IF BY MOONRISE, YOU FAIL TO PROCESS THE CLOTS, DIGEST THE MARVELLOUS ONES IN THEIR MUTUAL ENQUIRIES, OR PROCEED TO LAMINATE AN ELK… SING WITH ME! UNTIL THEN, MIGHT I SUGGEST YOU TRYING OUT VARIOUS FORMS OF SURREAL WRITING THAT ARE LESS DAUNTING THAN MINE! YOU ARE STILL FRIEND, FRIEND. IF YOU LOVE ME, I LOVE YOU. WE HAVE PEACE BISCUITS SOON!
Short Story / The Brunchtime Fiscal Fist-Off
Three minutes before the hour of his lunch, Syphim Tobias III went to the rockiest of rocky mountain ranges to gather his thoughts. If thoughts were like dustballs, he was choking to death in a field of straw. Often he thought about pinning death to the ground with his cueball pecker and making love to its oblivious folds.
“I can collect samples of all types of shrub or wood pigeon,” he said, puffing out some silent air. I was walking around the newest of the new forests inhaling the most disgusting toxins at the time. I missed the whole goddamn thing.
We converged for a brunchtime fiscal fist-off once in the early ‘80s. I recall his modish perm, his spaghetti bowtie and the vacant expression of moral bankruptcy on his face.
“See these walls? See these stars? See these badly erected ramparts holding up these crystalline morals? These are figurative decorations unbeknownst to the fattest of the fat, the widest of the wide, the slowest of the slow… we can overcome their crushing banality and ersatz winters,” he began, attracting a crowd of three.
The first man in the crowd was named Oink. As a child he had been the victim of a series of revolting pig experiments whereby streaky bacon in the “in-between” stage was grafted onto the backs of human guinea pigs. Scarred by the experience, he had grown up a victim of heinous over-oinking. His dialect was broad farmyard pig, and his manners similar to that of a multi-millionaire. As a result he was pushed to the highest echelons of society by an embarrassed government cabal of red-cheeked ministers. It was noted how easily he was able to integrate into whichever nouveau niche society he entered.
“Hug-h-h-h-h-h-hug!” he said, earning a round of applause.
The second interested party had inherited the dishevelled, rheumy-eyed foxface of the suicidal librarian. She was well-versed in simpletons and their secret abilities in both mathematics and applied science. She understood that these dolts were a breed unto themselves, different from the scruffy idiot savant masses, and instead ran on the proliferation of as many types of ginger biscuits and motherly nuzzles as they could amass. Her son, with an IQ lower than sixty, was known to mutter incredible things about quantum physics. She held onto her resentment that nobody took him seriously, due to his frequent outbursts of very silly observations, among them that porcelain was an element.
The third onlooker was a Popcorn Dotcom Millionaire manqué. He worked in the lobby of the local cinema and had bluffed his way into the soiree by stealing someone’s ID card. His favourite flavour of popcorn was butter crisp.
Syphim’s words were pondered over. The popcorn boy had no idea as to their meaning and diverted his attention to the popcorn baubles swinging hither and thither through the embuttered folds of his brain, talking in Aramaic code. The woman thought about the last great speech she had heard, given by Dr. Smart in 1997 at the Annual Conference on the plight of the brainless and aimless. The pigman scratched himself and oinked as the draperies swished gently in the breeze.
“See… what becomes evident is that the FTSE index is in a state of flux,” Syphim added.
I knew this to be incorrect, having emerged from the Saintly Council of Numbers a few days sooner.
“This is untrue. You need a crustier hypothesis to prove this is right. Might I suggest the curtains are turned off before the windows of thought are opened?” I asked, confounding everyone with my erudition.
“No, you see… the sea at sea with time and me, when all but three ran out to sea. This is the Wilson epicentre of my logic,” the woman said.
“Could we envisage a bordello with invisible stockades like this? Could we spur on the mannequins in an afternoon where nothing is sense and all are much farts?” she asked. I wondered about the reaction to this. It seemed like a façade or an avalanche, like an ultimate factory piping on the lawn. Where did this come from? What did they say to one another to result in the catastrophe?
I entertained many people in these wee dark hours… I had taken aboard many scuppering wolves. Many people invoked shrapnel at this time. I was different to all these people (perhaps in the fullness of time I would learn to accept this). A week later, after the argument, some time elapsed in which the general consensus was that we were making a higgledy-piggledy of things.
Then the moon descended, gibbous and black, and called a halt to the blips of fatality.
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clele75 reviewed Version 2 -
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Hmmm, I’m not sure how I really feel about this. The notes were obscure, if intentionally so. The writing sounds a little pedantic, but has a unique style. But after reading this three times over, I’m still wondering what you are trying to say with this piece. That all our thoughts, rants, and musings are worth nothing?
In a way, I wish you would have continued the scene. You build it up, and I was expecting some conflict (beyond the scant dialogue.) Have more of a climax before simply wrapping everything up with the “I.” Which brings me to the “I.” Who are they? You say that Syphim is addressing a crowd of three. But the “I” pops up, making it a crowd of four.
Also, I’m not sure if manque works. If someone has become a millionaire than they have realized, at least to some extent, their potential. Manque means not realizing one’s potential.
Overall, I still find the style quirky and engaging, I just think you can do a little bit more with this.
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hippopotimoose_moo reviewed Version 2 -
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The whole making love to death thing sort of grossed me out. And as far as the keeper of the slippery moons goes I hope he can make you write about something I might actually understand. Maybe I’m just a country hick but you need to bring it down a notch, maybe a whole friggen bar, man. You are writing for a very selective group, of which, I am not a part of (and thankfully.) No offense, but I only got the gist that you were describing people (millionaires in particular) as piggy. You can refund this if you want but it’s extremely hard to follow and there are alot of unneeded details. Who cares if the guy liked buttercrisp or that he stole an I.D.? I am now extremely confused and distressed. And, sincerely, I mean no offense, I just want to know what you meant. Please message me back and tell me because I am clueless.
chickiemcweird reviewed Version 2 -
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This would be great as a graphic novel. You could do something like Teen Beat used to, but instead of a fold-out of River Phoenix, have a bonus LSD centrefold, with perforated lines to tear along. It should be illustrated with the things people scrawl on truck stop bathroom stalls in lip liner.
I liked it so much I printed it out, cut it up, crushed it, cooked it, and injected it directly into my aorta. I am also wearing jumper cables as earrings, and have taken my laptop into the bathtub to critique this.
I think if you imposed your perspective on more people, fewer people would make me want to deep throat the muzzle of a 38 caliber pistol. Other than that, all I can say is “Oink.”
Well done. Let’s rob a church bazaar with unconcealed produce.
DCAllen reviewed Version 2 -
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You might laugh if I try to make sense of this (perhaps “nothing is sense”), but . . .
Are you intentionally mixing metaphors (dustballs/field of straw) to make a statement about meaning?
Observations:
cueball pecker (Wouldn’t cue-stick pecker make more sense? Although, pool-cue pecker seems to have a better ring to it.)
You could delete vacant: moral bankruptcy is vacant enough. A very strong image.
“embuttered” nice word!
How does one turn off curtains? And how would this logically affect the windows of thought? The curtains could be turned off when they are open or closed, so this wouldn’t affect the metaphor of the window.
Again, this makes me think that the author is experimenting with surrealism, juxtaposing contrasting elements (avalanche, factory piping on the lawn).
Interval reviewed Version 2 -
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It is obvious that your vocabulary and capacity for imagery are excellent. However, this piece is nigh-impossible to follow and fairly schizophrenic. It draws on all sorts of different references that, while they may be related in your mind by some significant, underlying theme, are thoroughly opaque to the reader. Although there is some sort of a concrete plot and conflict established – this so-called fist-off, the great majority of the text seems not to support them at all and instead is an assemblage of scattered, esoteric anecdotes. You would do well to work on the readability of this piece while preserving its high creativity.
EAnonymous reviewed Version 2 -
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Hear, hear, KotSM!
I quite like this. It made my spleen quiver, emanating a precise F#, and my left patella received radio transmissions from Brazilian truck drivers who had only pleasant things to say. My opossum was not at all flatulent when I read this to him, which is good.
Though the reviewer notes do a decent job of setting the tone, the text itself sort of eases into its absurdity. At first it seems like a childishly written fable(“the rockiest of rocky…”). The second sentence then seems like a mistake. The third thoroughly bewilders. I love this sentence, but at first it seems out of place. It’s not until the paragraph about Oink that I felt certain that the author knew what he/she was doing. That’s not bad in itself, but if you start off immediately with something as blatantly absurd as the overall story, you could avoid losing readers who might misjudge your intentions.
That’s all the criticism I have, as I found this piece delightfully ridiculous.
“A week later… ...some time elapsed…” that’s my favourite part of the work. It says it all, really.