Contributor: Miles Gough

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I thought I might have offended the Grand Fiend. It was about the food. He was eating his old stand-by, Pickled Presbyterian's Feet and I had a thin crust pizza with extra cheese and garlic. I said with a mouthful of pizza, “Oh no, I can’t believe I’m eating this in front of you. I am so sorry.”

The Grand Fiend was his usual magnanimous self. “I will take your apology, for I am sure that you did something that deserves forgiveness, but I am baffled why your food would cause you to prostrate yourself so.”

I said, “The garlic. The extra garlic. I know you’re not a vampire, but I don’t know how if it affects you and I should have asked.”

The Grand Fiend leaned back, “And how does garlic affect the mighty vampire?”

I knew I was being set up for the fool, but I couldn’t stop. “Uhm. Well it’s anathema to them. They can’t be in the same room as someone who has garlic.”

“It is so good that the old propaganda still has its power. I am relieved that even you, one who is learning the ways of the nether beings, falls for it. Garlic, to ward off vampires. Isn’t that the quaintest thing.”

I put my pizza slice down. “It’s propaganda? So it does nothing to vampires?”

“Of course it does something to vampires, just the same as you. It makes them hungry.” He noticed my confusion and took a breath. “Let me ask you this. Who do you think first said that garlic was protection against vampires?”

He didn’t let me think of an answer before he shouted out, “Vampires. Vampires did it. Now, you ordered your pizza with extra garlic, because you love the taste of it. Vampires love their food, also spiced the same way. They like to bite into flesh that has the odor of garlic. So how do they make sure their meals are well-seasoned? Why eat people who wear garlands of garlic around their necks. How do you get the livestock to wear such ungainly necklaces? Why, spread the rumor that garlic will keep the creatures at bay. It’s brilliant marketing. The humans feel more secure, and the vampires get tastier feasts.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “So all vampires love garlic that much?”

“Oh no, please don’t let me mislead you. They just don’t want bland food. Who does? There is a reason the folklore mentions a variety of herbs used to ward off vampires, because different vampires have different preferences. Some vampires spread the rumor that rosemary kept the bloodsuckers off, but they did that only because that was their favorite herb. You’ve heard of rosemary chicken? This is rosemary peasant.

“I know of one vampire that traveled through the countryside spreading different pieces of advice to each of the villages he entered. One village, he told them to use a poultice of thyme and sage, another was told to use garlic and another still to bathe in water and rosehips. He did this because on the evenings he wanted a garlicky dinner, he hunted in that village. If he wanted tender sweet meat, he preyed upon the village of the rosehips. The whole countryside was his spice rack.

“That’s the way to be. To create a variety of choices so that you will never be bored. If you have the same thing every day, dressed in the same manner, then you are nothing but old clothes and over boiled roasts. Live life with some fire, some taste.”

I felt excited about what he said, but I didn’t want anymore pizza. The Grand Fiend must have thought similarly, because he looked at the Presbyterian Feet he was gnawing on and sighed. “Yes, one must not be stuck in a rut. Let’s have a merry hunt. Shall we partake in a few pints of ice cream?”

And that is what we did. I got Rocky Road, and the Grand Fiend splurged on a large tub of Butter Blood-Clot Ripple.


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Author: Miles Gough

Contributor: Robin Wyatt Dunn

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I believe in the future.  I believe in the future.  I believe I do good for my children’s future, come what may to this old Rome of ours, I believe in the Information State.

“What’s that, Dad?”

“That, daughter, is Yankee Stadium.”

I am only a product of the Enlightenment;  so are you.  Knowledge ceased to be occult back around 1700;  that which God had hidden became only temporarily obscured, awaiting the righteous tools of men.

“Who is that, Daddy?”

“That’s who we’re looking for, honey.”

A pretty blonde.

“She’s pretty, Daddy.”

“Yes, she is, honey.  And she’s bad.”

“She’s bad?”

I see if we can get a third confirmation on the iris scan:  Interpol comes through at last;  they only have half our processor chains.

“Yes, she is, honey.  Very bad.”

Another home grown terrorist, reading Marx, Engels and Khalil Gibran in paper format, dropping off the grid for extralegal periods of time, and returning to us changed, made cancerous, filled with knowledge that has no place in civilian minds.

I press a key and she is bound for Kiev on a windowless night flight:  if she does get out of there, it will be as a corpse.

“You see, honey, I can make people disappear.”

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Eight years later

History is so funny.  What is sweeter than forgetting, once you reach a certain age?  

There’s always another Holocaust.  We need it, child.  We like the blood on our hands.  It fulfills some unspeakable desire.  I, who knew your eye color and your DNA and your loves and handwriting curves, I, who knew which way your dick slanted, I who knew your face in a thousand different angles, I have finally fucked myself.

And you will too, goddamn you.  What are you being trained to expect?  What do you really hope to get out of this?  You goddamned fool.  Go ahead, read.  Read, goddamn you.  

In the beginning was the whirl.  The whirl of your desire.  Entertainment.

Entertainment, child.  Entertainment, dear heart.  Entertainment, rube.  Suck that pallor off your face, reader.

Entertainment:  a containment field!  The splendor of a child’s sigh!  The curve of her thigh!  The ecstasy of these long nights!  Have you never stood on stage and felt that ancient and abiding need out there past the lights?  

Stories don’t have beginnings, middles and ends, you see.  You think Aristotle was some god?  You think he was like Jesus, shooting fire from his fingertips?  

No, stories just have necessary and unnecessary parts.  My daughter is dead, you see, I killed her.  Not with my own hands, you understand.  I didn’t do enough for her.  

I was a biometric scanner.  I was innocent enough to be surprised that the bosses were granted a free pass.  They didn’t need to be fit into the databases.

And so I found myself here in this garbage alley.  Happier, in a way, though the happiness of sleeping outdoors in a city is the strangest thing.  You’re raw, you know, rubbed down hard, and every little voice and every little breeze fills you to the brim with life, fit to burst, you can hardly take it.  It’s why we take to talking to ourselves out here.

My daughter, what happened to her?  I don’t know, to tell you the truth.  I assume she’s dead by now.  Dead to me, certainly.

It was such a nice simple story, you know?  An empire of surveillance, and an end to violence.  An end to fear.  And we all go to bed with smiles on our faces.

You know what I mean:  see how nice and Aristotelian it is?  Step 1:  identify the problem.  Step 2:  brainstorm solutions and settle on the favorite solution.  Step 3:  implement the solution.  

Why do you always need it so nice and simple?  More important, why did I?

I suppose I have to tell you this part:  you’re like me, I know.  We think simplicity has the ring of truth, that it reveals the structure of our lives, but the truth is it usually conceals.  It covers up inconvenient details;  it stifles debate.  In a fight-or-flight live-or-die world, subtlety and complexity become indulgences, rarely afforded.  

But that isn’t all of it, is it?  You want to be justified.  It isn’t enough that your desire for the predigested and the canonical reflects some ancient neurochemical habits;  you want to make aesthetic claims, like Aristotle, moral claims, even.  If it bleeds, it leads.  Elect the taller man.  If it doesn’t make sense in the first five seconds, delete it.  Why worry your pretty little head over entertainment?  You paid good money for it.

My job, as a kind of government storyteller, a weaver of details, was to coat you in the veneer of safety like a good Hallmark card, to sing you a little lullaby.  

Aren’t you better than that?  Can’t you be better than that?

Do you always insist that the good guy wear the white hat, and the villain the black?  Must I give you only the same images and sounds you’ve encountered a dozen times before, superficially rearranged?  

You are dying you see;  me, I was reborn.  

Listen, child, it’s not so hard.  It’s about attention.  What is the nature of attention?  When you attend?  When you open wide your eyes?  Wonder, or affliction?  If you wait, the gnome and the angel return, you see, the random curves into order, and it is an order that you make, you see, child, it is made together.  And that is what we forget always.  Always we forget it because creation, like birth, is the most painful.  To bring into being.  That which is always easiest as a child becomes so hard later.

Let me remind you:  when your Daddy told you you could be whoever you wanted, he wasn’t lying.

Who do you want us to be now?  And ask yourself:  how did I get this transmission to you?

Your cursor is blinking.    

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Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park. He is 33 years old.

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Author: Robin Wyatt Dunn

Contributor: Caitlin Hoffman

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There are times one must go mad. If not to protect, then to ascend. If not to ascend, then to revert.
We were all mad in our mothers’ bellies, just as they were mad in their own. Were we all to be sucked back up into the vaginas of our predecessors, everyone would agree with me.
Cuts must occur, if only to tie oneself back to society. The same goes for abuse and bloodshed, poetry and.
Dream-drenched graveyards.


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Caitlin writes books nobody reads. She's bad at writing bios.

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Author: Caitlin Hoffman

Contributor: Brent Rankin

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Hey, like I was sitting at this bus stop, waiting for the Number Seven, when Jesus Christ sat down beside me and asked for a cigarette. I only had a doobie. Of course I gave it to him. I mean, the Son of God and all that. How do you say no?

He was wearing flip-flop sandals, worn out jeans, and a teeshirt with a majajuana leaf silkscreened on the front. He had the long hair, beard, and all.

“Are you…?”

“Yeah, yeah. Yeah,” he said. The questioned annoyed him. “What? You think I’m Windall Wilke?”

“Who’s Windall Wilke?”

“I don’t know. I just like the sound of the name. Kinda flows.”

He fired up the smoke, sucked a long drag, exhaled, and sighed. “Damn, that’s good,” he said and then, “Bet you got a few questions, uh?” He sucked in more smoke.

“I guess. Are you really Him?”

“What? Flowing white robes, halo? Scabby hands and feet? That is so yesterday, man.” He sucked on the roach and blew the smoke out of his nose.

Before I could asked the Savior a question, He said, “I’m no magical Genie. I don’t grant wishes. I can’t change the past or the future, if there ever was one. Dad saw to that,” he sucked on the doobie, “Didn’t know Moses. And get over this,” as he blew the smoke out, “I never slept with Mary! Where do you dudes come up with this crap?”

“I wasn’t going to ask that,” I said.

“All right, then,” he finished the last suck on the roach and dropped it. He crushed it under his foot. He said, “Hey, I did bring that old man back from the dead. Cool! Turned water into wine…very cool.”

I’ll go along. “Okay,” I said, “when will the world end?” I shoved my tongue into my cheek.

He ground the roach deeper into the concrete and shrugged, “Yeah. Funny you would ask that. In a few hours.”

“What? Are you for real?”

“Ain’t my fault,” Jesus said. “Hey, you people forgot about me. Everything I did, I did for you guys. Mankind. No one cares anymore. So the old Man sent me here to let you know. It’s over, man. Fire from the sky, dude…fire.”

“Like in the Bible.” This guy’s a nut case.

“I didn’t write that! Dad did. And, yeah, man. Kapoof!!” He held up his fingers and wiggled them, “Fire, baby. Just letting you know.” Then he said, “Well, gotta go now. Don’t care to be around for the bar-be-que. You know what I mean?” H winked at me, stood up, and said, “Hey, thanks for the smoke.” He walked away.

I sucked my tongue out of my cheek and when I looked, Jesus was gone. And I missed my bus.

Takes all kinds. At least he wasn’t parading a sign: “The End is Near.” Or, standing on a soapbox.

Yes, sir. It takes all kinds. You know, Windell Wilke does roll of the tongue, sort of.

Hey, do those clouds look funny to you?


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Having published the e-novella "The fisher man" on Amazon and Booktango, I'm experimenting with flash fiction. I'm finding it exciting. So much to say so briefly.

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Author: Brent Rankin

Contributor: Sean Crose

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Back in '95 I was really into the postimpressionists. Van Gogh and Gauguin were my favorites. I'd watch the Altman film, Vincent and Theo late at night by myself in my parent's den while getting loaded on beer, taking time every few minutes to step out on the back porch to smoke a cigarette and reflect. Those were the times. Art was important. Life was a mysterious, golden gift from God.
I had a girlfriend at the time named Gretchen who lived up in Western Massachusetts, by the Vermont border. On the weekends I'd ride up the to see her and on the ride back home I'd check out the fields and hills around the areas of Sunderland and Amherst and marvel at the colors. Everything looked almost purple or blush – just like in the Gauguin paintings of Tahiti.
I'm not sure whether the fields and hills really looked that way or I just wanted them to. After all, the fields and hills of Tahiti probably didn't look much like Gauguin had painted them. To the post impressionists, perception was everything and I was following their lead, perceiving life as I wished it to be rather than as it really was.
Perhaps that's why I resented the fact that I lived in Waterbury so much. It was hard to perceive life in Waterbury being anything other than what it was. There were no great natural scenes that Gauguin or van Gogh would ever be interested in.
Also, it's hard to perceive yourself as a starving artist when you're trapped working part time in a busy supermarket. Gauguin and van Gogh would never work in a place like that. They would literally starve first.
As time went on I began to realize I really wasn't much like van Gogh or Gauguin. They were the real thing, starving artists. I was merely a writer who struggled under the burden of unconventional normality. To this day I'm not sure whether they had it right or I did.
I'm glad, though, that I'm not van Gogh or Gauguin. I'm not going to cut my ear off, after all, and there's no way I'm going to die from syphilis in a hut in the South Seas.


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My name's Sean Crose. My writing has appeared in such publications as "Crack the Spine," "The Copperfield Review," Six Tales," "Fiction365," and "Breakwater." I live with my wife, Jen, and Cody, the world's greatest cat.

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Author: Sean Crose

Contributor: Mike Wiley

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My grandmother hated spiders. “Never turn your back on one that’s alive,” she said to me. “And not even when you think its dead.”

I’m not sure what they ever did to her.

Despite her warnings and condemnations, I grew up more or less indifferent towards the arachnid community. I guess you could say I even had one as a pet through my first year of college.

A tree-horned daddy long leg had made a home behind one of my stereo speakers. It didn’t bother me, and I didn’t bother it. The thing even seemed to like most of my music. The harder, the better. If I played Slayer or The Dillinger Escape Plan, it would come out from behind the speaker and do a little bobbing, swaying motion. Nothing fancy. It’s not like it was a goddamn tap dancer; just a spider. Though I think it really liked The Refused, because it would actually change colors when I played that. During the buildup to New Noise it would sort of tremble, weak at all eight knees. Then when the lyrics came (Can I scream? Yeah!) it would burst into a bright red, like a clown’s false nose, one leg pumping up like a fist. I would have said it was amazing, except that I had seen a leopard gecko do a similar trick a few years back.

It was still living there in the dorm room the day I moved out. On that day, as I was packing, its body turned blue.

That part of the story took place on the west coast of the United States of America. About six years later, I found myself living on the east coast. Brooklyn, as it were. I had a career, a wife, and had more or less forgotten about Dave (Dave is what I had named the spider, by the way). Only occasionally during those dull cocktail conversations where one is pressured to produce a story that makes you appear interesting did Dave ever make an appearance in spirit.

Well, one night I came home after heavy drinking and a ton of head banging to find my wife, Emily, duct-taped to a chair in the living room. Her mouth was gagged with a gym sock and she had a black eye. The Refused was playing on a stereo in the bedroom. I knew right away that I hadn’t stumbled into a kinky love affair because the men my wife typically had affairs with all listened to pansy music.

I don’t know how he did it, but Dave had found me and he wasn’t looking to make friends.

Tears streamed down Emily’s face. Because she couldn’t talk, she gestured wildly with her eyes, indicating the bedroom door, which was neither closed nor open. It was ajar.

I crept up to the bedroom door. A red light emanated from the room that glowed like camp-fire coals. Suddenly, a large shadow passed before the open space and the light went out. I kicked open the door and immediately received a blow to the face. I fell on my back. Just like that, Dave was on top of me, spider fangs hovering inches above my face. A drop of frothy venom fell from one of the fangs and caught my ear. It smoked and burned like acid. The smell was horrible.

Normally I can hold my own in a fight, but you’l have to give me some credit here. Dave had one arm or leg for each one of my limbs, plus four extra. You try taking on the Lord Vishnu in hand-to-hand combat.

“What do you want?” I screamed.

“You left me and have taken up with this whore!” Dave said. Each of his four free arms delivering devastating blows to my face and torso. It was a flurry of hairy, glowing red arms and legs.

“Dave! Please stop!” I begged.

“Stop calling me ‘Dave’!” it said. “My name is Margaret and I love you. You left me behind like so much trash all those years ago.”

I stopped fighting.

Turns out ‘Dave’ was a female the whole time. And she had the hots for me. As soon as I found out the truth, I had a break down. I started sobbing.

Margaret gave up the fight too. Her body turned from red back to it normal, doo doo brown color and she fell onto her back by my side. I couldn’t stop crying.

“I love you too, Margaret!” I blubbered. We were both crying.

Just then, I heard a slow creaking sound as my wife tipped her chair over onto the spider, crushing it to death. The gag fell from her mouth.

“What is wrong with you?” she said. “That spider just invaded our home and beat the crap out of both of us. Untie me from this chair so I can leave you.”

So, to answer your question, that’s pretty much how I ended up homeless and begging for spare change outside this here liquor store. Now let me ask you a question. You gonna finish that sandwich?


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Mike Wiley is an active author and musician residing in Brooklyn, NY. He can be reached at rosebombsexplode.com.

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Author: Mike Wiley

Contributor: Mike Putnam

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The Taylor Triplets. The unvanquished juniors at our public ivy. Blonde, from one of the richer suburbs outside of Columbus with an Irish city's name. We had an entry for them, but it was a blank page once clicked. A member of ours had been on the case of the dyed-brown-one since fall of their sophomore year to no avail. Glasses-clad had a boyfriend going to OSU from another one of the 270 loop suburbs, or so we had heard. Intel was understandably weak due to the majority of the female student body knowing about our database. Someone once tried to tag all three of them under the TBSD (Taken But Still Down) category but it was removed from their page the next day after more than a thousand down-votes and hundreds of heated comments. Many of those comments about how, regardless of the validity of the statement, you couldn't tag three people to a lifestyle choice one of them allegedly practiced. That was just laziness, which few stood for in our community. So the hunt continued, for merely a scrap of credible information on any of them. Was one into DP? Or another into group scenarios? What about being filmed? Were they adventurous with their lovemaking? Did they have a strong stand on the whereabouts of the orgasms' final location? What semesters (and/or seasons) were they most active? There were currently two hundred and fifty-six possible tags that could be attached to a girl (or girls), giving perspective suitors an idea of what they could potentially try. No one had even posted drink advice or music interests for any of them. They were brick walls even at their drunkest and none left without all being accounted for. Much sleep and even more money had been lost trying to crack the code of the Triplets. Unfortunately, the entry between Rebecca Tanner and Jessica Turner was a total joke to all looking for advice.


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Mike Putnam is a writer currently living in Ohio. He considers himself a curious spirit.

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Author: Mike Putnam

Contributor: Nicole St.Onge

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I sat outside the house, as I had been for several days now, reminiscing the time that I had spent silently hiding among the grass in a sprawling field. I remembered watching as they came, creatures in pairs and groups, sauntering along and stopping occasionally to pick up and observe my companions with eager eyes. If one was not satisfactory, he would be dropped back onto the ground carelessly, and the creatures would continue on, leaving us glad that we had survived another day. After a good time of evading the eye of the creatures and hoping that I wouldn’t be the one to be taken next, it was to my dismay that I was selected by a group of takers.

Upon my arrival to their small dwelling, I was set on a table beside a few of my new acquaintances. We were terrified and curious as to what our fates would be, and we didn’t have to wait long before we found out. The young lad on my right was chosen as the creatures’ first sacrifice, and the rest of us were forced to watch in horror as the proceedings ensued. A knife shifted into our view, and we were shocked as one of the creatures dug the blade crudely into the top of our poor friend’s head and began to cut around its perimeter. After the larger creature had separated one part from the bottom, several of its smaller offspring dug in, tearing out his innards and dropping them into a bowl with a sickening splat. Following the gutting of our poor companion, we found ourselves looking on and holding our breath as the larger creature stepped in once again, this time slicing a grotesque image into his front side as the younger ones cheered in sick excitement.

I watched as the horror continued on each time until finally, it was my turn to endure the damage. I had heard of these acts of insidious destruction before and had nightmares about the subject; families being separated, children and their parents being forced to stomach the inevitable torture that would occur, all the while knowing that they would never see their loved ones again. I never once thought it would happen to me; I was so young-I didn’t deserve to have my once peaceful life in that field end in such a gruesome and untimely way!
~
I woke up in a daze and eventually became aware of the steady warmth that was burning inside me. I felt no pain, just the brisk wind of the fall that I had come to know and love on so many autumn nights. Then I heard voices emerge from several of the small creatures as they walked down a path beside their fellow traveler;

"Come on, Dad! Hurry up!"

"It’s time to go trick-or-treating!"

"The other kids will love our jack-o-lanterns when they come!"


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Author: Nicole St.Onge

Contributor: Eric Suhem

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Sally looked at the pile of lima beans on her plate. “I don’t like this food, why do I have to eat it?”

“Be quiet and eat your lima beans, or you’ll go to your room.” said her mother.

At the bean conference in Lima, Ohio, on a small table, in the middle of the auditorium, under harsh white light, sat a single lima bean. “We all must eat the town bean,” was the general agreement voiced.

 “But I don’t want to!” responded a small child’s voice, to which the instant response was to remove the youngster from the room.

There was an argument in the auditorium about the origins of the lima bean. “The lima bean’s origins are in Lima, Peru,” correctly asserted a woman in a pea-green sundress, and there were roars of agreement throughout the auditorium.

A man in a severe yellow suit disagreed, arguing that the bean either came into existence in Lima, Ohio, or that the lima bean’s beginnings were somehow linked to former pro golfer Tony Lima (one of only 3 two-time winners of the Buick Open). There was some murmuring in the room about the Tony Lima theory when the yellow-suited man asked, “But what about the kumquats?” followed in response by a thunderous ovation.

A steaming vat of lima beans was wheeled into the auditorium, and all participants consumed one bean apiece. “Will this help resolve the disagreement about the lima bean?” the leader of the bean conference asked the briefly munching throng.

The answer was a resounding “No!” as eating this bean with broad pods seemed to put each person into an even fouler mood, and the debate about the lima bean became more rancorous and unproductive.

The man in the severe yellow suit arose once again and announced, “I am one of the kumquat people!” Half the auditorium roared cheers, joining the man in a chant of “We are the kumquat people!”

The other half of those in the auditorium yelled in response, “We are the bean people!”

“Why didn’t you buy the lima beans at the discount mart instead of that strange health food emporium?” asked Sally’s mother.

Sally’s father took a deep breath and loosened his yellow tie, saying, “The discount mart didn’t have the kumquats I like, but that ‘strange’ health food emporium did.”

The bean people came from pods, but that was their only ‘abnormality’. In every other aspect, they were exemplary citizens, living life on the low burner of the universal gas stove. Some had been through tumultuous incarnations, and were now ready for peaceful conformity, forming the rules that would be the bedrock of their bean-oriented society.

The kumquat people had been crawling from their caves for centuries, agitating the bean people. “We bring revolution!” the kumquat people would always scream, thumping their golden orange citrus tomes.

The bean people countered, “We shall slay you and your heretical ideas!” while fist-pounding their corresponding legume scriptures.

Sally’s mother rolled her eyes. “You know we need to save money, Sally needs new clothes for school. Why can’t you be responsible? Am I the only adult here?”

“I’m going to buy more kumquats tomorrow!” yelled Sally’s father.

The man in the severe yellow suit arose once again and announced, “I believe that no resolution will be met at this time about the origin of the lima bean, nor about the merits of lima beans vs. kumquats. In fact, there seemed to be no discord at all until that little child refused to eat the town bean, and had to be removed from the room. That’s when the trouble started!” He looked to the nearby woman in a pea-green dress with sensible shoes, and she nodded her slight approval, eliciting his relieved sigh.

There was a roar of agreement. “Yes, it’s the child’s fault that we disagree! Destroy the child!”

“Well Sally, that’s a nice little story about kumquat and bean people, but you still can’t have any kumquats until you finish the lima beans,” said her mother. Sally scowled at her plate, and her parents resumed arguing.

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Eric Suhem dwells in office cubicles and ocean waves. His book 'Dark Vegetables' can be found in the orange hallway (www.orangehallway.com)

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Author: Eric Suhem

Contributor: Chris Rhatigan

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I drive on the interstate.

Things are very loud.

It is like the car is a noise-absorbing box.

I cover my ears.

The car veers toward the guard rail.

I uncover my ears.

The car no longer veers toward the guard rail.

I do not feel comfortable in the right lane.

I move to the left lane.

The left lane is uncomfortable too.

I see a bright, colorful sign for a gas station.

This seems right.

The gas station sign should be here.

The gas station sign belongs.

I need to go to the gas station due to my desire to go there, so I cut off a pickup truck. The driver yells obscenities.

Maybe they were not obscenities. I could not really hear him. I am driving on the interstate. As I may or may not have mentioned. And things are loud.

As I may have mentioned.

I leave my car running and enter the store. I select a sixteen-ounce cup of coffee. I add three sugars and no milk. I select a shrink-wrapped snack cake.

There are three people in line ahead of me.

I sip my coffee.

I want to eat the snack cake now, but I think (know) people will judge me for it.

“Why is he eating that snack cake? He has not purchased it yet. That is not his snack cake. Why can he not wait until he has paid for it? If everyone acted like him, what kind of society would we have? We would not be able to trust anyone. Everyone would go around eating their snack cakes prior to paying for them. This would lead to chaos.”

But why does the logic of the snack cake not apply to the coffee? Even though you have not paid for either, it is acceptable to drink the coffee, but not to eat the snack cake.

This is what I question.

I pay the three dollars and eighty-seven cents for my coffee and snack cake.

The clerk wears a hat advertising a mustache.

He also has a mustache.

The mustache is not special in any way. It is not a handlebar mustache or a pencil line mustache or a Tom Selleck mustache. It is just a mustache.

The mustache should be here.

The mustache belongs.

The clerk moves his finger in circular motion. He pokes a hole in the circle, obscenely. This display makes me think of the word serious.

He says, “You’re liable to land yourself a parking ticket, you keep messing around like that.”

I say, “What do you mean?”

He juts his mustache at me. The hat’s mustache is also jutted at me. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I do not.”

“Well, you’ll find out soon enough, partner.”

“Why are you calling me partner? We do not have a partnership. Unless I am unaware of our partnership.”

“That is true. We don’t have a partnership. Not legally, at least.” He smiles. “But I know a guy who knows a guy.”

I open the doors. It is raining.

I have nothing to cover my head with.

I consider buying a newspaper, but I hate newspapers. They depress me. Not the stories in the newspaper, but the ink. The ink is, at this moment, the most awful thing I can think of. The way it is on the page. This is truly offensive.

Maybe I could pay the clerk for his mustache and cover my head with that.

I would like a mustache.

A mustache says, “Authority over facial hair.”

There is an enormous stack of parking tickets on my car jammed between the windshield wipers and the windshield. The rain is making them wet.

The tickets are written in crayon for various amounts.

The first one is for thirty-two cents.

I can pay that.

I think.

The next one is for fifteen thousand dollars.

I cannot pay that.

I think.

I will have to get out a loan from a bank. I will use the clerk’s mustache as collateral. They will say “How can you afford to pay this loan?” and I will pull the mustache out of my pocket and they will say “Oh. I’m sorry, sir. I will fill out all of the necessary paper work.”

I sit on the hood of my car.

I eat my snack cake and drink my coffee. The rain makes me wet. This makes me think of the word dog.

I am not going to let these parking tickets make me depressed.

I wonder if I will get another parking ticket.

It would stand to reason that I would get another parking ticket.

Although I know there is a flaw in my logic.

The wind sweeps parking tickets away and they swirl around me like dragonflies.

Magical.

I drive on the interstate. The parking tickets swirl around me like bumble bees.

Threatening.

But they do not strike.

They must be biding their time. Waiting until my guard is down. Then they will devour the supple flesh around my rib cage and between my toes.

Three weeks later, I receive a letter from the gas station. They apologize for the inconvenience. (No problem!) The parking tickets were issued by a rogue force who has since been terminated. (Phew!) They would like to offer free snack cakes and coffee to anyone who suffered mental duress due to the errant parking tickets. (Compensation!)

My return to the gas station is triumphant.

I eat two snack cakes and drink two cups of coffee, making the whole world seem excellent, I should be here, I belong, there is no question about that.

The clerk stares at me.

He pets his mustache, maintains his stare.

Authority.

Maybe I should have paid the parking tickets.

- - -
Chris Rhatigan is the editor of All Due Respect and the co-editor of the anthologies Pulp Ink and Pulp Ink 2. He has published more than 30 short stories in venues like Needle, Pulp Modern, Shotgun Honey, and Beat to a Pulp. He reviews short fiction at his blog, Death by Killing.

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Author: Chris Rhatigan