Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: flash fiction

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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23/May/2013

Autosabotage

There were two Martins, by his best count. They had whittled down in numbers until only two remained. Good Day Martin planned on leaving Bad Day Martin alone, and hoped he would go away. Bad Day Martin planned on murdering the other one. He was the whittler.

He woke up on a Good Day. His chest ached. There were two new voicemails on his phone. The first one was from himself on a Bad Day; the second from Martin’s estranged wife. Now there were only Bad Days left.

He had thought he would feel victorious. Or regretful. He felt nothing.

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22/May/2013

Touchdown Gently

You come from the sky in a shining ball of gold; you touchdown gently in my corn fields and draw strange crop circles and my eyes roll back in ecstasy. I try to contact you but you speak in maths and I don’t understand, and I tell all my friends and none of them believe me and all of them laugh, but it’s true, I remember you cloudlessly. I stay out late in other people’s fields just waiting, and the other people can tell I’m not really there, my eyes are fixed to the sky. Most of them don’t care.

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21/May/2013

Unlikely Places

In the bathroom mirror when it’s fogged up, so that I’ll see it only when I’m naked and cold and vulnerable.

In the bottom of the cereal box.

In the blood.

On the balloons I used for our daughter’s birthday, I got a letter from you every time I inflated one. Some of the taller parents had to crouch when they entered our home.

In the sky, with the clouds.

In the pattern of the blooming cherry tree you planted thirty years ago. How long have you been planning this?

You write little eloquent apologies in the most unlikely places.

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20/May/2013

Coke’s New Ad Campaign is Making Me Feel Weird in the Soul

I’ve got this irrational fear that someone with the name on the bottle will demand a sip. Unless I can explain exactly who I intend to share the bottle with, of course.

At first I would try to pick bottles with the names of dead friends on them, so I’d be too sad to enjoy my addiction. Any time’s a good time to quit.

Somehow I kept buying bottles. At some point I switched categories from ‘dead friends’ to ‘past lovers’ and hoped that the bottled name would start blinking on my phone screen.

But that’s not going to happen.

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19/May/2013

See the Sun

It’s the end of the world; it feels like a practical joke. People are standing still, slack jaws gaping, gazing at the sun as if they are tricking me into doing the same. Did you know that ‘apocalypse’ is not in the dictionary? I refuse to look it up. I refuse to look up, but the contours of my shadow begin to contort and everything glows blazing red, as if it is only ever going to get redder. Experimentally, I closed someone’s eyes and he crumbled into red sand. Experimentally, I close my own eyes and I see the sun.

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18/May/2013

Mycofreudianism

The collective unconscious is a real place and we should go there. We cannot be individuals like this, just different faces of the same skull. We must sever the ties. I have scoured satellite data and come to the conclusion that the place must be underground, or I would have seen it by now. I can feel it, though, I could always sense it. It tugs at me with its cords, if you put your hands to my neck like this you can feel it, can’t you? It pulsates like a second heartbeat. I have a handsaw. Are you coming?

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