Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: short stories

7/Jul/2013

Curtains, but No Windows

This room has curtains, but no windows. They hang in such a way as to suggest that they are blocking the sunlight. If you were to look behind them, you feel, sunlight would flow into the room like water from a burst dam. This is an illusion you keep with you. You know not if gravity still affects you. Your legs are touching the floor, you cannot lift your arms; but you got like this long ago. Your heavy heart. Maybe now you’ve moved somewhere where the sun is nothing but a distant star, where nothing pulls you home anymore.

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6/Jul/2013

Scream Enough

Scream enough, and they will start to sound like you. They will actually lose the ability to sound like they did before, and their insides will readjust to seem more human. Their genetic codes seem far too unpredictable to be engineered, which suggests that these things have evolved naturally. If you stop screaming, and talk to them instead, they will parrot you. If you sing, they will learn to sing. There is no advantage to hunting like this, they only reveal this after the capture. For all intents and purposes, it is psychological. They are justifying the hunt to themselves.

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5/Jul/2013

All the Arteries You can Cut

I visited the man in the cave today, but he didn’t want to paint for me. I killed the man in the cave with a sharp rock. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I remembered all the doorways he had painted for me before. All the light seeping through thick canopy, all the arteries you can cut on a deer’s body to kill it in an instant. I killed the man in the cave and I tried to paint with his blood, but I could only paint closed doors, dark featureless skies, and animal hides hung up to dry.

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4/Jul/2013

The Middle of the Maze

In the middle of the maze there sits a monster for which words have not yet been invented. It is not in chains but in exasperation it is stuck, sitting on its haunches, staring at the ants that march across the maze. He cannot follow where the ants go, in the cracks between the walls.

When someone comes to kill him, he usually lets them. If the murderer does not find his way out before sunset, they trade places and the murderer dies, and the monster resurrects. He hopes that one day, a knight will know what the ants know.

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3/Jul/2013

We Will Never Forget the Tyranny of Genghis Khan

We made the world a smaller place, and we are still seeing the effects, 60 years later. Dr. B argues that an equilibrium can never be attained in a system with more than one growing part, and we will never see the end of the consequences. They will continue to grow, to multiply.

The machines let you project yourself fully to up to three other places simultaneously, which was great for both presidential candidates holding speeches and protesters clamouring for social justice.

B points out that we still have not, indeed we will never, forget the tyranny of Genghis Khan.

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2/Jul/2013

Grease and Mud and Hair

There is a thin coat, a layer of grease and mud and hair separating everyone else from me, and I am getting lonely. I will hug someone and they will not want to let go but it is not enough, there is this film that keeps me from touching them. It keeps me from feeling their actual touch. What I feel is ghostly compared to how it is supposed to feel. I looked in the burn ward, where the film has been scorched off, but I was escorted off the premises. Maybe I need to peel it off by hand.

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1/Jul/2013

Do Not Enter

You come into our family like a tumour, growing viciously. Five years ago she had cancer, this feels exactly the same. I’m 14 now, you shouldn’t be here. They will forget me. The librarian gives me that look that people give me sometimes, when I ask her what section I should trawl through. I tell her you asked me to, she asks for your phone number. I give her my own number and hope that she won’t hear my pocket buzz. This is the first time I am put on a watchlist because of you. It won’t be the last.

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30/Jun/2013

A Lighthouse on the Tallest Hill

There is a lighthouse on the tallest hill, but no sea for miles. Sometimes I go inside and climb the stairs and crank the machine, and there are little sparks and the lamp makes as if to turn more, but it’s stuck. It’s creaking. I start digging, and reading up on ships, and I think our houses are all things that used to be ships. I dig in the sand, and find the skeletons of big, shapeless things. They break when I try to lift them up. I think perhaps long ago this place was the bottom of the ocean.

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29/Jun/2013

Home/Sick

Alien psychologists seeing diseases that just aren’t there in your precious human mind. They like you. In your head, one terrapsychologist has decided, there is the feeling of belonging anywhere. The yearning for a specific location, it is so strange and causing you so much pain. You are not, you need not long for Earth, they tell you, you will be okay without it.

“I already have a word for it,” you tell them. “Homesickness. But it’s no sickness.”

There is an expression on her face that you cannot read. Maybe it’s a smile. “And it is not your home.”

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28/Jun/2013

Green

It is night. The cover of clouds is thick enough that perhaps the sun has given up trying to get through. The air is cool, the seabreeze has lost most of its brine. Manhole covers ooze with steam. Cars are driving, slowly, just following the path of least resistance, and most green lights. Underneath, clockwork ticks and clicks and hums.

Something gets bored. In turn, something else clicks.

It is night, and the buildings are made of cold, dead rocks and brittle clay. There are faces in the windows, but not behind them.

All the lights turn green and shine.

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