Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: short stories

9/May/2013

Not Even You

Nobody sleeps with the first one they kiss, it’s a rule. It’s either too early or too late. Your first kiss never leads to your first lay, if only for the fact that they are not the same person anymore by the time you reach the part where you unzip your denim jeans and wiggle out of your clothes. And you can see it in their eyes then as they look at you with that questioning look because they don’t want to outright ask. Afterward, in all likelihood, they return to the same person they were before, and they leave.

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8/May/2013

Shipwreck

I feel like a shipwreck. I sank like a stone. The finest masonry this side of the ocean I tried to cross did not help, but I got exactly halfway before anything happened. Cracks spiderwebbing all over my hull and you will never pull me up in one piece. You can salvage the fine china. I can feel your wires and divers attach magnets and hooks but if you move me, I will fall apart like a slow-motion fireworks display. The waves are doing their part, the corals theirs. Perhaps one day I will bloom with them but for now …

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7/May/2013

Doing Much Better Now, Thanks

He stared at his cupcake, its soft artificial pink was much softer than the artificial pink of her skin, which he had once loved.

Sometimes he looked at art. Cubism. Braque, not because it didn’t remind him of her – it didn’t – but because it was good. Braque knew his cubes.

Like, should he stalk her to find out what café she dines at just to avoid it himself? That seemed counter-intuitive.

He had even discarded all the tapes, not because he had memorized them all, but because he needed space for his new record collection.

He was just that cured.

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6/May/2013

Douglas

But that was their choice, their hearts, not his. They had made him lonely and he had made himself almost lonely. That was okay. The thing about Douglas, Douglas knew, was that he had always been a fanatic. Not always of the same ideas, and often about the wrong person, but the fire burned within him strongly like a star’s heart. There weren’t too many people who could handle that, but he had recently made acquaintance with someone who could, someone who could put it to great use. Douglas needed to be used, so that he could stop feeling useless.

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5/May/2013

Woolen Socks

The patient looked at once eighty years old and eighty minutes. Covered in red slime, eyes sunk so far into her skull that she could not see, and a lack of hair. She breathed in short bursts and then held her breath. When she opened her mouth and accidentally swallowed the water, it was obvious she had no teeth. Little fingers grew from the stumps that were her shoulders.

Keys rattled. Woolen socks, plain white shoes stepped in. A man in a labcoat picked the patient up and rattled her until she coughed up the water.

The man walked away.

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4/May/2013

Aching for You to Eclose

You were a nervous kid in winter; not anymore. You have wrapped yourself in so many layers of protective silk that you can’t breathe. You won’t let me in, you won’t let anything out. You think your heart is a cocoon, but you failed biology quite catastrophically and one day your chest will hatch. A million moths will escape you and as long as their wings beat your blood will pump, sure, but the moths belong to everyone who was ever nice to you. Every time someone dies, your pulse will slow. And I am waiting for spring to come.

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3/May/2013

In Case of Organ Failure

Beginning to suspect that Dr. Donum’s insistence on cloning specifically herself hints at a deeper problem in her psyche. I am withdrawing my previous conclusion that it is yet another sign of control issues. I saw blueprints on her desk. Next week I will attempt to surreptitiously get a closer look. It should also be noted that in case of organ failure, a clone of her would be ideal to pick organs from.

I exchanged the samples, of course. We are in fact cloning me now, to keep that woman’s trickery at bay. Besides, I deserve it more than her.

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2/May/2013

The Microwave Problem

The microwave oven engineers made a box that only worked when closed. It was too small for a child, and yet puppies had the occasional misfortune of being cooked.

This problem was posed long before the teleportation device was realised. Supposedly it was something the engineers of the microwave oven had faced: how to make people avoid putting their body parts or children inside the machine, as it is obviously unsafe for them? The device needed free air, so they had to run a current through it to discourage body parts. Yet, puppies had the occasional misfortune of being cooked.

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1/May/2013

Did You Write about Me?

You broke a rule and it sounded like a twig snapped. You say you’ve forgotten that night when it rained and we could still see the stars, yet a smile flashes across your face when I tell you March 23rd, 2008. I suppose it was March 24th, by then, but you’ve forgotten the wet grass and how you put your cold hands down my warm pants. And if I paint you a slow picture, you remember but you can’t say if I cried before, or after, or what you thought. And your lip twitches. You should have that looked at.

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30/Apr/2013

Harddrive Rust

When grandpa still existed, when there were any grandpas at all, he used to explain to me that there used to be more than one sun in the sky. He said there was harddrive rust in the universe and that all the stars had become similar and they had then become one. Concepts were disappearing, merging. There’s just one sphere now, and there are no grandpas, and soon there’ll be no memory of grandpas either. I think my hands used to have more fingers, but I don’t know what comes after ‘five’. The one sphere sings a solemn, lonely song.

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