Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

29/Apr/2013

Befriend a Spectre Day

It is hard to have ghosts as friends. They do not see the point in eating like you do (did) and they can float for days staring at the same painting, really looking at it. They appreciate things differently from us. And bit by bit you fade away. Ghosts are deaf, because all matter passes through them, they are always in the vacuum of space. Your hearing gets worse and worse until you’re sure flesh-people are just mouthing things at you to mess with you but then someone drops a plate and: nothing. And you should have eaten days ago.

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28/Apr/2013

Strigiformes

Don’t look in the obituaries. He didn’t die but he might as well have, he is gone. He dropped out in a rather suicide-like manner but there was no splash, no blood. No-one looked over the edge. No-one said anything. Ripples of lacks of facial expressions spread through the crowd and he was an absence.

He had told us not to search the ravine floor, as he wouldn’t be there and we’d be wasting our time. He must have fucking hated the thought of us wasting our time, huh. We held a not-funeral by the side and didn’t invite anyone.

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27/Apr/2013

You Say So Little

I taped your mouth shut while you were sleeping so that your muffled screams would wake me. I knew your first instinct would be to rip the silvery tape off, so I tied your fingers to your thumbs and made your whole hands useless. You say so little to me, I thought maybe your words just escaped too silently for me to hear, even though I press my face up to yours as close as I can without touching you. I never touched you. I will remove the tape if you want me to, it’s easy, just say the word.

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26/Apr/2013

Where the Cracks Would Form

I just want to slam my fucking head against this wall until either head or wall crumbles. I shaved my head and I felt the skin there for the first time in years. I know how it will feel when I burst open. It will be pain and rapture. I can feel it when I close my eyes, the eggshell, how thin my bone is. When I rest my head against the wall imagining the strength I would need to tear it down, and you slam the door and the house shakes, I can feel where the cracks would form.

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25/Apr/2013

Introduction to Top Hat Physics

But they must to come from somewhere.

Why?

Because things don’t just appear. They do not originate from your hat; they are coming from somewhere else.

I don’t follow.

You can’t actually create anything. At best you can… assemble.

That’s it, then. The rabbits are assembled by the hat.

But you can’t assemble rabbits.

You just said–

I know what I said. Shut up, I’m thinking.

Maybe it’s like, a loan. I’m borrowing the rabbits from their future offspring.

That doesn’t make sense.

Don’t overthink it, then. Just be glad you were shipwrecked with a real magician and stop complaining.

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24/Apr/2013

Gossip

Take off your clothes, and take this paint and brush. Paint little faces all over your body and smooth out your features. Open your mouth; don’t open your mouth. This is no way to breathe. Be calm. Where is the air coming from? No, listen. The faces have begun to talk amongst themselves. Their voices are drowned out by the way your heart drums in your ears, you must stop it.

Good.

You are in a room with no-one else. They are moving. When your features return, the faces will be gone. You must hear what they are saying now.

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23/Apr/2013

Sky Factories

Plumes of tar hanging in the sky, so thick you could probably scoop some of it out if you got close enough. It is always night under Nemuttemachi, the trail from the sky factories. Shantytowns are constructed anew every time the wind changes direction and relocates the sky. Inside the smoke, ever-shifting patterns of light move like dancing constellations, pale blue and yellow. It is said to emulate a night under the open sky in the times before light pollution. It is as if the heavy cover of black clouds cuts through the blue paste and reveals the real sky.

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22/Apr/2013

Whale

A shadow moved across the land, shaped like the shadow of a whale. There were no whales present who could cast that shadow, there were no clouds in the sky. The crops shivered when it passed them through, but they were unscathed. Tree stumps couldn’t move when it touched them, but their roots shook.

A little boy was playing with sticks in the mud, he shivered too. The shadow circled him widely, with aquatic quickness. He thought he should scream, but the air above the shadow didn’t move like it should, and he sounded like he was underwater.

He disappeared.

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21/Apr/2013

Call It Fate

Somewhere in a ditch the rainwater is separating a dog skeleton from its collar.

In a hospital a baby is born. They cut off one of its two genitals and it screams.

The earthquake cuts the land apart right between your feet and mine.

And the pilot doesn’t get to see his home country from above one last time, when the billowing black cloud obscures his view.

A doctor sells his soul for medical knowledge; he could have made a better deal.

A wall is being built. Yellow signs with black text are hung up. The message cannot be clearer.

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20/Apr/2013

Anything She Opens

This morning, her umbrella tried to eat her. Umbrellas are hungry and they have long thin teeth like needles.

Anything she opens becomes a mouth, and it often sees her as food. It is why she appreciates the chivalry so much, why the rain soaks her so often outside of pubs.

She found out her new bank account had eaten all her money. Just as good, she could never live anywhere that had doors anyway.

She tried to end it the day before she got evicted, but the deeper she cut the more it could open. She didn’t even bleed.

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