Since my life is dreadfully boring right now, I'm going to dedicate the next week or so to free form short stories. Whatever crappy tale that pops into my head that day will be broadcast here, live and unedited ('cause I'm lazy).
I hereby declare it to be...
STRANGE AND MOST LIKELY CRAPPY SHORT STORY WEEK.
uh...
OF DANGER .
Story the first:
The sign above the door read, Beware of falling solicitors! Owner has no friends, relatives, acquaintances, subtle nuances, or punctuation (proper or otherwise)! The sign below the door, however, gave an unwritten asylum to any stray animals or four-legged humans. Anything that crawled was exempt from haven. And dont even try to argue in defense of bad posture or evolutionary draft-dodgers. Still, as strict an elitist cult as it was, the place was crawling with various personages of the riff-raff and neer-do-well variety.
The walls were stained yellow by cigarette smoke, the floors stained brown by muddy shoes, the ceilings stained red by a really tall woman with a painting fetish, and the air itself stained slightly opaque because no one ever slept and were always so tired that the blurs in their eyes leaked out into the world, giving everyone else their cases of the Nappy Time Blues Flu. The halls were lined with paintings hanging from flagpoles. Each individually finger-painted work hung impotent because of birth rather than old age. All the flagpoles had been nailed to the floor for fear of strong breezes running too fast through the narrow corridors. As an added precaution, the windows were bricked up (sometimes with cans of food, as the fireplace could only give so much). Of the many rooms, few were used. Those that were used lacked doors while the unused were locked and boarded up. No metal was allowed inside the house, so the keys to those locks had been placed in the owners safe, which had long ago been placed at the bottom of some ocean they had stumbled upon once.
The they, of course, being the children of Henry Miller; all illegitimate forty-seven of them. Over time, though, the forty-seven began to die off, leaving only four currently. Three of who had been eaten by the last and now lived symbiotically in a now very crowded stomach. This four-in-one person was named Atlantis. Atlantis King Fornicate. His favorite food was not people and his left leg was missing. (In an unrelated note, Atlantis was not the mythical city of the same name. He was just this guy he knew.)
One day, after eating his breakfast, Atlantis stood up on the kitchen table to observe his little kingdom. As he did so, a mime with three invisible balls started juggling outside. Atlantis, so intent on the mime was he, that he hit his head on the ceiling fan. He then fell off the table and landed on a chair, killing two of his stomach siblings. The third remaining stomach sibling was so distraught that she leapt into the lower intestine, where she would remain until eventually dying of starvation. Atlantis, meanwhile, got up, cursed a now-bruised knee, and banned chairs from the house. This turned out to be a unanimously unpopular law among the houseguests, so they overthrew Atlantis and named the ceiling fan that had defeated him as their new landlord. Atlantis currently lives in the fourth row of a movie theatre.
I hereby declare it to be...
STRANGE AND MOST LIKELY CRAPPY SHORT STORY WEEK.
uh...
OF DANGER .
Story the first:
The sign above the door read, Beware of falling solicitors! Owner has no friends, relatives, acquaintances, subtle nuances, or punctuation (proper or otherwise)! The sign below the door, however, gave an unwritten asylum to any stray animals or four-legged humans. Anything that crawled was exempt from haven. And dont even try to argue in defense of bad posture or evolutionary draft-dodgers. Still, as strict an elitist cult as it was, the place was crawling with various personages of the riff-raff and neer-do-well variety.
The walls were stained yellow by cigarette smoke, the floors stained brown by muddy shoes, the ceilings stained red by a really tall woman with a painting fetish, and the air itself stained slightly opaque because no one ever slept and were always so tired that the blurs in their eyes leaked out into the world, giving everyone else their cases of the Nappy Time Blues Flu. The halls were lined with paintings hanging from flagpoles. Each individually finger-painted work hung impotent because of birth rather than old age. All the flagpoles had been nailed to the floor for fear of strong breezes running too fast through the narrow corridors. As an added precaution, the windows were bricked up (sometimes with cans of food, as the fireplace could only give so much). Of the many rooms, few were used. Those that were used lacked doors while the unused were locked and boarded up. No metal was allowed inside the house, so the keys to those locks had been placed in the owners safe, which had long ago been placed at the bottom of some ocean they had stumbled upon once.
The they, of course, being the children of Henry Miller; all illegitimate forty-seven of them. Over time, though, the forty-seven began to die off, leaving only four currently. Three of who had been eaten by the last and now lived symbiotically in a now very crowded stomach. This four-in-one person was named Atlantis. Atlantis King Fornicate. His favorite food was not people and his left leg was missing. (In an unrelated note, Atlantis was not the mythical city of the same name. He was just this guy he knew.)
One day, after eating his breakfast, Atlantis stood up on the kitchen table to observe his little kingdom. As he did so, a mime with three invisible balls started juggling outside. Atlantis, so intent on the mime was he, that he hit his head on the ceiling fan. He then fell off the table and landed on a chair, killing two of his stomach siblings. The third remaining stomach sibling was so distraught that she leapt into the lower intestine, where she would remain until eventually dying of starvation. Atlantis, meanwhile, got up, cursed a now-bruised knee, and banned chairs from the house. This turned out to be a unanimously unpopular law among the houseguests, so they overthrew Atlantis and named the ceiling fan that had defeated him as their new landlord. Atlantis currently lives in the fourth row of a movie theatre.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
clara:
Trite adages noted.
tinfoilhalo:
I've only read one of Harlan Ellison's books , but it was pretty cool . It was called "Angry Candy" and was a collection of short stories . Some stories worth mentioning are "Paladin Of The Lost Hour" , "Broken Glass" , and "The Region Between" . The Region Between specifically is really good in a warped and confusing kind of way ( I think it was written in a way that was meant to be confusing though ) . If you get a chance , check it out .