Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

The Author Is Dead

The author is dead, long live the author.

The author is dead but the book is still being written. Pages are being pushed out under the door, and if you listen closely, you can hear the noises that a typewriter makes, like cartoon characters eating cobs of corn. The author is dead, beginning to rot, but the story is progressing at breakneck speed. The plot thickens! The author is dead and someone else has to rewrite the pages to remove the stench of rot, before sending them to the publisher. The author is dead but the contract isn’t up yet.

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15/Jul/2013

Fifty-One Times

I just don’t get it, who would want to hurt him? He had no enemies, he did god’s own work. He was a saint. I can’t believe that anyone would kill him, and especially not like that. It’s just unthinkable. Did you say 51 times? Tragic. Just tragic. I have no words. Would you say that your first impression of the crime scene was more awe-inspiring, or revolting? No, I’m just trying to – listen, I want to find the culprit just as much as you do. But as you can tell, everybody loved him. So, tell me, was it beautiful?

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14/Jul/2013

I Will Try, I Will Try, I Will Try

And for my next trick, I will become a seasonal slime creature. In the winter, I will be cold but I will live grudgelessly. In the summer, I will live under a bridge and watch the water. Sometimes, I will catch a fish, extending my crude approximation of limbs outward to stop the happily skipping fish in its tracks. I eat all of it except for the bones, which I wear as jewellery. They slowly sink into my skin and migrate to my heart. Watch, as I live life in a cycle of freezing and thawing, free from the pain.

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13/Jul/2013

Zombie Alien Invasion Impact

Three doomsday scenarios happened all at once, as if old adages were true after all. But something happened. Malevolent aliens picked up human shamblers infected with the turtlevirus. They couldn’t see the difference between zombies and people. Some of the aliens were bitten, and so the zombie virus spread to the mothership. As the strange ship hung in space, desperately trying to shed its infected parts like a snake sheds skin, a rock the size of Mars hit them and bounced off, giving us a new moon. All the zombies turned toward the moon, walked out into sea, and drowned.

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12/Jul/2013

Rot

He says, “Did you know the stench of fish is a sign of decay? Things from the sea are not supposed to smell. Any meat you get from dead animals has to be rotten. The process of rot starts immediately after death, and it is incremental. There are eggs in the blood that start gestating as soon as the blood stops pumping. The bacteria inside don’t wait for anything, do they?”

I say, “I guess not.”

“There comes a point where the rot is too much, and the meat is considered bad to eat. But it’s always rotten, always rotting.”

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11/Jul/2013

Conversations with the Recently Deceased

“Hi, Mum.”

“She says hello.”

I start crying, as practiced. “How can I be sure it’s her?”

The medium opens one eye for half a second. “Ask her questions only she could answer.”

“Mum,” I said, “what was the name of your favourite high school teacher?”

“She says … Mr. Ruthwick. She looks flustered.”

“The whole world thinks you ran away, Mum. Who killed you?”

“She doesn’t know … she just faded.”

Okay, good. “What was the name of your first pet?”

“She says Mr. Stickly … then she regrets it. She asks, are you trying to get into her bank account?”

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10/Jul/2013

Big Black Wall of Soldiers Lost

You find your name on the big black wall of soldiers lost, not because you really died, but because there was none among the ranks who could recognize you anymore, and you refused to talk to anyone about anything. You find your name on the bark of that tree, but impossibly high up because that moment when he wrote it there, with his rusty pocketknife and his love, was so long ago that you cannot remember his face. You find your name inscribed on someone else’s skin, your face stretched across someone else’s skull, your air filling someone else’s lungs.

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9/Jul/2013

Emil the Despot

Emil the Despot from apartment 11b started a war when he wrote his name on every timeslot for the laundry room in the basement of the apartment complex. Chaos erupted, people took sides, and a commodity became a scarce resource when a precision strike from Julia Evans, 8c, took out two of the dryers. Previous allies turned enemies, until eventually the super repaired the machines and moreover instituted a new rule about slot-hogging. And so the unrest turned into quiet remorse. It took them all a week more to notice that flat 11b had been empty for a long time.

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8/Jul/2013

The Watchmakers

At the age of 15, each child shall be fitted with precisely one watch. It shall have a certain number of hands from one to five, and numbers from nine to fifteen, and the hands shall move at certain speeds. The variables shall not be released into the public. The reasons why shall never be told. Great anxiety shall come forth from the watches. If a watch breaks, we shall do nothing about it but observe. Watch forgery shall flourish, and it shall be battled with more complex watchmaking, but never with legislation. We shall make them care about this.

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7/Jul/2013

Curtains, but No Windows

This room has curtains, but no windows. They hang in such a way as to suggest that they are blocking the sunlight. If you were to look behind them, you feel, sunlight would flow into the room like water from a burst dam. This is an illusion you keep with you. You know not if gravity still affects you. Your legs are touching the floor, you cannot lift your arms; but you got like this long ago. Your heavy heart. Maybe now you’ve moved somewhere where the sun is nothing but a distant star, where nothing pulls you home anymore.

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