Through Weakness, Strength

by Trent Walters

A. Template for the Crrrazy-Bar-and-Grill Story
At the Crrrazy Bar and Grill, where everybody loves you and your worst quirks, Joe Schmuck cradled a foaming mug of Schlitz, sitting in his regular black leather barstool. The stool’s panoramic view allowed him first glance at whatever otherworldly creatures would slime inside Uhura’s [insert more Irish sounding name because they’re so crrrazy and they likes they booze]. The balding bartender wiped down the counter as in sashays his fiery red-headed daughter, whom Joe secretly pines after–the superfluous love interest that is never quite requited so that readers return, story after story, wondering when those two crrrazy kids will hook up. They’ll almost make out, but then she’s beeped out to LaGrange point 2.5 to settle the alien dispute raging there.

In [walked, zapped, sizzled, slithered] a(n) [extra-dimensional being, time traveler, cockatrice, the oafish two-headed were-snake] with a mean thirst for stouts–only Joe didn’t know it was a(n) [extra-dimensional being, time traveler, cockatrice, the oafish two-headed were-snake] until he/she/it did something dastardly, putting the whole universe in peril!

But thank God for Joe and the dipsomaniacs at the Crrrazy Bar and Grill, who come together when they’re needed most. [Insert corny gag at the end to release tension through a forgettable denouement.]

B. Questions for Popular Templates
Is it enough to kick over a man’s many-storied sandcastle, laugh, and walk away? Isn’t the gesture like the hole left from a foot passing through walls of sand?

What is a template, but the framework that satisfies many, not unlike eating a pound of chocolate in one sitting? Is it that the few are displeased that many are happy with little, or that the few are simply displeased with much?

What drunken misfit wouldn’t want to guzzle off a beer-sticky oak floor where misfits fit in? What lover wants the chase to end: Isn’t that what leads to boredom, musty motel rooms, and expensive divorce lawyers? Isn’t it fulfilling when the clumsy two-headed oaf saves the universe due to his deformity precisely because it gives hope to the rest of us misfits?

C. Pop Will Eat Itself
Socrates’ fame inflated like a latex balloon by his popping other balloons with questions lathed to pinpricks. But what foundation did he ever smooth with a trowel? Can an ecology of pincushions and wrecking balls exist alone?

The snake consumes its tale.

Or does it? Is Doctor Frankenstein any less a man for creating a monster that seeks to destroy him as much as the creator seeks to destroy the created?

The Onierographer

by Rudi Dornemann

She’d only just arrived. Translucent like illuminated smoke, the curves of buildings loomed over her, but she felt more comforted than claustrophobic and, realizing something wasn’t right about that response, she fell awake.

The laminated prompt card still lay on her blanket.

One of the researchers was right there, making a show of reading something off a display in the corner. As if he couldn’t have done that from control room.

She pre-empted what she knew he was going to say.

“I’ll pack first thing in the morning,” she said, and tugged at an electrode on her scalp.

“It happens this way with some people. A lot early, then nothing.” He sounded sympathetic, but she knew he got paid by the page his subjects produced, and must be secretly relieved to get someone new into this room, someone who might dream more productively.

“I was there. On a street. Somewhere in the ammonite city.”

He didn’t even look up from his clipboard. “Did you see any inhabitants? Get a sense of what any of the buildings were? Were you in the inner or outer whorl?”

“I didn’t…” she said. “I’m sorry.” Her eye lingered on the spiral as she handed him the prompt card.

“We’ll mail your last check.” He pulled something from the pocket of his lab coat. “Here,” he said, “for a free copy, when the book comes out.”

The coupon showed the cover: More Dream Realms Revealed: A LucidTravel Guide.

She shivered awake.

The director, Dr. Current-Waves-Tendril flushed disappointment pinks and purples from the tips of his upper limbs. “How much did you give them?”

Red-Sand-Hiding stretched on the sleeping shelf, brushed life-support barnacles from her mantle.

“Not enough,” she said, “We’re still a prime destination.” She could feel frustration brightening her face. “Publication date’s pushed back a little, that’s all.”

Within a year, they’d be overrun; mobs of dream tourists, gawking without inhibition, would wander the inner and outer whorl, the upper and lower spirals.

“The others haven’t done much better,” said the director, and Red-Sand-Hiding saw two-thirds of the shelves were empty. “They can sustain the dream, but not the dream within it. We’ll have to try the next plan soon.”

She loosened her limbs in agreement. Somewhere, she knew, behind walls that swirled like ink, were pens of sharks, hungry, restless, ready to turn the streets of ammonite city to nightmare for a season.