Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: short stories

27/Jul/2013

Dream Journal Entry #6

I fall asleep to nature shows, my childhood kryptonite. I would be treated to Attenborough, my parents would go upstairs for alone-time; I can’t believe it took me fifteen years to understand that ritual. I dream of walking in on my parents having sex. My mother twists her neck to look at me. My father is pumping and unbothered. They make small cricket chirps, and I’m seeing this all from the height of a 4-year-old – most of the action is obscured when I’m close enough to the bed, thankfully. Then my mother bites Dad’s head off with her giant mandibles.

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26/Jul/2013

Dream Journal Entry #5

The sex dreams, I never have. If a dream stays with you long enough, it transmutes into some weird memory that no-one else remembers. There is biting, thrashing, scratching, growling. I kiss, and you kiss back. You whisper, “You may do whatever you feel like,” and for days that echoes in my skull. Things aren’t real unless they can touch me (and I touch back); so why can’t you touch me? You mustn’t be real. I’ve done this before; I’ve never done this before. You’re not a dream. You must have happened. We had twenty-four hours like an action movie.

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25/Jul/2013

Dream Journal Entry #4

In my sleep I have a sword and a shield, otherwise I am the same person wearing flannel shirts, thick glasses, and bracelets from five different festivals. The people I meet in my dreams all seem relieved to see that I am carrying all that steel, they put their hands on my shoulders and they thank me. I never think to ask them what for. My dreams are about social happenings, polite dinners, running into old friends. I am always moving toward the setting sun, the direction of my childhood. I wonder what will happen when I reach the ocean.

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24/Jul/2013

Dream Journal Entry #3

Apparently technology works differently in dreams. There’s something unintuitive about the way a cell phone buzzing near your groin indicating that someone far away is talking to you, or wanting to talk to you; this is learnt behaviour and dreams work deeper than that. In my dreams, anything electrical works the opposite way I expect it to: traffic lights are too bright to look at, I cannot get a clear reading from my wristwatch, and if I pick up a phone – a red rotary phone – and dial your number, you actually pick up. You’re still debonair; we talk for hours.

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23/Jul/2013

Dream Journal Entry #2

Sometimes I see him in my dreams. I wake up and I know he was there, before the details of the dream sluices through the gaps between my fingers. In the dreams he hides in plain sight, that is how it works within a dream: inconspicuously. He smiles unmenacingly, even though I know he only has menacing smiles left. My dreams are prosaic dreams, about social rituals that make no sense, and how to adhere to them. He brews tea, he serves biscuits. He should not be there. He knows a way into my skull. Please. Get rid of him.

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22/Jul/2013

Dream Journal Entry #1

My dream journal is nine years old now. Each night, after my warm glass of milk and before I take off my glasses, I write down the dream I am going to have. My pen strokes are soft and feathery like my sleep. In the morning, my journal is empty and I have only the vaguest of recollections. But I have come to know a recurring dream, one where I write too hard on the page of my book and the words are not entirely erased, and dream seeps into my reality with that skippish jerkiness with which dreams move.

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21/Jul/2013

A Scholarship

A scholarship. A good time. Slight friction. The vast expanse of sky. Names of stars, drinking games. You forget his name. Last call. One planet, veering out of its orbit, crashing into another planet. More good times. Blood on the bedsheets. A conversation best had sober, easiest had drunk. Somewhere in the between. An unanswered question. The going-through of the evidence with telescopes, the plotting of vectors in the sky. Vodka. A shiver. He wasn’t going to say anything. You were the one who–

Electricity. One last look at those blackened sheets. A garbage chute. An envelope; a scholarship.

Acceptance.

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20/Jul/2013

Pre-emptive Coping Mechanism

She has a chemical scar, swirly blue, snaking its way up her body and coiling once around neck. There was a terrible burning. The scar is visible only at certain times, when she is flustered or when she is scared. It makes her more flustered and scared, to see the burn crawl up on her skin, it feels like it will explore new parts this time, like it will burn through her skin. She knows its outline by heart and on some days, though she knows it by its itching, she will paint it over before it can break out.

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19/Jul/2013

Today is a Tuesday

Today, I place the last of the secret love letters, shakily written but with a positive message. We have all the time in the world.

Today, I woke up thinking of all my dead friends. I am angry at them for not saying goodbye. I am not connected.

I never want to write a last will and testament, I’m afraid people will think I’m thinking about the rope again. I don’t want them to feel like they should be angry at me for not saying goodbye yet.

Today, I will hug you forever, with all the time I have left.

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18/Jul/2013

Le petit jour du jugement

We both scream for God. In French, they call it le petit jour du jugement because of the striking similarities: there is the shortness of breath, and the blood singing in our veins. The quivering and the involuntary throat sounds from deep deep down, and the blinding white pillar of light from heaven that purges the countryside around us. We gasp. We huddle in the bed, narrowly avoiding the wet spot, reaching for the radio by the bedside to find out that the bodycount has reached the thousands. It fans outward from the place where you and I made love.

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