Novella

Pastiche

Emotional longing is fleeting. Mutual attraction passes with the passage of time. Wisdom, however, has a capacity for outliving generations and centuries. 

Seven months prior to this moment, I met a boy here. Same bus-stop, at around the same time. Beggars lined up the street, half-drowsily glancing in my direction. Even though their systems were brimming over with cheap booze, they think it's strange a girl sits here at a bus-stop at one in the morning. One of the drunks thinks it's inherently profound to yell incoherent nonsense at the moon. Right next to him, a dog follows suit. Same language, different species. But we are deviating, aren't we?

Seven months ago, I met someone purely by chance. Everyone who knows this story was under the impression that it had something to do with destiny. Either way, I think there's hope yet for humankind, if we learn to trust each other, and do not function within a mentality that recognizes every action and thought directed towards another individual as the result of some ulterior motive.

The Watchful

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetant

Isaac Asmiov 

Everything… is merely the envisaged product of infinite chaos.

Chapter One
2071 AD

Nuclear War is imminent.

The final attempts at Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, have failed horribly. The annihilation of the sole sustainable life-system on the planet, is minutes away.
The United States starts off with nukes sent to Russia, Korea, China, and India. Russia retaliates in the nick-of-time with nukes of their own, sent to the United States, and Israel. The rest of the world watch, and wait, in implausible horror, as they observe Dust-storms, Cyclones, and Floods occur as a chain reaction to these events. Plant and Animal life alike wither away, leaving vast amounts of decaying matter all around the globe. Until the planet is left pretty much a smoldering, flooded junk pile of rubble and phosphorous. 

Culture Shock

I was twelve, when we were liberated from the death camps in 1945. What I watched for five years in those camps probably changed my perspective on human beings. There is no such thing as humane concern. Either humans indulge themselves in exploiting and damaging nature thoughtlessly for their own needs, or doing the same to themselves. What a remarkable species; we seek comfort in knowing some other person hasn’t got the same opportunities as we have, and hence, we’re happy with our own pathetic lives in knowing we’re at an advantage to survive, thrive and prosper in self-importance. Perhaps I just understood the concept of Success wrong.

Bedtime Stories

Chapter One
The Show

Producer: I’ve read your idea. Very confusing, and disjointed. And for a children’s show, the material’s full of anarchic humor. Could you elaborate?

Writer: Well, you’ve given me five episodes… I have five different ideas.

Producer: The more the merrier, and all that… However, there’s bound to be a pattern in even the strangest of ideas. What’s the angle here?

Writer: Well…

Producer: Is it some form of storytelling?

Writer: I suppose…

Producer: Animated?

Writer: Some of it.

Producer: Is it educational?

Writer: Probably not.

Producer: What about set design?

Writer: We need one set. A library.

Producer: I see. So is the show entirely narrative?

Writer: The start of every episode may be. The rest of it is either filmed on location, or animated.

Producer: Do make this easy for me, will you?

Writer: I’m not surprised at your response, it’s written in such a way as to confuse both parents and kids…

Producer: All right, but you’re going to have to explain this to me. Selling an original idea to a corporation isn’t exactly child’s play. What’s the format?

Writer: I introduce each episode like I’m reading from a children’s book, then the camera pans out, the visual fades in and out to reveal the story I’m reading. Sometimes filmed, sometimes animated.

Producer: I’m going to have a long day straddling executives with this one, I just know it…

Romanticism

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement 

Oscar Wilde

 
“Hello…”

“Penny, it’s me…”

“What is it?”

“Grandfather’s dead.”

“Um… Well?”

“Well, you need to get here for the funeral.”

“Yes, and I have a job to do.”

“I think that charity organization could function a day without you.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Penny, I’m serious, you need to get down here ASAP.”

Monument

The searing white light woke me up from my uneasy slumber. It’s difficult, perhaps, to know for certain what’s going on around me, when I experienced indescribable pain as soon I opened my eyelids. Minutes later, I manages to pry them open, and instantly wish I didn’t.

A Series of Cants

Neo-parable Two

I met him around the street corner, I think I was about eight at the time.
He was a twenty year old street comedian, covered in rags, with dirt caked onto his skin like a face-pack. Broke and starving. The neighbors constantly remained pissed off with this deplorable, unemployed excuse of a young man, and tried driving him off with a garden hose. To their minute astonishment, and immense irritation, he stayed right there, getting drenched on their lawn. Later on, I remember overhearing them talking to my folks about it.

Neighbor: One would imagine that he would be scared of water, judging from what state he’s in, when he comes around the block for his “performance”…

Yes, quite, One may… I heard my bored Grandfather reply.

Tuned

Is it too much to think everything in nature has a balance and rhythm to it? Is it stupid to think every mood, every emotion, every instance, every example, and every other little thing could be captured in music? The answer to both these questions - Yes. However… Is it moronic, eccentric, or indeed, psychotic, to try doing exactly that?

No.

Black/White

Catherine Huff is known to readers worldwide as a writer who’s managed to break the last barriers of publishing material. Which was detailing the horrific, in the middle of children’s literature. Black Humor in the middle of a moral anecdote. Arachnids, her short-story for children, managed to do exactly that, by introducing disturbing humor without the use of symbolism to cover up the more disturbing details contained in the story. Needless to say, more parents were up in arms about the issue. The children hadn’t lost their innocent little minds reading this story; nor did they kill anyone, as most of the Schools and Parents claimed they would.

Somehow, the idea of Culture Shock always ends with the conclusion, that it would desecrate the traditions and sensibilities of established norms. In all probability, I suppose Establishment Types do not, ever, find faults and fallacies with their own rules, regulations, and rationalizations.

Huff has recently published her autobiography, with detailed descriptions of her career shift, from Law Enforcement to Writing, her subsequent three-year spell at a minimum-security prison as a result of her writing, and certain details about how the autobiography itself took shape in prison.

As a book reviewer, it is absolutely pointless to introduce a review with personal details of the author. Call it editorializing, but what follows is the short story she published first, followed by the Prologue to her autobiography. Combined, they form a potent insight into the mind of the author. I hope.

Abode

I write.
I draw Buildings.
I’m Twenty-Three.
I’m now on a local Panel Show. Stoned. And, oddly enough, attentive. For a live show, though, too silent, and observant.
And, for the third time this month, I’m feeling sick, looking at people always coming up with the attitude, and belief, that being in an agreement with each other always, or fighting each other, should be the either existent choices for settling any-fucking-argument.

Life. Splendid. Seems like abrasive nonsense to me, maybe that’s the reason why I live in a constant state of incredulity, curiosity, and despondency.

In conclusion, I started to write original stuff for a professional reason, which seemed like a hobby to everyone else. My career was really on iron-bolted halt, to put it mildly, even my life. Something changed with one idea, then everything did. So, I built a house, and continued with minimal recognition, ending with a rant on a Panel show, which very nearly ended my even otherwise snail-paced, slouching career, into a new dimension - Mental Inertia. No, not writer’s block. Get my condition, and you can end up for months with no clear thought, or any thought at all really. Fortunately, looking back at a condensed version of the entire three years before, I think it was a life, which was at least interesting to observe, and oddly funny to exist in.

Interviewer

Para-Normality

Ghost: You people piss me off…

Me: What are you talking about?

Ghost: You’re obviously bastards…

Me: Look, I can think of a million other things a ghost could do to me. Verbal Abuse never really crossed my mind. What the fuck?

Shoeboxes

The secret to being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw

Excerpt from Box 305: I want my idols to beat the fuck out of them

Emptiness shrouds us. To my way of thinking, emptiness is easier to handle than obligations. Emptiness makes it possible to tread along the line of insanity; obligations envelop us in a gateless circle of insanity. I wish I had people I looked up to, who would come to my rescue and kick the shit out of those people I hate. Odd, this rationalization coming from a pacifist. I wish there was some guitar hero or writer who could help. This is reality, though. There isn’t one soul I would like to harm, save for a handful of cretins. I wish it was more simple - reason is harder to generate than brute force. I suppose it’s difficult for people who're used to employing brute force as a solution to everything to understand this analogy. Trust me, it isn't to condescend any of you. You people, quite plainly, are a virus. Even if I was born because of you. Possibly, it partly is because I was Born, that I posess an everlasting contempt. Isn't it nice to see a moral idiot, and a sexist idiot, fight to the death, to gain the Superior hand in inconsequential Cattle Crap? And, even more dementedly, I have to pretend what they do is something rather cloy and innocent? Get real, for a microsecond, Stupidity isn't my forte.

Cruising

Personnel Decisions ~ December 2012

Me: I love this copy machine. This copy machine defines this work environment pretty well. Everything’s copied to the extent, that given the right amount of time, every employee looks like a clone of each other. The same walking-dead expression. It’s like an organization of zombies, servicing the general living population. The shop has this sinister white light throughout, the surroundings are white, the things we sell are white, the furniture is white, and the telephones - yes, white. Amazing, isn’t it?

Parlance on a Bench

We’ve lost the old one. Another member, of whom we genuinely thought of as family, gone.

Clarity in Regular Irregularity

1. DRIVE

Eddie: We’re bored, aren’t we?

John: You’re telling me? I was dozing off, and you call me out for a drive… And here we are, staring at automobile butts for an hour. If this is your idea of entertainment, I don’t know what gets you bored…

Eddie: What would you rather do?

John: I don’t know… A concert… A burger, perhaps… Anything but this.

Solitude

Happiness is a myth. After months of broken sleep, that’s the only rational thought I’ve had. Every single day is the same, consisting of a random order of bizarre memories, endless pacing within this room, and suicidal thoughts. And panic attacks.

The Soliloquies Rhyme-less

6 months earlier

Elizabeth: I’m going to be a call-centre supervisor someday.

Me: High ambitions, no doubt…

Elizabeth: I know when you’re mocking me, you know… Better option than you, isn’t it?

Me: You mean more successful? Sure

Elizabeth: And you still don’t care?

Me: Nope

Jester to Jape

The birth of Andy Williams was faced with some dread, because he showed all the signs of a still-birth. His vitals weren't responding, his eyes were wide-open and no one heard a sound from him. The doctors were astonished to find no movement or sound from a seemingly healthy baby, but then they were reassured when the baby broke wind at the appropriate time, when the doctor decided to take a closer look. It came to be known soon enough, when he had driven his parents to the end of their tether, and was sent to school in order to allow his parents to recuperate their way into temporary sanity, that he was a natural prankster. 

tRi

Chapter 2. Lost Creativity

Prologue

There’s a difference between feeling an exuberance for life, and loosing all interest in life.
Both these views, though, are equally valid.

Curiosity is the only state of mind and hallucinogens the only vices we need, to walk through life, as if within a dream - experiencing everything, learning anything, and contemplating, rather than allowing baser emotions control the way we act and think. There’s definitely more value in the lateral elements in life than the visceral. Possibly, these would provide people with a lucid, logical, interesting perspective of life. 

Warpath Crudeness

Being air-dropped into some remote region in the Amazon was the worst mission ever. It was also the first. We were told to protect America from the forces of evil, and it required us to track and kill a group of terrorists who were head-hunters, cannibals and nuclear scientists. Quite a Curriculum Vita, I might add. Seemed unlikely at the time, but we had to go with the flow. Having doubts & asking questions are the worst characteristics to have when you're in the military. Work has been steady. So is recruitment.

The year is 2015 AD. America's efforts to arm every country in the world was effective - unfortunately, efficiency in this case were followed by repercussions. Every nation in the world had nuclear science, energy and weapons manufacturing plants for the last 2 years. Every country has the capability to launch nukes to any destination in the world. This is solely about government agencies. Ever since governments all over the world were armed with nukes, so were splinter groups. Thus giving the word Democracy a new, warped meaning. This meant any social strife within a nation, and disagreements among nations were answered by one simple stratagem - bomb people. It sort of goes against the idea proposed at the start of the millennium that our nation was arming people to the teeth for protecting them.
Effectively, we have changed civil liberties overnight to vigilante justice - thus enforcing our primal instinct of survival in a way more brash and brutal than any previous war in the recent past. If everyone possesses power, it means power will result in obliteration. If we continue to propel citizen ownership of WMD's, we'll die out before we start to realize what was wrong with that initiative to begin with.