Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: short stories

9/Jan/2013

Multiforms

This is the room of ever-changing doorways. The one you came from is open, static. Only one can be open at a time.

That one is the ladder inside a well, turning into the baleen-plates in a great whale’s mouth. This one here is two trees in a black forest.

You close the door on bright lights and tourists, the square door turns into the scorched chimney of a ramshackle house. It stays like that until you blink, which is when you lose your chance. The abstract doorways turn back into concrete shapes, none of which are the way out.

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2/Jan/2013

The Glum Thousands

They found Lewis with his throat slit like a second smile. Lewis worked for the big people; he supplied the good stuff. He canned the laughter of daytime sitcoms– any one of ten thousand people could have murdered him. The glum thousands, they were called, and each one was called in for questioning, and the interviews were long. Grey, drab rooms. The prime time interviews were the worst; that was when their laughter was in use and at any moment the interviewee could burst out laughing while their eyes kept this bored, dour look. Lewis McCannigan’s murder was never solved.

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16/Dec/2012

Abigail

One of these days you will hurt someone. That day is crawling closer like a half-dead frog. She’s going to look you in the eye and say, that was wonderful. Your chest will heave and there will be the slightest hint of a blush on your pale cheeks in agreement and she will kiss you and you will smile and then the question.

You will answer.

And part of her will sting, her stomach will feel like it has shipwrecks in it, and her tongue will stick to the roof of her mouth and she will want to feel cleaner.

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11/Dec/2012

Red Tape

The Bureaucracy descended 30 years ago, devouring and mycolising all the northern hemisphere governments. There are maps of it but they do it no justice; not this self-duplicating, self-non-contained monster of a complex, that which laughs at wisdom and knowledge as we knew (thought we knew) it. The Bureaucracy always grows, and any attempt at finding out how it works further complicates it, for three new departments (heads) grow every time we define (cut off) the use of one department. That department then withers. The more necks it grows, the more blood simply fills them, that is how it works.

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29/Nov/2012

Salt

The sea attacked the shore with its whole self; kissing it again and again. The shore tried to shrug it away and then push it, it tried to say it only wanted to be friends (and it worried about the status of their friendship; people take this sort of thing rather seriously, especially with entities so contiguous as they). But the sea continued, lunatic and obsessed, until it wore it down, until the shore was nothing but hard, cold rock. The sea threw itself still, asking for another kiss though it could not reach the top of this new formation.

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28/Nov/2012

Paramedic

There is a creature made of ambulances roaming our city. It likes to watch people die. Its sirens sound too muffled; its shadow moves too much; the ambulances have no drivers. Cell phones stop working near them.

It makes sure to not be the first to arrive at an accident scene. It’s a living museum, made of the rusty, broken ambulances of old. If one climbs into one of them, one falls asleep to wake up somewhere else.

Individual ambulances can stand being apart from the group a few hours, but start to fall apart if separated for too long.

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27/Nov/2012

Life

Life pulsated for one glorious moment and was then stubbed out forever.

Four million turns later the first of the evidence reached as far as it would reach, and the evidence of stubbing out reached mere moments later.

Four million turns after that the sun that had brought life to the world exploded, destroying all the physical evidence still left on a lonesome planet where hopeful electricity still struck the ground in vain.

Ten million turns later the system collapsed in on itself, sucking in the last of the artificial satellites, which still carried frozen life just on the off-chance.

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17/Nov/2012

Arthur

There’s a word inside a stone and whoever pulls the word out of there becomes king. Men have spent half their lifetimes conversing with the stone, laying forth their theories and trying to convince the stone they would be just kings, fair kings, loved kings. The scholars argue whether the word is stuck in a stone or in all stones, and so stonetalking’s spread to all corners of the kingdom.

A young man sits down next to the big stone (the one stone) and ignores the three knights quoting poetry at it. “Hi, how are you?”

“Bored,” the stone says.

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3/Nov/2012

Trace Fossil

The grey bug burrowed deep into its host’s chest. Crawled and scratched and ate its way down to her heart and the heart stopped. The bug, simple as it was, could simply not comprehend what had happened; what was once a very lively source of heat and joy now lay dead in its arms. So it kept digging. It was in love, plain and simple. It dug until its claws and teeth had worn down to nothingness and then it waited until they grew back and it dug again; through bone, out her back. She was just not there anymore.

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2/Nov/2012

Response Ability

for Existential Elevator of the Mercer Box; happy birthday

~

“No, you can’t open that door,” a man told her. He wedged himself between her and the door and slammed the thing shut with a smile. He was missing some teeth and his white hair seemed prehensile. The door was right there behind him. His pupils were of different size.

“You cannot be serious.” The smell of booze rose up from everywhere: the room was large and decorated in red and white. Large banners hung as though thrown in from high windows, where also birds could enter. The place was mostly stone. “When you said ‘welcome party’ I imagined at least one Alien would show up.” Her attempt at pushing him aside met with no success.

“You have to remind yourself: you are the Alien here.” The man grinned. “Enjoy the party. Natives will show up later, when you’re ready for them – in the meantime, you can party like one.” His hair curled up.

She compared their outfits. Herself, she wore the full ceremonial dress of welcome – long ribbons and a dark cope, a silhouette pattern of the mythical beast, small but functional shoes with iron soles. She could feel the weight of her iron earrings on each lobe, and her shoulderblades still itched. This man wore – exclusively – a toga.

She slumped back into a chair that wasn’t there a moment ago. The man relaxed his posture a bit. His pupils synchronized. “It is always pleasant to receive fresh meat,” he said. “What is your name?”

His hair unfolded from the curls and floated outward languidly to where a fly was buzzing. Macro-animals like that had only been theoretical to the woman up till that point, and she stared transfixed at the creature until the white hair snapped shut and trapped the insect.

“Er, Quan Merora,” she said.

“A pleasure to meet you, Erquanmera,” said the man and bowed. His hair parted in the middle to show a surgical scar running along the man’s black scalp. He straightened himself up again. “I am the left, and my name is Demnar Juthuth. I will make sure someone gets you a drink now.”

And he walked away. Read the rest of this entry »

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