Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: fiction

24/Dec/2013

When Grandfather Died

Every time a person dies they are taken to a cold, black room below the hospital. There is a waiting period of exactly 24 hours during which relatives and close friends are notified of the death so that they can lament. Sometimes people are so sad they want dead people back. If they are sad enough, the person in the black room will be revived.

When grandfather died, we adults just could not care, but we told you about it on the off-chance that your tiny heart would bear enough sorrow to wake him from the dead. It did not.

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23/Dec/2013

A Certain Kind of Lie

There is a certain kind of lie. I know, I have a long list of specific mendacity, and this is yet another one. This lie is one that two humans say to each other when something ends, and they mean it at the time. As the days, weeks, months go by they hear it again, and reinterpret it, and something bubbles up that was there the whole time: they never meant it, in their heart of hearts.

I said, “for a while”. You nodded. I still mean it; give me time. I hope that was not one of these lies.

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22/Dec/2013

Emotional Compromise

Emotionally compromised. It is such a wonderfully political-sounding, malicious, delicious phrase, “emotionally compromised”. Taste it. It’s smooth. It sounds like: We will rescind our guilt trips if you vow to feel guilty about it at least once a week, for a period of no less than one consecutive hour, and if not active guilt at least one full day of this nagging back-of-your-mind throb. It tastes like: We have found out what you really feel, you can spill it out now, it is over. We have isolated the leak. We have learnt from our mistakes. This will not happen again.

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21/Dec/2013

cul-de-sac

You have a different geography at night; but then so does this city. Day sees you rather put your hand in a blender than shake mine; night sees you one of the dancelanterns held up invisibly above like a swollen starscape, leading me by hand through throngs until we find a newborn alleyway; you cul-de-sac me.

You wear that stunning dress. I am still in my pyjamas. You dress me better with red nailmarks from my thighs to the spot between my shoulderblades. In this part of town, no-one cares about two strangers making love. Our moans are outdinned anyway.

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20/Dec/2013

Clock Tower

The clock tower gives a mighty brazen sound. The quarantine is three weeks old now; the buildings around have been entirely evacuated. The temple stands as it was three weeks ago, but lacking people, all its rare books and silver untouched.

A church bench has been hastily dragged from inside the temple to barricade the tower’s door, along with boards and nails and sheets of metal.

If you observe from far up, you can see the first few, weak, tugs at the rope before the bell gets into full swing, on the 12th and the 24th hour of every day.

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19/Dec/2013

Social Moth

Social butterfly? No, a moth. Daytime, I wriggle and slip in-between and dissipate. The social lubrication ushers me; my smile, unfaltering, propels me. I hang from the ceiling. I rub up to people with the grease of a well-oiled machine. We intergrin, anecdotize, thank each other for the pleasant company.

Nighttime, whenever night is, all this liquid wavers within me, leaks out through my pores. I toss, turn. I never sleep. I hang from the ceiling, all my water rushing to my head. All my blood at the edge of my skin. I rotate. I burn my sheets after sleeping.

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18/Dec/2013

for Pao

She sits on a log and stares at a procession of forest ants. They all seem to be walking one way, toward the stream; it must be morning.

“You can never know someone fully,” she says. This is upsetting her. “You can never know exactly what someone else thinks, or what they would do in any given situation. Sometimes, you can make an educated guess.”

She thinks for a while, and stops frowning. “This does mean, however, that you can always get to know someone better. There is always more to uncover, always another layer of skin to peel off.”

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17/Dec/2013

Trigger Warnings

[Trigger warning: that time you were five and an old man with stripey hair leered at you on the bus, and he wouldn’t look away, and he wasn’t smiling but he was interested, and your mother, right next to you, felt a continent away]

[Trigger warning: a vast, uncaring universe]

[Trigger warning: the time your best friend committed suicide, and knowing however much you shout and scream you cannot argue with her logic]

[Trigger warning: a better world, not entirely unlike this one, but better, and you’re not in it, not even a tiny bit of you]

[Trigger warning: irreversibility]

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16/Dec/2013

Cancer Detector

She bought a cancer detector online, set it up, and promptly forgot about it. The same way dogs can sniff out illnesses, the device claimed, it could analyse particles that came into it and sort them. She did not trust the thing, but she had bought it as a ritual, the same way she threw salt over her shoulder or turned her mattress every month.

Whatever; it started beeping in the middle of the night and the man she had taken home left in a hurry, thinking it was a fire alarm, or a good excuse, and that was it.

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15/Dec/2013

Disneyland

You must treat a being to luxury before killing it, those are the rules. A hog is given a spa visit: it has a whole mudpool to itself and it rolls around and it makes contented noises and smiles (have you seen a pig smile?). Subsequently, it is slaughtered swiftly and painlessly, though the executioner weeps. A queen invites her greatest enemy to her greatest feast. He shows up with body-guards, who are seduced away, and he is beheaded at the table, in between stuffings of finest pork. A mother, tired and weary, finally takes her pleading son to Disneyland.

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