Posts Tagged Micro Fiction
The Decent Man, Part I
Posted by Carl in Fiction, Finding Purpose on April 10, 2014
The black on the coal grey screen said 9:08, confirming ugliness in the truth of being. Failure drips down, seemingly from hair follicles that have tremors. She was smiling in the room with glass corner until she glanced at him as he sailed the hallway, and he knew the screen on the phone on his desk would show bad news. He had been hoping for 9:03 or 9:04 after seeing her violent eyes. As it is, there is no defense. He had promised her that he would arrive by 9 AM each morning, agreeing that this was entirely reasonable. He failed, failed, failed, and today there was clarity to the failure. Even the most simple parts of life squeeze and expand the pulpy mind of consistent failure. This is not a decent man, so it may be a terrible way to start our fictional dig into psychological essay about what it is to be a decent man. We will find out despite his failures.
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My Day in Tricky Bullets I
- Empty mind, the goal, but interference.
- Dog man, dog man, listen to that shitty music, don’t listen to that shitty music, just let that shitty music float through and cause you to vibrate, dog man.
- What would guru guy think about how empty my mind is, but if I wonder that, it, the globby mind not my wonder, is filled with egotistical motives and pollution swarms, blowing circuits.
- For a moment, as smart as the five dogs, but Harry looks at me.
- Get your shit together, he says. I’m hungry and you need to quit fucking around.
- Pixie loves me, but she’s only looking for a surprise for her breakfast.
- No surprise, she toys with the others because dog food sucks.
- Gracie does not chew Pixie’s head off. I don’t know why.
- Idea for poem trickles in as I am busy feeling ashamed for not emptying the mind, feeling dizzy with the wheels of insanity trying to trick me into losing my place in the world, threatening to make me forget who or what I am, threatening to remove my sense of the calendar, threatening to incapacitate me and bend me over the edge of the sink under the rag infested with the rottenness of old kitchen mess. I am ashamed of my diseased self.
- An unbearably sweet girl on the roof downtown throwing rocks.
- Maybe 20 stories.
- Maybe pebbles, but more rock-like because they have mass, power to alter the world,
- and she throws and throws, and all the people in the streets are joyful.
- The people do not protest.
- The people strive for acquiring all of the free rocks.
- I see why my poems suck so badly when I have ideas like this, but my editor earns his pay, and he says, You quit even thinking about writing until you have a brain that might understand what art is supposed to be.
- Mozart for lunch. I did not eat Mozart.
- There are times, listening to Mozart, and I am sure I’m listening to God. I wish I could understand this.
- The odd phrase “could not be more perfect” comes to mind.
- A guy talking politics on LinkedIn the other day said it’s rude to bring in things which come to mind. I suppose it is too spontaneous for politics.
- Reduce your time with politics, news, silly strings of comments about art which somehow make you feel contentious.
- Reduce these and do something worthwhile.
- A guy talking politics on LinkedIn the other day said it’s rude to bring in things which come to mind. I suppose it is too spontaneous for politics.
- I’m a fucking toad sitting in a meeting.
- New guy. doesn’t understand. You don’t know what we know.
- Some guy says he likes Carl’s idea and I feel less like jumping out the window.
- Jumping out windows is tough on the 16th floor because the glass is very strong in order to resist those things that buildings tend to run into.
- For a short time, I reflected on the last 8 years of being a father as opposed to the years before that, and I had an immensely good feeling, a rare sense of worthiness, and I thought about the last time my daughter told me she loved me. Yesterday. Oh, there might not be better goodness, and I hope that is okay.
The Beginning of My Story
On that day, the weather was sporadic as it might be in the midst of the vacant, listless September, the clouds like a giant casino, filling and emptying with the winners and the losers, but Mother hoisted a natural cheer so I had been left out in the modern rabbit cage, hanging above the dark oily alley with strewn garbage and broken bottles, braced to the window (my cage), centered by the breakfast table. At the fateful moment, the winds having begun to stir without Mother noticing, some sort of vigorous weather event having snuck up from behind and from within the crevices of the Brooklyn tenements, it was then that one torrent of furious air swept the ash-can-like planter filled with mildewed soil with the outgrowth of a blusterous and half-dead, lost-red, filtered to colorlessness, mini rose-bush off of the ledge of the patio on the outside of Ms. Stilldinger’s unit, 8B, two floors up, one over to the left. With a tremendous twirling velocity, it nailed my cage, blasting the fasteners, bouncing me out of the back of the cage, as then I felt myself tumbling in an unnervingly slow motion, bouncing rather than ripping the canopy above the cook’s entrance (the bounce attributable to my nearly-perfect mass of 22.5 pounds having flown from 6 floors up), the canopy covering the cook, Freddy, who having heard the pot blast my cage had moved out to look up beyond the canopy in time to catch me in an athletic manner after I had bounced diagonally on the third bounce. This certainly puzzled me on the tentative value of baby cages.
Some babies come to the world as new creatures, new creations, but some come from another life. Some are from another world. My mind is aware of the future world I am from where cars fly instead of rolling. I’ve come back here as punishment after hanging myself, as if I had not punished myself enough all the way through to my last day.
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Conversation in a Steady Car
He awakened to a piercing honesty while driving his battlefield sedan. He spoke in stilted and jumbled syllables with buckets of um’s, speaking to one whom he loved and one who was highly critical of people who don’t speak the King’s English.
Maybe the listener wasn’t critical today, but it made the speaker’s tormented soul regretful of his honest exploration.
“I hurt, and I know I shouldn’t hurt, but regardless of my solid rationality, I can’t remove the hurt, and it sticks and sticks.”
“It takes skill.”
The road was rough. It was flying by in terrible grays and all of the light-colored automobiles were trying to strike dead our floundering speaker and his tormented soul.
“I’m working on it. I am learning that it is not always all my fault.”
The hotels and the commercial buildings rose from the high vegetation which had started to slow with the heat of June and the mop head of river waters hanging in the air.
Perhaps the honesty was worthwhile.
I’m human, kind of, he thought.
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The Stranger Damaged George’s Soul Violently
George Torndawg walked into the heavy, melting bands of crosswalk. He was bedeviled by a sun that was hanging on to his nose with claws and punching him in the eyes and the forehead, regardless of which direction he slung his abdication. George Torndawg is rooting for a car, any car, to slam into him and malign him deeply down into the muckiest soup, the soup like his mother when she was sauced and watching fuzzies on television, but the traffic is far too slow. Furthermore, there’s no traffic today.
The reflective glass of the first floor curves with the plagued monster of a human creation in concert with the circle drive where the most hopeless patients might be dumped, and all of this first floor glass is shadowed by the overhang of the ethically-superior floors.
The glass is a hall of mirrors, blades and blades of sharp planes meant to shatter the ego, and then there is the man in the wheelchair with a ratty blue dog blanky with all sorts of holes, the blanky with holes. He, the man with the ratty blue dog blanky and slinky, oily, thin hair, is wearing slippers that should be retired, and when George Torndawg made a short glance at the man, the ropes of George Torndawg’s intestines plummet deeply, and he is suddenly longing for a gun that he could hold with two hands and point properly with the fullest of competence and the intensity of god. He is presently tasting the blue metal as it rests in his mouth.
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The Heavy Flow of Minor Disturbances – #2
Check, check, check. Should I feel brushes of gray guilt from going to work late? Late is 8:30 and though there is a grind to the rush hour, there is certain pleasure from sharing the miserable pathway with so many other difficult humans.
The bright lines from a blurred sun cut through a foggy surface covering not only my eyes but also my sense of what in the world around me might be real. The beautiful shine from the tingly knives which appear to be carving man’s creation delicately enough to leave it there, they brighten my outlook and for several moments I feel an impending chance at success.
Does she say anything good about my frantic efforts? No, but why do I need her encouragement? Why am I so bereft of self-esteem, especially when I am on a long streak of diligently working to do estimable deeds?
She’d be better to leave me alone in my stuffy chocolate pudding, but instead, she pounces on my distracted nature and fries my burnt ends for leaving a confidential paper that is really lacking anything to be confidential about on a robotic, mostly-broken printer in a common workspace where our comrades might read that paper. I need these course corrections. I need a hot flame that curls the edges of my foggy awareness, but despite my fully-developed load of guilt about these defects of mine, something demoralizes me and no matter how rational I am, the day goes straight to the pot of shit sitting outside the building doors where the smokers go for a bit of sanity.
It’s this yellow Tonka toy dump truck that I drive around for most of my living moments and it is heaped with the load of all of my defects. The load is heavy, but I strive to carry it and push and push and push to shove these things out the back of the truck as I travel in a slow lane, not concerned too greatly about the pollution of my defects, for they go to rest with McDonald’s wrappers and all of the other detritus of our blown-out society, but when one person who perhaps justifiably withholds compliments adds a little fly paper on to the back of my truck, it is as if Godzilla himself reached out and smacked me and my shit straight into the ditch.
I try and I beg but the day won’t start over and I come to believe that it is better for me to come to work when it is too dark to identify any of the various objects in my world and when the others are resting comfortably in their achievements.
The Heavy Flow of Minor Disturbances – #1
The morning shadows have a new shape, and the cacophony of the birds has started again. Foreshadows of hope, it’s on the way, and I refuse to stop, to ask why because I know this little buzz, this hope-thing being on the way is a silly artifice made of tissues.
The winter sun has frightened me for so many countless months, causing guilty pleasure and pride with the trinkets from my endurance, still wondering what kind of animal I might be. Not all of the people see the monsters in the shadows, crawling longingly on the bright winter days. The monsters are ghosts, or spirits, and they’re not interested in being seen as they are far too busy singeing the raw nerves of the fragile psyches (ones such as mine), which make us little, gangly, spider-like animals too timid to go out, lest we be smashed by the semi-trailer which has been dislodged and has flown perfectly to land centered on our little plastic cars.
But today, I’ll drive slowly in the little residential neighborhoods, not for fear of being trashed by the trailer but for fear of smashing any heavy wall, smoothly and head-on. My car window is down by about 2 inches and confidence in my spirit grows with the crisply testy, cool breeze. I will feel comfortable for I will be familiar with almost all of the people, and some of them are as nice as a human can be. I need my meeting, my medicine.
It’s this backdrop that causes surprise upon reflection. What is it buried so deeply that made me break down in complete despair, sobbing like an uncontrollable fruit fly?
Light Poles for Death
Buses feel faster than their true velocity.
I stare at the driver’s black boots, boots with multiple soft and white scruffs but no crinkles or wrinkles, boots that will last forever. I love the fat gas pedals on buses. I imagine the encounter with the platform-like pedal as a fuzzy, electric boost to the ego.
Presently, the man’s foot is down almost all of the way, so we must be doing as best as we can.
The short light poles with antique lanterns, in charcoal gray move by quickly and steadily, and it strikes me dead-frozen that the only people who really get to enjoy these poles are all of the suicides who jump into the dirty Missouri River.
Running on the Tiny Inundations of Waves
Double-zero-three is a smooth ride. I like the suspension, making it feel like a boat over tiny inundations of waves.
The lady in maroon calms as I show her my face of compassion which is after all composed from the very center of the core of a beautiful diamond in truth, but it is also true that now, I am far more worried about the stolen baby and how I might continue to save the baby from the fate of living in a house where the meth lab blew up five years ago and melted the baby’s mother’s face, even after which she continues to this day to cook and consume with glorious ferocity, watching her face that looks more like a squid out of water made of plastic, from the fate of being beaten and smashed by a father who is always so drunk, whose last date with his wife ended as they sat inside their car beside the shore of a lake that was strewn with rocks, he promising to leave her blood on every piece of rock on that “beach,” she so high on heroin that she walked home which took over four days and nearly caused death by starvation.
My mind continues with these disgusting memories, they continue to rattle my senses seemingly, glaringly, to support my actions, stealing their baby and then, in furious stupidity, stealing the bus. My life is over, but I’ve done at least one good thing.
Thursday’s Escape from Sour Cakes
I stole the bus. The number on top was giant, but I could not get comfortable with why it had that incredibly simple number, double-zero-three.
I would get lost in a police helicopter.
That boy in the horrid, knit, rainbow hat couldn’t carry himself in a simple walking process. He stumbled all the way down a long city block. I thought about heroin.
Nobody missed the stolen bus. I wanted to drive it into the big river, but I drove North instead at which point, the riders started to look questioningly at me. The lady in the smooth, maroon dress with black stockings and incredibly classy shoes seemed to be ready to have an emotional breakdown.
I stole a baby, and I needed to focus on the next right step. I was not entirely comfortable with the impulsive idea of stealing the bus.
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