That One Story
He never saw it coming. The bolt of lighting exploded with a force so powerful that it knocked him to the earth. He held his burning chest with one hand and yanked at the grass with the other as if he could somehow transfer his own pain into their innocent green blades. The wizard knew his bolt had done some damage, but was it enough? He couldn't be sure. With the stroke of his wand he decided he didn't want to write about fantasy anymore and completely changed the subject, continuing to abide by the 10 sentence limit of the challenge of course. With only a few sentences left, there wasn't much else to say. How could he create a story in only 2 sentences? It seemed impossible, unlikely, and absolutely mental. It was.
Fiction—A Zelzer Stiff
The android was making them all uncomfortable with its Zelzer Stiff eyeing them from its hip. It’d only been forty point three seconds since the landmark decision to include artificial humans in the Second Amendment and this son of a manufacturing plant had just walked into the Rig & Rattle with a laspistol holstered, twinkling. Kghoshi—a real bastard on a good day—splashed his drink on silver chestmetal and said, "You packing, tin can?" The bartender—a saint on a bad day—put an arm on the droid: "C'mon, now, let's not do this." The move was registered as an offensive action and the android shot the bartender between his eyebrows. Kghoshi's finger moved a centimeter toward his gun when a second shot put a red dot on his forehead as uniform as urna. The men in the bar leaped to their feet. Offensive actions. The men in the bar toppled over chairs and tables. By the time the android reached the counter, empty now of breathing souls, a feed of reaction times, facial registers, psycho-prints—all pointing to self-defense—had been submitted to local authorities.
Fiction—“To Paradise First Tending,” a Tale of Chief Inspector Henri Moreau
En 18—, dans la ville d'Arles
I woke to the impression of fingers tapping against my chest. Crouched on my gown was a scorpion battering its seven tails against me. These scaley tines struck with the blur of a harpist, the fury of Xenophon on the Hellespont, and I immediately, once conscious, struck back, slapping the thing into the window.
A green smear on the pane. The scorpion squirmed where it fell, wriggling down into jerks and then an armored stillness. I pulled down my collar to check my chest – only bruises, no expansion of wine-colored boils. As banal as it sounds, I sighed in relief. It had been the same scorpion I found nesting in my papers, seeking refuge from the cold. The one I neutralized by snipping its sacs and putting it in a container on the desk with my insects – the worms which produce garrote's rope, the fireflies in a fireproof jar.
Only a poor assassin would use a useless scorpion. No, deduction led me to pursue other designs which led the arachnid from the crown of glass on the floor to my bedside. Perhaps utter accident or a want for warmth carried it to the plains of my being, followed by the recognition of a great living enemy. The thing may have had some memory of its gelder. Maybe God is a playful devil.
This was before I knew of my enemy – the man who hides behind the wasps.
Bad Writing Advice—“Don’t read this. Write instead.”
[Censored: I replaced all profanity with references to “Deepthroat” by CupcakKe.]
Why are you reading this? What the Deepthroat by CupcakKe is wrong with you? WRITE SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Get your Deepthroat by CupcakKe off the internet and onto Microsoft Word, or better, a yellow legal pad. Come put it down. Why are you still reading this Deepthroat by CupcakKe? What do you think is going to happen? You’re not going to magically become some kind of Deepthroating writer by reading CupcakKe advice columns. GO CAKING WRITE, you stupid cup. Get the lick, lick, lick, lick out of here. Why are you staring at me with your mouth wide open like I was a dentist? GO.
Okay, now you done cupcakKed. You done cupcakKed now. You cupcakKed up. You must be some kind of dumb mother-deepthroater. You must have an IQ of 1.3. One point to know how to read, and .3 to be smart enough to do it with your eyes open. You probably can’t even speak a sentence.
Okay, so what I’m going to do, is end this article early so you can go write. And you better do it. Throw your phone into oncoming traffic. Toss your computer monitor into the county morgue. Get away from people. Take off your clothes. Arch your back. And keep only one thing – this poetic advice on writing by one of the world’s most profound writers:
“Don’t need a pen or a pencil
All I need is my body
… My fingers in it, gentle.”
[https://badwritingadvice.com/2017/03/24/dont-read-this-write-instead/]
Nonfiction—Snakes and Spiders
When I wake, the cats are at the door – they want to slip into bed and lie in my warm vacancy. One is black with a teacup on her chest, the other gray as elephant's breath with muted stripes. In the darkness, I fumble against their fur, locating rump, scruff, finally head, and I pet what I can find until they roll over and expose their tummies – a trap. Under the bluing shade of early morning they are furry dead spiders.
Cats aren't the only parasite squirming in the bedwaters – my wife, snorting like the Union Pacific, snakes her cold fingers and toes toward me, seeking flickers of heat like sausages over a campfire.
Shower. Toothpaste. Size 40 pants instead of last year's 38. An XLT button-down that's starting to hug. The cats follow me to the living room as I pick up a satchel and keys. Jenny lets me pet her back – she has a funny habit of bursting forward when my hand reaches her tail, to circle around for another run. Remy sits on the couch, feet tucked under his chest like a chicken in a coop. I think of saying goodbye to the snoring pile of hair in the other room, but my wife doesn't work until 9. Still, what if I never see her again?
I open the door and step into a world devoid of Julie and Jenny and Remy and the little routines of morning before the light.
