Zo Relaxed Und Watschen Der Blinkenlichten is a bad name for a band but it’s the one they got, so Effy locks her jaw and tries to get on with expressing herself via theremin. The only people at their shows are middle schoolers wondering why they’re not yelling German.
“Hey!” Charlie finds her after a gig as Effy sips Jameson neat. “You guys sounded great.”
“No we didn’t.”
“Aww, don’t pout! Band names are a nonrenewable resource, you know.” He buffs his nails, quite deliberately. “And not everybody can be in 99 Teen Science Machines.”
Effy says something rude in theremish.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
“Do you mark me?” asks Chell, pacing. “I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. But I have accomplished it now! She is gone, and that bright eye will trouble me no more.”
The observers sit and smile. The beat grows louder–flat and regular, like a watch wrapped in cotton.
They know! They mock! She stares at them, pulse pounding. Anything is better than this derision–
“Here!” she cries, smashing her chair into the floorboards. “Villains! I admit the deed!” Beneath the planks, they see it: the face of the Companion Cube, and its tell-tale heart.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Emilia’s familiar is a happily twitching thing of spring steel and tin, bounding ahead of them on its three legs and bending to clank inquisitively against a storm drain. It makes her sigh.
“Hey, cheer up!” says Gruntham. “I don’t know anyone else who’s managed to bind a clockwork.”
“You mean you don’t know anyone else who’s tried,” Emilia mutters. “For reasons that are becoming obvious.”
“You should be proud.”
“When are you going to summon your familiar, anyway?”
Gruntham, smiling, doesn’t answer, letting the city speak to him in scent and rumble: vast and old, innocent, soon to be his.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
COCHLEA: Difficult to obtain but well worth the effort, as they will grow into gifted children named after your grandparents.
EYES: Spring-blooming annuals, best planted in late fall or winter. Produce cable-knit sweaters in a variety of colors.
KNEECAPS: Require heavily nitrogenated soil but do best in indirect sunlight. Produce a certain je ne sais quoi.
RIBS: Plant lengthwise in trenches, as with tubers, or grow hydroponically. Produce short-haired female mechanics or, when pruned, mechanical engineers.
SMALL INTESTINES: Slice into 6″ segments and treat like cuttings from a parent plant. Probably. Produce headaches.
TEETH: Best avoided.
TESTICLES: Jade.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Tom Sawyer gave himself too much credit: painting a fence can be enormously satisfying. Once the semiotics of whitewashing are brought to bear, of course, such joys become less simple, but they are agnostic to the color of the paint. No child balks at a brush and an open can.
My stepfather once wrote that it’s easy to stay pure so long as one rides a bike. I think such purity is cosmetic, but no less valuable for that; I’ll take my absolution where I can get it. Sometimes that’s in the downhill breeze, and sometimes the eggshell coat it kisses.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Taking phishbait eventually loses some of its thrill. Odette gets cards printed up with her SSN and mother’s maiden name, credit cards and CV2, home address and a picture of the fake rock where she keeps her key. The guy at the print shop gives her a long, careful look.
She leaves the cards as placemarkers in library books and in the shoes she tries on at DSW. She can only buy things with cash, of course, but by now she’s used to that. It’s worth it, knowing she’s multiplicative, metastatic: that little Odettes everywhere are gleefully doing the devil’s work.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009