“This list is ridiculous,” says Epidiah. “Holy water is for vampires, we’re not setting money on fire, and ‘proton packs’ are not real.”
“Still locked at the corner,” says Lemmy, peering out the mail slot. “Look, it wears the chain it forged in life!”
“It’s a ghost bike, Lemmy,” says Epidiah with weariness beyond death. “Somebody spray-painted it white because a friend of theirs–”
“Reached out from beyond the grave, I know,” Lemmy frowns. “Like vodoun or pharaonic burial goods. Did you bless the holy water yet?”
Epidiah’s sainthood derives from the Universal Life Church, but unfortunately that’s good enough.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
–Philo
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
–Plato
Be kind, for everyone you meet is haaang on a minute.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m pretty sure I said that.
–Mark Twain
You don’t get to say fucking everything, Clemens.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yeah, the reports of you saying stuff are greatly exaggerated.
–Yogi Berra
Get it?
–Yogi Berra
That’s not even the real quote.
–Mark Twain
You guys are a fistful of assholes.
–Ian Maclaren
Actually some people you meet have it pretty easy.
–Thomas Jefferson
Castle wears the stethoscope. Elephant carries the gun.
“Our remaining time,” says Elephant with a puff of frustrated breath, “can no longer be measured in minutes.”
“Are you talking?” hisses Castle. “What is the one thing you think I need to do right now?” Head cocked, pressing her earpiece, she twists a heavy dial tick by tick to the left.
Elephant grinds those great teeth, waiting, crouched by the door with her hand-cannon cocked. Castle hears the last tumbler whisper into place.
Their sleeping subject murmurs, hand fumbling for something heavy on his chest; but the heartbreakers are already gone.
“And why didn’t you notice the ship was leaking antimatter for four hours?”
“Look, I had a hot holodate,” shrugs Science Officer Riker. “Things got out of hand. And also into hand. Because I got a holohandy.”
“Will, maybe if we tried reversing the polarity to–” says Engineering Chief Crusher.
“I tried reversing her polarity last night, if you know what I mean!” says Science Officer Riker. “What I mean is that we did it from behind.”
Around the table, the other officers stare at him hard enough to press latinum.
“I’m detecting tension somewhere in this vicinity,” frowns Captain Troi.
Jelenko sends her a dozen white roses. Hortense sends him a dozen black widows. Subtlety is one quality they lack in common.
Jelenko leaves a string of pearls on her doorknob; Hortense leaves his motor oil in a pool beneath his car. He delivers an assortment of white chocolates topped with silverflake. She bribes a barista to swap his coffee for ink. To switch things up, Jelenko gets her Loubotins in jet leather. She puts powdered bleach in his shower head.
In the hospital, he takes delivery of the roses, their petals charred one by one. He smiles; she watches. Monochromance.
The island must have been some kind of fur farm, before the demic: Lisa’s found rusted-out pens and a crumbling house with tannery racks behind it. But mostly the foxes clued her in.
They’re all human-friendly and uninterested in her food; they seem to eat sweet fallen apples, when they’re not pillaging a busted kibble silo. At night they curl up around her overturned boat and twitch their feet in sleep.
She could give up searching for the prophet, maybe. Stay here, eat fruit, stroke foxfur and dream.
No, Lisa. Sail on.
They cry like children when she goes.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
“Write what you feel,” says the counselor, so Stoop sits down and writes a story about a pretty smart guy who had a hobby of toying with beautiful fractals and okay, maybe he switched to freelance to have more time to pursue it and then maybe he stopped doing freelance but it was temporary, but then he failed to budget for food and rent so the landlord had him dragged fighting from his filthy chair in front of the slowly turning recursive helix which is when his sister got him into this program with a counselor who says “write what you–“