommy Marcella whacked the kids’ piñata, a rainbow colored pony, with his aluminum baseball bat. Stronger than that bat was the half-hour of frustration behind it. Seventeen-kids-and-one-yellow-broomstick-,-brown-where-the-paint-had-chipped-off-the-end’s worth of frustration. Eight and half sugar-jonesing child-hours of frustration and the power of one hormone-squirting, shadow-mustached man-child fell behind that silver and black Louisville Slugger.

The rainbow pony burst. And where candy was expected, intestines poured out onto the cracked grey pavement. The clot of pre-adolescent bodies shattered into its constituent screaming parts, littering the bloody scene with dozens of hyphens in their wakes.

John Butts suggested we make sausage. We laughed a little but the party had gone out of us at that point. But for an occasional shout or crackle of salutes in the distance, the quiet had descended upon us. There were a few lingerers who didn’t know until it grew uncomfortable that good times ever ended. The rest sought their beds, only now realizing that there was work the next day, spaghetti be damned. My joy was mellowed but persistent. In the warm glow of Mrs. Demers’ Scottish Terrier, Poopie, I kissed my wife. I even kissed her husband (closed mouth for Barry, though).

Everything since then has seemed so ordinary in comparison.

The World's Biggest Waterslide, Day Three

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST WATERSLIDE, DAY THREE
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Everything washes down. I’m grateful for that. The vomit, the corpses, the piss and shit. It all flows ever forward through the wide and endless fiberglass loops. Washing down and away from me.

It’s an endurance test. I’m covered in Shar-Pei wrinkles, between the oil my body is losing and the loosening skin of my starving frame. I’m drinking chlorinated water that a billion bodies have slid through. I’m hungry as hell. If someone doesn’t throw me a sandwich, I’ll never make it for four more days, never mind four more weeks. They said the slide would alleviate the population problems. I thought they meant by keeping one third of humanity off of the Earth at all times. Now I realize they meant by voluntary extermination.

But Oh My God, this is fun! This is why the space elevator was created!

Shower County

SHOWER COUNTY
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

It never rained out here anymore. Crops died, cattle followed. There were no clouds to seed and a rainmaker had run off with a nice chunk of the county’s change, though we kept the one ear that we tore off of him before he escaped. The ear didn’t attract any rain either.

Bob Miller’s son ran an engineering firm in Arizona and those folks had come up with one heck of an idea out there. The county commissioners flew out for a day to see how it worked and they liked it so much they sold it to the rest of us on pure excitement. The project was one year in the making and that was a tough year, but Bob’s boy sold us water on the cheap until we could get on our feet. When it was all done, we had ourselves a showerhead in the sky, thirty miles in diameter.

There was a big faucet-turning ceremony and everybody came out, all the kids, both pastors and the Grindlers even brought one of their cows. It was a good thing we were all there, because a faucet that size needed every available back to turn it. And then we had rain. For the first time in nearly two years we had a downpour to heal our dry, cracked earth. A couple crazies stripped off their clothes. They’d brought bars of soap with them and lathered up right there in front of everyone. Luckily, the sheriff was there too.

A land that dry won’t soak up the water that quick and to be honest, we were so happy to see rain that not a one of us wanted to be the one that said stop. Wasn’t long before we had another problem on our hands. Bob got on the phone.

His son said it was no problem. They’d run into the same thing in Arizona. His contractor rolled back into town a few days later. While we waited, they hauled out as much water as their tankers could carry. In a few months we had a nice big water drain, half as big as the showerhead and placed strategically in the lowlands.

It all seems like a happy story all wrapped up, but there’s things that most people, going about their daily lives, don’t consider. Like who’s going to clean out that drain? Sad to say, that job’s mine. Gives me the shivers every time I go down there. Where those giant hairs come from, I don’t want to know.

Beyond Sky

BEYOND SKY
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Where the other kids watched Orion and the Great Bear, Megan saw right through them. In the forever dome above the forgotten Drive-In out back she lost herself for hours until her mother’s shouting called her in to bed. Her black ballet slipper sort of shoes felt over the crumbly grey asphalt while tufts of brown grass tickled her chin and every three yards a steel pole rose from the ground, chips of pink paint clinging to the parts that weren’t rough with rust. Green and yellow wires poked out from many of the poles. She only knew the colors from the daytime. They were all shadow on shadow now. Severed from their voiceboxes, they stood only waiting for the end of the world, bearing witness for their dilapidated screen which was on its last behind them.

Megan grabbed a pole a swung herself slowly around it, knowing the scratchy surface like she knew her own bed. Her eyes were fixed beyond the stars peering hard into the black you only got out here in the abandoned town.

She wanted to blow the top off the sky just to see what was on the other side of the universe.

Those Darned Aliens

THOSE DARNED ALIENS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Saltwater got them drunk, so you can imagine what they felt when they discovered Earth. Imagine humans discovering a planet with vast oceans of rum. Didn’t matter that it was peppered with tons of fish poo, that rum was going to be drunk. To hell with “Take me to your leader.” The Sock Monsters of Becky’s World made big time deals with the first bozos they found, usually fishermen, to export our seas in little shiploads.

“Say, you can’t do that,” the rest of the world said. “You don’t own the oceans.”

“Neither do you,” replied the fishermen. “Don’t piss us off or we’ll sic our alien pals on you.” The rest of the world backed off. They didn’t really need to argue. The Sock Monsters were an undisciplined lot. They drank more saltwater than they moved so they were loaded long before their ships were. They got into crazy drunken fights, rending one another to tatters. We actually made out well on the deal, selling the aliens tons of thread once their medical supplies ran out.

They bankrupted themselves here, every last patchy drunk of them and eventually, with all the Terran thread coursing through their bodies, they became more Earther than Becky’s Worlder. The fight had gone out of them. They were pulled in by the net-load and wound out their days in ignominy, wrapping the feet of fishermen’s children throughout hundreds of Atlantic coastal villages.

Blame It

BLAME IT
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

They danced slow but bouncy in a little bar in Lisbon - some bossa nova on an ancient juke box - her retro nineties haircut doing a fair forgery of a retro sixties haircut, her short dress nearly as passable in the dim light and Manny let himself be taken back to fall in love with another woman who didn’t even exist, but bounced here in front of him just the same.

Then Astrud’s soft and foggy vocal faded, the moment was gone, and he felt a sadness for a loss that would come back to haunt him now and again for the rest of his life.

The Extremely Brief First Marriage Of Martin Rainer

THE EXTREMELY BRIEF FIRST MARRIAGE OF MARTIN RAINER
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The twenty-third century saw limitless wonders and Martin was able to do things that no one from any previous time could have done, like marry a woman made of soup.

Upon returning from his disastrous honeymoon, her mother, a vat of boiling water, wept uncontrollably (although no one would have known if she hadn't told them). No criminal charges were pressed, but the girl's father, a weird conglomeration of dried pasta, chicken and veggies, sued Martin for everything he had. He contended that Martin should have known better than to bring his new bride on a jaunt four-hundred years away in Victorian London. On the very first day the poor thing was slurped into oblivion by a wild pack of street urchins.

Sexy Pants

SEXY PANTS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Marilyn wouldn’t give Daryl the pleasure of her company outside of work but she did love the way he sometimes called her Sexy Pants. Then came the day she caught him in the sack doing it with her red slacks and Marilyn realized that she wasn’t Sexy Pants at all.

Stick With Me, Baby

STICK WITH ME, BABY
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

There was a reason Johnny ate all that paste in school, although it wasn’t evident until he met Roxanne in first grade. She colored within the lines, got picked first for kickball and had been known to partake of a couple of pots of paste before breakfast herself. She was everything he wanted in a woman. He sidled up to her in class one day and never sidled back down. There was so much paste in their systems that it oozed from their pores and when they made physical contact their skin fused into one.

They were brought to a surgeon who cut them apart and grafted some skin wherever he saw red stuff, but when Roxanne left her hospital bed to stick herself back onto Johnny, the adults in their lives gave up. They were married for propriety’s sake, but honestly, the way they were stuck together, they couldn’t have tried anything naughty even if they had thought of it. Johnny and Roxanne sought out like-minded individuals, the greatest paste eaters that the nation’s elementary schools had to offer, and whenever it felt right another kid would stick himself or herself to them. Before they were done, they were a human blob, four-hundred and sixty-seven children strong. Governments world-wide feared that this might be the next step in human evolution, humans grouping together like cells to form an even higher life-form. But the truth was, humanity had nothing to fear.

I mean, these kids couldn’t even go to the bathroom properly.

Aside! Aside!

ASIDE! ASIDE!
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

He (And by “he” I mean me (or perhaps I should (and will) say I (aye(!)))) loved (I just use the past tense here because of story telling convention (not that I’m (as the writer, not the narrator) a slave (watch out, we’re in the middle of a cliché here (Jeez (a euphemism for Jesus (The big (not overweight (at least I don’t think so (It’s not like I ever met him or anything (I mean, we lived nearly two-thousand years apart (Well, one-thousand, nine-hundred, and sixty-nine (don’t think you’re dirty thoughts around here) (1969 (MCMLXIX)) years apart to be exact (Wait, he was born in year one (1 (I)), wasn’t he? Not year zero (They wouldn’t name a year zero (0 (?(The Romans didn’t have a zero (Lousy Romans (Picture me shaking my fist right here (at the Romans)))))) (or would they?) (Comic books have number zeroes though (drives me crazy (and they don’t always come first in the series either (What the hell is that all about anyway?(!)))) don’t they?)) (We had a whole thing about that around two-thousand (2000 (MM)) and two-thousand and one(2001 (: A Space Odyssey (!))(MMI))) so really, we’re talking about one-thousand, nine-hundred, and sixty eight (1968 (MCMLXVIII)) years apart, aren’t we? (And that’s from his birth to mine (rather than his death to my birth (And all of this is giving the church the benefit of the doubt on this calendar thing (Wait a minute, why didn’t they make his birthday January first (1 (Ist) st) instead of December twenty-fifth (25 (XXVth)th? (I mean if you’re going to fuck up the whole calendar, why take half measures?))))) (And I want to be exact))))), but prominent) Christ guy, not the gardener), I like to think I’m a better writer than that)) to convention) not because he (I) doesn’t (don’t) love her in the present (Because he (I) does (do(!))!)) her.

Cardboard Delight

CARDBOARD DELIGHT
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Dominic was tired of everyone saying his pizza tasted like cardboard. To prove that it didn’t, he made a type of cardboard that tasted like pizza. Once all of his customers tasted that cardboard, he figured, they would have to admit that his pizza tasted like pizza, because that’s how his cardboard tasted. Are you following me? I guess it doesn’t really matter at this point, does it? No one went so far as to say his pizza tasted like pizza, but his pizza sold like crazy after that. Nobody dined in, though. They all bought his pizza just to eat the box it came in.

Wallpaper

WALLPAPER
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The homes of that late gilded age were built twelve-hundred layers thick and a man like Daiquiri had to spend a fortune like his father’s in order to be able to properly house his bride. She was a monstrous, toad-like creature, but she was all that was left after the bridal rush of sixty-eight. His horse had melted in the equatorial heat and while all the other young men strode in to swoop up brides on their wet-weasels (not otters, mind you, but wet-weasels), he had arrived on foot, days later with a choice between some maggoty looking things and his soon to be bride. Just as well, for once he’d made his choice, his fiancée slurped up her competition with her fleshy straw-like tongue. He’d gotten a two-for-one deal.

Now in their new home, she was all over the walls, all of the time, tearing through layer after layer until Daiquiri became sick to his stomach. The paisley had been swept clean of the walls almost before he saw it, then the striped blue, the multi-colored polka-dots and dozens more. He was aghast. At this rate he’d be penniless inside of a week. Her sticky, super-tactile toes, it seems, found something unbearable about each and every paper, whether it was to be blamed on the color or the surface. This one burned and that one itched and how could she ever walk on her own walls in comfort? Paper after paper hit the floor as fast as the servants could gather it up and dispose of it.

“Not to worry,” Daiquiri told himself between heavy, dry breaths. “I’ll be dead before I’m bankrupt. My heart will stop any moment now, I’m certain of it.” But it didn’t stop. He even pounded on his chest once or twice to help it along, but to no avail.

“Sir, if I may?” his manservant, Hoeltag, ventured.

“What is it, Hoeltag?”

“Well, sir, if I’m not mistaken, the lady’s love was won outside her native tire caves on the edge of the far eastern desert.”

“Yes, what of it?”

“Would the lady not be more allowing of a surface not unlike that to which she was accustomed?”

After a sudden intake of breath, Daiquiri clapped his hands. “Excellent, Hoeltag! Give yourself a pat on the back, but not before you strip the tires from every last rubberlad in the barrows!”

“Very good, sir!”

The word went out and hill-dwelling rubberlads from near and far were rounded up and flayed, their treaded skins applied to the walls of Daiquiri’s home. His blushing (or maybe that was a fungus) bride calmed immediately and fell asleep on the drawing room wall. Daiquiri collapsed with relief and exhaustion. A sizable fraction of his inheritance had been saved. Now he could settle down to the life of a country gentleman with his remarkably ugly wife.

“Hoeltag?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’ve changed my mind. Strip the walls.”

“Very good, sir.”

Daiquiri pounded upon his chest with renewed vigor.

Chickenman

CHICKENMAN
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

What they’d been after was a creature that was half human/half chicken. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the colonel wanted super-sized drumsticks or something. What they got was one remarkable deviant and a chicken that had to be put down for humanitarian reasons.