short stories | Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

14/Sep/2013

Claiming and Unclaiming

And the worst thing about this virus, this gruesome, terrifying, insidious, awesome – in the non-colloquial sense – ungodly virus, is that we have no way to detect it. Not only are its symptoms deadly, not only are they so frustratingly vague as to avoid arousing suspicion in its host; not only does it – according to prominent experts and authors on the virus – disguise the deaths it claims, unclaiming them. It also fails to show up on tests, refuses to be limited by any vector. You could have it already and not know, not even have an inkling. Then it takes you.

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13/Sep/2013

a short list of things which are currently swaying in the wind:

The charred body of your yapping dog,

the rope it hangs with,

the branch of the tree it hangs from, though some of that swaying is indirect, and

the leaves on it, like little hands with three thick fingers each, waving.

The grass around the circle where your yapping dog burned, but not the crisp, brown grass inside the circle

The flagpole I erected overnight,

the ropes that run up its body sounding like lashes of a whip every time they hit the pole,

the victory flag itself.

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12/Sep/2013

What You Left Behind

You have left something behind, quite carelessly. I locked it in your old abandoned room, because that room smells of you (pine trees, heather), and I would think that this thing you left behind would be calmed by that. It just thrashes around, emitting a high-pitched screech at the edge of my hearing, like something blurring in and out of focus. Why did you leave this behind, so carelessly? It even looks like you. You should have taken it with you. I’m sleeping in the treehouse tonight. You have a key. I expect this thing to be gone by morning.

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11/Sep/2013

Patchwork

The ship was welded together the same way their culture was. It was made up of bits and pieces of old things: patchwork hulls, and still functioning machinery from old u-boats, steamer chimneys, maglevs, and oil rigs, and everything else that still floated 500 years after the last civilisation lead-piped their aqueducts and drowned in them.

In the rear of the ship stood a hulking crane with a diving bell in the hook’s stead. The crew, clad in wet-suits and helmets, would climb out to it and dive down to collect more leftovers for their ships or for their culture.

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10/Sep/2013

The Compound Eye

Step into riot gear and turn on the compound eye. Advance. Look down at your feet to know where you are, look forward to see what the rest of them see. Move like one being through the crowd, strike precisely. Advance. But it was someone else, you were looking at someone else’s feed when the boot crushed that larynx. Act on instinct, spray capsicum like a frightened skunk. Advance. Feel good. Advance. Have a secret betting pool with the others. Every night, you trade serial numbers, making identification useless. Everyone vouches for everyone. This is anonymity, not those Catholic masks.

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9/Sep/2013

The Tooth Fairy Plots

“Just listen,” she said, sounding like the bottle of whiskey she cradled. “When my grampy was young he got a penny for a tooth under his pillow. My nephew today gets a fiver.”

“So?”

“That’s a hell of an inflation rate. I think the Tooth Fairies know something we don’t know.”

“Ignoring the fact that they don’t exist–”

“Can’t prove that.”

“…it probably points to a change in social norms and a rise in consumerism, or something.”

“No. The Fairies are competing fiercer. Human teeth are about to become a scarce resource. I can feel it in my bones.”

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8/Sep/2013

The Rabid Dogs #7 – Group Hugs and the Sudden Feeling of Being Safe Again

His bite is worse, no matter what you think you know. You have only seen his tongue hanging out of his mouth, felt the room quiver when he puts his rumbling stomach to the floor. You haven’t felt his teeth in you, and maybe that’s why I hone my teeth. I hit him once and he just smiled an escalating smile at me. Psychologists can cure everything. And I have honed my teeth and picked up a hammer. Today’s the day I get him fixed. I make an appointment with a psychologist. Then I finally bash that dog’s brains in.

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7/Sep/2013

The Rabid Dogs #6 – The Mutt, the Mouse, and the Mule

The hobby psychologist enters. She takes his coat.

The dog has a grimace that I think is supposed to be a smile, all teeth and dribble glistening from the sides of his Winston Churchill cheeks.

She has painted a clownface over her features; there is a frown inside a smile. She tries to make the frown unseeable.

Teeth sharp now, I practice smiling in front of the mirror. Is this a mouse smile?

He takes one look at the dog, then, after all this. “Looks fine to me,” he says, pats him on the head, and leaves without his coat.

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6/Sep/2013

The Rabid Dogs #5 – Who’s the Coward Now?

He fell asleep with his face on a pillow in the middle of the room, white down feathers are everywhere. I’m at the bottom of the stairs with his bowl of water and my perpetual white flag. I brought a pair of shears.

I could grab hold of his teeth. I could fix him, and he would feel a surge of testosterone, the last his body could muster, and he would punish me with his last furious bites.

In the end I bite my tongue until I can taste the rust of those shears, and I go back to bed.

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