Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: drabbles

8/Jan/2014

Your Homophobic Uncle

Your homophobic uncle has found out that you’re gay. Maybe it was your earrings, or one of your friends told; whatever. He’s said nothing about it, but why would he need to? He made sure to tell your aunt that he knew, she passed it on to you. The rest of the family are all impressed that he is keeping quiet about it, but he is the kind of man who gets drunk silently on liquid smoke. He always stays in the room to make sure you’re never alone with your little cousins. You’re the only one who’s unsurprised, unimpressed.

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7/Jan/2014

“Bladerunner”

The book industry, starving and destitute, yet unwilling to spend any money on things that were not surefire cash cows, started getting into reboots. It started small: The Count of Monte Cristo escaped from a modern prison. And what if the Arab Meursault kills was a terrorist? But it escalated, because who wants to read lengthy old works? Do androids really dream of electric sheep? Do androids dream? Androids? Dream? Young authors tried to get a shoe in by telling their own stories, baking old words into new genres, but most just succeeded with stuffing zombies into Pride and Prejudice.

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6/Jan/2014

Everything Is Alive

Everything is alive, you can never die. When your body stops moving and you go cold, the pattern of your molecules breaking down resembles your brain too closely for it to be a coincidence. You try to “disperse, be disconnected,” but it’s impossible; you will never stop thinking. After soaking through litres and litres of dirt you will want to gather again and you in your infinite knowledge will hatch a plan and all your spores will find each other again and your atoms, the ones that are really you, will rendezvous over some nine months and you will Become.

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5/Jan/2014

The Underside of This Bridge

It’s dark, and the underside of this bridge is like a bad venereal disease, all pustulent rust and rain dripping down the sides. He is cold, and his blanket is the exact same colour as the wall, but there is a curfew and he isn’t taking any risks. The officer will inspect in half an hour’s time; he keeps himself awake by focusing on the pain in his leg. After 28 minutes, he walks out into the rain to stand underneath a tree, waiting for the splash of police boots to fade in and out before daring to go back.

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4/Jan/2014

The Evening Report

“Earlier in the day we revealed that no-one else cares about anything, that it’s not just you,” says the same news anchor as before. She has now removed her shoes from her feet and rolled down her pantyhose to her ankles and, apparently, uncombed her hair. “This shocking discovery did not, shockingly, cause everyone to stop doing what they were doing. I suppose, safe in the knowledge that no-one truly cares what you do or refuse to do, most people just went back to what they were going to do anyway. Some even got into arguments. More after the break.”

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3/Jan/2014

Butterflies

“Come on, just bloody shoot me,” said the first child, impatiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

The second child was unsteady, resting the barrel on the first child’s shoulder.

“You need to blow my head clean off, pick up that thing and point it.”

He made some swallowing gestures but couldn’t complete the motion, and then he pointed it straight at her ear. “And you’re sure about this?”

“Sure as day.”

He pulled the trigger and there was a hellish noise and when he opened his eyes again, there was but a cloud of butterflies dispersing.

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2/Jan/2014

Rats

The first rat we found, with bulging eyes, we found in my little sister’s room. It made hissing, scratching noises, trying to claw its way out through the floor with its worn-down claws. My sister came straight to the abbess and me. We touched the rat with a firepoker, but it refused to come out from under the bed. We had to torch it.

I guess whatever pestilence was eating its skin thrived in smoke. There were ten coughing, panicked rats the next day, and now my sister is afraid of something invisible. She won’t come out of the bathroom.

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1/Jan/2014

Anchorlust pt. II

It is all about frames of reference. She is moving faster than the asteroid, spinning slower. Two-hundred thousands miles per hour means nothing, when she is inching forward like this, thrust for thrust.

“You’ve been chasing that thing for an hour, come back,” tries someone in the radio room, distantly.

“Not yet.” She comes up next to it. It is spinning out of control. She just needs to reach out and grab it, and simply hold on. She steels herself, spread-eagles and then clasps it.

For a while everything spins, and then she is part of it.

She stays there.

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1/Jan/2014

Anchorlust pt. I

The tube goes all the way up to the surface. It is hard to breathe. He is walking toward a large rock. Every step he takes throws up languid clouds of dust. The pressure from all that water kaleidoscopes his vision. The two white lights on his shoulders, far apart like the minuscule eyes of some giant creature, flicker as one. He nears the rock. He reaches it, embraces it; this is it. He wants to stay here. The rock is, and he is, immobile. It is hard to breathe. The tube goes all the way up to the surface.

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31/Dec/2013

Deleted Scenes

We watch the deleted scenes from your life in a clip-show your father prepared special.

It’s nice to have the backstory, the behind-the-scenes, even if it is officially non-canon. There is the five-hour visit to Zurich, and the two days spent in an institution plotting your way out. Once you’re inside, it is hard to convince anyone you belong outside. You ended up there for a reason, right? What would a sane person do, that an insane one would not?

“There’s a reason,” you say, “that these did not make it to the final cut. Are you listening to me?”

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