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My Love for You Would Bust Kneecaps: The Untold, Unauthorized, and Mostly Untrue Story of an Olympian and her Most Devoted Lover (Intimate Moments #769)
by Trent Walters
Editor: Any resemblance to this famous public figure is purely coincidental.
Gilly Fahrenheit lived on the other side of the tracks. Tonka Hearty lived in a trailer court. Their forbidden love affair had begun at Camp Marshmellows where they hid from the camp counselors and rolled among the tall weeds behind the latrine.
Tonka could no longer conceal the truth from her mother. Mother, elbows on the formica, stood hunched over a six-inch black and white playing a crucial scene from "One Life to Live." A damp and musty washcloth dangled from her hand. Tonka tried to wait patiently for a commercial.
"I'm having a baby," said the TV.
But Tonka's news was too important. "Mom?"
Her mother tapped her finger to her lips.
"If you loved me," the TV rumbled, "you'd abort it."
"And if you loved me," the TV piped, "you'd divorce that hussy who stepped out on you to have an affair with Rick."
"If you loved me," Tonka said, "you'd let me date the boy who lives on the other side of the tracks."
"If you won't divorce her," said the TV with a sob in its throat, "then I’ll have a secret love child, and after the court releases the DNA results, the world will know who the father is!"
"So?" Tonka’s mother glanced at her child, then back at the black-and-white. "It's all in the same trailer court."
"It's not a secret," said the TV, "if you just told me."
"You don't understand!" Tonka slammed out of the trailer and ran flat-footed to the court's edge where Gilly crouched in the bushes.
"What'd she say about us hunting horny toads by the lake?" Gilly croaked in a whisper.
Tonka wiped her nose, sniffed, and shook her head.
"Geez. Your mom doesn't let us do anything 'sides play house and skate at the ice rink."
"Gilly." Tonka braced Gilly's shoulders. "I'm having our secret love child."
***
A decade later, across the rooftop of a rented Yugo outside the Olympic ice rink, Gilly professed his undying 4e passion with a boot to the hub cap, setting it ringing hollowly. "My love for you would bust hub caps." Gilly climbed into the left side believing he was still in America.
Buckling herself into the driver's seat and tossing her ice skates into the back, Tonka thought that, with one life to live, she couldn’t have many Olympics yet to go. "That Kerry Schmancy chick ain't no better than me. If only she'd.... What did you just say, Gilly?"
"My love..."
"Never mind. I want you to prove your love like Madonna said you should. If you loved me, you'd..."
The Ghost Key
by Trent Walters
A leaden skeleton key lay locked in his head. Arthur could feel its heft when he shifted in his acceleration couch. He traced the lumps of his skull like a phrenologist divining the contents--lumps received by attempting to retrieve the key the hard way.
The key to unlock his head was locked in his head, so Arthur was baffled how he might retrieve it. Even if he did, it remained to be seen whether it would fit all the locks that needed opening: his Babbage Engine of Analysis, an empty chest of drawers (he’d been living out of his space suit for weeks as though the ship might spring a leak any second--his fishbowl helmet was flecked with toothpaste), and a medicine cabinet stocked with the essential toiletries.
The color of the key he could not see, it being on the inside, his eyes on the out. But he felt it. The once machined-smoothed edges had corroded down to brittle sharps that broke apart and cut if he stood too quickly from his acceleration couch to stare out the bay projection window into the starry night--the stars aswirl in golden flames. The impression of the grooves--that the key slipped into--still hung in the convoluted knots of his gray matter, like that image of a child that remains after he’s fallen backwards into a snowbank, flailing his arms.
Arthur had fallen back into the acceleration couch, just smelling the rusty tang of impossibility. The key’s teeth must have bitten into his olfactory. A drop of blood leaked from his nose. He held the bridge of his nose between thumb and index finger, recovering. A bridge. That’s what he needed--the kind Einstein and Rosen might construct.
But he needed the right equations to plug into. The equations lay in his engine of analysis. The key opened his engine. His fingers drummed the couch’s leather armrest. He tapped something hard.
A keypad! If he could visualize the equations and escape coordinates, freedom might once again be his. His fingers tapped the keys, then again--harder. He pounded them with his fist.
They didn’t respond. They were frozen.
The ship was losing heat rapidly, becoming a cryogenic freezer. Or a coffin. Depending on whether rescuers spotted his ship in the vast expanse of space. He’d wait quietly. Not hope. Hope disappointed. Instead, he’d drift: down passageways, haunting them as if still alive.
One Man's Heaven
by Trent Walters
Frank,
You oughta drop in. It's all chew what they say about how grate hell is (sp? Nobody thought to bring a dickshunary. Thank God. Books would of made life in hell hell!)
It's a never-ending bitch party with necked sand volleyball and castles that last forever (unless someone kicks 'em over. Someone usually does). One half of the place is frozen, the other a fiery lake. Remember the Polar Bare Club in Alaska? Like that accept we brake holes in the frozen lake, leap in, then dripping ice cubes, dash over to the one of fire.
Hey, remember the good times when we'd boozed up at ol' fatty Slim Jim's, then you'd talked me into driving us around town doing crazy shit like playing chicken with oncoming traffic or tossing the "Bridge Out" sign into the ditch? Damn, that was funny. At least I thought so until I drunkenly forgot about it on the drive home.
That's what it's like here--crazy fun! non-stop parties by the lakeside! the best practical jokes! One hot chick keeps an everlasting stash of whiskey chilled in the frozen lake. While we slurp Southern Comfort from rose-colored, plastic sand-buckets, the guy or gal who's been the biggest pain in the neck of late gets roasted on a spit over the lakefire. It hurts like a son of a beach, but the pain receptors get charbroiled quick enough. Then we've got something to snack on with our buckets of booze. The meat rots fast, so we wolf it down. Tastes like chicken. Not a big deal to the guy being charred cuz he reappears after we've licked the last grease off our fingers.
You were always the life of the party, so I know you'd be a favorite as I've been. Life here is so much more exciting--better sex, sexier babes, faster boats, spicier meats, and no work. Heaven can't beat this living.
RSVP. The guys look forward to meating you.
Dream
by Trent Walters
"Wake up, sleepyhead. Do you remember your dream? You squeezed your pillow awful tight. Was the dream of me?"
"I don't think I dream. I never remember them."
"Everybody dreams. Maybe they're nightmares, so you block them."
"I'd remember a nightmare."
"Maybe your dreams have nothing to say. We only remember the memorable, holding on to the relevant."
"Mmmaybe."
#
"Wake up, Love."
"What a strange dream. I dreamed I said I don't remember dreams, but I do--to the minutest detail: my day-old perfume mingled with your scent on my lace pillow, the brush of cotton sheets against my legs and the heat of your face hovering over mine, the sound of your voice cracked and scratchy as if you were getting over a cold and it made me a little tingly down there, and my mouth sour from the alcohol of the night before. I don't even drink. My dream-me implied dreams mean nothing, but they mean the world. Why would I say something that I don’t believe if it was my dream? Do you think some being hijacked my mind?"
"Being? Do you mean aliens or chimpanzees?"
"I'm serious. God could be trying to tell me something. Or our mitochondria are trying to warn of impending catastrophe. Or you, even: You're making me dream."
"Possibly. Could also be that someone who needs your help sends you the dreams--someone in another dimension. Or else you dream of the life you live in a parallel universe."
"I hope I'd have more sense than that. An inability to see meaning shows a distinct lack of imagination."
#
"Pay attention, Mabel! You're always daydreaming in my class."
#
"Wake up, oh god, wake up! Don't die on me--god please no. If you leave me this way, I’ll never forgive you. Please. Breathe. Oh baby. Breathe. The CPS will send out their investigator again, and she won't believe me. Not a third accident."
#
"Why won't you wake up?"
"You ruined my dream of flight over the ocean where the sea met sky--no up or... What's that smell?"
"The house is on fire, you fool. We have to get out of this place."
#
"Despierta, mi cielito."
"¡Mamá Mar! ¡Acabo de soñar que hablo inglés pero no hablo inglés pero yo estaba hablando inglés!"
"¿Qué dijiste en tu sueño?"
"No sé. No hablo Inglés."
"Espero que fuera bueno."
"¡Claro que sí!"
#
"Wake up!"
"No."
Parthenia Rook, episode VI: The World's Fair
by Trent Walters
For previous episodes in Parthenia Rook, see the archive.
Parthenia, in her shiny leather pants and pineapple sunglasses for a disguise, scanned the crowds for signs of a barefoot chimpanzee in an Italian suit made out of chitin. The digital displays that flowed down the sides of her sunglasses assured her no zombie photographers slouched in the vicinity.
An anonymous tip had warned that the Bonobo King would "arrive today to rain on the world's parade," and Parthenia believed it. The Bonobo King always emailed his anonymous threats in assonance.
However, there was no hint of clouds in the pale sky above Vörpalsberg. Only the bittersweet scent of coffee wafted up from the four hundred cafes--reminding her of wasted kirchenstreuselkuchen.
Her stomach rumbled at the loss. No, it wasn't her stomach, or else her stomach was making the silverware rattle and the dishes clatter. Earthquake? Probably more like the overgrown earthworms that Dr. Mandril had genetically engineered to attack Manhattan.
That's when Parthenia saw the swift-moving cloud, the tail end of which twinkled like stars on a humid night. Parthenia turned her sunglasses to the dark mass, to allow the pineapples (actually, radar dishes with astounding pick-up) a chance to bounce and receive beams off the disturbance, but Dr. Mandril must have either devised a cloaking device or come up with something more sinister.
A plague of locusts? Not the Bonobo King's style.
A gust of wind jostled the crowd. They looked up. That's when Parthenia felt a lump in her throat. Dr. Mandril had engineered a Zemeros giganticus. A giant butterfly. Gorgeous. Parthenia stood paralyzed with awe.
But the twinkling that trailed the butterfly snapped her out of her reverie. Their plan was for Parthenia, the world-famous lepidotrist, to fall so in love that she wouldn't protect the world from the Bonobo King and his minions. It might have worked if the Bonobo King's zombies, harnessed in anti-grav devices, didn't have to photograph the fair before wrecking ruin. Parthenia Rook tapped her platform heels to jet--Kung Fu fists first--into the butterfly's maw.
Primetime
by Trent Walters
The new reality show, "Your Life," received an unprecedented five billion viewers--all hyperwired to be seated among the stadium's studio audience. Cameras panned the virtual viewers as the red velvet curtains rustled slowly away to reveal an empty stage.
A few hands clapped tentatively.
Charity
by Trent Walters
Grimmy's fingertips nervously tapped the keyboard on his first day as a communications specialist. Mr. Boss put his mind at rest by spreading his arms to take in the small blue cubicle space, nearly knocking down one partition. "See? It's simple. Nag until they give, so you have no twinge of conscience if you press the disconnect."
Grimmy adjusted his headset to give his hands something to do other than tap the keyboard. "Oh, sir. I have no twinge of conscious about asking money for charities."
"Great! Then you're ready for your first call." Boss had spread his arms wide again, which made Grimmy blink a few times until he suspected the Boss' gesture was a symbol for what the company did: gave people second and third chances to be generous souls.
Grimmy hit the call button. A man answered, "Hello?" and his name appeared onscreen. "Hello, Mr. Walters. Every year, thousands of children die due to faulty deflector shields. You and your beautiful children may be next, resulting in death, deformity, or agonizingly painful disease. All proceeds from your donation to the deflector shield repairman's bilge are tax-destructible."
"I'm sorry," said the voice that was purported to be Mr. Walters', "but I don't give over the vidphone. Put me on your do-not-call list."
Boss whispered into the ear of Grimmy, who might have otherwise remained frozen in unbelief. Grimmy repeated the whisper: "What amount can we put you down for?"
"We must have a bad connection. I said I don't give over the vid. You don't even display your face. How can I scan it to know if you're legitimate?"
"Trust me. We're too legit to quit. What amount can we put you down for?"
"Maybe you're hard of hearing. I'll trust you to put me on your do-not-call list. Thanks!"
The dial tone buzzed in Grimmy's ear. His eyelashes restrained brimming tears. Why would the man's heart be so hard after Grimmy had been so earnest and eager? His finger hovered over the disconnect button that glowed, "Lower deflector shields in this man's neighborhood."
"It's okay." Boss squeezed Grimmy's shoulder. "Last week, this same soulless bastard forced me to press the 'Straight to Hell' button when he refused to donate to the religious fund for demon-possessed toe-fungus in West Africa."
Disciples Teach the Master a New Principle
by Trent Walters
Confuscius--winded from a tangle with a Bengali tiger which he had grabbed first by the tail, then the ears, and finally the head before dispatching the beast--was cresting a small rise on his stroll through the metropolitan zoo of Sung. He was decked out in his finest serge and skins, his belly full of acorns and chestnuts. In this pleasantly sated mood, a sight confused Confuscius: Holy men, with rods of chastisement, beat two young men.
"Pray, good sirs," Confuscius inquired of the holy men whom Confuscius belatedly recognized as his own disciples, "explain your behavior."
The disciples, who did not recognize their master, said, "These two brothers were bruising each other in their rough-housing and enjoying themselves. Their motive for doing this--since we do not understand such motives except as outsiders--must be anger and power; therefore, even though Confuscius never forbid such behavior, it is wrong and should be punished."
Confuscius' puzzled expression cleared, and he nodded. "You were quite correct to do so. Please, allow me to examine your rods of chastisement, They look impressive." When they handed them over, Confuscius whirled them through the air until they sang. "Yes, they are impressive." He handed the rods to the brothers. "Please, at your discretion, use these on the holy men, for clearly these rods were meant to be wielded on those who revel in anger and power."
This Is the Fairy Tale
by Trent Walters
This is the fairy tale your mother wouldn't tell you. This is the fairy tale the brothers Grimm found too horrifying to ink on pure white parchment. Through the years only the meanest mothers passed it down to their most iniquitous children to frighten them into submission (and wetting their beds) in the darkest, coldest hours of bleak German winters when the bloated moon cast shadows of swaying tree limbs into the children's bedroom--the gnarled fingers of a witch lingering just outside and tapping at the window.
This is the fairy tale that survived on the back flyleaf of dusty library tomes hiding Grimm's worst fairy tales that an unfortunate listener had to pen in order to purge herself of the nightmares that still stalked her into adulthood or in order to burden new generations with his own childhood afflictions. This is the fairy tale, rumor spreads, that the fabled old wives share with a hearty cackle as they squat around a boiling black cauldron deep in the thickest thorny bramble and poison-oak woods.
This fairy tale is typed here only to purge the world. Legend tells that if the story were told to the world at once, evil would flee from the land and leap back into Pandora's lock box. And so, paradoxically, I wound the world to save its soul from the stain of this story:
Job Interview
by Trent Walters
-- Drac. We meet again.
-- I need a job, Doc. I'm so desperate I--
-- I vant to suck your blood! Ha, ha.
-- That's an old joke.
-- So you're desperate for a job?
-- An oldie but a goodie! Ha, ha. You got some delivery, Doc.
-- Frankly, Drac...
-- Name's Dracula. The title's Count. Say them together: Count Dracula.... But please call me Drac. My trusted associates do.
-- Okay, Drac, but frankly a man of your qualifications isn't needed in the hospital nursery.
-- I'm overqualified?
-- If you want to put it that way...
-- What other way is there?
-- Your experience in the mortuary, hospice, blood bank, ICU, and phlebotomy labs, don't translate into work for a nursery. Besides, a few irregularities sprung up at your last positions.
-- You're discriminating. I'll sue.
-- Nobody's said--
-- Undead men got rights, too. You think I won't sue?
-- That's nice, but it's more your reputation.
-- Have you checked my references?
-- George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson were fine American citizens in their day but they're dead now. Your reputation, I'm afraid, goes a little deeper than any man alive could dig.
-- What do you mean?
-- You were in jail forty years for murder.
-- I'm a changed man. I was let out on good behavior.
-- You were let out for the good behavior of the state of Georgia. The prison had trouble keeping inmates. The criminals disappeared, one by one, until only one mysteriously remained. The entire state of Georgia didn't commit a crime during your sentence. They called the prison you stayed at, let's see, "Death Row."
-- Aw, Doc. Give a fella a chance.
-- With babies? These little fellas want to live. You've got to work where no one else wants to.
-- I need youth. Rejuvenation. I need to savor the laughter of boys and girls. If you don't give me a job, I'll... I'll...
-- You'll vant to suck my blood?
-- I'll show you! You... you...
-- Speech impediment?
-- Ow! What the heck?
-- That? That's my fang-proof turtleneck--a fine weave of cotton, wool, and sterling silver smelted from crosses found in abandoned sanctuaries. You like?
-- I'd like a job.
-- Youth ain't what it used to be. Time to hang up your dentures and move on. Oh, Drac, don't cry. You'll smear your powder. Chin up. Listen, the unwanted pregnancy clinic opened a position in... What do you know? Gone already. Like a bat out of hell. Give the boy credit. A real go-getter.
Stones without Sticks
by Trent Walters
The Rolling Stone was his own man, so to speak, and traveled past lands unseen. The stone, being a stone, was stoned with the inordinate pride of having gathered no moss--his being's essence unsullied by another being's essence, which his most restless and rocky friends had firmly warned him against.
To scale new heights in his rollings, he started at the foot of a mountain that poked holes in passing clouds. For millennia (a figure rounded by reckoning since stones don't count), he forded streams and outstripped boulders attempting the same ascent. Occasionally, a biped wandered by, and Stone leaped into the crack of its foot's second skin. This saved him hundreds of years of bounding up the path. The free rides never lasted long, however; for in short order, the bipeds removed their skins (they obviously gathered another kind of moss).
Along the way, he heckled those stones who had given up the struggle--not only gathering moss but water, earth, grass, and trees, even! What odd, stiff, wooden creatures they were to stand heartlessly on his fellow stones. It served the trees right to die in a few hundred years.
The higher he climbed, the stranger the substances that his fellows had drowned in: water solid as stone! He chatted up a few, but they all seemed frozen in fear.
Finally, Stone reached the summit. He leaned over a steep precipice and roared his triumph at achieving his dream. That's when he heard the triumphant yahoo of a biped which swallowed his pipsqueak roar. Before he could turn, the biped's second skin kicked him over the ledge.
Stone cursed the biped--though the beasts' lives were already abysmally ephemeral--until he realized this was another journey (if considerably faster) to tell his grandchildren about. Stone bounced and sparked other stones who, excited about Stone's journey, joined him in the Great Fall. Despite the descent, it pinnacled Stone's achievements: His fall was his meteoric rise: so many other stones leaping to join in Stone's headlong, boisterously joyful fray--a veritable pride of the unmossed, so quintessentially, so unreservedly stoned in their stony abandon.
Panting and laughing, they landed at the foot of the mountain with a flurry of dust. What a rush! They spoke of the great race for eons to their children's children. Eventually, Stone gathered moss, but it was nice not to be bald anymore.
The Rise and Fall of Minor Fiefdoms
by Trent Walters
Thief Bowlsalot's girlfriend dragged him to the artsy-fart reading at the Thebes gallery. He couldn't even wear jeans. It was for some fancy-schmancy writer lady who won the Bigwad award, and his girlfriend had read him the Bigwad o' crap and he'd wanted to say, "So what?" but said, "Oh, baby, that was great." The things he put up with to get down a girl's pants. Only she thought he liked novels that rich heiresses wrote--those who never dirtied a fingernail except as snot-nosed brats slumming it with her girls at the Everyman's Mall.
Ms. Bigwad wore a pink feather boa and was trailed by a ham-handed, bodyguarding knot-head, who looked like he was itching to pound any one of these balding scrawny sycophants, and by a waiter with a tray of black goo on crackers, which Thief found more lively than anything else in the gallery.
Ms. Bigwad read. Nothing happened to the characters, so they never had to deal with anything: no air raids, no gun-toting fourth graders, no fistfights after a night of booze and schlepping through the streets with some other guy's girl. They never disobeyed signs: no fishing, no hunting, no shoes, no shirt, no service. Just a dentist who collects famous photographs and trades them with friends who blow their never-ending wad at Macy's and not at the hooker's or on a line of blow, and the characters blab, blab, blab about zip--enough to make you gouge your ears out. Somebody gets a brain aneurysm, but fuck talking about that--too interesting. Who cares about death? What did Ms. Bigwad know of ticking time bombs ready to explode in her head? Thief's granny died of one. That meant something--to the family at least: an inheritance of quilts, several dozen balls of yarn, and thirteen feral cats.
Thief tried not to snore as the writer lady droned in a voice parched as the Sahara. Thief's girlfriend elbowed him awake before he'd been ready to, so he left the reading. No chick's pants were worth that much.
The rich lady's lousy limo was blocking the alley when Thief went to kick start his motorbike. A steel bar with a large knob concrete at one end got Thief to thinking: He'd give the poor lady something to write about.
With the first stroke of luck he'd had all evening, he found a diamond as big as the Ritz on the back seat.
Purify
by Trent Walters
"Boy!" the copy editor cried.
Adolphius Equis, AKA Boy, had been chatting up one of the reporters to verify mutual interest when he heard the summons. He ran to the watercooler, poured himself a paper cup full, and tossed it back. He noticed the reporter was still watching him, so Adolphius grinned, lifted his black tie and mock-hung himself--tongue protruding, head lolling to the side. It got the laugh he'd wanted. He shot back a sly grin.
"Boy!"
Adolphius flicked drops of cool water on his face and dashed the last few meters into the copy editor's office. He panted as realistically as he could manage. "Almost didn't hear you, boss--what, with the noise of the metal fans."
The copyeditor didn't glare long at the absent-minded secretary. He stood and handed Adolphius a typed page with various corrections in red ink. "Take this to the editor. Don't dawdle."
In the reflection of the window, Adolphius adjusted his tie and pushed back his hair while he watched the copyeditor bend over a filing cabinet. Adolphius let a half-animal noise escape his throat, which he turned into a throat-clearing.
With a manila folder in hand, the copyeditor spun on his heel and snapped his heels together. "What part of 'Don't dawdle' didn't you get?"
"Just want to make a good impression, sir." Adolphius marched out of the office, down the hall, and--out of eyesight--ducked into the bathroom to seat himself on the porcelain throne. He had reading material:
Hitler Wins Again!
(UPI) After conquering the world and ridding it of the filth of Africans, Americans, Asians, Eurasians, Hitler successfully purified the European blood down to the superior Aryan line. Of course, not all Germans measured up to the Aryan standard, and these genetic reprobates were swiftly dispatched. Superior Nazi scientists have since developed human cloning techniques, which lead to the ultimate purity. However, it has come to Hitler's attention that some Adolfs of genetic variability are not wearing their mustaches between four and six centimeters. Effective immediately, all such outliers will be dispatched with due haste. Heil, Hitler!
Adolphius finished his business, washed his hands, pulled out ruler and scissors from his back pocket, and trimmed the impurities.
Jaunting
by Trent Walters
Although known commonly as "teleportation," I prefer this 1950s usage, which implies a short, pleasant trip. Originally, it meant to ride your horse until it tired. Now it's knowing your destination by orienting your mind to the beginning and extrapolating yourself to the end--a minor reorientation of perspective that changed the world.
Whenever newsheets downloaded the latest death tolls, my family took short trips down to a private North Carolina pine-forest island beach. We laid out a blanket and picnic basket and gave our daughter a bucket and a shovel--pretending we were the only people left in the world. The Atlantic lapped the shore as if time might stop. We didn't experience that pang in the chest every time we snapped up a newsheet to find out who bombed who, who hung or decapitated in retaliation.
Vera, my wife, coped differently. She rearranged the world, moving the couch at different angles to the 3V as if the news looked better from a different perspective. In her green phase, all the upholstery was verdant with vines, leaves, and hanging gardens seen only when the light glanced off it. A spring of false optimism. Every tribe attempted peace accords. Negotiations murmured behind closed doors. We held our breath when the world's leaders came out to say nothing had been resolved.
When news of jaunting spread like a virus, every man with a grudge and a bludgeon could appear anywhere within the limits of his imagination. War returned. Vera swapped green upholstery for red.
When our bank lost their reserves to mirror-shielded jaunters on whom automatic laser rifles had no effect, my mind was distracted and I jaunted home, afraid to tell my wife we were penniless and probably wouldn't be able to fill our picnic baskets on our jaunts to the seashore. Only after we'd eaten dinner in silence--a minestrone with grated Parmesan--did I notice the furniture was green. The couch was repositioned to where it was before jaunting hit the world. Furthermore, news on the 3V had restored its era of false optimism.
Whenever Vera changed the upholstery to ashy blacks or desert tans, I jaunted back to an apartment of green upholstery. I won't say that I'm jaunting to a saner, parallel universe or that I'm reversing time, perhaps stunting my child's development indefinitely. I don't know.
But somehow I don't care.
We Are Siamese
by Trent Walters
Yuk hated Yak and knew Yak would ask for the salt-and-peppershakers that would raise their blood pressure. At a closeout sale following the big quake, Yuk bought the most hideous shakers he could find to curb Yak's appetite. It didn't work. "Pass the matching pair of joined-at-the-hip salt-and-peppershakers that look like a couple of nasty beasts going at it, if you please," Yak asked in a tone that suggested he would as soon stab Yuk in the back as accept the nifty shakers. Yuk laughed to himself, good thing I laced the shakers with rat poison; that'll learn the dirty rat.
Yak accepted the damnable salt-and-peppershakers with a smile on his face and a dagger in their heart. Yuk had probably poisoned them. Yak pointed at the window. "Look, in the sky! Is that a bird or a plane?" When Yuk turned his head, Yak sprinkled Yuk's Tostitos with poison. We'll see just how funny poisoned salt-and-peppershakers really are, Yak thought.
The chair groaned as they wobbled back and forth.
Byzantine Pandora
by Trent Walters
In 1203, A.D., Pandora yawned and rolled aside the stone covering her box (well, coffin). A walk to Byzantine might do her good.
Her feet grew sore from walking, so she rubbed her tootsies by the gently lapping shores of Stone Lake--which, despite its name, was not a lake of stones but one of water. Dusk had fallen when she spotted knights in shining armor, rowing toward the palace docks. A hundred boats, at least.
She whistled shrilly. "Fishermen!" She waved.
"Shh! Keep it down!" one whispered, motioning his axe to emphasize.
Their chivalry did not impress her though the palace guard had waved at her atop his Byzantine wall. But, employed, he lacked the necessary gondola.
She wouldn't let those Sunday boaters get away with skimping on their manners. "Over here!"
A knight looked at the guard (who sighed at the female), shot an arrow through the guard's poor pounding heart, and told Pandora, "We will pick you up if you will shut your trap."
Pandora clapped her hands. She'd never played a game of catch the castle.
On the other side, she let herself be lifted out the boat and on the dock. She ran beside them as they clattered down the corridor. Somehow the residents were not surprised to see them. She gave pointers, helping knights to better slash and gouge. One knight paused to grab her by the shoulders. "This is not the time to play. When we go forward, you go back, lest one of us fortuitously lop your head off."
"Aw, shucks," she said and shuffled to the water gardens.
Someone yelled, "We've got the emperor!"
Pandora, skipping rocks into the pool, was roughly whipped around. "Who are you?" asked a handsome Byzantine. "You don't belong here. Tell me where you come from."
"From going to and fro across the earth."
His face was horrified. "Miss Fortune!" Maybe he'd have plunged her in the pool, but from a window, cheers arose, which made her glum--their having fun without her.
"The knights have seized the emperor," she said.
His face grew pensive. To his side, he drew Pandora. "Hastily, I judged you, oh, my good luck charm. I'll exit to Nicea. Meanwhile, next in line is witless Isaac Angelos. I, Constantine, will reign thereafter!"
#
He was right. He ruled the Byzantines--although without a crown--a reign that lasted months.
Chop Chop
by Trent Walters
It's the broken hum after a hovercraft crash. The chrome-plated policemachine, with black helicopter blades chopping out its back, prints out a traffic violation from its mouth. The craft steersman jabs a thumb toward Pandora, rocking on her feet at the street-corner in her green, knee-length pleated skirt--pretty as a picture--as though she were a guileless fold-out child in a forbidden men's magazine. "Jail-bait," says the wild-haired man, panting, "enticing the weak-willed with illegal proclivities, crossing at a green light just as I'm supposed to stop at the red! A green skirt means go--go for it now!" The cop processes this, inhales his ticket, and chops over to the girl.
The Bug-A-Boo Bear
by Trent Walters
The brokers of the pawnshop heard a burly growl before Pandora lugged the weighty chest inside and lifted out the fearsome heart of papier-mâché. Unlatching the catch in back, she emptied it upon the counter. Bats flew out, tarantulas crept, black widows scuttled, killer bees buzzed, and a praying mantis mantraed. A small, discolored, ugly pearl rolled off the counter and under the paw of the tallest pawnbroker who shook his furry head with sad regret. The other brokers laid upon the heart a heavy club to crush the papier-mâché. The brutish girl had got what she deserved.
she is where she is or Why She Boarded the Shuttle for the Station at Lagrange Point Seven
by Trent Walters
She is unhappy with herself because she is two months pregnant with his child, she is two months pregnant with his child because he didn't wear a condom, he didn't wear a condom because he was too horny to think straight, he was too horny to think straight because she had really turned him on, she had really turned him on because virginity embarrassed her, virginity embarrassed her because her mother had laughed when she'd asked what a penis felt like, her mother had laughed when she'd asked what a penis felt like because her mother's mother had slapped her mother when her mother had asked her mother's mother the same question, her mother's mother had slapped her mother when her mother had asked her mother's mother the same question because her mother's mother had felt only one penis which was her mother's father's who had gotten her mother's mother drunk off a whole mason jar of moonshine and left her mother's mother two months later when her mother's father heard her mother's mother was pregnant with her mother's father's child.
Proust1: A Primer, which the Author Painstakingly Annotated to Allow How Not to Read about a Lout Whose Crimes Spouted against Humanity Are Not in Doubt2
by Trent Walters
Squatting on the bottom library step, the mousy, elfin-framed man named Arthur4 dusted his snake5-skin suit, glanced at his watch6, then adjusted his horned1-rims to watch an old woman6 wheeze and labor7 up the steps with a dolly that held his titanic8 stack of manuscript pages. She paused to catch her breath and pushed long tresses of gray hair out of her face.
"Cease wool-gathering, Miss Mykoytress." His eyelids hooded to slits. "We haven't words enough and time9 before I present my doctoral thesis."
"Did you reproduce this thesis and read three-thousand pages of Remembrances?"
Art raised himself, as if slowly uncoiling his legs. "That facsimile records the achievements of the all-time greatest novel."
"I read the first fifty before I realized I hadn't read the first."
He hissed, ready to strike.
"I reread it, realizing he taught himself to write on my time. I don't have much left."
Scenting the proverbial lost sheep's weakness, Art flicked his forked-tongue7 and slithered7 up the steps to make the intellectual kill. "He had strapping male companions, one of whom Proust bought an airplane which the companion promptly crashed into the ocean. Proust never regained the time lost from the loss."
"I prefer Of Mice and Men." The tresses of her hair writhed and turned him to stone.
_____
1 Pronounce Proust like Faust2 jousting it out with the metamorphosing Mephistopheles, whose elfin frame housed a Machiavellian mind that deluded the most casually espoused Marlowean/Goethean readers of Chairman Mao's social policies.
2 The author uses assonance3 to demonstrate artfully4 the proper pronunciation.
3 The auctorial3 terms "ass-onance" and "pomp-ass" resonate like pans9 of Teflon-coated Freudian slips for the propensity to use overly erudite3 and pompous3 terms like "auctorial" in a flagrant flaunt of critical authority.10
4 The "author" impishly misdirects the reader with "Arthur" to obfuscate his identity slipping a devilishly deceptive "author" into the title.
5 The wise old woman archetype tempted into servitude by the wise old serpent male archetype.
6 Sly injection of the symbol of time.
7 Scathing indictment of the bourgeois laissez faire.
8 Double entendre alluding to the recyclable Greek myths and the ship that lost a thousand faces9. Note the juxtaposed conflation of a child's and a man's play toys: a doll-y and a ship (with phallic suggestion)--let alone the bio-ethical reproductive dilemma of cloning inherent in a "dolly."
9 Marvel at the coy allusion to Andrew Marvell's poem.
10 Never trust auctorial3 critical authority.
Sense
by Trent Walters
A proud and knowing forestpeople, we dwell near a clearing used for fertility festivals. The forest is all of the world, except for the sky. We see the sky and know it. Our home is parallel to the home of the sky, so we are parallel to the starpeople, their equals. But we are earthy compared to those lofty ones, who uphold their torches nightly, so far off they hear not our calls.
The forest is the world, the world the forest; the forest inscribes the world; the forest flows beyond what the eye can see. There are no words for these things. We do not write but only speak them. Some urge us to transcribe history for the next generation. Foolish conceit! People should live in the now, not the past.
Rumor spreads that our world shrinks, tree by tree. One claims to have marked a tree with his sharp stone, and on the morrow, it was leveled to a stump. This we find difficult to believe because this one often cannot find his own sleeptree at night, which he should know, blindfolded, like his wife's form. Besides, what are we and what is the world without forest? If a tree disappears, does the world disappear with it? The notion's nonsense.
Rumor also claims a grassland surrounds our home, the forest. This we also find difficult to believe. Grass is for walking on and softening your nest. It cannot shield you from the tusk beast. A people need only forest and juicy beige fruits that dangle off limbs. We know this, but we also smell smoke from foreign fires--smoke flavored with wild game and fragrant wood. Do we believe what we know or what we sense?
Some of us desire to descend from the trees, to lope to grasslands to see what strange beings these may be, if such truly exist. The starpeople we know. We see them every night. They are silent and persevering if aloof in their nightly searches by torchlight. But the grasspeople must indeed be strange--grazing their world upon all fours.
Others of us doubt the sense of leaving the safety of our world. Can these grasspeople be found? Would they want to be found? If they wanted to meet us, wouldn't they have attempted to talk already? This assumes that we can find our way out of the forest, the world.
Venus Merchant
by Trent Walters
The wisest woman in the nursing home was Venus Merchant--a name undoubtedly excavated from a dusty Victorian novel of Classical mythology. When I expressed delight in her name, she lied and said--always neighborly--that mine was beautiful.
She smiled with her teeth, which stood in neat, white rows--each surrounded by a halo of yellow. Ridges of skin dipped toward the corners of her mouth, a star of ridges between her brows. Her eyes were bright and filmy. On her eyelids, flakes of sleep had sat since the morning, neglected by her nurse's aides. I wanted to wipe them with a damp washcloth, but it wasn't my place, my time.
Meet your neighbors, she said. The new people, the young make the community. Grow with your community, and sell them your love at prices anyone can afford.
She asked if I had children, no doubt thinking I had a family. In her day, someone my age would have settled down to a steady job with a family and built his home in a lifelong community.
Today, community is mutable. If we can't make it here, we move on as our African ancestors had. Perhaps--because every niche is filled--starting fresh to find, to found your own community is no longer feasible.
And perhaps I only thought this to comfort myself.
She said this had been her community for three or four--(here her lips trembled to form words. I expected the word "years" to define how long she had lived in the nursing home)--hundred years and that she wouldn't be here much longer. She dipped a spoon into her Coke and sipped. "This"--the spoon shook as she set it before me--"is your community." I looked at it. What looked like mozzarella was crusted about the handle. I turned back to her, awaiting the complete metaphor. But she put the spoon in her handbag.
She pointed to a plant highlighted by the sun near the far window. "See that leaf?" I nodded. "It says: I am here, this is my home. We should leave things as we found them. Find out about those who were here before, how they lived. Know your neighbors--what they do for a living, what dishes they favor, what celestial kingdom they grew up in--even if it takes a few centuries."