Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: flash fiction

7/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 7

Freaky Deer

“One drinks the blood of the animal and wears its skin and this is how one gains its powers. There are animals out here that you have never seen. The baanklides are the first of it. There is the averit which is a hunter. As far as I know, there is only one, but be careful around it. It hunts by getting its victim happy and drunk and then burrows into the back of said victim’s head, accomplishing both things at once. It may wear your skin for days without anyone noticing.”

(the man grinned)

“It really likes to brag.”

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6/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 6

Unknown Source

“Who buys a fireplace for a chimneyless house?”

“Just shut up and help me. It’ll make me feel more at home. Guy at the shop said it’ll transform all this urban stuff into a proper forest house.”

“Don’t they usually have like, installation offers?”

“No. Shut up. Lift on three. One, two–”

“Huh. It does feel more woodsy. Is that pine I smell?”

“They’ll appear, guy said.”

“Whoa. Did you see that thing’s eyes?”

“Don’t fuck around. Help me with this instead. Why are you locking up?”

“Miriam, don’t freak out but something’s watching us. If you turn, turn slowly.”

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6/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 5

They called the monster ‘the suicide box’.

“Just burn it down. Don’t talk to it.”

The suicide box was hardly big enough to sit in. It had no legs or wings or anything else that moved when it shouldn’t. A warning label said ‘will trap you in it with what you’re afraid of most’. Gus looked at the chair there and sat down in the chair, sweat breaking in his forehead, matches right there in his hands. A gust of wind and the door was shut. It was dark but he could make his own light. He opened his eyes.

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4/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 4

fear_ancient

Sometimes at night when all the electric equipment is on standby, Carey likes to shut her eyes and pretend it’s midday and she can remember everywhere she needs to go without blinking lights of machines that hide behind strand-of-hair-thin strings and spindly doll’s limbs.

Carey has a similar feeling now but she has never been on this bridge before. There are fish and deep things in the water, which she can ignore if she closes her eyes. She has walked a while and cannot remember how the bridge looks. Her shoe hovers and she needs to plant her foot somewhere.

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5/Aug/2012

New Drabble

http://kewangji.tumblr.com/post/28780656719/a-year-older-a-year-older-in-a-haunted-house

A year older; a year older in a haunted house.

Funny that Suki or Atame hadn’t noticed that only strangers turned up to their wedding.

The cancer was growing in her brain like her skull would split open. The doctors had never seen anything so rapid. They were fascinated, until they remembered themselves in front of him.

And he’d done something bad, and he’d been punished.

And there were the final vows.

And the same day on each year until he dies, he goes to that haunted house, a year older, and he watches the ceremony but he can’t touch.

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9/Jul/2012

Toothed Beaks and Mountains

The five million of us sat in the same place at the same time, awaiting the meteor strike. We thought we could last through it. There was not much grass around us, just sand and time, which aren’t entirely different, but we didn’t let it dirty our hands.

We amateur astronomied, I stabbed two sharp telescopes into the backs of our heads. There was hindsight to be had, and there we saw the meteor strike.

This is where we point out that that was a million years ago and sand and grass have taken the place of the bones and neverending ashes that ended. The fire had shadowed itself, masked to something more devious.

The four million and nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine of us waited for the meteor strike. One of us took up studying the way the comet’s surface crackellated from the heat. “Perhaps,” you (I) said, “we can learn from this.”

There was another one who wasn’t us who tried to drag us away, but provided corners when the meteor struck, this other one I don’t know where they are now.

We didn’t learn from your crackellology. Out of the four million and three thousand five hundred sixty eight that are left one grabs a shovel. One – still the same – fills himself with water and walks wobbly to the hole he just dug, to where the meteor landed a million and nine hundred and ninety six thousand four hundred thirty one years ago (back when we wasn’t sick, or so many).

He lets the water fill up the hole and waits for the meteor to strike. He (I) waves at it with flags that mean come, come, I sigh and watch another one of me wiped out. Unless you’re counting like I am you could not have known how many me have gone up from the spot where I’m sitting.

“Why do you need to stop the meteor?” I ask myself.

“Look, it’s a bit less now? Do you see? There is a town” (two million and five hundred thousand eight hundred fifty two years ago) “that now has one house standing.”

“That is a new house, not an old house,” says a version of myself which has a number that is five million, minus the number of years since the meteor strike, plus one. I think that’s it.

~

Timestorm, I get dust in my eyes.

~

A pebble lands by my feet.

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12/Jun/2012

Worldbuilding 0: Intro!

This might be a series, or it might be a one-off, but I put the (Intro) thing in the title because it would be nice if it was a series. I’m going to build a new world! That is definitely the best part of storytelling. First I’m going to do some analysis of two of the worlds I write in though, because I’m like that. The other worlds are either too small to make comments about, or (in the case of the Vailverse) secret!

Drabbleverse

A lot of the drabbles I write take place in the same universe – henceforth called the drabbleverse –, because it’s fun to have continuity and I wish I was Cordwainer Smith*. There are a few small things that separate this drabbleverse from ours, and they all grew forth pretty organically over the course of the year or so I’ve drabbld intensely.

The first thing of these is fate-days. On a fate-day, everything smells of iron, and you get one chance to change your life. Fate-days are allotted seemingly at random, and one can tell that one is coming up if the rate of coincidences one is encountering. Most people in the world knows this.

The second thing is the Immortal God of Death-Fate, who is channeled through the Machine of Death, which is basically two floating bowling balls with an EKG-line of electricity between them. It speaks directly to our hearts without going through our ears. It’s very cryptic and not very helpful, and follows the rules of other machines of death that exist**.

Another thing is that practically everything has been given agency again. This is not that very present but it is still noticeable in cases such as this one: http://kewangji.tumblr.com/post/12254790760/on-the-7th-of-may-2012-the-sun-found-its-goal, or this one:  http://kewangji.tumblr.com/post/24968807842/cosmos-channeled-eyes-toward-charles-who-started. I say ‘again’, because, see, far back in time, through the eyes of humans, everything was given agency – the moon wanted to arc across the sky and the rivers wanted to flow. But with the advent of determinism and stuff agency’s been sort of slowly retracted to something only humans and certain animals have, but even that’s been called into question. Obviously the sun can’t be waiting for  anything.

I like that these things exist in that world.

The Anyworld

The world with the variable, the vessel and the vermin. The variable travels the universe and deletes unwitting or sturnfleen races of  biologically or technically immortal idea machines. It does so in the vessel, also called the Anywhere Machine. Nobody remembers what the vermin is/are/was/were except that it’s bad for everything. The stories written in this universe are all titled “The Anywhere Machine [something something]”. Only story currently live is The Anywhere Machine, Appendix I – Futureful Skyful***, but believe me when I say that this setting is stuffed. And also dark. Many words have to be invented specifically for this world, like sturnfleen, and dymphnatics, and meaninglet.

~

So, what makes these worlds fun?

Probably contrast. The contrast of those worlds and the one I exist in right now (just passing through). Hopefully they are fun to read because of this – most everything that makes you want to read anything is contrast; any scene, any sentence needs conflict. And contrast is the confliction of metaphysical concepts. Next time I will think up a few details about this new world. I will leave this topic for a little while, though, and think up exciting subtitles for posts that start “Worldbuilding [x]:”.

Below you can find a list of failed ideas for what this world should be about.

  • Instead of babies, humans lay eggs.
  • Extraterrestrials have already invaded and brought us under their yokes: it turns out capitalism comes from space.
  • Genetic memory is totally a thing, and people’s heads are becoming too large with all that information in their skulls.
  • The walls of reality are but eggs and literally world-shattering things are waking up.
  • Monsters.

Actually, that last one is probably on the right track. Next Worldbuilding post will be about monsters.
~

* Cordwainer Smith has a Wikipedia article you should perhaps read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith

** if you haven’t yet read it, read it: http://machineofdeath.net

*** https://zombiesintelligently.com/vignettes/the-anywhere-machine-appendix-i-futureful-skyful/

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