Why polite conversations should never deviate from the weather.

By Ross Levere

Dinner parties, as we all know, are sophisticated evenings where etiquette and class override our basic desire for a meal in front of the television. Style magazines inform us the preparation for such an evening can be almost effortless should you choose the correct avenues and that, as always, appearance is paramount. Those wishing to make an impression are encouraged by classy TV chefs to indulge their guests with exotic cuisine and the more confusing the cutlery the greater the achievement. Wine is no longer a simple question of red or white, today we are bombarded with information regarding regions and grapes which cannot simply be over looked by the appeal of supermarket discounts. New outfits are a necessity; to wear something one has worn before just won’t do, that is, whilst fashion is too fickle an acquaintance to try and embrace. Yet despite such an abundance of horrors it is to the dinner party that people stay faithful, the reason being that a good one is not easily forgotten. The fortunes of many a millionaire having at some point been dependant on whether it was best for scented or natural wax candles. Regardless of suitability for the job, it was table manners rather than experience which caught many a powerful eye in the corporate world.

With this in mind Kate stood nervously peering through the already greasy window of her new oven door at the pink chicken entombed within which would never be ready by 8 o’clock. Her guests, by now on their way, would have to wait, their patience paid in full with a generous offer of extra wine purloined from her husbands personal collection. Having been married for 5 years Jim and Kate knew each others quirks rather well and in an emergency such as this Jim would always bury his resentment and offer up the cheapest bottle for consumption. This occasion however was rather more crucial than inviting over old friends, tonight it would have to be something spectacular, a wine of immense superiority. With Kate having toiled for three years in a job she loathed tonight was the opportunity for promotion, no more early mornings and late nights should three simple courses convince the man in a suit. So it was that Jim picked out a particular favourite he had intended to save for a more guaranteed celebration, an Italian red which had been with him for almost as long as his wife. But having never tried it before there was always the possibility that it wouldn’t appeal to him anyway and so it made sense to impress these people with the name and hope for the best.

Luckily for both Jim and Kate their guests were delayed, giving time for the wine to breathe, the chicken to cook and Kate to re-apply her makeup. In the dinner party circle punctuality is crucial, should one be late it implies tardiness and can lead to the cancellation of the highly coveted cheeseboard. Fully aware of this Kate felt it best to wave such trivialities and assign their lateness to traffic which no individual has the power to control. By 9 o’clock everyone had assumed their seat having made their apologies and offered their assistance. The wine turned out to be rather pleasant which caused Jim some discomfort at the fact that he’d now nothing more than an empty bottle for his years of patience.

Triplicate

by Momar Van Der Camp

Triple the weight. Triple the score. He opened the vein. The blood rained down. In triple.

Make everything in triplicate. Every day he heard the same thing. Copy and paste. Triplicate. Copy and paste. Triplicate. Copy and paste. Triplicate. But what happens when you triplicate and triplicate and triplicate to the point where you've made nine of the same thing? Does your life then cease to matter?

Add more weight. Tally it up. Step to the edge.

He walked into the office that morning with the same notion in his mind. Triplicate. Triplicate. Triplicate. He was a god to those papers. He could create. He could destroy. He would destroy. He would destroy something. For the last 10 years, triplicate triplicate triplicate. He'd had enough.

Tie the weight to your ankles. Take a deep breath. One more step and it's over.

To the roof. He made it to the stairwell with no one noticing the heavy blocks he carried with him. The thick rope. The black sheath on the cold stainless steel blade. His clothes not even pressed for the day. Everyone he stepped by made the same motion: triplicate, triplicate, triplicate. Copy paste triplicate.

Another world, another dimension, at the same moment someone else was doing the same thing. Cutting the vein. Making their way to the edge. Changing the world.

He would wake someone up.

He took one more step as it dripped dripped dripped down his arm. Across space, another young man took the same step. And he fell. And in another world, in another dimension, he fell.

His life would end that day. And so would his. And his.

I Know

by Hannibal Tabu (bio on Chores)

There's no telling how long Deborah sat staring at the screen, reading and re-reading those same eight words. As far as blog posts go, this was terribly short -- more like one of those microbursts people posted on sites like Twitter or Jaiku. But here it was, Friday afternoon with Deborah checking MySpace for interesting bulletins or messages before she made some weekend plans, finding a blog from Fred posted that same morning with two simple sentences.

I know. I've known for a long time.

The "mood" indicator was set to "betrayed" and the blog's title was "You don't know me." "Friends" by Jody Watley featuring Rakim was listed as the music this blog was written to.

Deborah sat back in her Aeron chair, worry settling in on her like a blanket draped over a sleeping child.

It might be nothing, she rationalized. It probably doesn't even have anything to do with me. Fred ran with some sketchy characters, like that ersatz Nation of Islam pretender Khalid. No telling who or what inspired this succinct, cryptic declaration.

Fred's blog was well known amongst his keyed-in associates for its in-depth confessionals, being specific about events if not about names, often providing descriptive pseudonyms to indicate who the people really were or at least what he thought of them. It wasn't hard for most of their friends to figure out that Deborah was "Angel" based on the story about that day at Reggae Fest alone.

But this ... this was unusual. Fred's shortest blogs still always required you to scroll down at least once, even on big monitors. Even his text messages always overran the 160-character requirement, coming into her Blackberry in fractured installments.

Biting her lip, she glanced at her inbox. Nothing from Fred, just the normal chatter from national and some FYIs from Strategic Marketing that she could just as easily delete as file. The computer's clock dutifully told her it was 3:16 PM. If she followed her normal Friday night routine, that meant ending up at The Magic Carpet on Crenshaw, Deborah would surely see him there, pool cue in hand, nodding his dreadlocked head to whatever was bumping from the jukebox. Could he really know about that? she asked herself, imagining his normal one-armed embrace suddenly as stilted as when he saw Lakeshia in the dusty paths near the food court of the African Marketplace.

The sudden vibration of her Blackberry took her by surprise, and she audibly "eeped" when it started moving across the surface of her desk calendar. She reached over for it and blanched when she saw Fred's number, the smartphone's insistence to be answered or silenced.

F***, could he have found out? she wondered, considering the dilemma. I thought ... sh** ...

She sucked in a deep breath, her modest breasts rising in her white Donna Karan blouse and pressed the key to take the call.

Breathlessly, she said, "Hello?"

5 Years

by Momar Van Der Camp

5 years

5 years. He keeps telling himself 5 years. It’s been 5 years. Since it all started. Since it all vanished. Since the last heavy rains washed away his sins.

5 years.

He stood outside the home of the victim once more, retracing his steps again. Rain was heavy. Rain was pelting down all around him. Washing away the sins once more.

But they stayed in his eyes. Desperation and glee that the case had never been solved. A family sat behind sheer drapes discussing how their day would go, only a member was missing.

He had taken her from them. And he had vanished. But 5 years is a long time. A lot of people get nostalgic. A lot of people want to rehash the past and recreate the same scene again so the exhilaration comes back.

And he knows the rain will wash his sins away once more. Just like they always do. He rifles through his pockets and begins his ascent up the stairs to their front entrance.

Chickens

by Garret Tufte

A long, long time ago, I worked at a chicken factory. We pumped out chickens by the crate-full. Incredible work of engineering, really. They worked on it for years, and it got done, I was first in line. They said you had to have a degree, the tiniest bit of science understandin’ to show you were more than a bum off the street. Course I barely finished high school, as it was called in them days. Still, they took me in, cleaned me up, trained me down, and put me in the driver’s seat of that darn factory.

Work was exciting, not because I really had anything to do, but ‘cuz I got to watch the magic, every day. The factory was split into input, manufact, and output. I was right in the middle. I took watch over the processor. The chick-e-mater, we called it. Standin’ fifty-foot high and a football field long. I could see the damn thing one side to the other. Course I had screens to give me a good look at the specifics. The sludge comin’ in from the input line, scooped out of the trains bringin’ it in. Anythin’ organic, scraped off the bottom barrel. Water tubes comin’ alongside. It all spilled into the vat, a funnel-lookin’ thing, takin’ it all in.

Then, well, I don’t know what. Two-hundred foot of black machinery, steam pots, tubes pumpin’ jelly, whirly-birds, and god-knows. It all ended with a spit chute pointin’ up, and guess what come out: chickens! Every two seconds a chicken would come poppin’ out, cluckin’ and flappin’ to beat hell. He’d shoot ‘em to a big steel cage, openin’ when the time was right, and crashin’ back together. Them birds would sometimes try flyin’ out at the last minute, but that gate would come squashin’ down on ‘em. Ha, me and the boys would laugh: them chickens was born sooner than yesterday, and they try to outsmart us! Damn dumb birds.

I watched that sludge and them chickens for fifteen years. Didn’t get no pension though. Factory closed when they came in with talk of how “people don’t wanna eat chicken no more” and “too much chicken out there already”. Bunch of Ivy-league bullcock if you ask me.

Now? Well I been doin’ pretty well for myself. Wife and kids took off to do whatever they’re doin’. Ain’t seen ‘em in few years now. But I been takin’ to these new incentives they got for them surveys. And get this, all I gotta do is watch the tee-vee here and tell ‘em what I think. Easiest job a bro ever did know...

Wormrobinsquirrel

by Garret Tufte, who has a degree in Creative Writing (and traditional literature as well, but apparently the jackasses won’t let you get 2 English degrees) and minor in Film. Likes: Eatin’, drinkin’, smokin’, and lookin’ pretty. Dislikes: anything that gets in the way of Likes.

A worm creeps. He stops for a second, lifts his unmistakable head, peers sightless, then creeps further. The ground feels mushy and moist; it is perfectly suited to his homely needs. Not to say that his needs are homely, they are merely needs of the home variety. So he finds his place and excavates a tunnel. So the happy worm did this and did that and la-dee-da all the fuckin’ way home.

You know what happens next? He gets his liver ripped out by a happy little robin, going on his merry way. He brings the liver back to his squawking birdlings, feeds them disgusting regurgitation, feels pride that he’s done his part to perpetuate the species, and gives thanks to holy hell that he ain’t a fuckin’ worm.

But guess what? The robin gets popped in the head by a hypocrite because he done took the worm that’s supposed to aerate the dirt for his fuckin’ azaleas. So the robin drops like a rock, a disgusting mess of a rock, to the bituminous asphalt of a cul-de-sac at the end of Red Bud Lane.

The happy squirrel surveys his winter nut-stash: plenty of black walnuts, obscene amounts of acorns, but only a few pecans. He’s got to have more pecans. I mean, once he gets sick of walnuts, and then sick of acorns, what’s he gonna eat? More walnuts? I don’t fuckin’ think so! So the happy squirrel, after much deliberation, finally decides to head out for more nuts. He pokes his head out of his tree-cranny, checks both ways, and zeeiip!

The happy squirrel deftly maneuvers his body through branches and leaves, crotches and knobs, utilizing the tail-paw coordination perfected over eons. He makes no sound and does not sway the tree. A stone’s throw away, a rabbit farts. They exchange glances and a nod. The happy squirrel hops onto a picket fence and sits up for a cursory survey. Bing! Pecan tree at 10 o’clock. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! he thinks, but he does not lose his head. He keeps an eye out… Man with rifle, 9 o’clock! He panics and bolts. Pow! The gun fires, the squirrel runs, the bloody mess plops, the squirrel slips… and the UPS truck flattens him like a rolling pin.

Silly squirrel, you should have known: a convoluted set of circumstances could lead to your destruction through no fault of your own.

Maternity Mayhem

By Patrick McCormack (Bio on "Choices")

DR. JERRI MACKLIN HAD A DECISION TO MAKE: BEHIND ONE DOOR, A MOTHER GIVING BIRTH; BEHIND THE OTHER, A TICKING TIME BOMB.

Jerri sprang into action with no time to spare. The hospital was evacuated after Dr. Chaos’ bomb was discovered. Who made that maniac Head of Maternity? Jerri wondered. There was no time to lose – that baby was coming, and quick.

“I need you to push,” Jerri said calmly.

“I can’t!” she replied in agony.

“Either you push or we all die!” Jerri shouted.

Painfully the mother pushed, popping the gooey infant into Jerri’s arms in one push.

“He’s out!” Jerri shouted. “Now let’s get outta here!”

Jerri threw a stuffed bunny, Mr. Fluffy, at the window, shattering it. She jumped out, pulling the mother and screaming infant with her. Suddenly the entire hospital erupted into flames.

Lying on the ground Jerri sighed. “Now that’s what I call a distressed birth,” she said grinning.

Drive

by Hannibal Tabu

His foot stayed steady on the criss-cross pattern of the accelerator pedal as his silver Chevrolet Lumina glided purposefully down stretches of pockmarked asphalt. He felt oddly comfortable in the glow of sparse streetlights, the angular surfaces of his face illuminated and darkened like a strobelit wall in some sultry dance hall. The night held him close, like a long lost love.

Where was he going? After 4AM, only illegal speakeasies and private gatherings were still going. Plus, it was Tuesday night, and most of the workaday world had retreated into slumber. Still he drove on in silence, considering.

For the third time he drove past the left turn which would have taken him home, where the spectres of arguments and his wife's indifferent back turned towards him loomed as the most likely scenarios. He'd find his way there before the sun peeked over the edges of palm trees and the normals emerged from their tedium and complicity.

For now, he had the night to hold him like she wouldn't, and the road to keep them company.

Check out the website www.hundredandfour.com to learn something so secret, it has been driving me crazy for a month. Thanks Hannibal. Just gotta wait til Monday now.

Fate?

by Ross Levere

Had John known what was being asked of him on that lonely evening in September 3 years ago he would have run a mile without stopping.
Three years ago John was miserable, sat answering a phone that never stopped ringing from 9 to 5 with only a weekends salvation to recuperate. A weekend spent shopping, paying bills, cleaning, washing, gardening and masturbating, this wasn’t what the brochure had promised him after university. The life we desire, so often gathered from images in the media, is a pale comparison to the one offered by those who allegedly care for our well being. Early aspirations are met with the stark realisation that we have to accept work in a ‘similar’ field to our chosen profession. Being an artist John had once held an ambition to work on graphic novels, to see his art bring to life a world that existed only in those pages. Reality however took away this dream with relish when his mother told him to stop drawing silly pictures and work somewhere with a decent pension. That day saw his favourite dream die as he could no longer envisage himself being questioned by fans eager to bemoan the Hollywood version of his work. He was no longer an artist, no longer destined to marry Milla Jovovich and no longer living with hope in his heart.
It was here that John found himself at the leaving party for a work colleague he barely knew. The inevitable oversized card had been around the office filled with vague and impersonal sentiments scratched into it by people who would struggle to recall him the moment he left that Friday afternoon. A faceless drone in a nest of brainwashed individuals. The drinks after work little more than an excuse to try and make sense of it all by intoxicating the senses with something created in a lab rather than a distillery. For John there was not even the primeval urge of other men eager to try their luck at sleeping with a co-worker on a boozy night out.
Except … Except the woman looking at him from across the room, her green eyes piercing straight though him. That moment frozen in time, impossible to describe but infinitely resonating in his heart. A stranger in which he felt no fear or disgust in imagining a future with - love, sex, even marriage. Everything and nothing making itself clear in an instant.
What was asked of John on that night 3 years ago was never ascertained, whether or not he even spoke to the woman with the green eyes remains a mystery. Some of us run a mile because we’re running from something, it is also true that in running we reach a destination. We see the world through our own eyes make our own decisions and live with the consequences. John made his decision 3 years ago.

Paperwork

by Hannibal Tabu (bio on Chores)

Clearly, there had been some kind of clerical error.

The list was very thorough, and was audited on a monthly basis to make sure that just this sort of thing never happened. There were literally thousands of criteria that got people of every stripe and strata on the list, which had been maintained since before the very first human fingers scrawled crude images on blank surfaces.

But the last department head had gone through a really emotional breakup, and there was that thing that happened at the solstice party, which all left room for errors to be made. That was clearly what had happened, leading to all of the screaming and rubble and ambulances.

Glenn ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair, looked over the file and tried to figure out how to fix things. Rayvon "Lil' Ray" Carver was a self-hating nihilist of the highest order, a seventeen-year-old junior high dropout filled with enough hate and suffering contained in his neurons and dendrites to blot out entire galaxies. The monitor kept chiming with updates and complaints from other departments, looking at probably hundreds of years of cleaning up this mess.

Rayvon Carver had been on the list since the day he saw his elder brother Alvin gunned down in their front yard, Rayvon's sibling's blood splashed across his favorite white Bugle Boy sweatshirt. That was clearly the event that led him to his teenaged pattern of driving around in a dented Oldsmobile Cutlass with his neighbors K-Dog and Voodoo Child, a sawed-off shotgun on his lap and murder dancing in his eyes.

As Glenn reviewed the photos from what was being called "the January event," he remembered the very first and most important directive of the department:

"Some people can never, ever get their wish."

Again

by Hannibal Tabu (Bio on Chores)

Their footsteps stopped suddenly, leaving them staring at one another across the bleak expanse of playground at south Los Angeles' Gompers Middle School. His uniform's white polo shirt felt too restrictive as he watched her budding solar plexus rise and fall anxiously. A kickball fell from her finespun fingers, bouncing disinterestedly away at an oblique angle, a distant shadow from a 767 drifting across its path. One thought held court in each of their minds: "I know you ..."

Carefully, as if they each feared the cracked surface of the ground were incapable of withstanding the weight of their connection, they walked towards one another. He didn't notice the razor thin canvas of his Eastsport backpack fall from his left shoulder, his olive green science book bursting free of the half-closed zipper to land open to the section on geology.

Mere feet from one another, they couldn't find anything to say. The drape of her braids somehow reminded him of oppressively sticky hot air and thick bunches of trees everywhere. His lips, held open as if his mouth couldn't hold in everything he wanted to say, inexplicably brought her lurching thoughts of seasickness and cries of anguish, and fear of never seeing him again.

They stood there, saying nothing, almost shaking with not knowing. This wasn't like the time they bumped into each other on the corner of Lennox and 123rd, him on the way to play at some smoky jazz place with Cab Calloway, her following her husband home after failing to make the landlord see reason, her every possession grasped in one hand. It wasn't even like the time he'd looked up from his Shaolin texts to thank the warlord's daughter for bringing water and staring into these same bright eyes.

Maybe this time they wouldn't run.

Strike

by Ross Levere, a scriptwriter who has had a series of deeply unsatisfying jobs and is currently working for the shoe department in Burtons. He graduated with a degree in Film History and writes because he has to, with a burning desire that won't ever be quenched until his goal has been reached.


Love, it seems, can strike any one of us in the most unlikely of situations. Everyday activities such as shopping, driving or socializing present us with a unique opportunity for that mischievous little sprite known to many as Cupid to strike our emotions with the rather alien emotion of love. Before such an affliction we have only ourselves to think for, our own actions to answer to and the love of our families to strive for. Yet when that perilous archer targets us we lose all sense of direction, life is thrown into disarray and before long we are enamored with someone whom only the year previous had been little more than a stranger. Now it is possible to see the future, marriage, children and old age coupled with a responsibility to long distant grandchildren whose youthful antics remind us both of years then past. In such a state it is common for promises to be made that are rather whimsical, for one does not assertively state that love lasts only until death when it is preferable to imagine a blissful afterlife spent forever in the company of our beloved. The predictions made in times of hardship designed only to calm our imaginations when fortune appears to have left us cold are taken as poison by those impatiently awaiting for this proposed golden age to arrive. Faith, it appears, is everything and nothing when in love and should be eradicated rather than embraced for it is always better to live in a warm house than dreaming of one whilst shivering.

As pure as love can be, whether it be platonic, emotional or with your very soul, there remains always the threat of other people. Those around us who do not understand the love you feel and judge only from outward appearances the actions of those involved. Too often do our friends, families and colleagues inquire as to our very personal relationships before passing comment after hearing but one side of an argument, dispute or proposal. Advice is all too often generic in its intentions, designed to apply to all who seek it rather than the individuals who ask of it. Mothers are tarred with the gifts of flowers, chocolates or bath salts whilst fathers are blessed with tools, alcohol or music popular during their youth. Loved ones are rarely fortunate enough to receive a gift from the heart, a present that will directly pierce their soul and affirm their assertions that you are their one true love.

My advice, when love takes you, accept the inevitable, embrace the future and revel in the present for it is here that we live and breathe. The past serves only to remind us of lessons learned, days well spent and hopes long abandoned. The future is something none of us can know and we must all venture into blindly, even the richest man can become poor and the loneliest man popular, we make it what it is.

Chores

by Hannibal Tabu, urban journalist, jackass, dot-com refugee, ex-husband, karaoke host, film aficionado, Macintosh zealot, published poet and novelist. He is a writer of African descent living in south Los Angeles county and you can find more than you ever wanted to know about him at his website, www.operative.net


We normally blamed clumsiness. The slipperiness of 99-cent-store dishwashing liquid, or fatigue in hands fresh from twelve hour shifts.

Honestly, the dishes were just tired. Too few in number and washed too often, they dreamed of an escape -- any escape, really -- from the endless cycle of hot water and being racked together to dry. The dishes hated the endless chatter about money that wasn't there, the slow singing of mournful songs over wash water, hoping for love that never came.

So we thought that they'd been dropped. They never needed the notoriety of the act, but it was suicide all the same.

Backwards

by Momar Van Der Camp

He killed himself. He went and did something stupid. He wouldn’t. He didn’t. He couldn’t. He went and gave the world a reason to forget about him and move on to bigger and better things that he never could, even though his parents had always wanted him to go onto something bigger and better for himself, something they could be proud of, something like a doctor or lawyer or some other such person who saved lives or healed pain. Some stupid kid who went and did something so incredibly stupid that people wanted to forget about him and all of his troubles and every last word he had ever spoken for the sake of healing themselves in a way that he never could and never even thought to. All it was was some stupid kid. It wasn’t much of anything. But it wasn’t. It could have been any number of things. It could have been a misunderstanding.

Perspective

By Patrick McCormack (Bio on Choices)

The snow was thick on the ground. Weeks of accumulation. It was wearing on us. You can only live, eat and sleep in a frozen foxhole for so long before you get driven mad. So, early one morning I took a walk along the line, alone.

I must’ve gotten turned around and wandered over to their line. What a dumb shit replacement thing to do. I trudged along for a good mile before it dawned on me that I no longer heard English voices through the brush. Then, suddenly, footsteps heard in the distance.

I dropped to one knee and unslung my rifle. I couldn’t pinpoint where the steps were coming from. My eyes searched every direction. Then he appeared. Two steps through the brush and there he was, about 100 yards in front of me. He immediately saw me, his MP-40 sub machine gun pointed right at me.

There was no sound. The snow had stopped falling. I didn’t blink. There wasn’t even a breeze. It was as if the entire world was frozen.

My rifle trained at his chest, finger on the trigger, I saw every detail of his face. Pinhole eyes under that Kraut helmet. The face of born soldier – flat, broad-nosed and huge chin. We stared through each other’s sites for what seemed like days but couldn’t have been more than a few moments. Both of us alone. Wandering. Brought to this frozen hell and looking for a way out, even for just a moment.

Eyes still locked on the German soldier, I lowered my rifle as three consecutive thuds echoed in the sky – mortar fire. I looked up to the gray sky, then back to the German. He was gone. No trace of him. I turned and ran toward the line, holding my helmet on as mortars burst around me. I got to my foxhole, and one year later got home.

I like to think we both had enough of the killing. We both wanted each other to get home.

___________________________________________________________

Out for a smoke away from the others I must’ve gotten lost. We’d been holed up in that shell of a town Bastogne fending off the Americans for months. So I strolled off on my own away from the decay, the noise and the nonsense of this campaign.

Three cigarettes later I heard footsteps in the distance. I tripped the safety on my weapon and took one last drag of my smoke before I tossed it and stepped through the brush ahead. One American soldier knelt down about 100 yards ahead of me.

We both froze. Statues in a museum of war. Rifles trained, waiting to fire.

Three thuds burst in the distance behind me – our mortars. The American looked up and I stepped back into the brush.

I knelt down and inspected the slide on my MP-40. To this day I still don’t know how it jammed and that American got off with his life.

The Diamond Jewel on the Crest of Francois the Giant

by Momar Van Der Camp


You are standing on a circle, or something that may or may not look like a circle. But it really should be a circle. Move left. Or move right. Backwards or forwards. It doesn’t matter, especially if it’s a circle, because it’s a circle. After you leave the circle (which you must, for life in a cycle is a never a cycle), you jump about 30,000 feet in the air to touch a face that isn’t there. Or is it? It might be, who cares? Somehow, something else happens (!) and you manage to place your feet on some kind of platform somewhere. The platforms (as they have now doubled, then tripled, and so on and so forth), shake and tremble, or maybe not, it seems that they do, but that doesn’t really matter. You start to bleed from something that happened earlier 30,000 feet in the air and now your legs dangle under things that are or are not there. The dangling stops you as a giant, who really is a midget wearing pants, or maybe not, stands above you shaking a finger in your face. You were trapped in a circle, which is now a square, and then might turn into a triangle of sorts. It doesn’t matter. You don’t really pay attention to the circle as the cycle continues. Your body starts to crumble and crack into a million tiny little rock-shaped figures that look like dust mites crawling out from under a microscope to rip open a body of bed sheets, or maybe it doesn’t crack and crumble, as then you find your final destination! Or not.

The Killer

By Patrick McCormack (Bio on "Choices")

The first time you kill a man you have to fight every natural instinct not to. You’re trained not to care, regardless how hard. The first one’s the hard one. You shake. Your heart feels like it’ll burst from all the adrenaline pumping through you.

Load up. Pull the trigger. Stab. Pull blade from ear to ear. These are the easiest to learn. What they don’t teach is how to forget his face. How to close your eyes without seeing him.

I’d never met my first mark. Not before that night. All I knew was where he was going to be. Club Zero. He’s there every night chasing tail. There with his wall of hired security. It’s amazing how high-profile Fed security is for witnesses when you pay attention. This guy was about to turn state’s evidence against my employer. That’s why I was there, two tables away. Sweating under the lights. The ice in my drink shaking as I lifted it to my lips. Waiting for the perfect opportunity.

It came.

A man can only drink so much scotch before he has to piss.

After his fourth round I went to the men’s room and waited. I puked twice.

When you shoot someone they don’t die immediately. Sometimes they don’t even fall after the first shot. You could hit them with a double-tap in the sternum - execution style. They’ll freeze; just standing there, staring. The third bullet, the headshot, ends it. I know this because they taught me. A soon-to-be killer.

After an eternity in the stall, waiting, watching the door through the space between the stall door and wall, he walked in. Fly already down. Security didn’t follow him. The room was ours.

I exited the stall when I heard piss hit the urinal. The knife felt cold in my hand. I knew I only had a few seconds before some drunk stumbled in the door. I had to do this quickly.

He was oblivious to everything beyond his own relief. Deaf to my approach out of the stall and behind him.

My knife entered his lung in one stab. Right between the second and third ribs. Silence. It’s impossible to yell with a knife in your lung. The perfect silent kill. He froze except for the piss still flowing. I twisted the knife. My eyes closed. When I opened them I saw his face reflected in the tile wall in front of us, locked like lovers. His eyes were locked on mine.

He fell when I pulled the knife out. I pushed him into the urinal. Head in the bowl.

I wiped off the knife and walked out.

It all took less than thirty seconds.

Job done. An envelop of cash would soon be mine.

It’s all down hill after your first hit. There’s a line, and once it’s crossed there’s nothing left. You’re a killer. It’ll never be hard again. After the first it’s too easy to kill.

My phone rings. Back to work.

Choices

By Patrick McCormack, Kansas City, Missouri. Patrick is currently a copywriter at a Kansas City ad agency. He is also a musician and martial artist.

The electric spark of the severed cable shot his eyes open. Getting oriented, he found himself on his back, the cable dancing sparks over his face. As the fog in his head cleared more of his surroundings came into scope. Above him was seat number B15 the same number on his train ticket.

Head throbbing, he raised himself to his feet, grasping a seat for balance. Flames gathered and flickered all around him illuminating the splayed bodies of the other passengers. Some alive, most dead. It finally hit him – the train had derailed. Who knows where they ended up, how many survived or if help was on the way. If it wasn’t for the shock he would’ve passed out right there. The noxious smoke choking his lungs. No visible way out. Faint coughs and pleas for help crept around him.

There had to be a way out somewhere. A door; a window; or the gaping hole made on impact. He crawled his way through to the next dark, smoldering car. Bodies everywhere. Apparently he stumbled into the dining car, full of feasting families. Or what was left of them. Place settings, shards of glass and food littered the carpet of passengers. He rubbed his aching eyes and pressed on.

As he stepped over the mess of people below him a thunderous BOOM! of flames threw him forward. The gas grilles in the kitchen had just exploded, blanketing the car in flames. Face down in a plate of prime rib he felt the heat of the flames behind him, devouring the dining car. At that same moment a cool night breeze caressed his face. He looked up to the left – a hole large enough to crawl to safety! Instinct took over and he bull-rushed the hole. Flames flooding toward him.

Nearly to safety, thoughts of relief flooding him, a faint cry of ‘help’ echoed to his right.
A small girl lay directly across from his exit, staring up at him with fearful innocent eyes begging for rescue as her voice failed with crushed lungs.

This instant seemed like an hour. There was only enough time to jump to safety himself or pull the girl out and toss her from the blazing mass grave. The savage flames threatening.

He made his decision.

He grasped the girl’s hand and held it tight. For that one split second looking at each other their minds were one. Her eyes pierced his. His hand in hers he raised to a crouching position. He took one last glance at the hole, then back to the girl.

“I’m sorry,” his strained voice yelled.

And with that, he freed his hand and dove out from the mangled, flaming grave. Tumbling and rolling down an embankment covered in wreckage. He finally stopped, hands clasped at his chest and gasping at the cool night air, he looked up to the train. It all burned as sirens approached in the distance. He laid there clinging to his life, and nothing more.

Chocolate Chip Consternation

By Momar Van Der Camp, Overland Park, Kansas. Momar is a budding independent comic writer, screenwriter and all-around creative wit.

Begin by stirring a large pot of a gravy-like substance that might or might not contain the same structure of chocolate or may even appear to be chocolate (but doesn’t have to be). If one wishes to contain the largest explosion of power, take the mixing bowl into the rain (for this can only be done while the skies leak down onto the Earth you call home. You must place the large bowl upon the top of your cranium and spin, counter-clockwise diagonally over an open field filled with the carcasses of fallen soldiers or war-heroes from the past (or even still containing the bones of those warlords that used to overthrow the lands you live on a daily basis). Once your stomach fills with the death of your soul and you bursting with the blackness of rotting flesh, the bowl contains enough sky-leakage to move forward with the experiment. Lie down in the open field and beg the forgiveness of the sky above you for damning it for all eternity with your rotten dance for chocolate chips. Wipe your face with the tail of your shirt and stand up, brushing from your back any unwanted carcass residue. Grab the bowl or earthen cup as you shall now call it and dump the contents onto the ground into the muddy levee that blossoms beneath your damp feet. This last feat will deem how appropriate your sacrifice to HG* will be. If cookies sprout from the refuse that you were once lying in, rejoice. If nothing happens, smash the earthen cup down upon your freed toes and bleed upon the mess lying below you. Renew your dance to the sky and try anew. When blood loss becomes a problem, consult the nearest physician.

* HG is the story of a man born into the freedom of the spaces above him. He stood at the four corners of the universe, all at the same time, smoking a rather large wooden pipe. On every fifth passing of the stars of Ganymede, HG would tip the contents of his pipe out onto the passing stars. Each fleck of ash would follow the path of the stars to a new destination, forming new worlds and new planets. This is how reality was born.