Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: drabbles

2/Jun/2013

Oh, and Don’t Take More than One a Day, Seriously

This is a sugar pill, intended to help against your hypochondria. I say ”intended” – do you know what a sugar pill is? It is a placebo, it does nothing at all, but in some cases the patients think they help, which helps. It is not a secret, illegal yet highly-effective treatment against the illnesses I’m pretending you do not have, but a simple cough drop that I’ve put in this nondescript jar for you. There is no point in writing anything on the jar, but come back every three weeks and I will fill it up. I hope this helps.

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1/Jun/2013

Routine Appointment

Once a week, every week, you head down to the tattoo parlour to get my name removed from your chest. The tattoo guy has long since stopped bothering to tell you that there’s nothing there. Those five letters are clearly still there, with the jet black of an industrial printing press, still smelling fresh. Your heart is nothing but scar tissue by now. You attempt to chat with the guy, but it rings false even in your tone-deaf ears. He suggests that if my name is still there in a week, you should consider writing something else over it instead.

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31/May/2013

Police Tape and Shitting where You Eat

There is police tape all over the door to his apartment and your first thought is, I wonder where he got police tape from? Then there is the smell of an exploded meth lab and thoughts two through one thousand run through your head too panicked to be remembered. A couple of thoughts after that stagger behind and stay with you when you come to your senses, and the police officer asks you, “Did you know the man who lived here?” The only thought that is left is the one about which option being worse, pretending yes or pretending no?

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30/May/2013

Headfirst

An empty park bench made of exquisite beige wood, uncannily placed in the middle of a field. The weather has no effect on it. The bench reacts when you sit on it – not a lot, but enough that you notice it. You can talk to anyone else who has sat, or will sit, on this bench, as long as you know their name, as long as they know yours. The bench will fade away after you have had your one conversation. So, the question is, who do you talk to? I took a deep breath and said my own name.

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29/May/2013

Motorcade

As his head explodes, as Jacqueline reaches back to collect pieces of him to puzzle him back together, before she realizes just how impossible that would be, some of the blood finds its way to your face. You rehearse what you will say to the journalists flocking there like hyenas to the mighty dead gazelle. Some of them will make their careers tonight, and they laugh as people run around trying to make things make sense. You get home and your mother tries to wipe the blood away with a wet napkin, but it has already fused with your skin.

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28/May/2013

Why We Wear Flowers after Having Committed Murder

Once upon a time there was a man who stabbed another man in the heart. The man got blood on his best shirt – by the time he had created an alibi, all dry-cleaners had closed. He had an important meeting the next morning: it was unacceptable to dress worse than his best. And everybody knew that Egyptian-cotton shirt. He wore it for confidence.

So he bought a flower to cover the stain. The flower smelled so good that the important people in the meeting demanded it. His boss glared at him. The meeting went well. Then he turned himself in.

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27/May/2013

The Myth of Continued Consciousness

Lou believed that he died every time he fell asleep. There was no difference. He had programmed himself to reflect this, much harsher than the other mezzodes on the ship. He had new personalities, new quirks, new phobias every time he accidentally slumbered. Lou refused to be a carbon copy of his former self, that was one of the ways he stayed himself. Sometimes he screwed up changing his own batteries, and someone plugged him in again and Lou held a little funeral and played the bagpipe. Lou believed in very few things, but he said bagpipes healed the soul.

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26/May/2013

Democracy

After decades of warfare, the parasites in Your gut develop a democracy. A fierce election campaign is held to the loss of one of Your kidneys; eventually the pink party loses to the brown party. The pink party says there’s only one of You and they mustn’t deplete its resources. There’s a good twenty years more of living in here. The brown party, however, favours the paraforming of other bodies in the system – bodies which You have a certain influence over. Your libido shoots through the roof and You feel young once more, and You do what young things do.

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25/May/2013

No Doors

She would never sleep again. There was another bedroom inside her bedroom, and she saw it when she closed her eyes. Things worked differently over there, for example there were no doors but she could go places there which she couldn’t in her own bedroom. Sometimes, if she went very far, she felt a sense of dread before opening her eyes and then she was on the highway fifteen countries away. She closed her eyes before the car hit her, at least. Sometimes she would blink out when talking to people in her original world. She wondered if people noticed.

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24/May/2013

Heartbeat Frozen in Time

In the dead of night, the skyline was a heartbeat frozen in time. We had come to the city with no name on a small boat that barely held us all. We were looking for a very specific person. I argued that “the city with no name” was in fact a name.

His heartbeat was frozen in time. The machines kept him as he was, in stasis. They almost sank the boat. We got Looks when we rolled him into the hotel. Allegedly, one of the floors had gone missing, and that was where we could find her, this surgeon.

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