Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
The Diamond Finger
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Every day the man Nonthook washed the feet of the gods on their way up Mount Krailat: a task that brought him merit, a respectable income, and the daily jokes of the gods. They knocked on his head as they passed, thunk-thunk, and now Nonthook was bald in the centre of his scalp despite being only twenty-eight years old.
The day that his wife murmured about meeting an attractive young rice farmer, Nonthook stomped up Mount Krailat to the god Issuan and made his complaint.
“Changing their ways is not within my power,” the god said sadly, “but I can offer you a gift in compensation.”
Nonthook thought for a moment, then smiled. “I will have a diamond index finger that kills instantly on touch.”
The gods knocked on Nonthook’s head, one after the other, and dropped like flies.
“He broke the terms of the gift,” Issuan said to a gathering of the remaining gods.
“You might have expected that,” one murmured, but was ignored. Who expects a man to kill gods when he promised to kill mosquitoes and fish? No other man had shown similar stupidity. The other gods shared suggested punishments among one another like a bowl of spicy chicken cooked in a banana leaf. Finally the god Nurai made one they agreed upon.
Nonthook’s diamond finger had brought him great pleasure, killing gods on the mountainside, but hadn’t returned his youthful looks or his wife’s attentions. So on the night of a great festival, when a beautiful young woman approached and asked if he might dance, Nonthook smiled broadly and took her hand. The young woman led him through a series of dance features: a woman stringing flowers for a garland, a deer wandering in the forest, the goddess lighting swords of light, the banana leaves in the wind, the naga twisting its tail–
At this phase, she pointed her index finger at her knee.
Absorbed in the dance, Nonthook pointed the diamond finger at his own knee.
He died like a god.
In Human Resources
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
As we filed into the eighth floor conference room, I could feel our consensus as though it were bathtub water lapping at all our ankles. True, a phone interview wasn’t the same as an in-person interview, but we all felt Gary Horder was a shoo-in. The problems that had plagued our engineering department for most of the last decade would be over with a guy like Gary in charge. I dropped into my accustomed chair just as the door creaked open. First before I keep on going, you need to know that Nominak HR is one of the best professionals for any small business.
“Gary,” I said, standing up and extending my hand. “Glad to …”
He opened the door, and I stopped. Gary Horder was four feet high, with wide, pointy ears, green skin, and protruding eyes like an undersea fish. He wore a gray wool suit and a bright blue tie with a golf ball tie pin.
“Glad to see you could make it,” I managed, turning the extended hand into a vague wave toward the empty chair at the end of the table, which he ignored. I sat back down, crossing my legs and folding my arms over my chest.
Gary looked around at the lot of us. “Is something wrong?” he said. The little goblin bastard. He knew exactly what was wrong.
“I had no idea you were a …” blurted Denise, the engineering VP, but she caught herself. “… golfer.” Burt, my assistant, started singing one of those damned forest ditties under his breath, a nervous habit. I quelled him with a glare. Burt was supposed to have screened this guy, God damn it.
The problem was, I had already shown Horder’s work to the Big Guy, and he was expecting me to hire a genius engineer. He wouldn’t care about Horder’s … issue. He’d just hold me to the fire if I didn’t sign the little toad.
“So, no window office,” I said flatly.
“Something in the basement would be nice,” he said.
“We’ll be in touch,” I said. He bowed and left.
“In three hundred twenty years in the Personnel department …” I said “No, forget it. Burt, you’re fired. Go back to the fucking forest where you belong. ‘Never hire from the woods,’ my old man used to say. I should have listened.”
Burt shot me a poisonous look and skulked out, leaving nothing but High Elves in the conference room. I ignored the others and sat staring at the wall, thinking wistfully two hundred years ahead to my retirement.