Fast Fictions

2008-01-26T20:20:00.000-08:00

Hanging up the daily writing routine for a while to focus on writing three poems a day at twitter.
My favorite poems at the end of each week will go up at kevinspenst.com accompanied by some writing suggestions.

2005-12-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

"WRITING THE CREMATED REMAINS OF BOOKS" is an enormously special short-short story based on this image by the very talented Vonster, an illustrator, designer and self-described die-hard doodler. What more could our eyes want ?

And after you chuckle your way through this fast fiction, if you find yourself with a hankering for a classic short story check out Classic Reader.

Enjoy.

WRITING THE CREMATED REMAINS OF BOOKS

Sammy lights the tiny "pinner" which promises - by the looks of it - no more than five or six measly tokes. Just enough to inhale some inspiration to help him write a story for Creative Writing 12, an elective which was supposed to be a breeze to boost his GPA to get into the university of his choice.

He hopes this weed will salvage his future.

He inhales and stares at the white wall of a screen in front of him. When he was a kid, he could spin yarns like nobodies business, yammering away tales of heroic animals, secret agent hockey players and alien parents but over the past year he's been more concerned about the cool factor of his literary concoctions. There are three girls at the back of the class who snicker whenever someone says the wrong word in a poem or story. Sammy isn't sure which words are the wrong words but he doesn't want to blow his chances of making out with one of them. They are so cute, he has to cross his legs.

"Can't create in a vacuum," he says out of the joint-free side of his mouth and he goes online and through the grey-haired strands of smoke of his third toke, he views girls in bright bikinis.

Suddenly, a genie-type apparition thing comes out of the screen."

"Holy Fuck," Sammy coughs, the joint falling out of his mouth.

"Here's the deal, little buddy. You want to write brilliantly sophisticated salvoes of prose, right ? This is the pen you are looking for. This is unlike any writing implement you'll ever use. With this pen I thee wed... to genius. You will write stories that will knock the hats off your profs and the panties off the ladies."

"What's in this weed ?" Sammy laughs, searching for the dropped joint.

"I assure you sir. The only joint you're gonna need after you take this pen, is one with a bank vault door on the front to secure your fortunes. You'll be rich !!" the genie-thing smiles and just to make his point he slaps Sammy across the face.

"Ouch !"

"There's all the evidence you need that this once in a life-time offer is yours for the taking. This pen can be yours while supplies last !!"

"What's the hook ?" Sammy says, rubbing his stubble coated chin.

"All you have to do is burn some classic piece of fiction. Something from the canon, as they say. Canon ! Fire the canon out of a canon is what I say. What a waste of space. People will thank you for your service to the community."

The genie-thingy dude pulls out a contract from the white computer screen along with a coffee and bird which are apparently there for moral support.

"So yes just sign here and the pen is yours. All you have to do is burn a book and funnel the ashes into the top of the pen. The ashes of a hundred paged book should last about five pages of double spaced writing, but remember to burn Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickinson, Woolfe somebody great. No pulp fiction. Won't work."

Sammy signs the piece of paper and the genie-thingy dude disappears.

And from this day on, Sammy writes amazing story after amazing story. Burning book after book and funneling the finely chopped up ashes into the empty hollow at the top of the pen.

At the age of 43, Sammy Derenger will die of a heart condition brought on by the guilt of destroying so much beauty which everyone says is so finely infused within his own work.

2005-12-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

"THE BIRD-MEN KILLERS" is such a special short-short story that it might very well just fly right out of this screen, perch itself on a stray strand of your hair and spend the next hour or two repeating the last word of everything you say in a tiny mocking tone. But when it leaves you'll miss its cute feathery charms.

Inspiration for today's work comes from the very talented Andy Kehoe, a painter and illustrator whose site features a motley crue of creatures such as murderous birds, beer-swilling wild things and gun-toting stuntmen.

And on a literary note, check out bookninja's serialized selections from Derek McCormack's Christmas Days, a refreshingly sad and morose countdown of stories to Christmas.

But for now put on those spectacular slippers made by your taxidermist friend out of those two peacocks you accidently drove over and enjoy the following short-short story...

THE BIRD-MEN KILLERS

In the distance, trees fringed the top of the mostly barren hill like a receding hairline. At the base of the hill, two bird-men stood disappointedly over a body which was bleeding its life into the ground. The man hadn't put up any kind of a fight, he didn't even seem to be all that surprised by the sight of bird-men wielding knives along his walking path.

"You said we'd strike terror into the hearts of men," the one bird-man said to the other who was busy shaking his head back and forth and back and forth.

The man had simply looked up from the pebbles of the path and stared ahead at the bird-men who stood in angry stances intended to inspire blood-curdling screams. When they both lunged at his belly with their flashing blades, he continued to maintain total calm and as his body toppled to the ground the one bird-man thought he saw a yawn taking shape on his lips.

"How is this any kind of start to a killing spree ? You said people would scream ?!"

And the bird-men shrugged their shoulders and made the journey back to the trees to come up with another plan to make a name for themselves in the world of men.

2005-12-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

"GROTESQUERIES OF THE GODS" is a divinely special short-short story that explores the lighter side of the abject cruelties of this dung-heap of an existence.

(Yes, that's mostly my hangover talking.)

Inspiration today comes from the very talented Camilla Engman whose paintings, illustrations and calendars for Christmas are all intelligent bursts of color and joy.

Oh, and on a literary note check out this Globe and Mail article on the declining sales of literary fiction in Canada. While al-Qaeda are cited as possible culprits, terrorists who've blown our imaginations to smithereens, there's no mention of George Bush's almost unbelievable election, performance as a president or inept responses to any number of global issues. I mean if we're not reading fiction because of the disastrous times we live in, I think a whole gallery of international rogues could share the blame.

Of course we need our imaginations for a whole host of purposes: from mocking idiot presidents to creating new worlds within a couple hundred pages of prose, but how do we preserve all that playful grey matter ? Yann Martel comes to the rescue: If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. In other words, we need intelligent fiction to sustain a worthwhile dream of a future.

(Yes my hangover is slowly disintegrating during the writing of all this.)

So for those of you whose imaginations are still alive and kicking, enjoy the following...

GROTESQUERIES OF THE GODS

While Victor Gliest hadn't a shred of imagination in his head, his dog's fecund mind created worlds, people and futures that poets and artists only dreamt of in moments of supreme intoxication.

Sitting on his favorite bench one afternoon under an empty sky, Victor stared blankly ahead, holding his dog close to his body as though it were a new born baby or a bag of potatoes during a famine. Victor was in the habit of holding most everything close to his chest. He grew up in a family of 12 within the confines of a two bedroom apartment. In short, he valued what little he had.

Victor blinked.

Victor's dog, who went by the moniker of "Dog", was busy imagining treats in a bag brought to him by a masked parachutist by the name of Argonarita, who would acrobatically leap out of planes, sailing and spinning though the sky in order to land next to Dog to bring him sumptuous little treats.

Victor blinked.

High above all of this in the canopy of the heavens, two gods were sitting around people-watching the world of mortals below.

"Shall that man die today ?" a hoary god said, pointing down at Victor.

"He's a good man. He just sits on that bench all the time doing nothing. Today, let's be decent," the other god suggested

"But even now the messengers of death have seen my finger and are going to take a life."

"Let them take that little mutt. Its passing will go unnoticed by the universe."

And just like that a world of bone-trees, cat parades and the very existence of Argonarita himself was extinguished.

Victor blinked.

And it took him several days to notice that something wasn't right with Dog.

2005-12-03T18:17:00.000-08:00

"THE PROPHET PEELS BACK ANOTHER LAYER OF TRUTH WHILE GETTING PAID MINIMUM WAGE" is an almost impossibly special short-short story based on a great little work by Nicholas di Genova. Check his shit out before it checks you into the hospital. Yes, his work is good and has the power to hospitalize if you stumble across it unawares.

Enjoy...

THE PROPHET PEELS BACK ANOTHER LAYER OF TRUTH WHILE GETTING PAID MINIMUM WAGE

"And in the end times all of the oceans of the world will dry up and fish will evolve stupid little feet that will enable them to waddle along in a Charlie Chaplin gait. They will stretch up like giraffes to suck perspiration out of the sky !! Would you like any fries with that ?" the prophet asks. His face is a collection of different razor cuts and lengths of facial hair, which move sharply from length to length like an attempt at a terraced landscape. The prophet has worked at this fast food joint for seven months and is slowly working his way through his daily grooming routine. Someday - his manager tells him - he might make employee of the month.

The prophet is the manager's uncle who went off sometime ago.

Proving once again it's who you know.

2005-12-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

"BLOOD CUTS GLASS" is an illustriously special short-short story based on this stained glass work of brilliance by Judith Schaechter:

Enjoy...

BLOOD CUTS GLASS

Moving into the remains of a church was one thing but replacing the saintly stained glass windows - which could be seen by everyone on the somewhat busy corner of Yew and 9th - with three equally colorful scenes from her childhood was another thing entirely. The image that brought the greatest amount of opprobrium from everyone in the community was a six by four foot stained glass of Janet weeping over her run over bunny rabbit. Disgusting, sick and tasteless were three of the most commonly bandied about words which over the weeks became entangled into clumps of ugly variations: sickeningly disgusting, tastelessly sickening, sickengustingly tasteless.

"Oh how I loved Bundles," Janet thought every time she heard a litany of harsh words outside her precious window. "Can't they understand that," she whispered to herself, sitting in her favorite chair knitting pajamas and other items of clothing for a rabbit that would never come back.

The neighborhood's ire found its physical expression in a brick that went right through the window one night at around eight o'clock and the remains of her beloved bunny were once again in pieces on the ground. She was too in shock to race after the culprit.

And so the second scene of tragedy was turned into a stained glass scene which, after it went up for all to see, sent shock-waves of shame through the streets.

And no one spoke ill of her ever again.

2005-12-01T20:50:00.000-08:00

"SWEET NOTHINGS FOR SOMETHINGS" is some very quick-lit for you to enjoy while you're tying your shoes, brushing your teeth or simply taking a deep breathe. A simple jolt of lit for any occasion.

Inspiration for today's story comes from the talented Wylie Fisher.

Enjoy...

SWEET NOTHINGS FOR SOMETHINGS

The flight through the friendly skies was less than amiable as Mark and Susan bickered back and forth over the whole point of the trip.

"There was still so much to see in Santiago," Susan said with her eyes fixed on the blended blue of the ocean and sky outside her cramped window seat.

"It's a once in a lifetime chance to see the Moais," Mark said, repeating his main rationale which was starting to wear thin with overuse.

"What isn't a once in a lifetime chance. Jumping off a bridge is a once in a lifetime chance."

Mark put on the cheap headphones provided and rolled the volume up to ten. There was an hour left in the flight and he was intent on losing himself in something better than stupid squabbles. He closed his eyes and tried to think of the most amazing thing that could happen on Easter Island. He imagined meeting a couple that on the surface seemed friendly and excited to be traveling to such an exotic locale, but on closer scrutiny there would be fear in the woman's eyes which moved back and forth between Mark and Susan at odd intervals. Morse code - one long pause followed by one quick glance - for "help me he's holding me against my will". And Mark would help her because of his knowledge of morse code and he would be a hero on Easter Island. This little fantasy was like a consoling whisper in his ear.

And that bitch Susan would feel ashamed for having complained about the idea of the trip.

Meanwhile, right next to him, Susan imagined pushing over a big stupid stone head right on top of the big stupid head seated next to her.

But their daydreams were cut short after a stone head, catapulted off of Easter Island by a group of drunk engineering students with way too much money and technology, smashed into the front of their plane.

And they never had anything to argue about ever again.

2005-11-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

"CONSPIRATORIAL CARBONATION" once again ups the ante of how incredibly fucking special one eansy-weansy short-short story can be ! Aiding me in this never ending endeavor is the very talented Rik Catlow, a New Jersey purveyor of urban pop art who creates art on found objects such as discarded beverage cans. Graffitied garbage has never looked so good.

Canadian culture note: We call cola "pop", which makes a nice little pun within Rik Catlow's work and also helps you to understand the following story. And including this word makes my work eligible for a 10 thousand dollar Canada Arts Council Grant.

Enjoy...

CONSPIRATORIAL CARBONATION

The sun sets as though it were taking its time, dawdling with dreamy colors over the cityscape, shining oranges and reds this way and that against glass skyscrapers and loitering in front of convenience stores. A beautiful evening for a stroll to troll the streets for garbage, Troy Guillaime thinks to himself every time there's a pink sunburst on glass out of the corner of his eye. A great evening to learn a thing or two about the world, he thinks, looking over fondly at his five year old son.

"You see son that's a very interesting artifact," he says, pointing to a crushed can beneath a bus-stop bench.

"Wow," his son squawks in the high-pitched tone of youth. He holds a pop-can with a sci-fi alien painted on top between his two tiny hands.

"You see this pop is called Exposed because the man who made it believed that creatures from other planets are using cola companies as a front to infiltrate our society. He wanted people to know how Coca-Cola and Pepsi are operated from other planets."

"Is that true ?" his son quiries, looking up to him with eyes as big as the world.

"Oh no the man who started this company was very, very, very insane and he just hallucinated these things. Hallucinate means see something that isn't there."

"Why did people let him make his company ?"

"Because people will do anything for money no matter how crazy you are."

Everyday after work, Troy Guillaime carefully places prefabricated garbage in various spots to later be discovered in the company of his son. Troy, who works as an insurance broker, can keep his creative faculties alive and kicking and his son can learn fanciful stories. Other children's heads and hearts are filled with Christmas hokum or religious mumbo-jumbo, I'm just creating non-traditional lies, Troy tells his wife.

As long as these fictions end with kernels of truth, the boy's mother doesn't mind.

"I can't believe you found one of those. They aren't sold much anymore. Tonight's a special evening," Troy Guillaime laughs, touselling his son's blond hair.

And the last light of the day signals the end of their stroll.

But on this night, unbeknownst to Troy Guillaime or even the laws of physics, a few rays of sunlight are left behind like so much garbage on the top floor of a building to later be cleaned up into the dustbin by a midnight janitor who's never seen anything like it.

Yes, a very special night indeed.

2005-11-29T07:22:00.000-08:00

"CURING A BROKEN HEART BY BREAKING INTO YOUR HEAD" is an immensely special micro-fiction based on this amazing work by Doug Boehm, a really rad painter from the States.

So take a break from the research you're doing for that trepanation pop-up book you're working on and enjoy...

CURING A BROKEN HEART BY BREAKING INTO YOUR HEAD

Samuel Clementine the 3rd had reached the end of his frayed, weathered and pissed upon rope. His beloved buttercup had left him for a muscle bound grave-digger, a rapscallion who, after having been employed to bury the poor woman's departed father, had concocted stories about seeing his spirit. Samuel Clementine the 3rd would have no congress with snake-oil charlatans and refused to allow his lovely, button of a wife to converse with this man who seemed to have untoward aims in his eyes. But his sugar-piglet was seduced by the promise of stories of her father's spiritual status and one morning she was gone with nothing but a misspelled good-bie note.

After her departure, Samuel Clementine the 3rd was a different man. He drank spirits, smoked cigars, used the Lord's name in all sorts of vainglorious ways and played poker often all on the same occasion; previous to his tragedy he had only allowed himself one vice a week but now they came on like gangbusters.

Yet this errant behavior was not fated to last as beneath it all was a sorrow too deep to deny. His poker cards were often drenched in tears and his alcohol was watered down by his blubbering.

And after sobering up, two months to the day his pussy-willow-pillow left him, Samuel Clementine the 3rd set upon all manner of cures: from tea-reading Chinamen to diviners who tried to locate the hairline fracture in his heart at the end of a twig.

But it was only until an incompetent trepaneur from Normandie came with a drill and a promise to release all the sorrows trapped in his head, that Samuel Clementine the 3rd was put out of his misery.

For eight dollars and 32 cents.

"Oh dearest honey-bucket of love," were his last words.

Dear reader, avoid the fate of Samuel Clementine. Call your sweet-heart by her real name.

2005-11-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

"WHEN GUTS GROW ON TREES" is an enormously special short-short story based on this sketch which was made by 10 000 people who all hated each others guts. No, I don't know how these people felt about each other but it is a fact that thousands of people collaborated on this doodle under the auspices of Peter Edmunds whose Swarm Sketch is billed as a Collective sketching of the collective consciousness. Something a little different from our regular fare at fast fictions.

And relating all this to language, does anyone know if there's a literary equivalent to Swarm Sketch where thousands of people work on one story together ? I would really love to see something like that grow out of parts of the world where people have historical grudges and hatreds towards each other. Imagine the IRA and UDF, the Hutus and Tutsis, the Isrealis and Palestinians weaving stories together. There must be ways to use technologies (where they are available of course) to allow for this kind of shared experience. Come on people get off your blogs about potty training your cats and start something useful !!

Okay I'm now stepping off my soapbox to get back to the business of dada slapstick which I hope you'll read even though I just insulted a lot of you because you're so useless.

WHEN GUTS GROW ON TREES

"When guts grow on trees, you'll finally stand up to mom, but before this grody miracle ever comes to pass you'll spend your days hiding in your hole of a home." Sally reads out her father's birthday poem in a belligerent fuck-you tone of voice.

Seated in his lazy-boy, her father smiles lamely revealing a set of sharply crooked teeth as though the muscles responsible for raising the edges of his mouth have been torn to shreds inside this maw of misery. A razzle-dazzle birthday party cone is perched on top of his head.

"Thank you for spending the time to labor over a poem. That's thoughtful," he sighs with no evidence of appreciation. His right thumb twitches at a remote control that isn't there.

Sally rolls her eyes and steps aside to let her younger brother get his kick at the can. They have bet good money on the power of their gifts to get their father off his listless ass. To stir shit up within his soul. Sally is now torn between wanting to see some emotion come to life in her father and losing fifty bucks to her brother.

"Here you go Dad," Stan holds out a frame wrapped in toilet paper and scotch tape which is already starting to come undone. The toilet paper is swept away like a cobweb and the portrait within is revealed.

"That's a picture I made of you using dead worms that I burnt with a magnifying lens. I glued them to the canvas using spit and glue. Don't you think it looks like you ?"

Their father sighs the millionth sigh of his life and nods a tired agreement.

"You've got quite the imagination there," he says as though auditioning for a part that he does not want.

And another birthday passes.

Like gas.

When useless dads grow on trees.

2005-11-27T12:19:00.000-08:00

"VIDEOGAMER'S BELOVED" is today's micro-fiction which, like a black hand reaching out from a flat video game screen, will grab you, pull you in and make you dance with the blue, green and yellow pixelated characters inside. Inspiration comes today from the very talented Matt Clark.

Oh and I just wanted to squeeze in a little mention of Chris Elliot's new book Yes, the Cabin Boy has a novel out there. That fact alone should be enough to make it a hilarious read.

But for now drag your computer - however big and clunky it may be - back into your bed and enjoy the following Sunday morning read...

VIDEOGAMER'S BELOVED

A cat-scan revealed that circuitry had woven its way around his cerebellum. No one at the hospital had ever seen anything like it and the senior staff fought over who would do the interviews to explain as much to the general public. Several of the doctors spent the morning scribbling down notes detailing how science could explain away such seemingly miraculous events. The conclusion that they wanted to dispel was that the microchips in Brian Fanlick's brains were in any way similar to the hardware within the video game he had played for three days straight in a comatose state. That was a definite impossiblity.

Brian regained a kind of hazy consciousness encircled by a ceremonious looking group consisting of his fiancee, her sister, his brother, a priest and three kids he'd never seen before in his life.

"Hey mister can I have your autograph ?" the one with the thickest glasses smiled.

"Now what did we say ?" Brian's fiancee put her hand up and the boy lowered his head.

"These boys were the ones cheering you on as you wasted your life away at that video game," she explained very carefully to Brian not knowing how much damage had been done to his brain. "I wanted you to see what you left me at the altar for. A fan club of little snot-nosed nerds but I will forgive you marry me right now."

The three boys, oblivious to the insult, watched Brian carefully, hoping to pick up some tips on how to high-score Galactablaster. Perhaps it was in his hands or the way he moved his eyes. He was their God.

"What were you thinking," Brian's brother asked. Brian's fiancee knitted her brow in consternation over this question which would further delay their "I-do's". Brian's fans waited eagerly for him to open his mouth with the truth.

His mouth opened but nothing came out and it was only after one of the kids rammed a quarter up his left nostril that he uttered those lovely words: "I do."

And the world was set to rights once again.

2005-11-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

"A CRUMPLED UP NAPKIN IN SERVICE OF THE FATHERLAND" is today's short-short story which, like an unexpected sparrow in your pants, will tickle, surprise and delight you to childlike laughter. The story has been inspired by the following piece by Christian Northeast, a Canadian commercial artist whose list of clients is a veritable who's who and what's what of cool in all its wondrous guises.

And just a quick little literary aside: I would be remise not to mention the amazing collection of talent found on the long-list for the Impac Dublin Literary Award, the biggest cash prize for fancy words in the world. Reading the list is tantamount to reading a short story. Or better yet, imagine it as a cross between a poem and a lottery ticket. Yes, let's be happy for their talents.

But for now sit back in your bathtub of Saturday morning coffee and enjoy...

A CRUMPLED UP NAPKIN IN SERVICE OF THE FATHERLAND

On September the 3rd, 2004, none of this really happened on a flight from New York to Denver.

The fasten your seat-belts lights had just gone out and the captain was welcoming everyone on board flight 312 in a such a casual laid-back voice that it suggested a birthday party speech at a pool side. Almost all the passengers liberated themselves with a simple click and several stood up to rummage through their belongings in overhead compartments for no apparent reason. Smiles were exchanged as people squeezed past one another and appetites were wetted in Pavlovian style as trays were opened in anticipation of salted snacks.

None of these changes in the progress of the flight registered within the double-walled fortress of Henry Siemens' body and mind. His resolution to stand on guard (or sit on guard in this case) remained steadfast. He was on a possible vehicle for terrorists not a guest at a party at 40 thousand feet.

"Peanuts ?" a fastidious looking steward asked. Henry Siemens nodded an emotionless yes which was followed up with an even drier: "and two waters." After opening the little packet of peanuts, he inserted them into his mouth one at time ensuring that the previous peanut had been sufficiently masticated and swallowed. Every third peanut was washed down with a conservative sip of water. This regime had been learned by rote and had been practiced countless times on solid earth so that Henry's concentration could be freed up for safety surveillance.

And thank god for his vigilance for a child, two rows up from Henry on the other side of the aisle, was putting the finishing touches on a lego gun which had been assembled without anyone noticing. But Henry noticed. He put his waters and remaining peanuts on his neighbour's tray, undid his seat-belt, stood up with the full force of the law and walked over to the child while wiping the salt from his fingertips with a napkin.

"This is an inappropriate toy for a plane. Guns have their place in our God-fearing country but not here, not now," he said firmly.

The child, surprised by the unwelcomed attention, started to cry and that was when Henry stuffed the napkin in his mouth.

None of this could have happened without the love of the fatherland.

None of this true story ever took place on flight 312 or anywhere else.

2005-11-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

"FALLING INTO A RED FRAME" is an immensely special short story loosely based on this little flyer for a student art show and sale at the Emily Carr Institute this weekend on Granville Island. The image was whipped up by Les Ramsey. I usually don't do stories based on ads but 1) this is a good cause, 2) you can get some Christmas gifts and 3) they paid me mega honkin' bucks for this sneaky promotion.

Enjoy...

FALLING INTO A RED FRAME

As they walk along the cracked, grimy, spit-marked sidewalk, they discuss what would make an appropriate frame for their living room. The work of art within it will follow in due time but first they must decide on the right frame; they prefer working from the outside in. You don't interior decorate in an empty lot you wait until the house is built, is the rationale they explain with impatient sighs to uncouth naysayers.

"Well I really think that cobalt blue frame - " Jeffery's opinion is interrupted by a tiny torrent of water that gushes out from a pipe at the side of a run-down two story building. Fuck ! Jeffery's hush puppies are soaked and Zack, while successfully jumping out of the way, lands on the curb of the sidewalk where he tumbles and crumples to the ground.

A gap-toothed hobo-prophet witnessing the whole comical incident shouts out: "Verily I say unto you there will come a time when theme parks will be built around moments like this. I can see even now a roller-coaster type ride with a hollowed out ceramic shell of a man in mid fall. At his foot there is a replica of a banana peel. There will come a day when you shall pay your ten dollars and be strapped into this shell of a falling man. You will experience the vicarious thrill of being a klutz for five minutes as your train of slipping men go up and down the rails of this coaster. All mistakes will have been genetically and socially engineered out of existence and you will need this ride to feel what so many people took for granted. Relish this moment !!"

And he walks on down the side-walk which has seen better days.

Jeffery and Zack exchange a knowing look of how-fucking-beautiful-was-that and they both pull out their cells in a friendly race to get to him first. "Tony, get your camera down here pronto. We need you to shoot something," Zack shouts zealousy from a sprawled position on the cigarette strewn ground. And they know that they should get that red frame and they are even more certain of what should go in it and they'll wait in these poses until they're certain the job's done.

2005-11-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

"INCHOATE COMPLICATIONS" is an exceedingly special fast fiction based on this blast of painted fun by Mr Hooper.

So put away all of those little red and green pills which are shaped as miniature busts of Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and all the other great drug takers of the world and enjoy...

INCHOATE COMPLICATIONS

It all began and ended within the bright, golden reflection of a dream. Sam Struthers had gone to bed on several Winter Ales and one and a half buckets of fried chicken drumsticks, breasts and legs, boosting his normal intake of daily calories by just one hundred or so, and he fell to sleep like a man falling off a cliff; he moaned and groaned until his mind splattered into unconsciousness.

On the other side, he found himself wandering through the darkened house of his childhood with drum sticks sticking out of his Lone Ranger pajama bottoms. He stood at the threshold of his parents room and peering in he saw two tombstones where the bed had once been. A fresh mound of earth stretched out from the stones which bore information not only about the lives of Sam's parents but also a thorough menu of chicken and fry combos at Lucky's Famous Fried Chicken.

Sam glided down the hallway on weightless feet sneaking glances into other bedrooms which also offered glimpses of similar indoor burials, places of rest which replaced nothing but the family members' deluxe king-sized beds, dirt entombments which did nothing to hide the king-sized girth of the Struthers.

At the end of the hall, Sam slipped at the top of the stairs on a Lone Ranger action figure who'd been doing battle with robots. (As a child Sam would take breaks from eating to play out this battle again and again.) They all stumbled and rolled around each other down the 34 steps which stretched out to hundreds until they all came tumbling down onto the sidewalk across the street from the dreamer's favorite restaurant.

The Lone Ranger, robots and owner of the fast food restaurant stood shimmering in the light of day in a conspiracy to keep Sam out; (an unconscious plea for sanity.)

And he woke up with his heart pounding.

I'm never going to eat another drumstick again, he swore to the bright light of the morning and thereupon hit the snooze button.

Five minutes later, he awoke and he pulled himself out of bed to make a greasy breakfast with no memory of his dream or life changing resolution.

Burp.

2005-11-23T08:05:00.000-08:00

"OIL TEMPLE" is an enticingly special short-short story based on this wonderfully action-packed painting by Dan Kennedy.

Enjoy...

OIL TEMPLE

"Oh yes, oh yes there have been some real diamonds, rubies and gems out here on the road," he says through a smile which is quickly clouded behind tobacco smoke chimneyed out from his nostrils. His top hat clip-clops from side to side in tandem with his labored gait.

"What's the strangest you've come across ?" you ask in the hopes of keeping your walking journey enlivened and amusing. The landscape is mostly barren with several poplar trees denuded of green. A small bridge crossing a river is the only hint of civilization in this stretch of pastoralism. In short, you are bored, in need of entertainment.

"Well..." His eyes seem to roll back into his head to search for some long forgotten tale at the back of his brains. "There was the case of the oil which was struck in the temple of a Fitzpatrick down in South Carolina. A liter of oil a day from an inch above the end of his left eyebrow. Not much but enough to keep the tracker in his field rolling. Paradise oil everyone called it, nothing sweeter than something that's free."

He breathes heavily under the weight of his two-hundred plus pounds.

"Yet in spite of all that value that poured forth from his brow, he was a miserable son of a bitch that wouldn't give you the time of day or night."

You wait in anticipation for some unique story about this man to begin.

"He died," he sighs and walks along the path in silence.

2005-11-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

"THE TUBER'S SUBTERRANEAN BLUES" is an almost illegally special fast fiction based on this splash of brilliance by Michael Slack.

So put away all those potato peelers you're gluing together to build a giant potato sculpture and enjoy....

THE TUBER'S SUBTERRANEAN BLUES

"Where your body's buried, that's where I'm warm, where worms crawl in your eye sockets, that's where I'm born," Anne sang in a gruff voice while rocking back and forth in her seat. The entirety of her baked potato danced on top of her plate with her fork acting as its artificial backbone.

"Stop playing with your food," Anne's father - all two-hundred and seventy-six pounds of him - hollered from across the table. "Your mother made that with love. Show some respect."

And he threw his knife at her as an afterthought of an exclamation point. Anne ducked and slid under the table with her forked food.

In her mind this potato was a broken-down version of that bumpy-round man sitting above the table. In her hard-hearted heart of hearts she hated her father. She believed that he was a potato who had grown slowly and painfully into a man. She sometimes thought she heard him whispering in the strange, ugly tongue of potatoes.

Under the table she curled up, bit her arm and wondered what percentage of her body was made up of potatoes.

2005-11-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

"STIGMATA BLUES AND BLACKS" is an enormously special fast fiction based on this painting by Joseph Daniel Fiedler.

Enjoy...

STIGMATA BLUES AND BLACKS

Battered black and blue, little Tommy ran into the living-room balling his eyes and tear ducts out.

"Good Lord," exclaimed the new neighbors who'd been invited over for a friendly little pow-wow of "where-you-from"s and "how-you-like-the-neighorhood"s.

Tommy's mother slowly got to her feet and took her wreckage of a child into the bathroom for some ointments, ice-packs and aspirins. The usual routine of going through diminishing first-aid supplies that had become second-aid, third-aid and was now at the umpteenth-aid stage.

The new neighbors were left in a state of shock over being thrust into the role of witnesses to some kind of beating. The casualness of the parents terrified them all the more.

"Oh yeah, well Tommy gets these mysterious bruises. Turns out he's getting the bruises of a Mexican pro wrestler who himself had been the vessel of some kind of stigmata of Christ. I mean that's what the medium said. If you believe in that kind of stuff." He took a sip from his coffee and continued with the previous conversation, "So Karl what did you do in Cincinnati?"

It took him 54 seconds to respond.

2005-11-20T17:15:00.000-08:00

"MOBIUS STRIPPER" is an almost impossibly special fast fiction based on the brilliance of Joseph Hart, an American artist whose work combines spiral-graph geometries with spiritual taxonomies. In other words, painterly magic.

So put away your delux lego edition of MC Escher's Ascending and Descending and enjoy...

MOBIUS STRIPPER

With her mind firmly focused on the ancients spiral-graphing constellations in the sky, she starts to slide the sleeves of her black top off her supple arms. Flesh emerges like a welcomed sunrise. But while she dances and spins her mind is the needle of a protractor, holding her in a place of origins, a singular beginning which emerged out of opposites and impossiblities. A something out of nothing.

And she strips and strips and strips, shedding layer after layer of clothing but total nudity is never reached.

"A fucking parlor trick !" a man in gynecological row mumbles.

But she continues to tease the majority of the crowd who are hopeful that she will slip up and expose something more. For her part, she remains intently focused on a meditation of origins which allows her to achieve the impossible.

She holds a mythic landscape in her mind like an Indian forehead holds a jewel.

Teasing out an impossibility as the music pumps away.

2005-11-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

"RELAPSED JOY" is an indubitably special fast fiction based on this painting by Geoff Keong, a Vancouver artist whose work is currently showing at the Wicked Cafe (1399 West 7th Ave). Wicked.

Enjoy...

RELAPSED JOY

Waking up with a jolt from power-napped dreams of effortlessly fishing hundreds of fish off the Queen Charlottes, Josh looked for the lottery ticket which had been perched on top of his whale of a belly. With no small measure of relief, he scooped it off of the floor of his bachelor pad which was coated in an afternoon's worth of empty beer bottles. Lucky Lagers clustered around the sofa like little brown buoys holding the sofa afloat.

"Who woulda thunk it. A million dollars found in the dirt," he mumbled to himself.

"And the winning British Columbia lottery ticket numbers for the evening of November 19th, 1987 are..."

His groggy eyes focused on the television and then on the tiny numbers between his fat fingers. He was never going back to that stinking fishing boat again. He would never have to work for twenty hours straight in the cold, rainy waters off of British Columbia. He would buy the fishing boat. He would buy the waters. He would buy everything he wanted, including more lottery tickets if he so desired.

And the pairs of numbers matched in increasing improbability and excitement and Josh's brains whirred with the winning numbers until he reached the crescendo of joy that he'd been dreaming about his whole life: 13 !! He stood up on the soiled cushions of the sofa and jumped up and down like a ten year old being told the institution of school has been thrown out to make way for an eternity of weekends.

And that's when the brain aneurysm burst, leaving Josh Matinaux with an exotic form of amnesia. In the ensuing operation, therapy and recovery one thing became clear: Josh Matinaux would forever jump up and down with the belief that he'd just won the lottery. After anyone told him that - no, in fact he was mistaken - he would look crestfallen for a few minutes until his amnesia stole this fact from him, returning him to that eternal state of winning joy.

The number had actually been 30 and Josh Matinaux, in his groggy, drunken, hearing-impaired state mistook it for 13.

An honest mistake.

2005-11-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

"THE IDIOT SAVANT SMARTENS UP" is an enormously special fast fiction based on this art within an etch-a-sketch. Merry Meredith has a show up in Vancouver of 34 etch a sketch works (or to be more artistic about it: pieces des etch de la sketch ) that runs until Dec.17th at the Basic Inquiry Life Drawing Center for the Figurative Arts.

So put away your million dollar vintage Lite Brites, Archie Comics, Etch a Sketches and Slinkies and enjoy...

THE IDIOT SAVANT SMARTENS UP

At first Mr and Mrs Fendermeyer were aghast at the thought that their little bundle of joy would grow up to become a frightened bundle of nerves in a confusing world but then, after reading of the artistic brilliance that had come so effortlessly to those within his mental rank and file, they consoled themselves by imagining the financial compensation which awaited them.

And little Sam Fendermeyer grew up around a piano, cello and violin as well as paintbrushes, canvases, pencils and pastels which all collected dust, waiting for Sam to display magical flourishes of brilliance.

"What about just one lesson ?" Mrs Fendermeyer cried after Sam had passed the age of ten without any stirring of words from his tongue or artistic gifts from his fingers.

"No they're always self-taught. That's the origin of their artistic gifts," Mr Fendermeyer explained.

And after ignoring their son for ten more years, they were rewarded one afternoon with a perfect copy of their afternoon on the beach within the grey canvas of an etch-a-sketch.

"Brilliant !!"

"This will fetch us thousands of dollars !!"

Over the next couple of days and weeks and months it was discovered that etch-a-sketches were Sam's forte. And after making his 542nd etch-a-sketch, which was sold for a thousand dollars, Samuel smacked his father in the face with an etch-a-sketch which depicted his father and mother walking arm in arm behind a baby carriage full of money.

And Sam moved out.

2005-11-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

"LIKE A 1974 GUITAR SOLO" is an exceedingly special fast fiction based on the following sample of illustrative splendor provided by Warlessrabbit.

An awesome little illustration by Warlessrabbit and an accompanying short-short story by yours truly can be found in Vancouver in the November issue of Ion Magazine.

But for now, put away all those tools and guitars that you're using to build a set of guitar stairs that lead up to your loft's love nest and enjoy the following short-short story...

LIKE A 1974 GUITAR SOLO

"They say there's a dead guitarist whose heart was fertilizer for this tree," he smiles romantically. A game show buzzer in his head goes off, alerting him to the mistaken content that just left his mouth.

"Oh gross," she replies, turning somewhat pale.

Too late.

"I mean that's what they say, but what do they know right ?" His fingers nervously rub the engagement ring in his pocket. "They say all sorts of things, like..."

She stares at him blankly, not having any idea why he brought her up the hill to talk about a potentially illegal burial.

"They say things like... you can't drink pee !" He flashes her a smile in anticipation of laughter.

She turns paler.

"What I'm getting at really is that this is a special spot for a special occasion. This kind of tree for example usually sprouts a penis like root straight into the earth. That's special," he smiles once more, buoyed by knowledge of Mother Nature's hidden cock.

While Eddy riffs for several more minutes on the unique nature of the guitar tree, Valerie's face turns like a color wheel through all the shades of sick. Finally she passes out.

And after she's finally found peace in unconsciousness, he slips the engagement ring onto her finger.

2005-11-16T08:06:00.000-08:00

"LUMPY SPLATTERINGS" is a tremendously special fast fiction based on this gorgeously grotesque piece by Gregory Jacobson. What I love about this piece in particular is its unique balance of the works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo - who made faces out of fruits and flowers in the 1600's - with a contemporary distaste for macaroni.

So put your Bibles away for a couple minutes and enjoy...

LUMPY SPLATTERINGS

"Oh my eyes, they are for Jesus, oh my eyes they are for Jesus, oh my eyes they are for Jesus, no looking back, no looking back," Lucy skips and sings with a basket of Bibles which she tosses one by one onto the doorsteps of sinners. "Extra, extra the good news is here !!" she shouts after a successfully tossed Bible. If the Bible makes a splashy land in a dog bowl or smashes a window, she doesn't make a holy peep.

But between houses she sings to her heart's and soul's content: "Oh my nostrils, they are for Jesus, oh my nostrils they are for Jesus, oh my nostrils they are for Jesus, no sniffing back, no sniffing back," she hollers to the heavens.

"Hey Bible thumper !! Keep that religious claptrap to yourself or I'll show you a real thumping," Cindy Oppenheimer, Lucy's least favorite friend from school, shouts out in derision as specks of macaroni flick out from her mouth. She loves to eat macaroni in the lucid light of the sunset because the yellow comes alive and keeps her company in her miserable isolation. Lucy is the only girl at school that deigns to speak to the big, fat, ugly and stupid Cindy Oppenheimer.

"Hello friend how are you ?" Lucy squeaks in the intonation of youth; her words rise and fall like a roller-coaster of giddy fun. She calls everyone outside of church friend. At church she calls everyone brother or sister. In her sleep she calls everyone Lucy. "Would you like me to teach you the lyrics of my song ?" she smiles evangelically. "Oh my brains they are for Jesus, oh my brains they are for Jesus -"

"Shut up or I'll rearrange your face. You're singing is crappy," Cindy Oppenheimer shouts and for the first time in her life Jesus, up in his heavens, totally agrees with her. And so it was that at that moment Jesus smote Lucy with a blow from the heavens that literally rearranged her face.

Cindy, witnessing the mysteriously sudden carnage right in front of her, screamed, dropped her macaroni and ran off in no particular direction.

And to add insult to injury - or perhaps in this case injury to insult- Jesus framed the poor little girl for the murder.

Oh my keys on my keyboard, they are for Jesus, Oh my keys on my keyboard, they are for Jesus, oh my keys on my keyboard, they are for Jesus, no deleting words, no deleting words.
Amen.

2005-11-15T08:07:00.000-08:00

"THE DREAM THAT ERODES YOUR VISION" is an enticingly special fast fiction based on this painting by Tim Biskup whose scintillating work can be seen on the front and back covers of the latest Blab!, a magazine which the Los Angles Reader has dubbed: "the New Yorker for Mutants."

So set aside for a minute all those beakers of toxic waste that you're alphabetizing based on mutating side-effects and enjoy...

THE DREAM THAT ERODES YOUR VISION

"So, why did you lose your last job ?" he asks with no real interest. A throw-away line which proves to the world that he is not completely ignorant of what goes on during job interviews. He stares at Michael with half-dead, buggy eyes that could be popped out of their respective sockets and placed on the table while he groped his way to the the shitter. Yes, he has more important things to be doing than this interview.

They sit in a grimy office consisting of one desk, one clock whose arms hold up five minutes to one, one tiny window and one framed photo of a meat factory. They are at the packing plant which receives various cuts that are processed into sausage, patties or ground beef. The factory in the photo is where the actual slaughter takes place and where friends of friends or enemies of enemies get jobs by mentioning that they know that asshole Bill or Joe or Mike or Tom.

"Well you know, I just didn't quite ummm..." Michael pauses, interlacing his fingers into a concerted fist of prayer.

Rick Wheeler looks up at the clock.

"My life's dream is to build a ship. An actual galleon straight out of the 1600's," Michael says in a burst of contained excitement. "Every penny that I make goes into making that dream come to life. Outside of work, I spend every waking hour researching and planning for what will be its meticulous construction. Some people have a hard time with that."

"Alright, well okay. You start bright and early six o'clock Monday morning then," Rick Wheeler says not wanting to waste anymore time. And after he stands up his head is momentarily smack dab in the center of the photo of the slaughter house. This fits with the fantasy of so many of his employees who image his body hanging on metal hooks next to cows in that plant. But today Michael's impression of his boss is simply that of an impatient man in a hurry and as Rick Wheeler leaves, he is replaced by his secretary, newly refreshed from her lunch break.

"Have you ever sailed ?" Michael asks her.

"No." She smiles her version of a smile which she can offer out for as long as the taste of her lunch remains in the corners of her mouth. Usually until around 2:00.

"Well its wonderful if you're able to go to sea on something you've built yourself. It's a form of walking on water. Very special feeling."

She nods.

"I'm building a ship which will be so radiantly spectacular that it will be camouflaged against the sun-light sparked waters around it." And Michael proceeds to explain in lustrous detail the mast, sails and size of his boat which will leave an imprint on her eyes. She will blink and blink but that dazzling ship will remain for several minutes. Like staring at the sun.

And in three weeks the dazzlingly described image of Michael's galleon will momentarily blind one of his co-workers who won't see the hands of Rick Wheeler in the main belt of the ground beef grinder and Michael will once again be in search of a new job.

2005-11-14T08:11:00.000-08:00

"THAT LITTLE GERM IS PEEING IN MY MOUTH AGAIN" is an incalculably special fast fiction based on this amazingly fun piece by David Chung whose site offers plenty of good times for anyone with an appreciation of art and a sense of humour.

So take a break from your hobby of picking the bristles out of old tooth brushes and enjoy...

THAT LITTLE GERM IS PEEING IN MY MOUTH AGAIN

"When I get a cold, I have this horrible feeling that there's this little germ in my body fucking with my immune system," Kelly explained to her third best friend, Alicia. They sat at the back of the bus skulking in their black hoodies.

"Yuck," Alicia said slowly through a grimace that masked her hitherto mildly attractive face.

"Yeah, it's totally sick, but sometimes, I swear, it's like this little bastard is just trying to mess with my head by fucking shit up inside of me."

"Weird," her friend replied, changing her unattractive grimace into an even more horribly misshapen face.

"Actually, there is a creature in your mouth," a man said with authority while lowering an outspread newspaper which he had been hiding behind for the past three months. In a flash, Kelly remembered that she had observed from time to time a figure behind a strangely outdated paper, but each time she had simply assigned the sightings to either her overactive imagination or an overabundance of drugs. But of course, the mosh pit at Lollapalooza !! She clearly recalled a man reading a newspaper in the mosh pit at the rock festival.

He sat down on the seat in front of them, but even from a seated position he towered over them.

"I'm part of a special research team that has been working on synthesizing highly intelligent germs which are for all intents and purposes sentient creatures," he explained carefully, pausing after every other polysyllabic word. "And I regret to say that one of those creatures escaped and we've tracked it to you. Chances are the mischievous little bugger is probably pissing in the back of your throat right now."

While Alicia's deformation of a face erupted into vomit, Kelly took the news far more gracefully: "I knew something was up."

And after Alicia got off at her stop, she never wanted to have anything to do with Kelly ever again even though Kelly owed her a hundred dollars for Lollapalooza concert tickets.

And Alicia went on to have an uneventful life, not knowing or wanting to know what happened to her erstwhile friend.

2005-11-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

"REMINISCING THE CORONATION OF THE MONKEY PRINCE" is a surpassingly special fast fiction based on work by Klaus Haapaniemi, an artist/designer from London whose sumptuous work is grounded in the play between vivid colors, interesting shapes and unique characters.

So put your family of pet monkeys - whom you've named after the family members of the Brady Bunch - to bed and enjoy...

REMINISCING THE CORONATION OF THE MONKEY PRINCE

While every corner of his kingdom is crumbling like a cookie, Santyremi, the Monkey King, does nothing but sit on his throne and watch his jester juggle bananas. Occasionally, he picks a mite from his hairy scalp and chomps down on it.

"Again, again !!" he claps laboredly and laughs in a weeze which echoes in the vastness of his throne room. Members of the court impatiently sit in attendance waiting for their freedom. They have endured with forced smiles an hour of these puerile proceedings but in their palpitating hearts they are tallying their possessions, estates and servants and the wisdom of keeping them or using them in the upcoming troubles. They calculate their exit strategies on their long, nimble toes.

While news of a peasant uprising in the very heart of the kingdom had come that morning, the King has done nothing but immerse himself in asinine distractions.

"Make for us once again your reenactment of my coronation with bananas, hankies and the court poodle !!" Santyremi laughs, casting his mind back like a shadow at twilight, stretching out to an unexpected distance. Only the shock of extreme bedlam has the power to stir up emotions in his mostly motionless body and mind. He knows that in some dark corner of his mind, lays an abandoned image of that illustrious day and that is what he needs to recover the kingdom. It must sparkle somewhere in that darkness; a kingly feeling rooted in a sovereign start.

A series of crashes and cries from outside the throne room's door unsettles the members of the court who abandon their seats but the king is still lost in his search for one afternoon of warmth on a pond coated in peacock colours.

But as the doors burst open under the force of a hundred angry paws the kingdom crumbles into no more.

2005-11-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

"THE CHICKEN MAN GOT A JOB AT KFC" is an inimitably special fast fiction based on this wonderfully surreal work by Robert Hardgrave, one of the contributors behind artdorks, a great place to check out the most gorgeously fucked up art on the planet.

So take a break from stuffing that chicken inside the duck which will then be stuffed into the turkey and enjoy...

THE CHICKEN MAN GOT A JOB AT KFC

There was no way for Samuel Smallridge, the general manager of the KFC on the corner of 72nd and 180th, to know that he had hired the once briefly famous Chicken Man of Langley. While there had been some jerky quirks in Tom Cunningham's mannerisms, he seemed to be competent enough for the basic tasks needed to work at and manage a fast food restaurant. He had the hand-eye coordination to press in the orders, he was literate enough to read a menu and he could smile a passable smile on queue. How was Samuel supposed to know about his former employee's background which had been buried twenty years ago into the past ? He had never been a criminal. He had just been something akin to a chicken.

But try as he might Samuel just couldn't find the words to defend himself under the scrutiny of his betters.

"We have some serious reservations about your continued future with KFC," one of the managers in the upper echelons of corporate KFC explained in words that come out in ordered precision. He adjusted his two hundred dollar tie which protected vocal chords perfectly suited to delivering bad news in an even handed but firm way.

"I didn't... ahh... couldn't have....ahhh..." Samuel inwardly cursed himself for his ineffectual stammerings. How could he put ten years of devoted service to KFC into language for this moment ? How could he summarize all that KFC meant to him ? He was neither a poet nor an orator, simply a man who loved selling golden chicken to people in his community.

"A great deal of spin doctoring will have to go into neutralizing this incident. A KFC full of chickens while the staff continued to go about their tasks and all of this captured on film ?" he asked in studied astonishment intended to strike shame into Samuel's heart.

"I trusted....ahhhh... he was a model of...." In the remaining silence of his failed stab at articulacy Samuel imagined taking an axe to the neck of the Chicken Man of Langley to watch him run around and around in that stupid suit he had worn that day until he collapsed into a heap of death. How was Samuel supposed to know that the Chicken Man of Langley was part of a radical animal rights group that wanted to humiliate KFC out of business. ? How was Samuel supposed to know about a chicken man spy who couldn't be trusted to be in charge of the restaurant ? He could add and subtract ! Why not promote him and allow him to mind the store ?!

"We're going to have to terminate your employment with KFC." His words filled the tiny white walled room at the back of the KFC and Samuel's love affair with chickens, KFC and crispy golden chicken was over. And at that very moment, his strained connection to reality snapped and Samuel lashed out at the world in a killing spree that took 12 people, 10 chickens, 3 drumsticks and one thigh.

2005-11-11T13:28:00.000-08:00

"GOD VERSUS THE GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS" is an incomparably special fast fiction based on the supernatural talents of Jeremy Pruitt. Seriously, has this guy signed a pack with the devil to get all that brilliance ? We may never know the source of his art smarts but we fortunately have Jeremy's brand new site to appreciate while we ponder imponderables.

So take a break from that portrait you're making of George W. Bush on the inside of your toilet bowl and enjoy...

GOD VERSUS THE GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS

"So who can tell me what book has the most mosts in the world ?" Mr Wallington asked his class of fifth graders and an army of arms shot up, reaching for the privilege to display their book smarts. Whenever Mr Wallington was hurting from a hangover - which was usually once a week - he imaged taking a chain saw and pruning the tiny hands off of all those upraised arms. In their little school uniforms he saw something fascist in their enthusiasm. Apart from these dark moments, Mr Wallington was a very gentle and kind educator.

On this particular morning, however, there was still booze on his breathe which went unrecognized by a class full of innocence.

"Yes, Martin," he said, suppressing a Budweiser burb.

"The Bible. Not only is it the most translated book in the world but it also contains the most amazing stories and miracles and love in the world." Martin stood by the side of his desk, firing this information off in the direction of the front of the class.

Mr Wallington mustered an apologetic smile and corrected the boy: "No Martin that's a very articulate answer but what I'm talking about is the Guinness Book of Records which is over a hundred pages of information about many different kinds of mosts."

"I think you're incorrect sir." Martin continued to stand at attention by the side of his desk.

"Well I think that you have an interesting answer but really the Guinness Book is full of verified truths that people don't fight about. Nobody would fight over the fact that the fattest man in the world is -" he opened his silvery Guinness book to a full page spread of the fattest man in America sprawled out on a crushed couch. He hoped this would amaze the class over to his way of thinking.

Martin's entire body started to shake and a chill filled the room. Possessed by God, his face morphed into terror with tentacles sprouting out from beneath his white collar. The flesh around his eyes blossomed tiny layers of angel wings while his hair fell out, becoming another site for a fresh growth of angel wings.

"The correct answer is the Bible" Martin said in a deep, booming voice.

"Well you can see for yourself." Their once slightly powerful teacher now stood at the front of the class holding the book out while shaking in his socks and shoes.

And that's when God set out to break every record in the Guinness Book. Pie-eating, words typed, weight gained, marathons run and even time spent in a rocking chair. Nothing was beneath the King of Kings.

Years later, Mr Wallington's mysterious death was attributed by some to a group of previous Guinness Record holders but nobody was convicted.

Martin is still in therapy.

2005-11-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

"A BARGAIN BASEMENT JACOB'S LADDER" is a superlatively special fast fiction based on this haunting photo by Alexey Uryevich Frolov whose site documents his photographic forays into abandoned plants, unfinished buildings and industrial sites in Russia.

Enjoy the following slice of linguistic absurdity....

A BARGAIN BASEMENT JACOB'S LADDER

"It's a clunk of junk, a scrap of crap and a haste of waste !!" Martin screams at the top of his lungs.

"No that last one doesn't work," Saul corrects.

Martin stands nude, his manhood shrunk in its toque of flesh, hiding from the cold.

"There is no working or not working in this instance. I'm expressing. At this point I'm expressing," he shouts, walking back and forth for warmth. He is tired of the foot dragging, the corrections and the hasty hesitations. Hasty hesitations, that's good, yes Hasty Hesitations !!
"This is full of hasty hesitations, snappy stammerings and breakneck dawdlings !!" he hollers.

"Once again that last one doesn't fit," Saul sits on one of the few remaining certainties of the dilapidated building: the floor. He is wrapped in three scarves which snake their way down through his army surplus jacket. His lower half has been doubled up with long-johns. He is warm but lacks passion.

"Fits of a coma, bursts of frozen nothing and jerks of an iceberg," Martin screams through the empty floor.

"Nope."

They stand in the wreckage of an abandoned building, preparing for the unknown. Their insanity has seeped into the cracks of each others minds and they are empty of purpose.

And nothing nothings some more.

"It's a clammer of stammerers, a cacophony of phonies and a din of gin drinkers."

2005-11-09T23:07:00.000-08:00

"GOOSE PICKS A PECK APART" is an eminently special fast fiction which is based on this hilariously stately work by Braden Danielsson, one of the contributors behind artdorks, a wonderful resource providing all sorts of beautiful bursts of creative insanities and perversions.

So get together with your beloved, put on every article of clothing that you own, take a piece off with every word you read and enjoy...

GOOSE PICKS A PECK APART

"I loved my goose. Nobody can take that away from me," Samuel Cronklin wheezes through his nasal cavities. "It was an ugly stupid pet who needed my love. How's that for an epitaph !!" he laughs and phlegm flies up from the depths of his sickly throat.

His pale hand remains held up in a shaking position at the painting of him with his goose. In the painting a fountain of blood squirt-squirts from his forehead. Andy shakes his head in bewildered awe.

"And if I were to move in with you, I would insist upon it being placed right here on this wall because the living room is the place the Bitch loved the most. She would have wanted it that way. Wherever I move, she moves. You can't deny those bonds, as miserable a hold as they may sometimes make on your strangled soul."

Andy shakes his head in disbelief. He is moving out in one month but Mark will be moving back in after he gets back from teaching English in Taiwan. Sight unseen. Mark has no idea how much Andy has grown to hate him; Mark figures his journals - which contain entry after entry of malice directed at the gullibility of Andy - were safely secured away in the basement but after a small flood everything was exposed.

"Great well when can you move in ?" Andy says shaking Samuel Cronklin's cold, moist hand.

Samuel looks at the painting on the wall and replies: "I think I already have. I think I already have."

2005-11-08T22:46:00.000-08:00

"ALPHA LOSER" is a remarkably special fast fiction which is based on the many faced spender of this following painting by Clint Lavado whose work can currently be viewed in Toronto at Swoon gallery - 63 ossington av (just north of queen) 'til november 13th.

What I love about this work is that it takes the most basic image in our culture, biology and DNA - some psychologists believe face recognition is hard-wired right into the grey matter don't you know - and just packs multiple versions of a mug within a canvas. Very simple but beautifully effective in evoking something in the viewer.

I mean that's my take on it.

I came across Clint's work in the latest issue of Broken Pencil Magazine, an invaluable survey of independent arts in North America. It is totally double D DIY, which is to say its fully packed with everything you need to know about music, art and the written word. And the latest issue exposes what's underneath and behind the new burlesque.

Broken Pencil also mentioned my little fast fictions in their latest print issue and I'm very excited to announce that a short-short story of mine is slated to appear in issue 30.

So put down the knitting needles which you're using to knit your latest soft 'zine about elephants and anvils and enjoy...

ALPHA LOSER

"Blankety, blank, blank, blank !!" he vociferates red-faced and enraged. He slams more money into the two quarter thick slot at the front of the vending machine and waits for his bag of cheetos. Dangerously cheesy, my ass, he mutters into his fist. If the bag of yellowy goodness which is hanging on the tip of a large metal corkscrew does not drop this time, he will become the epicenter of rage.

He wants them.

He hates them.

A rope tightens around his midsection.

He presses "B" "12" and is rewarded with nothing. It doesn't even make the effort of moving.

"Fuckety, fuck, fuck, fuck !!" he screams, shaking the machine back and forth. He sees reflections of faces in the glass facade as he tilts it towards the light but when it crashes back down to its upright position he sees all the bags of chips, chocolate bars and cookies which are out of reach. He shakes it again with renewed vigor and this time on its tilt he witnesses the faces of everyone who's ever denied him what was rightfully his. Stone faced and unsympathetic. An Easter Island of indifference. He can see them all crammed into a portrait of his past.

He screams as the machine lurches over upon his measly 145 pounds. A weight he used to lord over those who were smaller.

A lineup of kindergarten kids clinging to a rope stand in front of the conclusion to the struggle, wondering how the field trip can possibly progress from this moment to a friendlier and happier place.

The boy at the front makes a half-baked attempt at playing tug of war against immobile death.

2005-11-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

"BRIDGING THE GULF BETWEEN SATANISM AND CHRISTIANITY" is an immensely special fast fiction which is loosely based on Kevin Potvin's business card. That's right, his business card ! Kevin is running for a seat on city council for the upcoming municipal elections in Vancouver. Usually I don't step into the mucky fray of politics on this site, but in this case I feel strongly that there is a great opportunity for Vancouverites to support an intelligent and creative individual whose ideals are grounded in critical thinking. And if you promise to go to his site, I promise that I will not subject you to future stories based on anything like Jim Green's mayoral election poster or Jack Layton's tie.

So pause for a moment from whatever act of democracy you're currently engaged in and enjoy...

BRIDGING THE GULF BETWEEN SATANISM AND CHRISTIANITY

"It was a big, fat, effing waste of time !!" April cries and globs of tears make the slow journey down her large cheeks. "They didn't care at all. They just didn't care at all."

Augustus has yet to tell her about the results from the CAT scan. He has been hiding the seriousness of his pain from her along with his three visits to the clinic. Like his disease is a mistress that will take him from her. For good.

"You know I thought I had something that would pique their interest. I printed up information about all of the candidates for the election and then I added one fake profile. A real nutter who's into bridging the gulf between Satanism and Evangelical Christianity." As she chuckles, the tears on her face fall to the wood floor of their living room.

"Those kids are going to remember that. I mean you've given them something different from video games and top 40 bling-bling. That's important." He loves her passion. He isn't ready to see that crushed under the rock of his bad news. "Wasn't anyone interested ?"

"Well one of the girls, Michelle, she took an interest in one of the independents. Thought he has some cool ideas."

"And she's the one who's gonna be calling the shots someday."

He has no idea how he's going to tell her. How he's going to stand in the stream of life with news of a trip to a desert.

"Bridging the gulf between Satanism and Christianity ?" he chuckles.

"Yeah I named the guy Tim Splatter and I wrote that he used to be a stunt man in Christian movies."

And their laughter sanctifies the moment as precious.

2005-11-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

"SKULL SOCKET FEAR" is an enormously special fast fiction based on this wonderful painting by Martin Wittfooth who has a show right now in Ottawa that runs until the 12th where you can see this in the flesh (in the canvass ?)

So take a five minute break from burning down fire stations and enjoy...

SKULL SOCKET FEAR

He rolls over onto his sore back and wakes up to the lucid morning light filling his room. His eyes and mouth yawn simultaneously in a stretched expression that his girlfriend hates. "I can just picture your mom telling you as kid, 'Your face is gonna stay like that.' And voila!" Fortunately, she's sound asleep beneath several layers of sheets.

He looks up at the track lighting above the bed; two of the tiny box sockets are empty, starting down at him like the hollow eyes of a skull.

Good morning death, he thinks.

And suddenly he remembers hours upon hours of dreams that flood his stream of consciousness: a big bang that sputters and trips out into billions of years of screwed up evolution, fish with wings, foxes on crane legs, rabbits with turtle shells and women in ponds with fish bowl helmets. The dream ended with the present where he and his girlfriend had anteater noses which they used to rummage about in the earth for sustenance. And in the dream they were going to live forever. Content with their quirks.

Evolution had just suddenly given up on death.

And after he reached the end of this upside down dream story, he was filled with an impossible happiness which ended when his heart stopped. But his eyes remained fixed on the empty sockets above.

Ten minutes later she woke up to find his body.

2005-11-05T22:04:00.000-08:00

"THE FISH HEAD MARKS THE SPOT" is a very special fast fiction based on a photo by my best pal Paul Pratte who is just your typically talented writer, artist and musician kind of dude. Keep your ear to the ground for his band's debut performance in Vancouver in the next couple of months.

So gather together all of your fish head stuffed dolls, read the following and enjoy...

THE FISH HEAD MARKS THE SPOT

The cold barrel of the gun presses painfully into his temple. It will leave a bruised ring. A dark pox. He shakes and whimpers under the threat of the gun.

"Where do you keep your money !! Where is it !!"

He walks in a straight line to the back fence of his back yard. "There's something buried under the compost. Under that fish head !!"

The screen door from the well lit kitchen opens and Miriam shouts out: "Sam what are you doing ? Who are you talking to ?"

Sam quickly takes the gun away from his own head and turns around quickly. "Nobody, dear. I'm just talking to those cats that are... those cats that are caterwauling again."

He doesn't want her to know about the cash buried under the compost heap. He doesn't want her to know about his weekly tests to see if he'll crack under the pressure of a home invasion. He doesn't want her to know that he's caved in once again.

2005-11-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

"YOUTH IN ASIA" is a delightfully slapdashed little fast fiction based on this wonderful work by Geoff Keong, a Vancouver artist who'll be exhibiting four of his works at the Wicked Cafe (1399 West 7th Ave) from Saturday, Nov 19.

So sit back and enjoy the following story which involves one joke which has been stolen from a Little Britain episode. Thank-you England !!

YOUTH IN ASIA

He punches out the final words of a four hundred page novel which has mined every nook and cranny of his life, work, philosophy and lexicon. He is spent, having invested all of his soul and time on this priceless collection of prose which champions his belief in life at all costs, even in a body of pain.

He punches out the tenth to last word: serenity.

It is the first novel in history that has been pummeled into existence and this guarantees its success, he keeps telling himself, hitting one of the giant keys which is slightly larger than his fist. His own fists pulsate with a dull throbbing agony. For a year he has bashed away at the alphabet. His initial plan of wearing boxing gloves through the writing was thrown out after he discovered that his hands welted up with rashes beneath the thickness of the gloves so he opted for a bare fisted approach.

He punches away at the fourth to last word: zenith.

The crux of his story, he will tell people time and time again, is that there is greater respect for the elderly in Asia. He has never been to Asia mind you, but he loves Chinese food. Most of the time. His favorite dishes are number 32 and 67. But more than Chinese food he loves life in all its resplendent forms.

He punches out the last word: God.

Having completed a year's worth of work, he shouts out: "The very title of my book will become synonymous with a renewed respect for life. It will be chanted on the streets. Youth in Asia."

2005-11-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

"OIL BARREL MEMORIES" is a very special fast fiction based on this wonderful piece by Rebecca Miller.

So curl up in the corner of your boxcar, clutch this laptop close to your chest and enjoy...

OIL BARREL MEMORIES

You've heard dozens of competing back-stories about the crazy lunatic living in the boxcar which used to operate as a sushi restaurant. He was once the owner but after a religious experience with a fish he threw in the towel. He was an oil tycoon who abandoned and was in turn abandoned by family and friends in his mad pursuit for profit. He was a train operator from Cuba who was involved in one of the lessor known plots on Castro, involving a Marilyn Monroe look alike.

Naturally, you're curious. You pass the purple boxcar on your way to and from work.

So one evening on your way home from work, you step a dozen or so meters off your beaten path to inspect the boxcar. You hear a muttering from within:

I will bottom out where we put the top in, top spin I win if you touch my whereabouts unknown togethered unglued through a sky blue cobalt sunrise that will explode all fads that will fade into the sunset to leave us forever alone and then love will come home and we will sing of fears falling like shackles that have been heard around the world. I will, I will, I will roll around in this old oil barrel, I will I will I will spin myself around in this barrel that rolls down the hill, I'll barrel, I'll barrel, I'll barrel down in this old oil barrel. In my youth I fit snug in the cold metallic memories of a world spinning around. I will, I will, I will go back to these days of the summer that warmed my young cheeks red with screams projected out of an old oil barrel. I will, I will, I will feel the forward push of my pals that gave the barrel gusto and hell as they pushed kicked it forward. Even now as the barrel continues to roll to the grave. The barrel continues to roll me to my grave. The barrel continues to roll me to my grave. A grave mistake. A grave above ground. A grave mistake of a grave. I calculated thousands of liters of oil on paper, on computer screens that never spun. All I wanted was to go inside an empty barrel of oil to once again spin my youth around the eternity of circle. I wanted to hide my calculations so that I could spin fear free. I wanted to forget the numbers of barrels and live once again inside one garbage dump oil barrel with brand new words like "fuck" cursed on the inside with teenage markers. I had no idea the world was within barreling towards death.

You stand stunned at what is inside what you've passed everyday.

You slowly walk the rest of your route home.

2005-11-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

"WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN YOU SAY WE FIGHT ?" is once again a very special fast fiction (How can they continue to be special every single day ? I don't know, they just are !!) which is based on this wonderful illustration by the very talented Rina Donnersmarck

So sit back in the autumn coated branches of your favorite tree, read these words on your laptop and enjoy...

WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN YOU SAY WE FIGHT ?

He calls the cat by a term of affection which is usually reserved for me. Sugar. What a stupid thing to call someone anyway. My little white crystalline solid.

And I lower my rump into my chair in the living room and wait for him to apologize.

He strokes the cat as though his hand were a rake going through soil. He bought that mentally gimped cat who seems to enjoy mistreatment off of a midget gypsy named Andre-Django. That's what he told me. I don't care. It's his cat. The cat.

Sugar, he says to me in a meow.

Pathetic. I wait.

"Look, what was I supposed to do ? My mouth was pumped full of anesthetic, it had clamps sticking out of it and a drill was going into a back molar ! Yes I saw somebody breaking into your car on the t.v. in the ceiling. I couldn't do anything. And yes I think there's something funny in that !! It's terrible that your car - in my care - was stolen. But I was just channel surfing, thinking holy shit this is kind of cool , I'm at the dentist but here I am watching t.v.: The Simpsons, some MTV, Pootie tang was on. Cool, cool, cool and then I land on some security camera channel of the parking lot. And they're stealing the car, but I was too pumped full of drugs to really care !! What was I supposed to do !! I was on my back and a drill was going into my molar. Of course I think there's something funny in that !! And now we're fighting ? Over something this stupid."

The cat has had enough of his bullshit and takes off. I don't blame it.

I sit and wait for a proper apology.

2005-11-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

"BUFFET TRAY PILLOW" is a very special fast fiction based on this wonderful paper collage work by Lynn Hatzius
.

So jump up on the side of that buffet, put your plate of food right on top of your lap-tap and enjoy...

BUFFET TRAY PILLOW

It's 1979 and the Panavision blares out the ad from America for the new all you can eat buffet, the Royal Fork. Three kings dressed in giant fork costumes fill their plates up while they shout, "Gold, frankincense and more, more, more !! Don't we have something to do ?", one king asks. "Ah it can wait," another king says filling his plate with chicken drumsticks. A young boy watches all this while stretched out on a dirty-gold shag carpet with eyes that will gladly be bigger than his stomach.

And the next weekend the boy's family drive to the Royal Fork, but find it challenging to get past the protesters with placards which decry the sacrilegious nature of the Royal Forks' advertising: "Gospels not Gluttony !", "Man cannot live by bread alone but only on the word of the Lord" and "Teach our Children to Stuff themselves on the Grace of God not Fatty Foods !"

The boy's family have driven for two hours and across the Canadian/American border to get to this restaurant so their intentions will not be thwarted. Protesters or not protesters, they will have their chicken.

And the restaurant is quiet as the local population are afraid to cross through the wrath of their religious neighbours.

"More for us," the boy's agnostic father laughs.

And the boy's mother and father go back two or three times to the eternally replenished buffet while the boy tops them by going back four times. Over plates of food he spits up sentence fragments. He's happy to have his fill of food.

"You're an eater all right," the father laughs, tousling his son's hair and the boy's mother and father go back for some soft ice-cream. While they are gone the boy stretches his body out on the length of the bench. There is a strange smell from the seat and so the boy turns his buffet tray over and rests his head on it. His feels like he's swallowed a wheelbarrow full of fireworks. He images a slit made in his stomach and explosions of food rocketing into the sky.

Outside protesters sing We Shall Overcome.

When his parents come back they don't see him beneath the other side of the table and so they naturally assume that he's in the restroom.

"When should we tell him," the boy's mother says.

"I don't even know if he'd understand the word adopted. I mean he's so slow," the boy's father replies.

And the boy wonders if his real parents could be among the protesters outside or the staff at the Royal Fork or the kings in fork costumes on the ads.

Or you.

2005-10-31T20:15:00.000-08:00

"THE WITCH THAT WOULD BE WHICH" is a very special Halloween fast fiction based on the following phantasmagorical image by the very talented Lars Henkel. Today's art comes from work that Lars Henkel did for a beautifully designed site at Meret Becker.

When I see these seeded heads, I think of the handiwork of a witch and this leads me to another person whose talents I'd like to praise: the exceptionally talented Kelly Link whose short story about a witch in McSweeny's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales is chock full of bile, black-magic and beauty. And lucky for all of us, Kelly just put out her second collection of short stories.

So without further ado, sit back in that mini-mountain of candies which you stole through some slight of hand off of the children who came to your doorstep and enjoy...

THE WITCH THAT WOULD BE WHICH

The perversions deep within his gaze are far too much to bear for the Witch and her youthful daughter, Stella. He looks up with lust in his eyes again and again, like a bloated pig returning to a feast which is not for him. Consequently, the Witch's brains are busy searching for the right curse. An immediate punishment which can be effected in the next couple of minutes.

The trolley shakes back and forth under the weight of the pitter-patter of the rain, taking them to their destination which is three stops away.

"What do you have in your purse dearie ?" the Witch sighs and coughs to her daughter. Ever since the Witch stole Stella as a baby girl she has communicated to her in nothing but sighs, coughs, moans, throat-clearings and snorts. This is the secret language of Witches which fails to find meaning on our ears.

"A handful of pussywillow buds which I love to rub against my cheek," she sneezes back. "And a pair of ballet slippers."

The Witch smiles, reaches into her daughters purse and begins a barely audible murmur of a chant which is well hidden beneath the sound of rain.

"But what harm is there really in that look ?" the daughter clears her throat and turns her head in profile against the window of the trolley which is draped in streams of mini-jeweled raindrops. The man can see her.

The Witch, fearing for the lose of her girl's innocence, abandons her chant and quickly instructs: "At the tender age of 17, you cannot realize how terrible men are. They are disgusting beasts who want to do nothing but unmentionable things to any part of your personage."
She returns to her chant all the while concocting the man's fate in her right fist: a couple of pussywillows mixed with her spit and wrapped up in the trolley transfer of a fat man. As the Witch and Stella get up for their stop, the Witch stumbles towards the man and drops this small packet of misery into the back of his shirt. The painful hives which will break out on his body will form lips which will document his wayward ways for any female family members.

"Sorry," the Witch says carefully, righting herself to look the man in the eyes.

"No trouble at all," the man says, suddenly blushing at his previous behavior.

How dare he defile my daughter with his gaze, the Witch thinks, stepping out of the trolley, pondering her own plans for Stella and how for the girl's nineteenth birthday her waist will be encased in a tutu sized roof of her ballet school. While Stella will drag her cemented-self from place to place she will hallucinate seeded versions of her head floating high above her in the canopy of the sky. And the effigies of her head will be empty and innocent enough to float up into the clouds

And the Witch's revenge on Stella's parents who killed her cat and nearly took her witch powers will be complete.

2005-10-30T22:46:00.000-08:00

"AUTUMN LEAVES LIKE HOBOS HANKIES" is a gosh-darn special fast fiction based on this little burst of brilliance by the very talented Vancouver musician, artist, gentleman Lee Hutzulak

So grab your laptop and crawl into that mound of red-orange leaves you've just raked up , read these words like a child reading a tale under the sheets past bedtime and enjoy...

AUTUMN LEAVES LIKE HOBOS HANKIES

After my parents divorce, they landed upon the arrangement of weekend visitations as being the most efficacious use of everyone's time. My parents were lawyers and while they had representation during the divorce proceedings, they were the ones calling the shots. They retorted over torts.

Visitations. I hated the word for it sounded alien and ghostly at the same time. And visitation rights sounded even worse. Aliens had bartered with ghosts over when they could possess or abduct me.

The typical fatherly trick of holding out gifts as a lure to inspire love and excitement was cold comfort for me as my father had no sense of what an appropriate gift was. I was far too old for the inflatable blue elephant that he brought on his first visit and I was too young for the soddering iron kit he brought the second weekend.

What I remember most about those first weekends of the new arrangement were the crunching sounds of leaves beneath our feet as we walked through the trails in the local park. And of course I'll never forget that first weekend walking with that large blue elephant under my father's arm.

"Your mother is a wonderful woman. A saint. Yet she's also a bitch. I have to be honest with you," he said, putting his smallish hand on my shoulder.

The leaves crunched beneath our feet like the discarded and dried hankies of hobos. The only evidence of peripatetic moments that would never find a home in my heart.

"You know I'm doing all this because we love you," he said.

In my heart of hearts, I wanted to grow up to become whatever the opposite of a lawyer was.

2005-10-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

"IN THE BALANCE LIES A CHOCOLATE BAR" is such a special fast fiction that I can't even find superlatives suitable to describe it. What makes it so great ? Well it's based on art by the very talented Anders Nyberg for starters...

The rest of the magic lies in you putting on your halloween costume, reading this story out loud to trick or treaters at your
door and enjoying the looks of confusion and terror on their faces when they realize candy won't come easy this Halloween. Enjoy...

IN THE BALANCE LIES A CHOCOLATE BAR

"I think we should have a big basket full of nothing and then when the trick or treaters arrive at the door, scoop up a big handful of that nothing and then drop it into their non-biodegradable plastic bags. As we're dropping nothing into their bags we can say something like, 'This year we're giving you a reminder of your innate creativity to imagine this nothing as anything you want it to be.' That's my proposal for this year," my mother smiled firmly. "It's just a suggestion."

My father cleared his throat.

The tension was as thick as soup, left-over soup that had been forgotten and abandoned in the corner of the fridge, only to be discovered by nostrils upon the opening of the fridge door. That was the foulness of this tension which existed every time we opened a family meeting about creative ways to circumvent corporately highjacked celebrations.

Especially Halloween.

In spite of all this building tension, all this talk of trick or treaters was making my sweet tooth ache for a chocolate bar.

"Michael, what do you think ?" my father asked. I knew I was expected to take an active role in the creation of our anti-consumer stance on this day in particular, especially after the fiasco of two Halloween's ago.

A mother dressed as an astronaut had spent a goodly chunk of the night berating my parents on our front steps: "You're trying to pawn off little poems about starvation in the third world to my kids while my husband is at home this very minute handing out candies for free that your son is gladly stuffing his bag full of." And that was how it was discovered by my parents that I had been sneaking out the bathroom window to run around the cul-de-sac for five minutes getting as much ill-gotten booty as possible.

"Well what do you say champ ?" my father was eagerly waiting for my decision. He was hoping that I would side with his idea of mirroring the trick or treater's actions after opening the door. Throwing back a reflection of the bloated beggars they'd become.

And I held the deciding vote.

Three hours before our family meeting, my father had promised that if I sided with him he would turn a blind eye if I disappeared for a few minutes on Halloween night.

He wanted more than anything else for his idea to come to fruition.

I let my sweet tooth vote for me.

2005-10-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

"ANIMAL TESTING" is an extremely special - Holy shit !! it can't get anymore special than this !!! - fast fiction based on this work by the psychedelically talented duo Kozy n' Dan:

So clutch your four pet chickens nice and close to this computer screen, read this in a clucking voice to them, scatter seeds on the keys in case they lose interest and enjoy...

ANIMAL TESTING

"After I fed some ketamine to my hairless guinea pigs, they were stuck in a k-hole for days," Stan Smerkson, a writer of no small import, snickers through his nose. "But when they came out the other end, I swear they were mouthing the words 'holy shit' again and again."

The circle of six people around him burst out laughing. He is brilliantly perverse and warped and they can share in that brilliance without being tainted by his perversions or warpedness. They are simply the audience.

"I just gave lysergic acid diethylamide to my pet ferret the other day," comes a voice from across the room. Patrick Donaldson, literary rival to Stan Smerkson, steps into the room playing with his scarf. "He started scratching iridescent mandellas into the walls."

The ensuing silence is filled with nothing but their total hatred for each other. They are both up to their elbows in research and manuscripts about living with unusual pets on drugs. They accuse each other of plagiarizing the idea.

One of them will be killed by animal rights activists.

The other will write a book about dealing with the lose of his best friend and rival, while brain damaged animals stumble around at his feet.

2005-10-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

"IDEALS GROW RUSTY ANGER" is a special fast fiction based on this work by the very talented Eleanor Rosenberg, an art student from Emily Carr.

So curl up within your blankets, put your cheek against the computer screen expertly installed within the middle of your mattress and enjoy...

IDEALS GROW RUSTY ANGER

"You've sold out for free, man. Can you believe that ? You not only sold out but you also have the added insult and injury of leaving without a penny in your fucking pocket !" he screams through a balaclava. He makes his point by pistol whipping the man tied up with a rubber hose.

The two other hooded thugs stand silently behind him. Every so often one of them - I'm not sure which one really - checks his breath with a cupped hand. The other one - who I know for a fact is the other one - stands with his feet firmly planted on the ground. Obviously he is confident in his ability to stand and look tough.

"You went and made yourself into some big shot. Happy cards sent out for free to CEO's and their corporate lackeys and all you wanted was fame. Oh there's the guy who was brilliant !! He sent out works of art directly to the top. Oh he made it big by knowing whose ass to suck !!"

Beneath the balaclavas they are Marxist art critics who want something more out of their art.

They are angry.

Well one of them - I'm not sure which one - keeps glancing at one of the cards of a man, his daughter and their dog, only their heads are all switched in this picture. He quietly chuckles at how cute it looks.

2005-10-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

"TERROR COMES IN TWOS" is a very special fast fiction based on work by an artist from Korea. Jisung Bahng's work strips down unexpected moments from fairy tales and then gussies those scenes up with humour, quirkiness and dread.

So take a break from your halloween dress rehearsal at the front door, read this story and enjoy...

TERROR COMES IN TWOS

Shin-pori Kim arrived in Vancouver in April with the highest of hopes and expectations and tolerance towards alcohol. He was certain that after several months he'd be shooting the breeze and chewing the fat and using all of his newly acquired idioms to communicate with English speakers around a table full of spirits and drinks. Most of all he was looking forward to living with a Canadian family in the most beautiful of environs in North Vancouver, a part of the Lower Mainland that was minutes away from either the culture of the city or the quiet depths of nature.

For the first time in his life, the world was about to become his oyster.

This dream was dispelled in two hours.

The family that he moved in with consisted of a father, a mother and their twin boys, Hans and Lutz. They had only lived in Vancouver for five years and having emigrated from Germany they still retained very thick German accents. Instead of the mellifluous tones of English, Shin-pori struggled to decipher nouns and verbs that came out of their mouths as though coated in slabs of sausage and sauerkraut.

"Vat should ve do tonight ?" his "home-stay" mother inquired, after Shin-pori's bags had been unpacked.

"Maybe we could just shoot the breeze," he politely suggested.

She stared at him blankly with total incomprehension.

"You know...talk."

She smiled and nodded a hundred agreements.

"Or would you like some traditional Korean alcohol ? Makoli is very sweet !" he looked at his home-stay parents expectantly. Again they stared blankly.

They didn't drink.

All the while the twins watched as Shin-pori tried to make himself understood. They could understand most of what he was saying but they realized that he spoke with an accent. If he spoke with a German accent he would make a better playmate, they decided later that night.

As Shin-pori lay in bed, trying to reconcile his expectations with his new fate, Hans and Lutz made sketches in the next room of a contraption consisting of lip clamps, jaw grip and a tongue hold which would move in accordance with their way of speaking. Once they built the machine and used it on themselves to record the movements of their facial muscles, it would be ready to be tried out on their new playmate. An electric stimulator would be placed on the vocal chords to ensure vocalizations would be made. Late into the night they discussed how they could lure him into the forest and then knock him on the head and place there speaking contraption on him.

And he would speak just like them.

The twins were excited and started this new project with the highest of hopes and expectations and intolerance towards difference.

2005-10-25T21:37:00.000-07:00

"CINEMATIC PAP" is a very special fast fiction based on work by the very talented
Josh Cochran.

So lean back in your theater seat, pull that blanket over your head, turn your flashlight on, read this story and enjoy...

CINEMATIC PAP

Every waking hour of everyday my brother reminded me of why, as a young woman, I had wanted to move out of the house, but after he called me one night in the grips of despair over his wife's suicide, I couldn't help but take pity on him and made the wrongheaded decision to allow him to crash at my place. Crash land into my home. Crash into my marriage. Crash into my sanity. Crash, crash, crash, as he went through wall after wall after wall in my house.

My husband maintained a sense of positive composure through the whole ordeal. He also drank. Heavily. All the while my brother would blather on and on about the failings of modern cinema. He was a film critic.

"I had the darnedest dream the other night," Charles yawned, rubbing the sacks of black beneath his eyes with the palms of his hands. "I dreamt that I was flying over a village in the old country. Flying. A special dream. One of those dreams that just make you feel like you've swallowed a whole ocean of freedom." He kissed me on the cheek.

My brother sat at the table listening with apparently little interest but suddenly he started clapping: "While Charles Oberton's latest dream Flying, is ostensibly an exploration of the geography of freedom, it ultimately leaves one empty and dissatisfied. Where is it going ? Where does it take us ? What is the point ? I give it ten thumbs down."

Through the ensuing silence my husband went to the cupboard to put some Bailey's in his coffee while I mustered up the nerve to say something.

"You're going to have to leave," I said point blank.

"As Godard has opined, every film has to have a beginning, middle and an end but not necessarily in that order. Cindy Oberton's latest work Get Out labors under the false assumption that anyone is listening or cares, as she blithely ignores the entire notion of beginnings, middles or endings. I give it ten thumbs down."

And that's when we took matters into our own hands and killed him.

The end.

2005-10-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

"FLIGHT PATH OF THE TIMID" is a very special fast fiction based on an image by the delightfully talented Eun-ha Paek.

So put your seat in an upright position, buckle up your seat belt, close your eyes as your captain reads this story to you and enjoy...

FLIGHT PATH OF THE TIMID

After spending several hours meticulously creating a soothing plane environment inside their living room and creating an elephant costume, Cindy was pooped . While she had never been on a plane before, she did her best based on recollections of scenes from movies as well as images off the internet which basically resulted in chairs from the kitchen and backyard aligned in a row along one wall, suitcases perched up on a bookshelf to replicate overhead compartments and small cut outs of blue and white taped onto the wall. She put flowers on the chairs and Brian Eno's Music for Airports on a continuous loop on the stereo. And then there were the small dinners wrapped up within tin foil (from her fathers cigarette packs as there was none left in the kitchen) on trays in the fridge.

Cindy had always dreamed seeing elephants in Africa, but her parents suffered from aerophobia.

Dinner that night was served on flight 302 which was bound for Moi International Airport in Kenya. The sterwardess was an elephant.

"This pasta is great," her father said through a mouthful of food. "But I really don't think we'd be treated to anything this good on an actual plane."

"I don't think they're allowed to give out flowers anymore either. Terrorists," her mom said in a concerned tone of voice.

After it became apparent that all of her efforts were in vain, she announced that the flight had been hijacked by crazies and that they had been flown directly into space.

Floating in nothingness with nothing to do.

2005-10-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

"DECORATE YOUR FACE OFF" is once again a super special fast fiction based on artwork by Marc Bell, a Canadian doodle-jockey who'll draw up crazy images of elbows with faces and toes with smiles faster than you can say "All Canadian Wild Balonies !"

Here it is in its amazing splendor...

So curl up in that hammock of yours which has been sewn together out of millions of washing direction tags from inside t-shirts (How did you find the time ?!) and enjoy...

DECORATE YOUR FACE OFF

Leo Koenig scootches carefully past C and D and plunks himself down in the middle of the row. He unzips his carry on bag and delicately pulls out a painting of cartoonish faces beneath beautifully bizarre headgear which he hangs from the seat in front of him.

"Art," he says, with a voila flourish of his hand. He shares his smile generously with the elderly couple that he's come between.

"Oh my, that's quite something," the woman in D says, bringing her hand up to her mouth. Her husband, seated in F, shakes his head in disapproval and opens up the inflight magazine.

Leo Koenig proceeds to take out more pieces of art which he tries to place in flattering angles and light. After ten paintings have been squeezed in around him, he turns to the woman in D and asks, "So how much would you pay for a piece such as this ?"

Over the course of the ten hour flight, Leo Koenig, the roving curator, will work on getting a number that he, the woman and the artist can be happy with.

And then they land in France.

2005-10-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

"AUTOMATIC LIAR / LE MENTEUR AUTOMATIQUE" is a ridiculously special fast fiction based on this hilariously surreal line-drawing by Canada's very own Peter Thompson. If you like what you see, you should get your mitts on THE HOBBIT, a collaboration between Peter Thompson and Marc Bell consisting of ephemerally drawn fonts and faces.

So lean back on the ever reliable shoulder of your siamese twin brother, read to him the following, ask him what the French words in the following story mean and enjoy...

AUTOMATIC LIAR / LE MENTEUR AUTOMATIQUE

"You're a gossip."

"I'm a conduit of truth. I just don't like to hoard knowledge." He drunkenly smiles and takes a sip from his one foot tall tikki mug. It's full of Maudite, an 8% beer from Quebec. The official fuel of party animals all across Canada. Cheers.

She takes a sip from her Strong-bow.

"I met this guy the other night who was a liar, though."

"A fucking liar," she corrects and pokes him in the chest with the top of her bottle.

"Un sal menteur !!" he rejoins and raises his mug for a toast. "A sa sal sante !!"

Shouts break out from those at the party who know French and other glasses are raised.

"This fucking liar told me that he was a siamese twin who was separated at birth from his mentally handicapped brother who as a teen tried to impregnate golf clubs. Weird dirty liar kind of stuff. This sal menteur was also telling me about how his brother was only mentally retarded part time because he would also channel spirits which made him look sort of normal for an hour or two. And then this dirty liar told me he had grown up to become a surgeon who specialized in separating siamese twins. Lying fucking liar."

"What a liar," she shouts.

"And he wanted me to buy him beers ! A surgeon ! And he needs me to buy him beers ?" He quiets down to whisper his name.

"You're a gossip," she shouts.

"I'm a conduit of truth !"

And his lie is complete.

2005-10-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

"FALSEHOODS INSTILLED WITH LOVE INTO HIS CHILDREN" is a very special Friday fast fiction based on artwork by Pamela Henderson whose work is something you will want to tattoo on some portion of your body.

Whilst getting that tattoo chances are you'll need something to soothe the pain which is why I'd like to recommend the new Boards of Canada.

So sit back in that tattooist's chair, close your eyes, listen carefully as the burly assistant at the tattoo parlor reads to you the following and enjoy...

FALSEHOODS INSTILLED WITH LOVE INTO HIS CHILDREN

"Oh put that away, I'll get this."

Sam dips his hand into his jean jacket pocket and comes up with a cupped palm of change. Pennies, dimes and nickels are funneled by his hand into the bus ticket machine.

Stacey can't believe her eyes.

The bus-driver looks deeply into his rear-view mirror.

After a minute of the tintinnabulation of change, a transfer is popped out by the machine and Sam starts to work on paying for Stacey's fare.

"Oh let me get that," she says reaching for her wallet, wanting to speed things up.

"No, no. I insist."

Half way to the total, the change starts to jam the machine and the driver presses the sympathy button, allowing a transfer to pop out so that everyone can get on with their lives.

"I do all that for my children, you know," he says as they stagger to the back of the moving bus. He thinks she's cute and hopes to impress her; he brushed his teeth five times that morning.

"Oh how so ?" she is intrigued by the depths of his quirkiness. For her this is more of an abnormal psychology field trip than a date.

"Well some day I'm gonna have a kid and I'm gonna tell him or her that the bus runs on change. The change is smelted down in a fiery heating system within the bus and turned into kinetic energy."

She looks at him.

"It seems to me to be a more beautiful way of seeing things. I just want to get into the habit now."

"Why fire ?"

"Well, I want to stick with that theme. I'm also going to tell him or her that we come from an island of fire where there's nothing but marshmallow beneath the surface. I'll tell him or her that's where we came from and that our ancestors did nothing but mine the marshmallow and then crisp it up in the flames of the fire that surrounded our island."

She listens and is amazed at how this seems to fit in with the fact that Sam was adopted and has no real knowledge of his origins. He wants to create a mythology.

She is equally amazed at how fresh his breathe smells.

Someday she will become an award-winning psychologist. Her breakthrough research will focus on her husband who tells their children strange tales night after night.

2005-10-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

"COUGHING UP NAILS" is an extra special fast fiction based on artwork by Zachery Rossman. Snoop around his site and experience the thrill of going through another persons' belongings. The opening page of his site gives you the sense that you're staring at a wall at his place and everything inside is there for you to put your greasy fingerprints on. And the artwork is awesome.

So put that hammer down, unwrap another baloney sandwich, read this short-short story on the long banner trailing behind that plane in the sky and enjoy...

COUGHING UP NAILS

The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons. You turn this phrase over and over in your mind like it's a petrified piece of cloud. An incomprehensibility. A big why me.

"Suck ass, dickweed !!" your girlfriend shouts at a van that passes by. You come out of your stupor.

"You don't have to badmouth everyone that doesn't pick us up !"

"There was one guy driving that van. There was no excuse for him not to pick us up. I mean he looked big."

You stare at her.

"We're tiny pacifists. How could we be threatening !?"

Hitchhiking across Canada had been your idea. You wanted to retrace the route your father took twenty years ago, but now all you can think of is how nice a warm fire would be.

And then there's the pain.

You stretch your neck back a couple pops and look up to the sky. Ontario trees too small to be real trees have watched over your three hour wait for a ride. If they uprooted themselves and marched across Canada to do battle with BC trees they would lose. You try to take your mind off the familiar pain in your stomach by thinking of forests fighting across Canada. Way up high in the sky.

And then it comes in a clutter-clash of pain. Nails tearing their way up your throat. Memories of your father's incompetence. Splinters in your tongues. Charges being leveled against your father. Funerals of new homeowners. Blood.

The curse of your father that you will take to the grave.

"Come here. Come here," your girlfriend holds you as you vomit up nails from the house that crushed a family ten years ago.

You want to find something good in the ground below that your father traveled across.

Before he retired. Expired.

A colossal fuck-up in Terminal City.

2005-10-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

"BANANA AND STRAWBERRY STAB" is a very special fast fiction based on some amazingly creepy work by Ken Kagami. You might recognize this Pac-Man collision of bonus fruit and one of the four ghosts that chased Pac-Man around from Deerhoof's Milk Man.

Have I completely lost you ?

Well get with it man !! 1) Play a game of Pac-Man, 2) Listen to some Deerhoof (who are playing in Vancouver next Thursday !) and 3) wince with one eye shut at the incredibly weird work of Ken Kagami.

I ask very little of you.

Please do this !!

But before you run off to do all this sit back in your cushy living room sofa, read the following short-short story which has travelled from your computer through your mini-DVD projector and onto your wall and enjoy...

BANANA AND STRAWBERRY STAB

In the thick of the forest, Danny and Paul march over branches and twigs which snap like a chorus of fingers. Small patches of sky are suspended high above on the tops of Cedar, Hemlock and Douglas Fir trees. In between the above and the below are ghost-patches of chilly air which send shivers through the boys.

"It's just around that stump," Paul says, huffing and puffing.

"That's what you said four stumps ago !!" Danny whines. "I want to go back. I'm cold."

Paul shoots him a glare: "You can't go back until you've seen them. You can even have one. I don't need all those titty magazines. What am I gonna do with a hundred titty magazines ? If you want to stay warm you can put one down your pants."

The tiny cogs of Danny's ratiocination machine slowly spin around and around: "Okay."

And sure enough after several more minutes of hoofing it, they find something spectacular. Something unexpected.

"Wow. Holy Shit ! Ah wow !!" Danny's eyes grow wide to take in the sight of a Pac-Man arcade game in the middle of the forest. There is a three foot pile of quarters surrounding the base of the video game. Danny rushes in where his devilish friend fears to tread.

At the touch of the controls, Danny shakes and spits out in pain. His body slowly turns a silvery tone as his skin starts to flake off in quarter sized chunks until he is nothing but a final splash of change falling to the forest floor.

Paul watches the familiar transformation.

"Thank you. You have done well. You can play for a day but then you have to leave," comes a voice from somewhere in the forest. Paul walks ahead to use the quarters to play again and again and again with an endless supply of quarters to guarantee that he will never die.

A strange figure in the distance dances a mirrored choreography through the trees of one of the ghosts from the game, as Paul plays with abandon.

Someday Paul will die.

Alone.

Regret.

2005-10-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

"YOAV AND HIS GHOST DO THEIR COMEDY ROUTINE EVERY NIGHT FOR THE PLEASURE OF NO ONE" is an exceptionally special fast fiction based on artwork by Seth Drenner.

So tighten that scarf around your neck, avoid the coughs of those on the bus around you, focus on these words on your internet connected cell phone and enjoy...

YOAV AND HIS GHOST DO THEIR COMEDY ROUTINE EVERY NIGHT FOR THE PLEASURE OF NO ONE

"You just don't understand," Yoav says to the ghost that has been haunting his family's house on the lower east side of Manhattan for decades.

"I understand."

"No, you don't understand."

"Right. I understand that I don't understand."

"Getting smart with me now are ya ?"

"I don't understand."

"That's right you don't understand."

"That I understand."

"Argghhhhh !!"

And so Yoav throws up his arms in the air, slams his bedroom door shut and goes to bed.

The ghost stands in the hallway to the applause of nobody.

2005-10-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

"THE NOZZELMAN" is a very special fast fiction based on the work of Kevin Speck who not only has the same first name and the same initials as me but also comes from a place called Surrey. Wild, wild stuff. Nobody ever told me the world would get this crazy.

So prop your laptop up on the dashboard, slide back in the leather seats of your Mercedes and enjoy...

THE NOZZELMAN

Whenever he dips the nozzle into his gas tank, he arches his back and luxuriates in the stretch. Along with moments in front of urinals, this is his time to relax. To steal a couple seconds for himself from a life of work, work, work.

He never notices that groans sometimes escape his throat and that the young men working at the gas-station watch and wait to laugh at the reactions of those around him.

They have given him a nickname.

On this particular day a woman finds herself intrigued at what she sees as his open door policy on his inner drives.

After the trigger of the nozzle clicks open, he hangs it up and his cell rings. He's back to work.

For a couple minutes, in the mind of a stranger, he is the freest man in the world.

2005-10-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

"STARDUST IN THE MUSTACHE" is just about the most special fast fiction I've ever written. It's based on this delightful little fable of an image by the very talented Jeana Sohn. I've made it as large as humanly possible for you to enjoy right here so you can get swept up in the narrative qualities:

So lean back against that tree trunk which will scratch you in all the right places, prop your laptop up on your knees and enjoy...

STARDUST IN THE MUSTACHE

"Do you wish to leave this accursed land or not ?" Stranya shouts and the two sides of his mustache flap lamely like the wings of an injured bird. Speckles of stardust are shaken free from deep within the roots of his mustache.

Frandolisa cannot help but giggle.

"Am I never to be taken seriously ?" he shouts in a louder tone of voice.

"Yes, your Mr Royal Highness. I vow that I shall forever take you seriously. Even if you were to fart and fall in a pigsty, I would salute your slop coated inner dignity."

And Frandolisa bursts out laughing.

At the sight of this Stranya turns red with rage. "Where are the stars disappearing to ? How is it that I place them securely in the trunk of our tree and yet when I return they are no longer there ?"

"Perhaps the stars are falling within the fissures of the tree, slipping back along the roots into the ground where they came from. It's been known to happen." She blinks away all playful fictions, like a child waking up from a dream.

He considers her theory and contemplates a new hiding place. If he can save up a sufficient number of stars, he can trade them in for drooples which will secure them passage on a train to a better land.

Deep in thought, he walks away kicking the ground in hopes of turning up a star or two which will be stored in his mustache.

She cannot understand how he wants to leave their land which is littered with stars and canopied with the patterns of their ancestors.

She is confident that his plans will always be subverted by her ancient alliance with the stars.

2005-10-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

"CRIMSON CATERWAUL" is an extraordinarily special fast fiction based on this wonderful little work by my man Manfred Naescher. Manfred is an artist par excellence who can also kick a soccer ball like nobodies business. Once a week he organizes a friendly game of footie-for-artistes, a kind of sports-salon for those who prefer laughter to competition. He is remarkable.

If you find this whole illustrated fiction (or to be more accurate for this site - fictionalized illustration) thing inspiring, you might want to check out this competition to illustrate Yann Martel's Life of Pi.

But for now slide back in your vodka and cranberry juice filled kiddie pool which takes up your whole living room and enjoy...

CRIMSON CATERWAUL

"Which one's that constellation ?" she asks with her finger pointed to the sky. The tip of her finger shimmers with moonlight on earwax. She puts little stock in hygiene but he likes her all the same.

"That's called Parachuting Buffalo. You know all those buffalo runs where hundreds of them would run off a cliff ? Well this one had a parachute. Can you see it ?" He traces his creation with his index finger. He rests his cheek against hers to get as close to her point of view as possible. The left arm of her glasses digs into his cheekbone.

A hunger for any kind of flesh rises deep from within him. It's nearing midnight. The hour of the change.

"So I don't remember learning any of these constellations in school. Where'd you pick all this up ?" Her smile inflates her cheeks which raise her heavy framed glasses an inch on the right side of her face. With his head holding the other side firmly in place, they rest at a diagonal angle. She hates them but needs them to see the stars connected into constellations. She was worried they'd break this strange spell that he's under, this attraction that he feels for her. But now all she feels is the side of his head against hers.

"Oh, you know. Here and there. My father designed telescopes. I mean he was blind but that's what he did for a living." He smiles.

She giggles and he goes to kiss her while her mouth is open. Her glasses poke him in the eye.

A red wave of anger surges up within him. He can feel the change happening. He will taste flesh soon.

"Oh I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," she says as she turns red and redder.

And redder yet while an army of angry bones, organs and sinew within her rearrange into something horrid and new.

It's midnight and they're both turning into beasts ready to feast. Their primitive minds have no room to acknowledge this coincidence. They are simply ready to fight and then feast.

The constellations above keep their shapes.

2005-10-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

"DANCER IN THE DRUNK" is a super special fast fiction based on this amazing illustration by Zane Kozak. Oh and go visit his site, it's all up and down and boxes and shit. (It's the weekend man, I'm on vacation from articulacy. His site is great. Really.)

Enjoy...

DANCER IN THE DRUNK

"Yup and that's why I'm gonna blow all your bucks to train to become a stenographer pornographer. Oh yeah... That's what I'm gonna do. You don't mind do you ? You'll gladly pay for school and carrots and pencils and everything. And then I'm gonna leave you after ten years of matrimonial mliss... batribonial bliss and run off with a pornographer. Here he comes waltzing into court..."

He finger-walks his fingers on the floor. He is propped up against the wall of his room but his head weebles and wobbles. He is stinking drunk.

"Oh and I'm here just typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing everything down. Stenographering everything down. Oh but I can't do my job because he's so fucking good looking that I don't care what he did to deserve this courtly fate under the scrutiny of the judge."

Stumblingly, he picks himself up and smashes himself like a bottle of beer on the side of his fridge. He shatters into hundreds of pieces of glass.

Each piece is a broken reflection of his story.

2005-10-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

"CROSS EYED AND PREGNANT" is an extra special fast fiction based on an image by Peter Kruper, who I'm very stoked to have onboard as he's exceptionally talented and he illustrates Spy vs. Spy in Mad.

Enjoy...

CROSS EYED AND PREGNANT

He opens the pages of a graphic novel to escape from his life which has been nothing but a charade of romantic cliches, lonely nights coin tossing his fate from the top of a building and one unfortunate tattoo after another but after he reads the tale of a man whose life is nothing but a charade of romantic cliches, lonely nights coin tossing his fate from the top of a building and one unfortunate tattoo after another, he balks at the implausibility of it all.

2005-10-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

"WEEPY BOTTOMS" is a fast fiction based on this little gem by Youshi Li. (This painting takes me back a couple years to this news report of a blind German psychic who reads people's bums.)

Enjoy...

WEEPY BOTTOMS

When she sits down on the chair that he once bought her for no particular reason, she always fights back tears. This happens like clockwork at eight o'clock every morning in her shoe-box writing room that overlooks a back alley.

On this particular morning, she stands just outside the door of the room. It's 7:55. The room feels half-empty. All of his things were moved out months ago.

"Asshole," she says, looking at the ergonomically correct chair. Her eyes dart back and forth between the chair and the window. There is an open dumpster two stories down.

She stretches her back which has creaked and ached all the way down to her tail bone over the past year and decides to sit down to write a story about a weeping butt-cheek who is consoled her butt-cheek neighbor.

After she finishes it, she laughs out months of pent up stress.

"Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha !!!"

She never contemplates the opened or unopened state of the dumpster ever again.

2005-10-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

"INCANTATION OVERDOSE" is a fast fiction based on this image by Justin Wood.

Enjoy...

INCANTATION OVERDOSE

Out of habit, he blinks to concentrate on the exact arrangement of words as his senses start to freeze. He looks right and left. As he successfully recalls the advice passed down to him by his climbing teacher he blinks and misses the trail marker.

He wanders off into a world as white as this screen.

His entire life has been lived with seriousness of purpose and an exactness for memory, but now he knows he'll never buy another calendar in his life.

After several hours, he falls back into the snow and does a snow-angel as the white around him turns to black.

His lips move in a final harangue against the mountains hidden behind the white.

2005-10-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

"MOTHER NATURE'S MILKY KINDNESS" is once again an extra special fast fiction based on my all time favorite artists in the whole wide world, the Clayton Brothers. I don't know how the Clay Bro's work. Do they tie their bodies together and then paint at the same time with left and right hands ? Are they so conveniently left and right handed ? Are they brothers in the religious, Afro-American or in the fraternal sense ? Are they hard at work as you read this, psychically channeling your response to all these questions and translating it into imagery on the page ? Anything is possible with the Clayton Brothers. They are talented beyond belief and so you should love, adore and purchase their work.

Just don't lend them money, whatever you do.

(Oh I'm totally joking. That's just my joky nature popping up again. Damn my joky nature as it's gotten me in hot water on more than one occasion, for example the time I was bungee-snorkeling with the Clayton brothers.. Oh Christ, I also just flat out lie a lot too. Just don't lend me money whatever you do ! )

Enjoy...

MOTHER NATURE'S MILKY KINDNESS

"There they are paving that road again. Keeping that bitch Mother Nature down. Shutting her up with asphalt. She doesn't have a hope in hell !!" He stands on the edge of the small park yelling at the road crew. They labour under the noise of a truck pouring the hot asphalt and they shake their heads whenever they glance at their heckler. When he sees that they see him, he snaps his suspenders in a confrontational way.

"This park is so beautiful that the birdbath over there by the stump is filled with the tears of young boys who are touched by the beauty of nature. Tell me that happens with anything else. Just try to lie through your teeth and tell me that !! She heals hearts is what I'm saying."

He sits down on a remaining tree stump.

"Mother Nature is the only fucking medic you will ever need. My arm is all blistered and burnt because I've abused myself in drunken fits of anger over what is going on here but Mother Nature will heal me. I trust her. Birds are her emissaries and they will take care of me. I don't know why that stupid bitch still trusts us, but she does."

The next week the paving of the parking lot has been completed but Mother Nature's Great Defender is no longer anywhere to be seen. There is a gentle bump in the corner of the lot.

Boys continue to cry in the remaining birdbath as they remember the beauty of the park.

2005-10-09T21:52:00.001-07:00

"THE SKY IS FALLING COMICS" is a very special Thanksgiving weekend fast fiction. It's about a jive turkey by the name of Buster Bankers and his little dog Banksy.

What makes today's short-short story such a treat is that it's based on work by none other than the Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman.

Holy Shit, I can hear you all exclaiming. Not the Art Spiegelman who "has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves."

Yes, that Art Speigelman.

You see dear readers the beauty of the internet is the potential for all sorts of previously unimagined collaborations. Now I know it's only Thanksgiving in Canada but I would like to ask everyone to do something for me this weekend. I would like you to think of something that you do well and create a surprise collaboration with someone out there in the world. (Please don't throw semen at passing motorists. That's not what I'm talking about.) You could for example, send a sound file of yourself singing a country and western version of Slayer's Four Seasons in the Abyss to Slayer. That's what I mean. And I mean it. It'll be funny and there'll be a thank-you involved.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Enjoy...

THE SKY IS FALLING COMICS

"Gee, Banksy do you think people are feeling as swell as they should be feeling ?" Buster Bankers smiled at his three legged dog who barked twice in response. "No, I don't think so either. These people need to let off some steam and how !!"

Buster ducked into a back alley and took a knife out of his back pocket to cut a swatch of hair off of his dog's back. Between the palms of his hands he rubbed the hair along with a couple of butts he'd saved up after having sex with various women in a less reputable part of town. After five minutes of chanting a strange gibberish that made his dog, Banksy, yelp in fear, Buster Bankers pulled out a comic from his pocket. Using this as rolling paper he smoked the hair and butt concoction. The smoke trailed up into the blue sky a message that only the spirits understood.

When he ran into the street, comics started to fall from the sky. People smiled and laughed as they read the humorous accounts of buffoonery and mishaps. Busker Bankers laughed and danced in the street: "See Banksy, a little bit of voodoo can put a heck of a lot of happiness in people's hearts !!"

Banksy was happiest of all. He'd gotten off easy this time.

2005-10-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

"FOOD FIGHTERS" is a fast fiction based on a whimsical little bit of brilliance brought to us by the talented Evah Fan.

Enjoy...

FOOD FIGHTERS

His teeth are yellow and crooked like an unsuccessful fence. He tells tales every night to frighten any curiosity out of the twins. In the next room crystal meth will be made all through the night.

"Every night at midnight food comes to life to fight for their placement in the produce bins, shelves and fridges of the world. The losers end up front and center, ready to be picked up to be chopped up, fried up, cooked up or whatevered up. If you ever stumble across one of their fights, they will turn you into one of them. A fat fist of dough to be flattened out and turned into spaghetti for lunch." He watches them carefully to make sure they are sufficiently spooked and then wishes them a good night's sleep. After he closes the door he starts to work on a batch of stovetop shards of jagged euphoria.

They know they are sleeping in a lion's den of danger and so they pretend to be scared but inside their pillow-soft thoughts they imagine little balls of dough wrestling for the fun of it.

The twins will hide in patches of innocence throughout their childhood until they see a clear opening to run for their lives.

2005-10-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

"READING TO THE REINCARNATION" is a simple little complication of a short-short story based on a photo by the lovely and talented Marieta Tsenova

Enjoy...

READING TO THE REINCARNATION

"Well just bury them under the cherry tree in the front yard," he says pulling up a rusty staple from the wood floor.

"No way. No way," she says on the other side of the room, wrestling with her own staple. "That's way too complicated. Rife with complications."

"What do ya mean ?"

"There's a woman at the gym who was telling about this former friend of hers who had her husband's remains buried under a tree. Some asshole chopped down the tree and the wood was used to make a bench. She was so horrified by all this that she ended up reading to the bench everyday. She reads home reno manuals. That's what he was into."

"She should just burn down the bench and put those ashes somewhere safe."

"See, complications. Way too many complications." They continue working on the living room of their new home, each imagining secret spots for the secure placement of ashes.

2005-10-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

"Recess is Receding in Droves" is a quick little skip down memory lane. Inspiration has come from the supremely talented Lee Hutzulak. If you're lucky enough to be in Vancouver, check out some of his new drawings Friday night at WRKS DVSN Gallery: 269 Powell Street.

Enjoy...

Recess is Receding in Droves

The moon shines bright in the black, open sky. Three childhood friends share a joint in the playground of their youth. Three distinct stages of hair lose are illuminated by the moon.

"Remember that time you tried to unicycle to school, but you kept falling flat on your face ? You were horrible." They all laugh.

"Remember when Mr Skanders was nailed in the face with that snowball ? Christ was he ever pissed." Their collective laughter grows louder.

"Remember when we wore Richard Nixon Halloween masks and played penis tag on the monkey bars during recess ? And you had to bark when somebody touched your groin ?"

A silence falls over two of them as paranoia slowly glazes over their eyes which glow red in the dark. They have no idea what he's talking about.

2005-10-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

"SMALL MAN, COMPLEX" is a tiny fast fiction about a tiny man with a big dream. Inspiration has come from the artwork of Ho Che Anderson.

Enjoy...

SMALL MAN, COMPLEX

On her morning march to work she quite literally stumbles upon him at the corner of 10th and Main. He comes up to her knee caps and professes his love for her. "My chiwawa is bigger than you," she tells him flat out.

"My feelings for you are bigger than the two of us combined. I want to understand you, spoil you, love you to pieces," he shouts. "I want to marry you and grow old with you and tease you by pretending to be you pretending to be."

She has no time for fools and so continues on with her morning commute.

"Wait ! Wait !" he shouts after her. He wants to race after her but he realizes that unrequited love at first sight is an open sore he'll just have to live with. He has seen the woman of his dreams. Perhaps someday she will come around, he thinks.

And that night she dreams of him jumping back and forth on her right and left breasts. She wakes up in an orgasm but with no name to call out.

Six hours later a crow snatches the small man up from his walk to the corner of 10th and Main and drops him to the ground to see what kind of goodies will come out.

She never sees him again.

2005-10-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

"WITHIN THE BLAST HE MAKES A MOVE" is a fast fiction based on this explosive little number by Peter Bagge, the author of Hate Comics. In honor of the occasion of having the master's art on my site I'm wearing a shirt, "I heart Hate Comics."

Enjoy..

WITHIN THE BLAST HE MAKES A MOVE

His arms and legs spin as though he's a weather vein blown from the of the top of a roof. He has no idea what's happened. One second, he was pinching tomatoes and then quite literally, "Kabloowie !" Suddenly another body sails next to him in the slow motion seconds of the blast.

Her blond hair swooshes to and fro.

"Do you have the time," he hollers.

She says nothing.

Fuck, he thinks to himself as his body slams like a sack of shrapnel into the ground.

2005-10-03T18:15:00.000-07:00

"INSERT PROFANITY HERE" is a fast fiction that asks the question, How long would it take a hundred typing monkeys to come up with a conspiracy theory about JFK that relates it all back to the "missing link" ?

Inspiration has come by way of a very talented Vancouver artist by the name of Robert Mearns. If you listen very carefully late at night in Vancouver, you can here the faint sound of his paint brush, slapping beautiful things on ugly old walls. Go to his site and buy some of his paintings.

But most importantly of all enjoy the following...

INSERT PROFANITY HERE

The elevator door does its horizontal guillotine routine and my building super nearly busts a nut.

"Oh Christ !! Who in their right mind would fu-" He closes his mouth on a now trapped speak bubble full of fucks and shits all compressed into a mumble of filth. I apply a Keat's quote to the profanity: "Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter." Yes, very fucking sweet.

He rubs his hand over the graffiti plastered on the shiny elevator door. At the center of the mess is a monkey with JFK's face. His head 180's in my direction.

"If I find that any of your friends..." He pulls out his most menacing glare for the occasion. What a prick. Accusing me. He knows I'm fucking colorblind. So I let into him.

"Is it because I'm young ? Is it because I'm a teenager that you're accusing me of wrong-doing ? Are all teenagers collectively responsible for every spec of shit out there ? I can't paint. I'm colorblind." At this point, I'm shaking mad.

He lowers his threatening look. "Well if any of your friends are responsible for this - "

Strike two, fucker.

"Because they are teenagers and so they must be rotten to the core ? They must be glue-sniffing criminals who get off on messing shit up ? Come on man, we've been over this already." I stand my ground and the old geezer gives up and turns to rub his hands all over the graffiti again. Like he's Spock trying to communicate with that sentient boulder. "Ahhh I feel pain because there's paint all over me !!" Fuck.
The door opens on my floor and I walk out, waiting for him to let loose one last stupid accusation.

The door closes on this glum expression on his face.

He never would have guessed in a million years that I trained my monkey to pull that shit off.

Yeah that's me. A precocious kid with a monkey. From what people tell me, his eyes are an amazing green.

2005-10-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

"SOMEBODY PLEASE TAKE THE CLOWNS SERIOUSLY" is a fast fiction that falls flat on its face onto a trap door which spins it back down through to a second trap door and voila ! onto its feet again. (The key here is that the ankles must be braced for the double trap door spin. (Something my grandfather taught me (in his senility)))

Today's inspiration comes from Anthony Myers, one of the most wonderfully enthusiastic artists to take up the call to send me something.

Enjoy...

SOMEBODY PLEASE TAKE THE CLOWNS SERIOUSLY

"I've accomplished everything today," Smarks says, pouring water into the rubber bulb behind his flower.

"Did you walk around the world ?" Smargs queries

"As a matter of fact ..." Smarks dips his head into a large bag of odds and ends and beginnings and evens. He comes out with a stack of photos. "Here I am in front of the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower and the Penis of David !!" Smarks walks to and fro showing off the photos as though he were a ring girl displaying the round number of a fight.

"Hold it !! Hold everything," Smargs shouts. He gently props up his affectation of an tiny umbrella against the wall. There is a bird perch near the top of its stem and the bird on it squaks: "Smarks n' Smargs ! Smarks n' Smargs !" Smargs inspects the photos.

"Your fly is down in every single one of these."

"Oh really ?" Smarks raises an eyebrow into a hairy peak.

"You walked around the world with your fly down !! With a smile and your fly down."

The stand in their living room (which is full of pictures of dying things) in silence.

"Well done !! You have accomplished everything," Smargs shouts.

And they jump up and down with pride in celebration of the folly of vanity.

2005-10-01T11:43:00.001-07:00

"DECAPITATED HEAD ON AN APPLE TREE" is a little fast fiction especially designed for you to enjoy with your Saturday morning cup of joe.

Inspiration has come by way of Sander Sarioglu whose wonderfully narrative work I came across on the cover of the latest Prism Magazine.

Enjoy...

DECAPITATED HEAD ON AN APPLE TREE

"Apples will have their revenge !! They will have their comeuppance !!"

She shoots him a glare to shut him up and after she's certain of his silence she goes back to selecting Fuji apples.

"I'm doing this for you, you know," she says to him while her hands fondle their way through the produce. A trace of a tear forms in the corner of her left eye.

As they move on to the frozen foods, he grabs an apple and plunks it on top of his bowler hat. His hat is stripped and his large wool sweater that stretches out with his fat is also stripped. From the sky the apple makes an almost perfect bull's-eye. If anybody from above sharp-shoots this apple, they'll have to take me as well, he thinks in a whisper to himself.

He spends the rest of the day day-dreaming Mother Nature's revenge on our apple-slaughtering society.

Months later, after the tumour - which had been pushing his personality into a strange corner of his brain - is successfully removed, the doctor notes its resemblance to a certain fruit.

She never buys apples of any sort ever again.

2005-09-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

"IMPLANTS" is a fast fiction that uncovers the latest trend towards pastoralism in youth.

Inspiration comes by way of Brendan Monroe who has created an entire world of midget ninjas, sleeping plant children and other strange entities on his site.

Enjoy...

IMPLANTS

"The boy had trees growing out of him for Christ's sake !!"

"That's none of my business."

"But that's kind of weird. Don't you think ?"

"If that's how he wants to waste his time... Let him."

"I can't believe you ?!"

"Look, when we were young it was nose piercings and breast implants. How do you revolt against that ? You go back to nature in a big way, but in the end it's nothing but a phase."

2005-09-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

"BREAK A BONE FOR CHARITY" is a return to the daily fast fictions of isolated little tales that have nothing to do with anything but your heart. I've been trying to create a serialized story over the past week but Christ it's tough as the story also has to take into account the art that I'm getting everyday. Literary contortion. Freak-showing myself for the amusement of the world. No way jack. I think I'm going to stick with the self-contained blurbs of fiction for the time being.

Today's fast fiction is inspired by an image from the very talented Penny Van Horn.

Enjoy...

BREAK A BONE FOR CHARITY

The doorbell buzzes in an electrified tone. You leave the pile of ticket stubs, bank statements, napkins and other daily scraps of paper which all have little haikus written on them. You are putting them together into a one of a kind booklet called "Poetic Dregs" which will someday- The buzzer cuts into your thoughts and impatiently hurries you to the door.

You open the door to whoever it may be.

"Hello, sir. There are many children who will go to bed tonight with no food in their belly. For five dollars you can break my arm and half of that will go to a trustworthy charity."

He stares despairingly at you.

You wonder what kind of hiaku will fit on the receipt.

2005-09-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

"VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ? - part six" continues the tale of a stoned art student who unwittingly saves the world. Today's visual insiration comes from the talented Seth Scriver, whose amazing images are booby-trapped with warped brilliance.

Enjoy...

VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?

"This is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends !!" a group of muscle-suited men chanted as they rickshawed a cabin on wheels up Granville Street. Dempsey couldn't believe his murky-red eyes and as he quickened his step to keep pace with the spectacle he found himself in the midst of a group of Quebec punk-rockers, homeless people, art students and a couple photographers who all trailed behind.

Six average sized men in body-builder suits sweated under the weight of their heavy plastic outfits. One of the men looked ready to faint as his face went through unique shades of red, but he continued to hustle and chant: "This is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends !!"

Dempsey recognized one of the art students in the crowd from his first year Art History class.

"Hey, what's all the hubbub bub ?"

"Protest."

"What."

"What ?"

"What are they protesting ?"

"Beats me."

They stared at each other with stoned grins.

Suddenly the six men in plastic muscles came to a halt, bring the strange circus to a stop in front of the art gallery. A man in a hill-billy hat and beard crawled out of the cabin. "Our world is a changing !! We are here today to show you how. We are not magicians but you will be filled with awe !" He pulled out a shot gun from the shadows of the cabin and started firing at the men who had carted him up the road.

The handful of spectators scattered every which way but no sooner had the firing begun than the men in suits who had apparently been shot, stood up to the amazement of everyone.

"This is a political allegory. This is 'now' theater. This is culture jamming. This is a statement about change." The hillbilly took off his beard.

Dempsey, hiding behind a bush, couldn't believe his luck. Of all days to cut class, he had chosen the best. His cell rang and he remembered his appointment to meet with his roommate.

But he couldn't take his eyes off of what was unfolding in front of his eyes.

2005-09-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

"VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ? - part cinq" is the fifth installment of a fast fiction that started a little over a week ago.

Basically, the story is about a stoned art student who has to save the world from total destruction.

As the story is set in Vancouver it also contains hints as to where you can actually buy weed in "Vansterdam" for all you out of towners.

There are also other exciting hints in the story such as the next winning lottery ticket number, the telephone number of Mr RIght and the forgotten code to that lock around your bike. Or at least that's what my morning horoscope told me I would unwittingly provide the world with.

Today's visual inspiration comes from Vancouver's very own Ehren Salazar. We were chatting a week ago and it turns out there's quite a story behind this picture:

But for now enjoy the fifth installment of VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ? ....

VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?

Dempsey floated down Water street in a stoned haze. A favorite past time of his was to watch the mildly insane street people confronting the overwhelmingly normal tourists. No matter how crazy their approach, the tourists simply blinked, looked at their maps and then stared up at the tops of the buildings.

"Could I have 32 cents ?" a bearded sad sack of a man asked an elderly couple.

They continued walking down the street with their gaze fixed on some unknown point in the sky as though there were a million dollar prize that awaited them for being the most diligent gawkers of the mundane.

"My number is 604-576-6869 if you change your mind," the bum hollered at their backs.

In the midst of this mix of people coming and going, there were an enterprising few who had staked out little territories for themselves: buskers, artists of ill repute and street vendors. Demsey's favorite was a man who sketched people with a pencil between his teeth. With his free hands he played the bongo drums. The artist's self-portrait was on a sign on the ground that read: my art will touch you but I promise I won't.

"So you're cutting class ?" he said to Demsey with a pencil between his teeth.

"Yeah," Demsey smiled with blunted bliss.

"Yeah, that's how it all started and ended for me."

Dempsey's cell went off: "Greetings. I am so terribly sorry to interrupt you from whatever artistic brilliance may be brewing in that skull of yours but I'm afraid I left an item of great import behind in my mad dash to leave the flat this morning."

Demsey stared at the pencil in the street artist's mouth and imagined it as a toothbrush with bristles at the end of it with tiny lead tips on each point that scrubbed scribbles on the inside of his teeth. Self-inflicted graffitti.

"Yeah, no problem. I've got it here with me."

"Smashing. Well shall we meet at the corner of Robson and Granville. Say in about half an hour ?"

"Yeah, sure."

And it was in such a way that the apocalypse was back on track.

2005-09-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

"DUPED IN THE SMOKE AND MIRRORS OF NARNIA" is an old-fashioned tale about a boy and his blender. It is based on this awsome piece of creepy pop art by Brian Taylor:

Enjoy...

DUPED IN THE SMOKE AND MIRRORS OF NARNIA

A simple joke about a 'tard had spiralled off into useless speculation . One of the assholes around the table suddenly got all philosophical on us: "So really what's the difference between a mental illness and a mental handicap ?"

Christ, I hate people who drop stupid questions on a group like that. We were laughing !!

Of course, I wasn't going to tell him about my younger brother who grew up with so much belief in his head that it pushed everything else out. He was a simpleton. And I was his asshole older brother.

Yeah, he believed pretty much everything you told him along with anything you read him out of books. After listening to the Lion, the Bitch and the Scarecrow... or some story like that, Andy was convinced that there was some other world waiting in a closet or at the back of the fridge for him.

So one day I said to him,"Yeah you can reach into and touch a magical world at the bottom of that blender." Oh Christ I was an asshole.

"Will I be able to touch Narnia ?" he asked.

I didn't know it was plugged in !

After the incident, he was different. Fuck of course he was different. Put your hand into the blades of a blender, see if that doesn't fuck you up. He no longer believed in the magical parts of stories but he believed there were actors that got together to create the scenes in the books. Try to make sense of that. He thought it happened somewhere but that it was all special effects and trickery and the author was the only person to see this shit. Yeah, exactly, weird. His mental handicap had left him vulnerable to beliefs that were all fucked up.

"So, what's the difference ?" he asked again.

I fuckin' nailed him right in the face.

I'm such an asshole.

2005-09-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

"THE DALI LLAMA RIDES AGAIN" is a special fast fiction written to celebrate the Dali Lama's ninety-fifth birthday !!

Someday.

Someday it will be the Dali Lama's ninety-fifth birthday and I hope this humble little story will be used to celebrate his holiness.

And I hope someday somebody shows him this very cute image made by the lovely and talented, Eleanor Rosenberg,who you can contact if you are interested in helping out with words or images for a book that she's putting together for an Emily Carr grad project.

And you should, she's good. I mean look at this...

On the topic of the Dali Lama, I'd also like to direct you to a friend of mine who's currently traveling through Tibet. Visit his detailed travel blog-o-rama to find out the latest fashions in Tibetan Buddhism for the fall season.

But for now, slide back in your hot tub, don't get too much water on your laptop and enjoy...

THE DALI LLAMA RIDES AGAIN

"Hey Dali, what's up ?" A young monk gives the Dali some skin and their fingers snap in unison.

"Ahh, you know just... I don't think it really went as I'd hoped. I mean everything was in place but the whole shebang just didn't jive." The Dali looks out his hotel window and stares at the shimmering lights of the city. "I mean I don't even know what city I'm in. Oh wait, I do know, Hey Chicago are you ready for some enlightenment ? Yeah that's right, Chicago."

"But that poster behind you of your head on a llama was choice. Funny stuff. I mean what's not to like and those activity books for the kids... Where's His Holiness ? and your head on the llama body somewhere in the crowd. People eat that stuff up."

"Yeah but do they really get it?" His eyes are shielded by his tinted sunglasses but a tear trickles down into the open.

It's midway through the tour and the Dali needs to cut loose and let off some steam in the city.

The Dali needs to get schloshed.

2005-09-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

"VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ? part square" is the fourth episode in the story of a quirky art student and his villainous roommate who wants to destroy the world.

Today's visual inspiration comes from the Chemistry, a Vancouver artist who's been making our streets safer for creative inspiration through the concert posters he's designed around town.

Enjoy...

VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?

Dempsey stepped into the street with aplomb. He was free for a day to wander the city as the sun warmed his face in the chill of the October day. He free to not give a fuck about anything. He was free to get incredibly stoned. He was free to free others of their rat race routine.

He would get stoned and go laugh at the suits on Georgia Street racing to a power lunch. After that he would make a scarecrow version of a tourist with a Hawaiian shirt and camera slung around its neck and prop it up in front or the mysteriously popular steam clock in Gastown. Finally, he'd paint a perfect copy of the Birth of Venus on a dumpster in a back alley, then he'd...
Or maybe he'd just get stoned.

He headed to Gassy Jack's Whiskers, a local pub that was a mardi gras of drug deals everyday. If you stood by the pool table that meant you were interested in hash and you'd be taken care of by the resident hash dealer. If you wanted mushrooms - when they were in season of course - you'd stand by the hot roasted peanut machine and you'd be served by a scraggly haired South African with a dozen teeth in his head. If you wanted cocaine you'd stare at a beer stained poster on the wall of a crowd of naked people at a nudist beach. They cheered you on as a dealer approached you to take care of your needs. Or if you were simply in need of a dime bag of weed, you'd stand next to an eight by ten of the Queen whose face was coated in a beard of graffiti.

Demsey stepped into the hustle and bustle of Gassy Jack's Whiskers and made a beeline for the Queen.

A heavy set dealer put his pool cue down from his game with the hash dealer and approached Dempsey. After making eye contact he motioned his head in the direction of the toilets and Demspey started to walk in tandem with his steps to the back of the bar.

"Just a dime bag."

"Fifteen bucks."

On the television overhead a decapitated head rolled onto the floor of a sub-arctic station. Spider legs sprouted from its sides and it hobbled away.

The dealer chuckled to himself.

Dempsey put the money into his calloused hand and in turn received his green gift.

The dealer went back to his game of pool and Dempsey walked with some anticipation out the doors of Gassy Jack's Whiskers.
After a couple hoots from his pipe in the parking lot of the pub, Dempsey continued with his walk. He imagined the freedom of others. He saw wings sprouting from the sides of people's heads after which their winged decapitations flew off towards what they wanted most. A feel good John Carpenter movie.

He remembered there was something in his backpack that he wanted to get to his roommate, Cam.

With the sun on his face, he laughed at the image of people's heads taking flight.

Free.

Across the city, Cam Poppinton realized that he was missing an essential part to his doomsday machine that would mulitply his virus and send a shower of it across the city.

The city's apocalypse would be behind schedule.

2005-09-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

"VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ? - part C" is the third installment of a fast fiction that started on Monday.

Today's segment of the story is based on an illustration by Dave Pauls, an illustrator whose site slices and dices quaint and gothic and then sprinkles them onto a plate of absurdity.

I'd also like to thank Leanne over at beyond robson for the fast fictions' mention.
Props right back at you, Leanne.

But for now swivel back in your chair and enjoy...

VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?

Dempsey Mcdougal confronts his soaped up face in the bathroom mirror. A bar of Irish Spring floats in the half-full/half-empty, non-committal sink.

"Well, what do you really have to say to the people of this world ? I mean you can't even keep track of your own crap that's scattered around the house. How do you expect people to care what you have to say when you are in fact a slob. Does your immediate environment not reflect a disorganized mind that couldn't possibly construct anything of intelligent interest ?" he speaks in a deep voice behind the white, soapy beard.

He lowers his face to wash off the white and emerges himself: "There's more fun in mess and more intelligence in mayhem than is dreamt of in your philosophy. And just off the record, since when have you been reporting for Forbes magazine Dad ?"

He soaps up his face: "Oh you know just trying to bring in some extra bucks on the side."

He splashes himself clean-shaven once again.

"Hello, I'm Barbara Mcdougal, reporting for Interview. I was wondering when you were coming home for a visit."

"Well I think with the art world in such a state of flux... I mean DJ Shadow asked why hip hop sucked in 1996 but I think we can ask ourselves why art sucks in 2005. You know, I've got a lot of work to do."

"Hello, Jenny Mcdougal, reporting for Juxtapoz magazine. Will you be working in one main medium or do you think there will be an eclectic mixing of everything in your work this year ? And if you are working in mixed mediums, would you say that art is going against the current trend in popular music to just rock out in rebellion to the mixed monstrosities of electronic music ? Oh and could you get me and my underage friends some coolers at the liquor store ?"

"Maybe yes, maybe no, yes and no."

Dempsey leaves the bathroom to put on some clothes, interviewing himself from the point of view of all sorts of relatives all along the way.

As he's about to step out the front door he sees a small circuit board that obviously belongs to his roommate, Cam Poppington.

"Poor guy, he probably needs that," Demsey says to himself, remembering that Cam had been talking over dinner about some hugely significant plans for the day.

As he zips up his jacket, he closes away the world of questioning relatives and resolves to be of some use and help out his roommate.

2005-09-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

"BEAR AT THE DOOR" is a fast fiction that I hope will find favour in your heart of hearts. It's got a cute little child, sweaty-palmed parents and a guest appearance by a bear, so really what's not to love ?

Today's inspiration comes from Catherine Ryan, an amazingly talented painter who "has been chosen as one of the ten artists to represent HANG at the AAF Contemporary Art Fair in New York, Oct. 27th-30th 2005." Drop by her site to see for yourself what all the hoo-ha is really all about.

Tomorrow I will be back with part three of
VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?

But for now enjoy...

BEAR AT THE DOOR

"Are those child safe scissors ?"

"What are child safe scissors ?"

"You know, scissors that are..."

"Too blunt to be of any use ?"

They stand in very close range to one another: husband and wife; father and mother, pro and con. They are locked in each others gazes and differences and disbeliefs.

Cindy stands beneath them like a vacationer at a mildly interesting tourist attraction of Statues Engaged in Child Rearing Differences. Her stuffed rabbit is a dirty souvenir from a previous visit.

"After you made me put three sets of training wheels on her bike, I really thought you'd let up a little. You know, trust that her world had finally been made completely safe. But you've actually been getting worse. Worse. Aren't you worried about my safety ?"

"What are you talking about ?" she snarls, her arms akimbo.

"The safety of my sanity."

As they bicker through a litany of child safety issues, Cindy wanders out of the kitchen and into the living room. She opens the giant front door of the house to an overweight black bear.

"So can I come in to play or what ?" he whispers in a low growl, as though his throat were full of stones.

"I'm sorry Mr Bear... I'm sorry Mr Bear..."

"Are you afraid of me ?" he whisper growls.

"I'm afraid of the rocks in your throat. I'm not allowed to bring outside things inside. Anyways I'm not supposed to touch rocks. They have sharp edges. Your voice has sharp edges."

"Okay well... do you have any cookies you could get me from the kitchen ?"

And she closes the door on her one possible friend.

Her parents continue to bicker in the fluorescently lit kitchen.

2005-09-21T23:23:00.000-07:00

"GRANOLA IN THE BARREL OF A GUN" is a fast fiction about a man who fights for peace, hates for love and uses patchouli to alleviate world hunger.

Today's spring-board into fiction has come from Marco Cibola, a talented illustrator whose work "has been recognized in national and international publications such as Applied Arts, American Illustration, Juxtapoz, Color, Bail and Arkitip."

As well as this blog.

Yes, that's right, I'm on a break from the two day roll that I was on with "VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?", the serializedfast fiction that I started on Monday. Today will be a one-off and then in a day or two I'll go back to "VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?".

But for now enjoy...

GRANOLA IN THE BARREL OF A GUN

Two children walked down the quiet suburban street gnawing on pepperoni sticks. A "twelve packeroni" stuck out from the open Spiderman backpack of the tubbier boy.

"This could be your grandpa's finger !! Ah I'm a zombie !! Arghhh !!" the larger boy belly-laughed through a mouth full of meat which he chomped up and down and up and down on.

"This is your penis," the slimmer boy joked as he bit down on the tiny remaining stub of meat.

Tubby punched his friend in the stomach.

"That's fucking stupid."

A long shadow suddenly fell across the two of them.

"That's no way to chill with a friend, little dude." A greasy haired hippie in a tie-died shirt and scraggly beard stood over them.

"You're not the boss of me," the Tubby boy shouted, spitting out flecks of pepperoni.

"Oh no, I couldn't be. There are no bosses. But I do speak with the authority of those mountains behind me, I've hiked them many times. The grass over there, that's my tightest bud. You see I'm a fucking vigilante for mother earth."

He pulled up his tie-died shirt to reveal the handle of a gun.

"You stop punching your friend and I want you to return those pepperoni sticks to the store. Trade them in for celery sticks or a hug from the clerk. If you don't I swear to mother earth that I will find you."

And the hippie went to lie down for a nap on the grass as the children ran away, leaving a trail of rolling pepperoni sticks behind. A wake of meaty fear.

2005-09-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

"VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ? - part deux" continues with the story started yesterday. Yes, that's right, for the first time in a year and a half of writing self-contained short-short stories everyday on the web, I have decided to continue with one story.

Yes, it's a way to hook you. Your hearts are fish and my imagination is the lure.

Helping me in this new adventure is Justin Adam who sent me this photo on the weekend:

Justin Adam is a film-maker, a graphic designer, a photographer, and the force behind Toquefest, an independent film and music festival in Vancouver, Canada. Check his shit out.

But for now enjoy part two of "VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?"

VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?

The filth-laden laughter of the evil genius is interrupted by a knock on the bathroom door.

"Hey Cam, are you gonna be in there much longer ? I gotta split in a minute and I just need to brush up on the ol' teeth and I'm not talking about studying." The voice comes loud and clear through the white bathroom door which is adorned with a poster of Salvador Dali on a toilet suspended high in the sky by impossible swirls and loops of plumbing.

"Oh yes I'm so sorry. I'm dismally sorry. I will be out in one shake of a lamb's tail," Cam says, quickly packing all of his lab equipment into a backpack. At the top, he places his prized virus which will destroy civilization as we know it, but for now he has to let his roommate use the facilities.

Cam opens the door.

"I'm sorry I didn't realize that your presence was still present in the apartment. In other words, I was under the false assumption that you were off at school," Cam explains. His teeth are yellow and brown in his mouth, like candies stored for a special occasion.

"No, there are some bullshit orientation classes that I'm not going to waste my time on," Dempsey counter explains. He makes a great show of putting a slug of toothpaste on the bristles of his brush which he shoves into his mouth. As he brushes he explains the importance of brushing daily.

"You know it's these little things that are important. Some men will only say 'I love you' while they're brushing their teeth because that's a time they feel most comfortable. I'm not saying I love you. You're a decent roommate and all but I'm just trying to say that brushing opens people up to different conversational environments."

"Yes I am fully cognizant of the fact that oral hygiene is next to godliness but perhaps my ambitions lie elsewhere," Cam starts to cackle and fill the bathroom with his unholy halitosis.

"You know I don't think there has to be any mention of god or goodness in any of this, I mean you can just..." Dempsey is close to uttered what he's wanted to say everyday over the past two months that they've lived together.

He opens the window to let some fresh air in, a blast of breeze that's recently been filtered clean through the feathers of a migrating bird.

"Have an enlightening day nevertheless. Perhaps you might endeavor to just show up at your institution of higher learning and paint a group portrait all of your classmates with their mouths agog as they are receiving this orientation. That would show true initiative and as long as you were inebriated with spirits you would earn their respect as well as the admiration of your goateed professors," Cam shouts with girlish glee. "But I am off now to try my fortunes with the fruits my own personal education. I must be off." And with a small bow, Cam is out the front door of their apartment, holding his backpack to his side.

"Roommates," Dempsey thinks to himself as he looks out over the view of the city from his bathroom window. He considers a black and white photo of the cloudy sky held up on top of the cityscape.

2005-09-19T23:51:00.000-07:00

"VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?" is a fast fiction based on an image sent to me by Simon Oxley. His site is crammed with great stuff. It's money. It's a briefcase crammed with stacks of hundred dollar bills. Yeah that's what it is.

Today I'm going to introduce a character who may pop up over the next couple of weeks and months following what might be construed as a story line. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you: Cam Poppington !!

Enjoy...

VIRAL KILLER, QU'EST-CE QUE C'EST ?

"Hello my little pretty !" Cam Poppington cackles an evil laugh as big as his belly which shakes and bounces under his lab coat. Cam's cackle is not as evil as his breathe which is rancid and cruel enough to blind the tiny eyes of midget school girls riding puppy dogs, but the foul laugh and even fouler odor work in tandem to instill pandemonium in the hearts and nostrils of anyone around him.

An incredibly large virus with the mouth of a clown stares out blank faced at Cam.

"Oh you are cute, aren't you ? Entertaining even. What are you going to do next ? Will you sing a little Britney Spears song ? Will you swim around like a dolphin ? Will the baby versions of you that pop out of your mouth make old grannies giggle ?"

Cam scrunches his face up next to the glass jar: "No one will suspect you of being the most lethal creature this world has ever seen."

The virus blinks unknowingly.

2005-09-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

"DANGO TAKES ON THE WORLD" is a super fast fast fiction based on one of the many awesome illustrations I came across at Jared Chapman's site. There's an updated retro look to some of his illustrations which I find particularly rad.

Enjoy...

DANGO TAKES ON THE WORLD

"There are always two ways out of a situation. My way or the stupid way. I want you to hire me as a your own personal bodyguard. My rates are reasonable and you won't even notice I'm there." He smiles at the camera as he holds up his telephone number but this is quickly replaced with a menacing glare. "As I said before, there are always two ways out of a situation."

2005-09-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

"BRAM STROKER'S COUNT LICKULA" is a fast fiction that finds its inspiration in this splooge of perversion...

Serge Seidlitz is a force of nature kind of talent who probably leaves behind amazing images of nuns with forked tongues simply by staring at any blank space for more than a couple seconds. Marvel at the wonderments on his site.

Enjoy...

BRAM STROKER'S COUNT LICKULA

On the surface of his smiles, Phil Terringer is extremely debonair and charming. If tickets were sold to view his shimmering smile, scalpers could make a decent living by constantly lingering behind him. Hidden in the grey mush of his brain, however, is an industry of lust that manufactures image after image of perversion.

"Okay we'll just get you in there and begin the scanning. Don't worry you won't feel a thing," the technician says with a comforting look. Her hair is pulled back into a cute ponytail. Phil wants her.

"It's a shame they don't make these to fit two," Phil says. She giggles a shy giggle.

He imagines that he is a penis and the CAT scan that he's sliding into is her vagina. His gutter of consciousness slowly floats from that to a legion of other images of nipples and open vaginas and stroke magazines from his youth. A pornographic version of Dracula suddenly begins to unfold in his mind's eye.

But his concentration is soon broken by the cute technician's scream. She has seen the rated-R results of the CAT scan of his brain.

And he certainly won't be able to charm his way into the sack with her.

2005-09-16T11:14:00.001-07:00

"STREET FIGHT RIOT RIGHT" is a very fast fast fiction that'll punch you right in the face for simply being a smiling spectator.

It's based on an image by I Braineater, a fixture of the Vancouver underground music and arts scene, a nuclear powered lightbulb socket in a very dark basement with mohawked rats scurrying around the corners. Yeah, that's what he is. My first memories of going downtown on my own as a little trench-coated and army booted teenager in the mid-80's include drooling over the I Braineatter t-shirts at the Underground which was on Granville Street. That was my art gallery.

I was lucky enough to be able to purchase one of I Braineatter's pieces some years back: a handmade raygun that also functions as a radio. Ask me about it next time you're over at my place for a party.

Enjoy...

STREET FIGHT RIOT RIGHT

"Dickweed !"

"You cock-sucker. I'll fuckin' rearrange your face and then you'll have to smash a mirror and look into the broken sharks to get a semblance of the original organization of your face."

"Hold it. Hold everything," the director walks into the crowd of rioters. "What the hell was that ?" the director yells from some hidden reserve of energy. The ten weeks of rehearsals have nearly exhausted him. "I told you a little improv to keep it loose. Don't go making monologues. Keep it simple. Okay, from the top of the scene.'

While progress slogged along at a snail's pace, everyone was confident that
the historic re-creation of the Robson Street Hockey Riot on Hastings street was a stroke of genius and would help to revitalize an impoverished part of the city.

2005-09-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

"TEAPOT YOUR PISS" is an accelerated fast fiction that races through a nursery rhyme theme park faster than you can say "the cow fe fi fummed over the moon".

Once again visual inspiration comes from Pieter Frank de Jong.

Enjoy...

TEAPOT YOUR PISS

"And if you look over to your right you'll see..." He pauses to wait for a swell of nausea to pass. The tiny group of blank faced tourists stare at him.

Drake Sanders is dressed in a teapot costume. During one glorious phase of his life he treaded the boards as a Shakespearean actor for five consecutive years but after having entered the world of television and having exited with a drinking problem, he was forced to take a job as a teapot.

This morning he's drunk.

Someone takes a picture of the green faced teapot.

In the flash of the snapshot he snaps.

"Oh yeah I'm a little fuckin' teapot and you're a fuckin' nobody who needs to watch fucked up actors trapped inside this bullshit. You try to perform the words of the Bard for five years and then suddenly find yourself burping out diaper commercials. That would fuck up anyone, you fucks." He waves his arms around the edges of the teapot."

The adult theme park of washed up actors who might throw a tantrum once again proves to be a success. The tourists have stories to tell when they get back home.

2005-09-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

"JAMES TRIES TO TEACH HIS HEADLESS CAMEL HOW TO FETCH" is a fast fiction for camel lovers all over the world.

Today's visual inspiration comes from
Fiona Ackerman whose show at antisocial gallery runs until the 29th of this month. Bring a camel head and get a free beer. Bring two and get two beers. Bring three camel heads and get thrown out on your ass for taking a simple little, silly idea and turning into the excessive slaughter of three innocent animals.

Enjoy...

JAMES TRIES TO TEACH HIS HEADLESS CAMEL HOW TO FETCH

"That was an amazing show. Your sister has told me a lot about you," Andrew shouts in a panic, shaking the Performer's hand with the force of someone whacking a club on a deadly animal. Andrew is high-strung.

"Andrew was moved to tears near the end of the show," Susan adds. She wants her brother, the Performer, to like Andrew who had in fact been moved to tears of boredom. (Her brother legally changed his name to the Performer after embarking on a career in theater and was so adamant that people called him by his new name that he once ignored their grandmother for five years after she accidently uttered "Stephen".)

"Well, truth be told, I think my game was off tonight." The two hour performance consisted of leaps and rolls and indecipherable gestures timed in some mysterious way to sounds of car tires crushing tape recorders playing sound recordings of traffic accidents. The only two things that seemed to be related in any way were the backdrop image of a headless camel and the title of the show.

"Neverthless that was powerful," Susan smiled.

For reasons unknown to anyone alive, their grandmother had bequethed her fortunes to the Performer. Everyone in the family made sure the Performer knew they loved him.

2005-09-13T23:58:00.000-07:00

"ADRENALINE PROSE" is recommended reading for anyone a) trapped in the fridge, b) doing dental research on living piranhas or c) running for their life. In short, anyone trying to save their skin will delight in the misadventures of the heroine in the following fast fiction.

ADRENALINE PROSE was an idea that sprang forth from this image by Andi Watson:

Andi asked that I alert my readers to a book entitled I WAS SOMEONE DEAD by Jamie S. Rich which can be purchased at onipress . Andi illustrated the book and you should buy it.

Enjoy...

ADRENALINE PROSE

Janet's interest in surreptitious reads grew in leaps and bounds over the course of her life. As a child she had not only read comics beneath the covers but -just to raise the stakes - she would read by candle light. Her sheets caught fire only once.

For several months as a teen, her readings were limited to books stolen off of classmates. Unfortunately, as the students who read the most were far from threatening, the experience lacked a certain vitality, the toughest kids in the school tending to be semi-illiterate.

It was during that phase of her life that Janet started to break into book stores to spend an entire night between the covers of a book that wasn't hers. Before the day began she would sneak back out of the store and into the world unnoticed. Bags beneath her eyes were her only punishment.

At the age of 23, she stowed herself away in a shipment of Gideon Bibles to Algeria. Although she was an athiest, she still wanted to feel the literary force of the Good Book through eyes and fingertips charged with adrenaline.

She was funny that way.

We never heard from her again.

2005-09-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

"PROPHET TRIPPING ON THE GATES OF REALITY" is an extra special fast fiction inspired by Vancouver's very own Jaret Penner.

Have you been in the Pen ? On the streets of Vancouver this question is beardo slang which means, "Have you been in the mind of Jaret Penner? Have you seen any of his works ?"

I also once heard a suit on Robson Street ask this very question with an enlightened twinkle in his eye.

Yes, people from all walks of life agree that Jaret Penner's work is fucking enthralling.

Enjoy...

PROPHET TRIPPING ON THE GATES OF REALITY

Two teens are sitting on the gob littered curb in front of a 7-11. Usually they guess what the people going in are going to buy. Divination based on body weight. But today something special is in the air and their conversation turns to the prophets:
"I mean I've never seen them but sometimes just before dawn, some people claim to see this collection of swirls and patterns in the distance. These guys give off a glow like a sunset. You can only hope you'd be so lucky to actually see them. They are so weird. Fuuuuuuck." He spits.

"I've heard they hold hands. Are they fags ?"

"They hold hands to keep the conduit closed. They're simply reflecting patterns in the universe." (Yes, he is a year older and reads nothing but Beat poetry.) "They don't give a cock-sucker-fuck what people call them. But what they really hate is when people mistake their search for the ultimate truth with something like looking for a contact lens. They spin and swirl around in their cosmic dance a lot. So sometimes people say shit like, 'Are you looking for a contact ?' Fuuuuuuuck. They wear glasses for Christ's sake."

"They're not fags ?"

"Fuuuuuuuck. They're prophets. They're fucking finding the truth of reality."

One of them spits on the yellow border of a parking spot.

2005-09-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

"HARK THE TEST TUBE SINGS IN FILTHY BUBBLES !!" is a special fast fiction which has found its inspiration in an installation at the Helen Pitt Gallery. Here's a still from the show:

Scott Evans, Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie have created a cybernetic bower of pastoralism, vintage junk and circuit boards. You have until October the 8th to make a pilgrimage from wherever you are in the world to this beautifully warped distopia.

Enjoy...

HARK THE TEST TUBE SINGS IN FILTHY BUBBLES !!

After lunch at the Buddhist Burger joint where a couple seconds of a Tibetan chant announced the completion of every order, the afternoon took an unexpected turn.

"Some friends of mine recommended this exhibit, eh ?" He smiled shyly beneath a beard that billowed sideways like a dirty cloud. His eyes were crystal clear with blue and made up for his polluted appearance. Jewels offered as an apology for everything else.

"An Exhibit," she bite her lip. "Exhibit A in what kind of crime ?"

He was from a small town in the interior of British Columbia and spoke in clipped tones that clung to certain stereotypes.

"Okay, now that's got to stop, eh ?"

She turned her hand up to officially identify what had just come out of his mouth.

She was up from San Francisco studying at a Vancouver university and her eyes were lit up in a constant state of wonder which naively lead people to believe that she was naive. Her smarts ranged from the book type to the street type and back again.

Their date was progressing in fits and starts.

But after they stepped into the art gallery and they wandered their way into a green hut, they found a new ground to approach each other on. Inside the hut a fish tank full of green liquid was siffoned away through a maze of tubes into awaiting jars. They speculated that this acted as a kind of engine to power a moss coated television screen which displayed pixels of some dead video game.

And in this new world their tongues touched in a two minute kiss.

2005-09-10T12:58:00.000-07:00
"MY PIRATE POWERS ARE UNSTOPPABLE" is a tiny little tale that exposes what's beneath the eyepatch of a pirate.

Argh !

Today's visual inspiration comes from the very talented Rebecca Chaperon, whose exceptionally literate website does such a great job of grounding whimsy in intelligence that you are left believing she does have a collection of robots that do her every bidding.

Enjoy...

MY PIRATE POWERS ARE UNSTOPPABLE

A pirate's work is never done.

Everyday I wake up early squirly. Even before the man who calls himself my new and improved dad is in the shower trumpetting out the gunk from his nose, I'm working on the treasure maps and plans for the day. After I've poured over the maps long enough so that if they were to fall into enemy hands I would have them memorized, I slip them into the belly of my co-pirate: Natsuki.

Then, after he's gone to work, we eat breakfast in silence because I don't want my mom figuring out what my plans are. She's always so curious. Too curious.

After breakfast I roll Natsuki to school. He's a robot on wheels. I only speak to him in Japanese.

"Tokomate yono sabe. Matta ne," I say to him. I don't know what these words mean but I'm thinking of what I mean and I just say these words. He understands me. That's how smart he is.

The Japanese are the most polite people in the world and they know more about robots than anyone else. I knew Natsuki would make a great co-pirate because even though he's from that kind of world he's rude and wild. If you are rude and wild in Japan then you are extra good at being rude and wild because you have millions of polite people to rebel against. You get a lot of practice offending people.

I know a lot about Japan because my old and outdated dad wanted me to grow up to be the smartest girl in the world, so we had a homestay student live with us. He wanted me exposed to another culture. Midori was quiet and didn't really expose me to anything except a cold once or twice. But when Midori wasn't looking I went through her belongings. I also started reading about Japan in one of the zillions of books my old and outdated dad bought for me.

A pirate must know about everything. I learned that lesson after my mom left my old and outdated dad because he was doing things she didn't know about. Right under her nose.

With Midori. She was too polite to say anything.

"Kakatome sate wa Midori conobe," I say to my co-pirate Natsuki. He understands. Then he smashes himself into a mailbox to be wild and rude.

I let him be wild and rude and I focus on cunning. A pirate must know about cunning and before school starts I always make sure to have any test answers inside my eyepatch. I'm always playing with my eyepatch so Mrs Singleton doesn't think anything of it.

Ahoy, you swarthy bitch !!

Those are some of the things that I have to do and that's just the beginning of the day.

2005-09-09T00:48:00.000-07:00
"QUICKSAND MY BELOVED" is a fast fiction that will sink into the sandy vicosity of your heart.

One again I'm pleased to say that visual inspiration has come from the enormously talented Eduardo Recife.

Enjoy...

QUICKSAND MY BELOVED

She loved the way he sang in his sleep. Softly yet masculine. Motorhead songs sung in dulcet tones. Awake, he claimed that he couldn't hold a note and that he was tone deaf. This was simply one of a countless number of beautiful peculiarities.

Unfortunately his body consisted of nothing but quicksand.

As much as Samantha loved Jake, she had to accept the fact that she'd never be able to touch him. If her fingers went to his lips, the rest of her hand, arms and body would be sucked into the sandy pull of his body.

Like so many others.

One day it became too much to bear and she filled her pockets full of cement mixed with precious metals. (Her father worked in construction and her mother ran a jewelry shop.) Prepared in such a way, she threw herself in a lake.

Her last wish was that he would never find her. She knew that he could never immerse himself in water without fear of dissipating into a million pieces of mindless sand.

But of course you can see the ending when you look up into your own past; he followed her.

2005-09-08T18:20:00.000-07:00
"FACING THE MIND THAT BIT YOU" is a fast fiction that dives into a pool full of LSD in order to get that twoonie at the bottom. A dip into abstraction for some minor distraction.

Today's illustration comes compliments of the very talented Ehren Salazar. Visit his site to mess around with the masked face of Jean Chretien. Very fun.

Ehren has also illustrated a fast fiction which will be included in a book that I hope wil be in stores sometime soon. The money made from Fast Fictions for the City will go to the InterUrban Gallery.

Enjoy.

FACING THE MIND THAT BIT YOU

"They call it a flashback but I would prefer that it be called a flash-in, you see what's going on inside yourself. Flashin'. The universe is flashing you, showing you its true nature, your true nature," he explained to his grandson. "And sometimes it ain't pretty."

"Grampa, are we going to the park today ?" Tommy asked. His eyes were big enough to burst. Blue water balloons filled with fun. Tommy was six.

"We're always at the park. You can always reach out and touch the blue of the sky or the soft green of the grass. Conversely, the fangs of a vicious dog that's off its leash is never far away. There things exist at all times around us. The mind is always lurking in the dark ready to bite."

And grandpa once again stepped out of this plane of existence.

And Tommy played with his glasses.

2005-09-07T15:54:00.000-07:00
"THE ANGEL WHO DREAMED OF BEING A COSMONAUT" is another teany-tiny fast fiction that I'm typing with my nose because my wrists are still sore from the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest.

I would like to thank Eugene Smith for fashioning such a brilliant image. He's done an impressive job of establishing himself as a talented artist through a number of different sites. Check out his monster blog to see for yourself.

Enjoy.

THE ANGEL WHO DREAMED OF BEING A COSMONAUT

After an eternity of hymns, harps and wiping God's ass with delicately perfumed silk, Stan the Angel wanted a change of pace.

"What are you nuts ?! We've got it all," Al shouted in disgust.

"Do we have massage parlours ?"

"No."

"Do we have cigarettes ?"

"No."

"Do we have just a single second to ourselves in a day ?"

"No."

Stan stared at Al whose face, while being exceptionally angelic, was also somewhat vacant.

"I know, I know. One crummy angel can't have it all. Nobody can have it all... except for of course the Big Guy. All I want is to experience total aloneness in space and then a bottle of vodka afterwards to celebrate. Is that too much to ask ?"

Al was too confused to respond.

"I want to be a cosmonaut."

And that's when he was thrown out of heaven in a thunder bolt firing. No two weeks. No severance pay.

No nothing.

Just the blackest of deep space, a belly full of vodka and death.

2005-09-06T18:27:00.000-07:00
"DIALOGUE 33: THE CELEBRITY IMPERSONATOR STALKER" is an extra fast fast fiction just for you. You know who you are.

I really like the way your fingers tap dance on the keyboard.

I like watching you.

Oh I'm totally joking. I'm just trying to warm you up for today's topic: stalking !!"

Special thanks to Jody Weinmann for sending me this photo out of the blue.

Today's fast fiction can be printed out and given to your friends who are studying English as a Second Language.

Enjoy...

DIALOGUE 33: THE CELEBRITY IMPERSONATOR STALKER

Mr A: So you dress up like Elvis and then you stalk people ?

Mr B: No, no, no !! I stalk celebrity impersonators. I think they're more interesting than the real thing. There's more of a gap between the persona and the actual person. The stalking... is more satisfying.

Mr A: Sounds like you're really into it.

Mr C: I like building little shrines for minor celebrities. I don't need to stalk them because they're always in my thoughts.
Mr A: Wow. That sounds neat.

2005-09-05T17:35:00.000-07:00
"PILLOW TALKS" is my first fast fiction to be written after my gruelling weekend typing away to get the gold at the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest.

My wrists are killing me.

So my fingers will quickly limp through a category 3 short story (short-short-short-story).

I'd like to thank the lovely and talented Marieta Tsenova for providing me with this photo.

Enjoy...

PILLOW TALKS

He waits five heart beats for her to say something and then he dives into his excuse:

It was one of those days when I had all these songs in my head but they were all being sung by Johnny Cash. You know, like that album of his with all the covers. Like that but with other songs. "I'm a virgin" by Madonna," "We've Got the Beat" by the Go Gos, "Straight outa Compton" by NWA. You know anything but done by the Man in Black.

You know, one of those days. One of those days that come like one in a million years.
I guess that's why I was distracted and I forgot about our anniversary.

You know things get into your head and they push other things out. Important things.

He turns to look to the empty pillow. He imagines the angle at which she'll be looking at him.

The pillow is silent.

When she gets home he'll be ready.

2005-09-04T17:33:00.000-07:00
"MY FIRST THERAPIST" is another lightning bolt of fiction that has struck this exact spot hundreds of times. What are the chances !! Zilch to zip. Where does all that electricity come from ?! Who knows. Can I harness the energy from this lightening bolt and power something like a bandsaw or a blender ? No, the "lightning bolts" that I mentioned are purely metaphorical lightning bolts and simply exist as ideas in our heads.

Today's inspiration comes from the brush of Sonny Liew, a very talented artist whose site is free of pretence and full of fun.

Enjoy...

MY FIRST THERAPIST

"Well that's why I bought it for her in the first place !" he screams out in a spray of spit. (He has over-active saliva glands which is something else that really pisses him off. This leads to more spitty outbursts of shouts so don't get him started.)

"All I'm saying is that you should have consulted me before making such a large purchase." She too is angry but contains her pissed-offedness in a clenched mouth. (She once had her teeth smashed out while in the front row of a pee-wee hockey game so please don't make jokes about hockey pucks de-teething anyone.)

"But why wouldn't we want her to have a doll that doles out little bits of wisdom ? Advice. It's an advice doll."

"Freudian psychology for a four year old !!"

"A very gifted four year old."

(Yes anyway he's your new boss. I know it may seem strange. Us here in the bushes outside their kitchen window. It's important that you understand him. He actually likes to have new employees see him at home. He has ambitions for all of us. Good luck.)

2005-09-03T13:58:00.000-07:00
"TREE TOPS FOR A THOUSAND YEN A POP " is another super fast fast fiction based on this incredible image by Seth Scriver.

You can read about how people are digging his stuff by clicking on cbc or you can email the government requesting that Seth be allowed to doodle the design for a new twenty three dollar bill. As always the choice is yours.

While you're reading this I'm pounding out one hundred pages of literature and typos for the 3-Day Writing Novel Contest so I won't have anything new for you until Tuesday but feel free to peruse any of the other 539 short-short stories which I have on-line here at fast fictions or over at Kevin Spenst dot calm.
Enjoy...

TREE TOPS FOR A THOUSAND YEN A POP

"Daddy I want a super crazy Christmas tree top !!" Tsutomu screams while yanking on his father's arm like its a pump designed to pour out a stream of money.

The tree tops stand in the display window and are coated in decorations and "illuminations" (Janglish for lights). A poster explains where they were grown: "Celebrate Christmas in your super hot Australian swinging style. Christmas originally designed by Jesus for fun by the pool so why not cast off those foolhearty ways and celebrate with the sun. These trees have been grown on the heads of summer time revelers whose job is to dance, laugh, splash and have a fun all time long."

"No today," the father explains and they continue on their way to the hairdresser.

2005-09-02T23:45:00.000-07:00
"SIAMESE TWINS DIVERGE ON THE DIRECTION THEIR SCRIPT SHOULD TAKE" is a super fast fast fiction about some of the possible difficulties of being a siamese twin.

Think twice before you consider getting the operation with your best friend.

Today's visuals have come all the way from.. out of my sketchbook. That's right this is my handiwork:

Yeah... I'm an artist too. As least that's what's been reported in the papers.

Enjoy...

SIAMESE TWINS DIVERGE ON THE DIRECTION THEIR SCRIPT SHOULD TAKE

"Well I think there should be more explosions. You know, like the exorcist throws dynamite down the mouths of possessed people," he says with his head tilted at an angle. His shoulder jerks along with his argument, propelling the point.

"No way that just doesn't fit. If we want this greasy haired loser to be possessed then we need an equally low-key hero. An anti-hero. A guy who just doesn't care. Okay maybe he has these wings that he wears for a joke but that's it," he says with his head tilted in the direction of his brother. He is flush with frustration and nothing moves but his lips.

"Okay, you don't have to get in my face about it."

"Well actually...."

He smiles and they crack up in laughter in one another's faces.

2005-09-01T02:33:00.000-07:00
"THE FILTHY HAND CLEANS US ALL ON THURSDAYS" is some fast fiction that will zip right by you like a black van with this image on its side:

Right behind the van is a low-flying airplane with some words trailing behind on a banner. They consist of several sentences and they illustrate the image on the van.

Yes, that's what today's fast fiction combo is like.

Once again we're lucky to have some art from Mark Delong. Go visit his site, smoke a cigar and then email him a description of the way the trail of smoke played with the images on his site.

Enjoy...

THE FILTHY HAND CLEANS US ALL ON THURSDAYS

"Sometimes when I look into the sky, I imagine that God is a big ogre with ugly hands. Every week that big hand reaches down from the clouds to wipe everything down with a dirty sponge," he explains all this while his eyebrows rise and fall to punctuate his words

He doesn't realize that he is dead. That he is talking to God. He will give God ideas that will forever change the way we look at Thursdays.

You feel a drip of brown, soapy water on your shoulder.

2005-08-31T14:58:00.000-07:00
"CONCLUDING IN TEARS" is some exceptionally fast fiction based on an image by the guys over at the Royal Art Lodge.

It has to be extra fast as I'm preparing for this weekend's 3-Day Writing Novel Contest. I'm doing push-up on pens clenched between my fists. I'm reading my thesaurus with renewed vigour.. no avidity... no moxie... no brio. I'm conserving my writing "juices". I will do a whole slew of posts on Friday and then be back on Monday or something. I hope.

But for now enjoy an extra fast fiction...

CONCLUDING IN TEARS

She makes her own glasses to deal with the torrents of tears that constantly splash against her specks. (The salt erodes the frames.)

"Why does she cry," you ask.

If you want to ask her just follow the tiny, salty stream of tears that always flows behind her.

2005-08-30T20:39:00.000-07:00
"GRAMPS PANTS" is some fast fiction designed to make you fire out through your nose anything that happens to be in your mouth during your read: milk, o.j., chicken salad, your tongue, etc. Based on another illustration by Pieter Frank de Jong, a very talented art student from the Netherlands, "GRAMPS PANTS" will never be required reading at any retirement home.

Enjoy...

GRAMPS PANTS

"Gavrilo Princip," Gramps shouted, blurting out a mouthful of chicken noodle soup.

"What ?" my mother asked, perplexed. Her brow knit into a big "X marks the spot" between her eyes. Please put me out of my misery right now, was how my brother and I understood that X. She worried her way through every minute of the day.

My grandfather was lost in some reverie over the details of this name and didn't respond as the noodle soup dripped from his chin. He wasn't senile, just eccentic, our mother insisted.

"Okay, well I was trying to remember who assassinted the Archduke Franz Ferdinand for the Sunday crosswords. You know these things sometimes take a while to retrieve in the old grey storage space, but when they come back... those memories... oh Christ they come back with a vengence." He smiled.

"Maybe you should just take it easy," my mom said. By the look on gramps face however we could see right away that she had said the wrong thing.

"Every moment is a challenge at this age. How in the hell am I supposed to take it easy. A lot of people assume that because you're up there" - he sawed his hand through the air above his head - "You're blessed with some kind of all seeing view. Some kind of resting place. Forget it. I'm still clawing every inch of the way up that goddamn mountain we call life always aware of the fact that if I make one wrong move - bam. Dead as a doornail. Every moment is a challenge and every memory is a battle and without that challenge I'm just an old geezer in adult diapers. Every breathe could be my last. You don't think there's suspence in that ? Age is not for the faint hearted. It's for the fighters."
He breathed heavily like an obscene phone caller between jobs.

"Gavrilo Princip," he repeated, turning the word over in his mind like a prize.