Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
The Plot Against Barbie’s Life
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
Barbie knew she had enemies–that creepy clown doll, the sadly plain-looking ballerina, even (though this was more of a bitchy rivalry) Skipper. But it wasn’t until she stepped on the brakes of her hot pink sports car and got nothing but a dull clunking noise that she realized someone was trying to kill her.
She wasn’t helpless. Barbie had learned something from dating more than a few action figures in her time–G.I. Joe still sent her whiny Facebook messages. She dove out of the car, rolled, and came up in a crouch. The hot pink sports car smashed into a bedpost at a speed that would have pretzeled her. The room was silent. After a few watchful moments, she crept away.
Three days and two spa treatments later, Barbie had nearly forgotten the incident. She was having tea with Malibu Ken, who was as gay as a songbird.
“Did I tell you her brother has a new set of X-Men figures?” Ken said. “Hello, Wolverine!” There were more emotionally developed gay dolls in the room, but Ken was the most fun and the best dressed of them.
Barbie shook her head and lifted her teacup to her little plastic lips. Suddenly Ken squealed, lurched across the table, and swatted the cup away.
“I’m so sorry,” Ken said. “I forgot and put sugar in it! You could’ve gotten fat!”
The teacup’s contents spattered over a pop diva dress Barbie had been wearing earlier. The tea ate through it with a hissing noise.
“Oh. My. God,” Barbie said.
“Oh Barbie!” Ken said in despair. “And that dress was fabulous on you!”
Barbie wasn’t listening: she’d caught a glimpse of blonde hair disappearing under the bed sham and she dove after it. In the darkness under the bed, she grabbed hold of someone or something.
It was a rough fight: there was scratching, biting, and shrieking. Hair was mussed. Ken ran away, screaming for the weeble policeman. When they finally rolled into the light, covered with dust bunnies, Barbie was able to identify her attacker.
It was another Barbie–but from a fashion nightmare. Her hair had been “styled” into a page boy-meets-weed-whacker cut, and her face was grotesquely made up with magic marker. She looked old–her plastic scratched, her breasts distinctly 1990’s-shaped. Clearly this was Barbie’s predecessor, who had been handed down to the little sister. Barbie thought she would rather die than look like that.
Fashion nightmare Barbie just looked at her, tears streaming down her disfigured face, and nodded.
Connected / Chapter 3: Signal and Noise
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the third chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.” Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters. Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every 2 weeks.
Police work is minutia, is cataloging detail upon detail, is studying lacunae—building images from what’s absent. It is dull and tedious.
But there is another police work—as old as Cain policing Abel.
Morello’s feed is being monitored by internal affairs. They connected as soon as Morello requested his meatsack be the one to chase the lead. Because someone took Morello’s son. Someone disconnected Caul from his tribe and put him in a terror coma. And even reconnected, Caul remains a phantom limb, a pain that cannot be eased.
The shop is an old religious place. Hard copy bibles, crosses, rosary beads. Software overlays the walls with glory—gold and colored light. NYPD AI hacks through, reveals the squalor beneath. The store owner’s ‘sack is middle-aged, skin worn thin by an ache that bleeds out around his eyes.
“Can I help you?” A bright voice mismatched to the body, the expression. Morello guesses the store’s visual overlay doesn’t just cover the walls.
He throws an elbow into the ‘sacks throat. Pin him against a wall. Cuffs him.
“Careful.” His partner, Chambers also riding shotgun in his head. Chamber’s voice emanates from where his conscience should be. IA remains quiet.
“Hack him,” Morello tells Chambers. “Find his tribe, his feeds.”
Chambers works. Morello searches. Just one thing to connect this guy to the disconnections, to the ‘sacks severed from the network, from the minds of friends and family. But nothing.
“I got zip,” Chambers says. “Can’t find him. Like he’s not even connected.”
“Everyone’s connected.” Morello can’t keep the frustration out.
Everyone’s connected except the bodies. Except the dead men. Except his son. And there’s no reason for the crime. Indiscriminate terrorism. Unless… Morello stares at the paraphernalia of belief in the store, and sees the disconnections not as a threat or a demand, but as a mandate. Men and women committed to disconnection. Men and women who wouldn’t be connected.
He looks at the store owner sweating it out. He sees Caul’s sack lying in the hospital bed. He feels IA riding shotgun in his head.
“Careful…” Chambers can feel the rage boiling out of Morello’s feed. No-one is disconnected. But there are two types of police work, and one must be done alone.
Morello drops the connection. Drops all connections. Everything noise to the signal of his rage. Alone he sets to work.