This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
My Alien Friend
By Plot Roach
So it turns out that my friend, Markus, is an alien. I didn’t find this out right away, in fact I’ve known him for five years now. I guess he wanted to make sure that I would be ‘cool’ with it, or something. Or at least wouldn’t go running off into the street screaming for help from the men in black or whatever.
I only found out about it at my birthday party. It was an informal affair, just a handful of friends at my apartment watching some crappy eighties horror movies and eating some takeout fried chicken.
I really didn’t think much of my thirty seventh birthday. I mean, it’s not a ‘big one’ as far as birthdays go. At eighteen you can vote, at twenty one you can drink, at thirty you tend to drink more, at fifty you are ‘over the hill’ and everything after that you never want to keep track of again. So what do you do when you’re thirty seven? You sit on the couch with your loser friends, also as sad and old as yourself, and eat fried chicken and make fun of bad movies.
Melissa came over with a bottle of wine, telling me that it was her gift to me only after she had already drank the last of its contents. Jim Jr. decided that I needed more excitement in my life because he gave me a couple of tickets to a hockey game the following month, hinting that I could take him with me if I wanted. I’ve never liked hockey, and I doubted that I will start an obsession with it now. Martha brought me a plant that I don’t need to water -which is good because I have a reputation for killing plastic plants. It’s supposed to pull moisture from the air or something, but I noticed that it was already brown around the edges, so I doubt it will be around long. And when Markus dropped by his face fell when he discovered that he had forgotten my birthday.
“Not a problem.” I told him.
“But it’s a big thing with your people.”
“You mean Americans or just weird people who are old enough to know that they should act better but don’t?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I said. “You can make it up to me later.”
After the fried chicken and movies we decided to go bowling. What can I say? When you’re bored and don’t want to drink yourself to sleep, it beats watching infomercials about hair plugs and power fitness exercise equipment. So we loaded ourselves up into Martha’s van and within minutes found ourselves wrapped around a telephone pole. It turns out that dear old Martha had a few glasses of my birthday wine and shouldn’t have been driving, but no one noticed until it was too late.
So I was standing a few feet away from the van, looking at our mangled bodies when I noticed that Markus wasn’t among them. All the other spirits of my friends had moved on by then, after wishing me happy birthday yet again.
Finally Markus walked up, lit a cigarette and tossed the match on the already burning pile that was my last living moment on earth. “Ready for your present now?” he asked.
“Can you actually see and hear me?” I asked.
“Who else would I be talking to?”
“And why weren’t you mangled like the rest of us?” I asked.
“I bailed.”
“Yeah, I get that -but how? And why didn’t you take us with you?”
“First, I am an alien. We have the technology. In fact, it was a gift from my mother and father for graduating college. A gizmo permanently attached to me to save me even if I’m not aware that I’m in trouble. And don’t ask me how it works, because I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
“You went to college?”
“I got a PhD in Human Psychology. It came in handy when studying your people.”
“I bet it did.” I said.
“Now, I have a gift for you.” he said and then snapped his fingers. We were in a small room, furnished sparingly except for an ornate stainless steel table and matching chairs. “Are we on your mothership?” I asked.
“Don’t be daft, we’re in my apartment.”
“Oh.”
“Now let me show you some options that you have open to you…” There was a trunk in the other room -also steel, he pulled out of it several orbs which he set up on the table. “I couldn’t save you and the others because I’m not supposed to interfere with the natural selection of this planet. But now that you’re dead, we can have a little fun.”
“I’m a little more worried about that last statement that anything else that has happened tonight, Markus.” I said.
“Relax, you’ll love it.” he told me. I’m going to put you back in a body.”
“My body?” I asked.
“The one that’s burned to a cinder?”
“Oh yeah, huh…”
“Now you have three options.” he said, standing back after he had activated the three orbs on the table. Each showed a different picture in a hologram that floated above it. The first was a world bathed in golden light that radiated peace and hope. The second a world of silver that felt cold but protected. And the last showed a green world, like Earth before all the cities and smog.
“The first orb shows you where you are headed when you die. It’s where we all go, it doesn’t matter which planet or religion you are from. And since you are going there anyway, I thought that I could give you a side trip in the meantime.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“The second orb shows a planet in Cygnus 12, the people there are born into machines that are like suits of armor. They nurture you , protect you from all harm and let you go anywhere and do anything until you die of natural causes.”
“But I’m always in the suit?”
“Yes, that is the drawback. All the things that your senses would experience first have to be routed through the computer which degrades the experience, I fear.”
“And the last one?”
“It’s a planet like Earth used to be.”
“-I knew it!”
“Intelligent, humanoid life is just starting out up there.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“People like you, who are given second chances by people like me.” he said. “Who knows, I might even go there myself one day…”
“What can I take?”
“Nothing, you’re dead. You can’t carry anything, even if you tried. You’ll just wake up in a body that has been set aside.”
“What do they wear there? Who will I be? What is it like there? Is it dangerous?”
“Yes, there are dangers there. Animals, natural forces and poisonous plants are at the top of the list. If you want protecting, you’re better off in the second world that I showed to you. As for clothes, you’ll be naked -just as you would have been in the second world covered by the armor. In the third world, the weather is always warm, so clothes are not needed.”
“But I’ll be naked!”
“So will everyone else. And trust me, I’ve been told that it gets old really fast.” he said, winking at me. “Now as for anything else, you’ll just have to go there and see for yourself.”
I nodded, smiling. Even if I was naked, it would beat being dead. In one place I could soar like an eagle above the clouds and swim to the bottom of the ocean to see underwater volcanoes, though I would only be able to smell a rose if it was digitized and sent through a computer. On the other hand, a place unspoiled by modern technology and populated with others like myself seemed like a good choice. And the place where my soul would go to would be waiting for me for when I was ready. So I pointed to an orb and waited while he pressed a few buttons.
A few minutes later I woke on the beach. Blue water to one side of me, a rainforest on the other. I held out my hand and waved my naked fingers in front of me. Then again, it wasn’t the only naked part of me by far.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY” was written in the sand next to me before the tide rose up and washed it away.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
The Excuse for Not Writing (Number 8)
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
The Excuse for Not Writing (Number 8)
By Plot Roach
Here is my excuse for not writing today:
I had a creative writing prompt picked out and ready to go. The story was really going to be something awesome, outlandish and just a little bit heartwarming.
And then lemurs stole my laptop.
I can explain, really.
You see, I started off the day in my neighbor’s kitchen. I had been sleeping there since the night before. She had been hosting a really long party and I felt that I couldn’t leave before I saw the elephant walk a fiery tightrope-
No, really. It was an elephant walking a tightrope and it was on fire.
Nooooo! Not IN her apartment, but on cable in her apartment. As in cable TV, not the cable that the elephant walked on… Anyway. It was some sort of circus special to raise awareness of abused llamas or some such.
I don’t know how llamas get ’abused’, they didn’t really go into it. They just showed some sad eyed looking creatures and I guess everyone assumed that they were abused, though that could be the way llamas look everyday for all I know.
Anyway, After another five minute sob story of poor Peruvian llamas, the elephant came on. And the act went pretty well until the elephant fell. It’s okay, it just got a few scratches. But the trainer has seen better days, let me tell you.
That's because the elephant fell on the trainer...
And if you ask me, they should have seen that coming. No one expects a big thing like an elephant to walk across a tightrope -much less one on fire- without it falling. And the net would have caught it better too, but they didn’t factor in the right weight of the beast. And how could they? No one has ever seen an elephant fall that far -much lesson one fire.
No, the elephant wasn’t burned. It just had it’s outfit on fire. It was dressed up like a ballerina.
No, I don’t think the elephant enjoyed it either. The fall was pretty high up for a beast like that. And the tutu wasn’t flattering, either.
So I fell asleep in the kitchen because the bathtub was already taken by her brother in law, Samson.
Why was he there?
Well, she was trying -again- to fix me up with him. But I’ve told her like a million times that I don’t like people who smell like cheese. It’s not that I’m prejudiced, I’m just lactose intolerant.
I wanted to know what happened with the elephant, so I decided to wait at her apartment (since I don’t have cable of my own). I went into the kitchen to get another beer when she told me to help myself to whatever I wanted. Then I saw the leftovers from a turkey casserole and you can guess the rest. A full belly of turkey and beer and I fell asleep on the kitchen floor like a narcoleptic chef.
When I woke up I could hear the trumpet of the elephant and I thought that the show was still running. So imagine my surprise when I saw the slightly wounded pachyderm tiptoeing through the flowers of the yard in front of our apartment complex. The poor thing was still trying to do its ballerina act!
It turned out that the circus was being filmed at a local park, just up the street. And after the elephant fell, all hell broke loose and half the animal entertainment made a break for it. There were giraffes dressed like bride and groom, a tiger dressed like Elvis and a couple of monkeys dressed like mob hit men. When a lion dressed as a sequined ice skater roared his displeasure at me, I ran back to my apartment. Samson tried to run in with me, but I locked him out. I just can’t get past that cheese thing. I’ve tried, but I can’t help but feel bloated and gassy around him. He’s a nice man, but think of the kids!
Anyway, when I got inside there was a seal in my bed and two spider monkeys were trying to switch the channel on the radio. Maybe they were interested to see if they were on the news, as I’m sure that I was.
And then a crash from the living room caught my attention. It turns out that lemurs, dressed like Swiss dancing girls, were trying to steal my laptop. And they would have gotten away with it too, if they hadn’t been so greedy. They were almost out of the window when the cord leading from the computer to the printer caught on the windowsill. When I yelled, I startled them into dropping the loot. The printer hanging on the inside of the apartment, the computer hanging on the outside.
I still never found out who filled the bowling ball with cheese wiz and left in in the stove -or why.
And to top it all off, I wasted all my time in this little fiasco. So now I can’t write on my creative writing prompt.
Sigh.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Sleepless in Pompeii
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Sleepless in Pompeii
By Plot Roach
There were problems in the museum almost from the first day the exhibit opened. Setting up the glass cases and lights had been the easy part, but getting the bodies loaded into them had been an abysmal task. Once the security vans had unloaded their cargo, Vincent could see that they had no easy task before them as one stone body after another were taken out of their cargo crates and brought into the main exhibit room.
Vincent, a part time employee of the museum ‘Naturale’, had been charged with the safety of the bodies from Pompeii. Granted they were really only the plaster casts of those found under the ash, but they were bodies nonetheless. Several had already suffered greatly by the hands of the public, some travelers seeking “souvenirs” had broken off parts of the bodies. The original museum which had once housed them, no longer wanted the broken plaster corpses. And the Naturale had gotten them for pennies on the pound. Thus the poor abused corpses came to America.
The first day that the exhibit opened, the electricity in the building failed. The following four days the water kept shutting off in the restrooms and every night since the bodies had been unloaded, the security sensors picked up movement.
There had been so many false alarms that the museum had decided to turn off the movement sensors and hire a human guard to patrol during the evenings. But in two weeks they had gone through three guards. No one wanted to stay with the corpses overnight, stating odd noises like a dog barking, a pig squealing and a couple arguing echoed throughout the building, but that no one could be found.
When the last guard quit, Vincent had been forced to take the night shift to watch over the building. He heard the noises himself, but knew better than to investigate. He knew that he would not find anything living amongst the displays and did not wish to find what else might be making the noises.
After a week of no sleep, and more damage to the museum (this time the ceiling tiles were falling down on the glass cases, shattering them), Vincent was at his wit’s end. The owner of the museum refused to admit that there might be a supernatural answer behind the ‘accidents’, and told Vincent to find a solution or to find another job.
Five different handymen, three investigators and several insurance claims later, he was no closer to an answer than he was before. He sat on the steps of the museum, his head in his hands, wondering how he would update his resume for the next job search when the answer that he had been praying for crept up the stairs of the museum and through the front door, dressed in a thick Victorian style dress that reeked of patchouli.
He only noticed her when she stopped and began talking to the bodies, even pausing to jump over the red velvet security rope to scratch behind the stone dog’s ears.
“Oh great” he told himself. “We have another crazy needing to be tossed out.” And while the local homeless had been a problem on occasion, usually trying to steal something they thought could be pawned, none of them had actually spoken to a display, much less argued with it. And yet here she was, shaking her hand at one of the stone corpses while patting the dog on the head.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“No, it is I who will help you.” she said. Vincent noticed the tumble of red curls that had fallen from under the hat on her head and how they stood out from the thick green velvet of her dress. Eyes, green as emeralds, sparkled with a mirth that had no measure.
“Excuse me?”
“You have been having problems with them, haven’t you?” she asked.
“No. We’ve been having problems with the electrical, the water pipes, the-”
“Security cameras at night?” she asked
“How do you know about that?” he asked.
“They’ve been keeping me up at night as well.” she said. “I live about a block away from here and between the barking, squealing and arguing…” she sighed. “So I thought that I might come over to see if I could help.”
“And just how do you think that you can help?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve learned a lot about them already.”
“You have?” he asked skeptically.
“All you have to do is listen, silly.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You are not listening!” she said, stamping her foot down like a small child who was just told that fairies do not exist. “Just listen to me, if you can’t hear them.”
“Alright then” he said. “Impress me.”
“Those two over there” she said, pointing to a couple in a corner case. “They are not man and wife.”
“But the paperwork said that they were found together.” Vincent argued.
“They were found together, yes. But they are not man and wife.” she said. “There is her husband” she said, pointing to a lone man across the room. “They had had an argument and she slept with his brother to get even. And she’s been stuck with him ever since the night of the eruption.”
“So if we put her back with him all this will stop?” Vincent asked.
“Not by a long shot.”
“But you said-”
“She belongs with him, but he won’t be happy until he gets his penis back.”
“And where is it now?”
“On a coffee table in New Jersey, I think. He said that the tourist who snapped it off definitely had a Jersey accent.”
“And he knows this how?”
“They’ve been around a long time, Vincent.”
“And how do you know my name?”
“I’m not psychic, it’s on the nametag pinned to your shirt.”
“Oh.” he said. “But if you’re not psychic, how do you know what’s going on?”
“Like I said, all you have to do is listen.” she said. “Now, I think he’ll take a replacement penis. Something stone, about the same color will do. It’s just for show, he knows. It’s not like it’s going to see any use…”
“And where do we get something like that from?” Vincent asked.
“I know a few places.” she said, winking at him. “But in the meantime, your biggest problem is with them.” she said, pointing to the next case. Both occupants wore sneers of anguish on their stone faces. “They are still mad at one another, even after all these years.”
“Another love spat?”
“No, they don’t belong together. They weren’t lovers, they were neighbors.” she said. “And they hated one another fiercely. So how did they end up in the same coffin?”
“Glass case.” he corrected. “The case he was in was shattered by a falling ceiling tile, so we had to put him into hers.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to get another case for him or things are going to get… interesting.”
“Define ‘interesting’.”
“Are you all paid up on your fire insurance?”
“Okay, I’ll get right on it.” he said. “But why are they so mad after all these years?”
“He killed her dog.”
“But the dog was found in his yard.”
“Just listen, okay?” she said. “He killed her dog, he fed it hemlock and pottery shards that had been mixed in with ground up meat. It was a nasty way to go. But instead of burying it and letting it go, she kept throwing the body in his yard so that his neighbors would know what he had done.”
“Why would he do something like that?”
“Her dog ate his pig.”
“The pig over there?” Vincent asked, pointing to half a stone pig laying in the display of “Life Among the People of Pompeii”.
“Yep. She sent the dog on the pig and when it killed it, she cut off the half that had been chewed and was going to butcher the other half when her neighbor found out.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“So what do we do?”
“First, get them separate cases. And then, get them to apologize.”
“And just how do we do that?”
“I have an idea” she said.
Later that night, after Vincent locked the doors to the museum, the woman waited in the Pompeii exhibit with a large paper bag. “Okay, now what?” Vincent asked.
“Dear sir” the woman said. “The woman in the case over there is sorry for stealing your pig and would like to make it up to you. So she asked me to give you this.” The woman produced a can of Spam from the bag. “Now I know it doesn’t look like the pig that you lost, but in a way it’s much better. It has already been slaughtered, so there’s no need to feed or clean up after it. And better yet, it’s already been butchered, cooked and taken off the bones. It’s filled with delicious spices and ready to eat right out of the can.” She then slipped the can of Spam into the case and under the body where no one would see it.
“Now madam” she said, walking across the room to the woman’s display. “That gentleman over there is sorry about how he treated your dog and would like to make amends.” She pulled out several dog biscuits and put them under the stone woman’s hand. “He now forgives you for stealing his pig.”
“Are we done?” Vincent asked.
“Not yet.” the woman said and headed to the case where the long separated couple was once again together. “I couldn’t find one in plaster or cement, but I thought that you might like this instead.” She pulled the last item from the bag and showed it to Vincent before putting it in the case. It was an eight inch stone phallus, clear quartz and in a state of erection. “If it’s only going to be for looks, it should be something worth looking at, don’t you think?”
“I think that I’m going to have to remove it during normal business hours.” Vincent said.
“I think that he can live with that -so to speak.”
“You never told me your name or how you figured this all out.”
“Oh” she said, blushing. “My name is Crystal. I’m a jeweler, and it really is the truth: if you listen to stones, they will tell you everything.”
“But the spirits of the dead are trapped in plaster...”
“It’s not much different than flesh, really. But they do tend to get a little more ‘hard headed’ with time.” With that Crystal and Vincent left the museum. There were fewer problems with the displays since her visit. The only problem being the sound of a dog whining when it appeared that its owner had run out of dog biscuits.
Sleepless in Pompeii
By Plot Roach
There were problems in the museum almost from the first day the exhibit opened. Setting up the glass cases and lights had been the easy part, but getting the bodies loaded into them had been an abysmal task. Once the security vans had unloaded their cargo, Vincent could see that they had no easy task before them as one stone body after another were taken out of their cargo crates and brought into the main exhibit room.
Vincent, a part time employee of the museum ‘Naturale’, had been charged with the safety of the bodies from Pompeii. Granted they were really only the plaster casts of those found under the ash, but they were bodies nonetheless. Several had already suffered greatly by the hands of the public, some travelers seeking “souvenirs” had broken off parts of the bodies. The original museum which had once housed them, no longer wanted the broken plaster corpses. And the Naturale had gotten them for pennies on the pound. Thus the poor abused corpses came to America.
The first day that the exhibit opened, the electricity in the building failed. The following four days the water kept shutting off in the restrooms and every night since the bodies had been unloaded, the security sensors picked up movement.
There had been so many false alarms that the museum had decided to turn off the movement sensors and hire a human guard to patrol during the evenings. But in two weeks they had gone through three guards. No one wanted to stay with the corpses overnight, stating odd noises like a dog barking, a pig squealing and a couple arguing echoed throughout the building, but that no one could be found.
When the last guard quit, Vincent had been forced to take the night shift to watch over the building. He heard the noises himself, but knew better than to investigate. He knew that he would not find anything living amongst the displays and did not wish to find what else might be making the noises.
After a week of no sleep, and more damage to the museum (this time the ceiling tiles were falling down on the glass cases, shattering them), Vincent was at his wit’s end. The owner of the museum refused to admit that there might be a supernatural answer behind the ‘accidents’, and told Vincent to find a solution or to find another job.
Five different handymen, three investigators and several insurance claims later, he was no closer to an answer than he was before. He sat on the steps of the museum, his head in his hands, wondering how he would update his resume for the next job search when the answer that he had been praying for crept up the stairs of the museum and through the front door, dressed in a thick Victorian style dress that reeked of patchouli.
He only noticed her when she stopped and began talking to the bodies, even pausing to jump over the red velvet security rope to scratch behind the stone dog’s ears.
“Oh great” he told himself. “We have another crazy needing to be tossed out.” And while the local homeless had been a problem on occasion, usually trying to steal something they thought could be pawned, none of them had actually spoken to a display, much less argued with it. And yet here she was, shaking her hand at one of the stone corpses while patting the dog on the head.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“No, it is I who will help you.” she said. Vincent noticed the tumble of red curls that had fallen from under the hat on her head and how they stood out from the thick green velvet of her dress. Eyes, green as emeralds, sparkled with a mirth that had no measure.
“Excuse me?”
“You have been having problems with them, haven’t you?” she asked.
“No. We’ve been having problems with the electrical, the water pipes, the-”
“Security cameras at night?” she asked
“How do you know about that?” he asked.
“They’ve been keeping me up at night as well.” she said. “I live about a block away from here and between the barking, squealing and arguing…” she sighed. “So I thought that I might come over to see if I could help.”
“And just how do you think that you can help?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve learned a lot about them already.”
“You have?” he asked skeptically.
“All you have to do is listen, silly.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You are not listening!” she said, stamping her foot down like a small child who was just told that fairies do not exist. “Just listen to me, if you can’t hear them.”
“Alright then” he said. “Impress me.”
“Those two over there” she said, pointing to a couple in a corner case. “They are not man and wife.”
“But the paperwork said that they were found together.” Vincent argued.
“They were found together, yes. But they are not man and wife.” she said. “There is her husband” she said, pointing to a lone man across the room. “They had had an argument and she slept with his brother to get even. And she’s been stuck with him ever since the night of the eruption.”
“So if we put her back with him all this will stop?” Vincent asked.
“Not by a long shot.”
“But you said-”
“She belongs with him, but he won’t be happy until he gets his penis back.”
“And where is it now?”
“On a coffee table in New Jersey, I think. He said that the tourist who snapped it off definitely had a Jersey accent.”
“And he knows this how?”
“They’ve been around a long time, Vincent.”
“And how do you know my name?”
“I’m not psychic, it’s on the nametag pinned to your shirt.”
“Oh.” he said. “But if you’re not psychic, how do you know what’s going on?”
“Like I said, all you have to do is listen.” she said. “Now, I think he’ll take a replacement penis. Something stone, about the same color will do. It’s just for show, he knows. It’s not like it’s going to see any use…”
“And where do we get something like that from?” Vincent asked.
“I know a few places.” she said, winking at him. “But in the meantime, your biggest problem is with them.” she said, pointing to the next case. Both occupants wore sneers of anguish on their stone faces. “They are still mad at one another, even after all these years.”
“Another love spat?”
“No, they don’t belong together. They weren’t lovers, they were neighbors.” she said. “And they hated one another fiercely. So how did they end up in the same coffin?”
“Glass case.” he corrected. “The case he was in was shattered by a falling ceiling tile, so we had to put him into hers.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to get another case for him or things are going to get… interesting.”
“Define ‘interesting’.”
“Are you all paid up on your fire insurance?”
“Okay, I’ll get right on it.” he said. “But why are they so mad after all these years?”
“He killed her dog.”
“But the dog was found in his yard.”
“Just listen, okay?” she said. “He killed her dog, he fed it hemlock and pottery shards that had been mixed in with ground up meat. It was a nasty way to go. But instead of burying it and letting it go, she kept throwing the body in his yard so that his neighbors would know what he had done.”
“Why would he do something like that?”
“Her dog ate his pig.”
“The pig over there?” Vincent asked, pointing to half a stone pig laying in the display of “Life Among the People of Pompeii”.
“Yep. She sent the dog on the pig and when it killed it, she cut off the half that had been chewed and was going to butcher the other half when her neighbor found out.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“So what do we do?”
“First, get them separate cases. And then, get them to apologize.”
“And just how do we do that?”
“I have an idea” she said.
Later that night, after Vincent locked the doors to the museum, the woman waited in the Pompeii exhibit with a large paper bag. “Okay, now what?” Vincent asked.
“Dear sir” the woman said. “The woman in the case over there is sorry for stealing your pig and would like to make it up to you. So she asked me to give you this.” The woman produced a can of Spam from the bag. “Now I know it doesn’t look like the pig that you lost, but in a way it’s much better. It has already been slaughtered, so there’s no need to feed or clean up after it. And better yet, it’s already been butchered, cooked and taken off the bones. It’s filled with delicious spices and ready to eat right out of the can.” She then slipped the can of Spam into the case and under the body where no one would see it.
“Now madam” she said, walking across the room to the woman’s display. “That gentleman over there is sorry about how he treated your dog and would like to make amends.” She pulled out several dog biscuits and put them under the stone woman’s hand. “He now forgives you for stealing his pig.”
“Are we done?” Vincent asked.
“Not yet.” the woman said and headed to the case where the long separated couple was once again together. “I couldn’t find one in plaster or cement, but I thought that you might like this instead.” She pulled the last item from the bag and showed it to Vincent before putting it in the case. It was an eight inch stone phallus, clear quartz and in a state of erection. “If it’s only going to be for looks, it should be something worth looking at, don’t you think?”
“I think that I’m going to have to remove it during normal business hours.” Vincent said.
“I think that he can live with that -so to speak.”
“You never told me your name or how you figured this all out.”
“Oh” she said, blushing. “My name is Crystal. I’m a jeweler, and it really is the truth: if you listen to stones, they will tell you everything.”
“But the spirits of the dead are trapped in plaster...”
“It’s not much different than flesh, really. But they do tend to get a little more ‘hard headed’ with time.” With that Crystal and Vincent left the museum. There were fewer problems with the displays since her visit. The only problem being the sound of a dog whining when it appeared that its owner had run out of dog biscuits.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Lucky Dice
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Lucky Dice
By Plot Roach
I like to role-play. And by that I don’t mean whips and chains, but polyhedral dice. I’m one of those freaks that you made fun of in school, sitting in dark rooms, pretending to be a half elf wizard with a lawful good alignment. The only thing worse then my acne was my ability to socialize with others, unless the dice were in my hand. Then I could conquer the bad guy, save the world and tell my tale at the local tavern. Granted that tavern was usually the local gaming shop and the patrons were just as lost to reality as I was.
We would get some poser from time to time, people who wandered in to listen to our stories and make fun of us when they left. We could usually root them out by asking what level their game master was or asking them if they preferred Dungeons and Dragon 8.0 over 9.0.
We may be freaks, but we are loyal to one another. You pick on one of us, you face all of our wrath. Though mostly that’s just a bunch of people in t-shirts with sarcastic remarks written on them, standing around eating junk food, living fantasy lives in between shifts of manual labor and counting the days until the next supplemental book in our games graces the book shelves.
I was waiting at my favorite game shop, Player Killers, listening to the same tales I heard every day that I came here. To listen to our tales, you would swear that we fought in wars, real ones. And then someone says something like ‘hits points’ or ‘constitution‘, and you get that what we’re talking about isn’t real at all. But in our heads it is. So isn’t that what counts? What keeps us happy is what keeps us from spitting in your food when you make fun of us at work. While you were scoring a touchdown and pulling a tendon that will never work right for the rest of your life, we were pillaging dungeons, and adding a few extra experience points to our characters) as well as a few pounds to our waistlines (with all the inactivity and the aforementioned junk food).
So I was listening to Sam (aka ‘Cryptkeeper’, the litch necromancer) talk about the early days of D&D when someone walked in and I knew that he didn’t belong here. He was built like a bull and twitchy as all hell. The laughter of our group as Cryptkeeper finished his last tale made him jump like a cat in a room of pit bulls. So I asked myself what could put this guy on edge? I walked up closer to the front counter, wanting a better look. I was creeping along silently. Hell, I’ve played rogue characters long enough I should know how to move like one -right?
He never heard me coming, but I could hear what he was saying to Michael, the owner of the shop. He was threatening to shoot him if he didn’t give the man everything in the register.
Michael kept his eyes down, not wanting to alert any of us and get us killed, was my thought.
What could I do? I asked myself. I was built like a twig compared to this oak of a man robbing the place. The only weapons at my disposal were hardback books and a rack of paint your own pewter figures.
Michael handed over the bag of cash and the man backed away from the counter. He hadn’t seen me yet and I crouched low to the ground, not wanting to get shot for spooking him. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my bag of polyhedral dice. I scattered them across the ground and prayed. Sure enough, the man wasn’t looking where he stepped and his right foot came down on a twenty sided Chessex Blue Vortex. He went down harder than a horde of drunken trolls and Michael was on him in an instant.
He had pulled ‘Excalibur’, a beat up wooden baseball bat from behind the front counter and started beating the would be thief like a gold filled piñata.
Eventually we called the police. But not until everyone had a turn. We may be freaks and nerds. But when you mess with one of us, you face all of us. When the police came, the thief was more than willing to go to jail, rather than face us for one more minute. I colleted my dice from the floor, glad the police didn’t need to confiscate them.
I kissed the twenty sided before slipping it back into my bag. In the past it had helped me to defeat a litch king, a fire dragon and a basilisk. Now I had one more tale to tell, thanks to my lucky dice.
Lucky Dice
By Plot Roach
I like to role-play. And by that I don’t mean whips and chains, but polyhedral dice. I’m one of those freaks that you made fun of in school, sitting in dark rooms, pretending to be a half elf wizard with a lawful good alignment. The only thing worse then my acne was my ability to socialize with others, unless the dice were in my hand. Then I could conquer the bad guy, save the world and tell my tale at the local tavern. Granted that tavern was usually the local gaming shop and the patrons were just as lost to reality as I was.
We would get some poser from time to time, people who wandered in to listen to our stories and make fun of us when they left. We could usually root them out by asking what level their game master was or asking them if they preferred Dungeons and Dragon 8.0 over 9.0.
We may be freaks, but we are loyal to one another. You pick on one of us, you face all of our wrath. Though mostly that’s just a bunch of people in t-shirts with sarcastic remarks written on them, standing around eating junk food, living fantasy lives in between shifts of manual labor and counting the days until the next supplemental book in our games graces the book shelves.
I was waiting at my favorite game shop, Player Killers, listening to the same tales I heard every day that I came here. To listen to our tales, you would swear that we fought in wars, real ones. And then someone says something like ‘hits points’ or ‘constitution‘, and you get that what we’re talking about isn’t real at all. But in our heads it is. So isn’t that what counts? What keeps us happy is what keeps us from spitting in your food when you make fun of us at work. While you were scoring a touchdown and pulling a tendon that will never work right for the rest of your life, we were pillaging dungeons, and adding a few extra experience points to our characters) as well as a few pounds to our waistlines (with all the inactivity and the aforementioned junk food).
So I was listening to Sam (aka ‘Cryptkeeper’, the litch necromancer) talk about the early days of D&D when someone walked in and I knew that he didn’t belong here. He was built like a bull and twitchy as all hell. The laughter of our group as Cryptkeeper finished his last tale made him jump like a cat in a room of pit bulls. So I asked myself what could put this guy on edge? I walked up closer to the front counter, wanting a better look. I was creeping along silently. Hell, I’ve played rogue characters long enough I should know how to move like one -right?
He never heard me coming, but I could hear what he was saying to Michael, the owner of the shop. He was threatening to shoot him if he didn’t give the man everything in the register.
Michael kept his eyes down, not wanting to alert any of us and get us killed, was my thought.
What could I do? I asked myself. I was built like a twig compared to this oak of a man robbing the place. The only weapons at my disposal were hardback books and a rack of paint your own pewter figures.
Michael handed over the bag of cash and the man backed away from the counter. He hadn’t seen me yet and I crouched low to the ground, not wanting to get shot for spooking him. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my bag of polyhedral dice. I scattered them across the ground and prayed. Sure enough, the man wasn’t looking where he stepped and his right foot came down on a twenty sided Chessex Blue Vortex. He went down harder than a horde of drunken trolls and Michael was on him in an instant.
He had pulled ‘Excalibur’, a beat up wooden baseball bat from behind the front counter and started beating the would be thief like a gold filled piñata.
Eventually we called the police. But not until everyone had a turn. We may be freaks and nerds. But when you mess with one of us, you face all of us. When the police came, the thief was more than willing to go to jail, rather than face us for one more minute. I colleted my dice from the floor, glad the police didn’t need to confiscate them.
I kissed the twenty sided before slipping it back into my bag. In the past it had helped me to defeat a litch king, a fire dragon and a basilisk. Now I had one more tale to tell, thanks to my lucky dice.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Fallen Angel
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Fallen Angel
By Plot Roach
The little white ceramic angel stood silently on the counter as the mourners wandered the house around her. They murmured condolences while shoveling food from paper plates into their mouths. Sandra, already numb with the loss of her grandmother, stood nearest the door while men and women wandered up to her, shaking her hand and conveying their condolences. And while each second surrounded by these people seemed to be torture, the day moved too fast into night. The last guest left and Sandra began to collect the plastic cups and paper plates, scraping the food into a plastic bin before throwing the rest into the trashcan.
For all their kind words and false smiles, not one of them had offered to stay and help clean up the mess left behind.
I should have known what they were like before they smelled the free food, she thought to herself. When her grandmother lay dying in the hospital, none had come to see her or send her flowers. When she died, none of her so-called friends had offered to help plan the funeral or add a bit of their own money to cover the expenses And now that the last crumb of food had been consumed, the last sad story told, the last hand shook, they passed away into the night like ghosts of the past.
Sandra looked to the sad walls of her grandmother’s home. In her lifetime she had given birth to five children, three of which were still alive. And when Sandra’s parents had died in a car accident, her grandmother stepped up to claim her grandchild, never once shirking her duties, though she was already old and frail. She raised Sandra as if she were her own daughter, never once making her feel like a burden. But out of all the family that had been left, none had taken care of her grandmother like she had taken care of them. None except for Sandra.
The walls were lined with peeling wallpaper, cracked ceiling tiles and pictures of all who had graced her grandmother’s life. She remembered sitting on her grandmother’s knee as a girl, when on hot summer nights they sat in the kitchen drinking ice cold lemonade and sitting in front of the fan. Her grandmother telling her stories of all the people in the pictures. Most she remembered, but had never met, until the funeral. And despite the stories of love and laughter that her grandmother had told her about them, none seemed as vibrant in life as their stories from her grandmother’s lips.
The bin of food she emptied onto the compost heap. No sooner the back door closed and the light turned off, then she could hear the raccoons digging through the trash of the heap looking for their own food for the night. Her grandmother had fed the ’bandits’ well over the years, claiming that they were as much kin to her as much as any that had stepped foot in her house.
Sandra listened to them scamper across the back patio, drink from the birdbath and fight one another over the best scraps of food. Her mood sobered as she realized that another fight would be breaking out all too soon as her grandmother’s things would be divided amongst her surviving relatives. Her grandmother not yet cold in the ground, some had even had the nerve to approach her during the wake to ask for her grandmother’s jewelry. Some had expressed interest in the will and what she had left them. Sandra would have given everything to the slavering beasts, hungry for anything to pawn, if he could only hug her grandmother one more time.
She knew that the home she had lived in would go to her Uncle Dennis, though he had only spent is childhood in it and nothing more. As soon as he was of legal age he enlisted in the Army and never looked back, only sending flowers on mother’s day and calling her on her birthday. Sandra’s Aunt Mildred had been just as bad, only expressing an interest in the old woman’s life when it seemed that she had fallen ill and might pass away. Aunt Mildred would get the car, most of the furniture and the collectables that sat on the mantle piece.
Various odd bits were to be given to one family member or another. And as for Sandra? She would be given her grandmother’s bureau and the ceramic angel that stood guard in the living room. Her grandmother had always said that there was a special angel watching over her that would care for her for the rest of her days. But as Sandra wiped clean the table and counters of her grandmother’s home, she felt more alone than ever.
Tears flooded her vision and she felt as abandoned as she had the night that the police had told her that her parents had died. Now she had lost the only person who had ever loved her as much as her own parents and she could find no end to her sadness. In her grief, she tossed the towel onto the table, inadvertently knocking the ceramic angel off of its pedestal and onto the floor, shattering it in the process.
“No!” she yelled, falling to her knees to pick up the pieces. “Why now?” she yelled. “What else are you going to take from me!” With bleary eyes she scooped the shards into a box and went to the junk drawer to get the superglue.
Maybe I can put it back together again, she thought. Maybe I can fix it and it will all be fine in the end.
She laid the pieces out before her on the kitchen counter, and pulled the top off the tube of glue. The first piece, the base, weighted heavier by far than the rest of the pieces, and when she fitted the first broken bit to it, she saw what had made it so heavy. An envelope had been curled up and shoved into the bottom of the angel. She pulled it out and opened it up.
“My angel, watch over me and mine. And as I set this aside, let it keep my girl, Sandra, safe. I have asked forgiveness for my past, but know that I can never ask forgiveness from Sandra should she find out about my ‘indiscretions’. Watch over her and keep her safe and I will abandon my life of sin.”
It was in her grandmother’s handwriting and came with a key. Sandra tried it on every lock she thought would fit in the house, finally finding its match in the bureau drawer in her grandmother’s bedroom. A drawer that her grandmother had said had been locked long ago, the key lost forever.
Inside the drawer were sets of old passports, at least a dozen or more, all bearing a photo of the same woman at various ages. In the bottom of the drawer was a batch of bank books in a box accompanied by a journal listing the account numbers, places and names under which a small fortune had been deposited. The second half of the journal contained a note.
“Sandra, if you are reading this, I am dead. The rest of this journal will tell you why I did what I did. As for why I stopped. Well, child, it was because of the night that your parents died. I knew that I couldn’t take anymore chances if I was going to raise you. If I got caught, you’d be in a foster home faster than I could blink. And I wasn’t about to let that happen to you. So I locked everything away the day that you came to live with me. I’m sure that you have some questions, and those will be answered in time. But first you’ll want to contact the banks listed in this book. They’ll know that you are going to collect the money that I left you. I only hope that it makes you happier than it did me.”
Fallen Angel
By Plot Roach
The little white ceramic angel stood silently on the counter as the mourners wandered the house around her. They murmured condolences while shoveling food from paper plates into their mouths. Sandra, already numb with the loss of her grandmother, stood nearest the door while men and women wandered up to her, shaking her hand and conveying their condolences. And while each second surrounded by these people seemed to be torture, the day moved too fast into night. The last guest left and Sandra began to collect the plastic cups and paper plates, scraping the food into a plastic bin before throwing the rest into the trashcan.
For all their kind words and false smiles, not one of them had offered to stay and help clean up the mess left behind.
I should have known what they were like before they smelled the free food, she thought to herself. When her grandmother lay dying in the hospital, none had come to see her or send her flowers. When she died, none of her so-called friends had offered to help plan the funeral or add a bit of their own money to cover the expenses And now that the last crumb of food had been consumed, the last sad story told, the last hand shook, they passed away into the night like ghosts of the past.
Sandra looked to the sad walls of her grandmother’s home. In her lifetime she had given birth to five children, three of which were still alive. And when Sandra’s parents had died in a car accident, her grandmother stepped up to claim her grandchild, never once shirking her duties, though she was already old and frail. She raised Sandra as if she were her own daughter, never once making her feel like a burden. But out of all the family that had been left, none had taken care of her grandmother like she had taken care of them. None except for Sandra.
The walls were lined with peeling wallpaper, cracked ceiling tiles and pictures of all who had graced her grandmother’s life. She remembered sitting on her grandmother’s knee as a girl, when on hot summer nights they sat in the kitchen drinking ice cold lemonade and sitting in front of the fan. Her grandmother telling her stories of all the people in the pictures. Most she remembered, but had never met, until the funeral. And despite the stories of love and laughter that her grandmother had told her about them, none seemed as vibrant in life as their stories from her grandmother’s lips.
The bin of food she emptied onto the compost heap. No sooner the back door closed and the light turned off, then she could hear the raccoons digging through the trash of the heap looking for their own food for the night. Her grandmother had fed the ’bandits’ well over the years, claiming that they were as much kin to her as much as any that had stepped foot in her house.
Sandra listened to them scamper across the back patio, drink from the birdbath and fight one another over the best scraps of food. Her mood sobered as she realized that another fight would be breaking out all too soon as her grandmother’s things would be divided amongst her surviving relatives. Her grandmother not yet cold in the ground, some had even had the nerve to approach her during the wake to ask for her grandmother’s jewelry. Some had expressed interest in the will and what she had left them. Sandra would have given everything to the slavering beasts, hungry for anything to pawn, if he could only hug her grandmother one more time.
She knew that the home she had lived in would go to her Uncle Dennis, though he had only spent is childhood in it and nothing more. As soon as he was of legal age he enlisted in the Army and never looked back, only sending flowers on mother’s day and calling her on her birthday. Sandra’s Aunt Mildred had been just as bad, only expressing an interest in the old woman’s life when it seemed that she had fallen ill and might pass away. Aunt Mildred would get the car, most of the furniture and the collectables that sat on the mantle piece.
Various odd bits were to be given to one family member or another. And as for Sandra? She would be given her grandmother’s bureau and the ceramic angel that stood guard in the living room. Her grandmother had always said that there was a special angel watching over her that would care for her for the rest of her days. But as Sandra wiped clean the table and counters of her grandmother’s home, she felt more alone than ever.
Tears flooded her vision and she felt as abandoned as she had the night that the police had told her that her parents had died. Now she had lost the only person who had ever loved her as much as her own parents and she could find no end to her sadness. In her grief, she tossed the towel onto the table, inadvertently knocking the ceramic angel off of its pedestal and onto the floor, shattering it in the process.
“No!” she yelled, falling to her knees to pick up the pieces. “Why now?” she yelled. “What else are you going to take from me!” With bleary eyes she scooped the shards into a box and went to the junk drawer to get the superglue.
Maybe I can put it back together again, she thought. Maybe I can fix it and it will all be fine in the end.
She laid the pieces out before her on the kitchen counter, and pulled the top off the tube of glue. The first piece, the base, weighted heavier by far than the rest of the pieces, and when she fitted the first broken bit to it, she saw what had made it so heavy. An envelope had been curled up and shoved into the bottom of the angel. She pulled it out and opened it up.
“My angel, watch over me and mine. And as I set this aside, let it keep my girl, Sandra, safe. I have asked forgiveness for my past, but know that I can never ask forgiveness from Sandra should she find out about my ‘indiscretions’. Watch over her and keep her safe and I will abandon my life of sin.”
It was in her grandmother’s handwriting and came with a key. Sandra tried it on every lock she thought would fit in the house, finally finding its match in the bureau drawer in her grandmother’s bedroom. A drawer that her grandmother had said had been locked long ago, the key lost forever.
Inside the drawer were sets of old passports, at least a dozen or more, all bearing a photo of the same woman at various ages. In the bottom of the drawer was a batch of bank books in a box accompanied by a journal listing the account numbers, places and names under which a small fortune had been deposited. The second half of the journal contained a note.
“Sandra, if you are reading this, I am dead. The rest of this journal will tell you why I did what I did. As for why I stopped. Well, child, it was because of the night that your parents died. I knew that I couldn’t take anymore chances if I was going to raise you. If I got caught, you’d be in a foster home faster than I could blink. And I wasn’t about to let that happen to you. So I locked everything away the day that you came to live with me. I’m sure that you have some questions, and those will be answered in time. But first you’ll want to contact the banks listed in this book. They’ll know that you are going to collect the money that I left you. I only hope that it makes you happier than it did me.”
Friday, September 2, 2011
Sisterhood of the Light
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Sisterhood of the Light
By Plot Roach
The first thing that she saw when she broke free of the egg was the blinding light that enveloped her. The struggle that had taken her hours to begin was accomplished within the final few seconds as she was spilled out onto the dirt amongst a mass of her own kind. She was surrounded by hatchlings like herself, miniature versions of the behemoths they would grow into, provided that they survived. Slinking among the shadows was death. Predators dashed across the field of hatchlings, snatching up a few here and there. Instinct told the baby to run for the dense undergrowth of a nearby forest. And within minutes she and the remainder of her kind were safe -at least for the moment.
There, in the thickly wooded realm, she and the other survivors grew large upon the vegetation. There were still creatures to be feared, but very few of them could take on a beast of her bulk. One had only to be quick enough to outrun the larger predators and stay within the herd for safety. Soon she and her kind became too large for their forest home and moved again by instinct, made a trek across the great grassy plains. They traveled in a tight formation, the males on the outside and the females grouped in the center. They were preyed upon by predators along the way, losing half their number before they found their kin.
Her mother, aunts and others called out to her. She recognized them by smell, each bearing a portion of her pheromones. But they were huge compared to the newcomers. Their bodies were like large hills and their longs necks stretched across the sky. To the young female it seemed as thought they could feast upon the clouds. And that is what she called them, the Cloud Grazers. The females were greeted warmly, the males were kept at a distance. It was mating time and the older males jousted for the best mates, chasing off the newcomers if they got too close to a receptive female.
The young female watched the fights and ensuing courtship. The mating dance became burned into her brain as she breathed deeply of the scents of her clan. She traveled with the group, as did all the other females, the young males having been driven off to form their own bachelor group which followed at a distance.
In the years that followed, the young female grew again in size, and learned many things. She traveled to where her kind laid their eggs, learned which plants would grow during the seasons, and which predators to now avoid.
Among these were the Thunder Lords, loud of roar and sharp of tooth. And while they were only a third the size of her kind, they hunted in packs. They could wound a creature and wait for it to bleed to death or die of infection. She had seen it happen in the older ones too slow to keep up with the herd.
Soon came the time when she took a mate, laid her eggs and took her turn leading the herd to new grazing lands that had been visited by her grandmother, mother and sisters. She had many good years, laid many eggs and even recognized a few that joined her group as her own offspring.
The predators followed them like shadows, and she watched as those she called grandmother, mother, aunt and sister fell before those sharp teeth.
One summer, as she lead the Cloud Grazers to one of the few watering holes that could be had during the drought, she was ambushed by a Thunder Lord pack. And while bitten in several places, and suffering from a twisted ankle, she walked, albeit slowly, away from the fight and back into the protection of the herd, her sisters pressed against her on either side to protect her from further onslaught. But she knew that they could not protect her for long, as she felt the blood run down her hide and felt the fever that came with one of the bites. If she did not fall from fatigue, she would succumb to illness. But still her foot marched onward as if to say: I will not fall today. Soon the predators fell back, dusk painted the land bloody colors and the Thunder Lords knew that they could wait until dawn to make their kill. The stars shifted in the night sky and the old one, which was now matriarch, looked overhead. Among these lights was one that grew brighter, until it filled the darkness with daylight. Once again she was enveloped in a blinding light, as was all her kind. And the old one was no more.
Sisterhood of the Light
By Plot Roach
The first thing that she saw when she broke free of the egg was the blinding light that enveloped her. The struggle that had taken her hours to begin was accomplished within the final few seconds as she was spilled out onto the dirt amongst a mass of her own kind. She was surrounded by hatchlings like herself, miniature versions of the behemoths they would grow into, provided that they survived. Slinking among the shadows was death. Predators dashed across the field of hatchlings, snatching up a few here and there. Instinct told the baby to run for the dense undergrowth of a nearby forest. And within minutes she and the remainder of her kind were safe -at least for the moment.
There, in the thickly wooded realm, she and the other survivors grew large upon the vegetation. There were still creatures to be feared, but very few of them could take on a beast of her bulk. One had only to be quick enough to outrun the larger predators and stay within the herd for safety. Soon she and her kind became too large for their forest home and moved again by instinct, made a trek across the great grassy plains. They traveled in a tight formation, the males on the outside and the females grouped in the center. They were preyed upon by predators along the way, losing half their number before they found their kin.
Her mother, aunts and others called out to her. She recognized them by smell, each bearing a portion of her pheromones. But they were huge compared to the newcomers. Their bodies were like large hills and their longs necks stretched across the sky. To the young female it seemed as thought they could feast upon the clouds. And that is what she called them, the Cloud Grazers. The females were greeted warmly, the males were kept at a distance. It was mating time and the older males jousted for the best mates, chasing off the newcomers if they got too close to a receptive female.
The young female watched the fights and ensuing courtship. The mating dance became burned into her brain as she breathed deeply of the scents of her clan. She traveled with the group, as did all the other females, the young males having been driven off to form their own bachelor group which followed at a distance.
In the years that followed, the young female grew again in size, and learned many things. She traveled to where her kind laid their eggs, learned which plants would grow during the seasons, and which predators to now avoid.
Among these were the Thunder Lords, loud of roar and sharp of tooth. And while they were only a third the size of her kind, they hunted in packs. They could wound a creature and wait for it to bleed to death or die of infection. She had seen it happen in the older ones too slow to keep up with the herd.
Soon came the time when she took a mate, laid her eggs and took her turn leading the herd to new grazing lands that had been visited by her grandmother, mother and sisters. She had many good years, laid many eggs and even recognized a few that joined her group as her own offspring.
The predators followed them like shadows, and she watched as those she called grandmother, mother, aunt and sister fell before those sharp teeth.
One summer, as she lead the Cloud Grazers to one of the few watering holes that could be had during the drought, she was ambushed by a Thunder Lord pack. And while bitten in several places, and suffering from a twisted ankle, she walked, albeit slowly, away from the fight and back into the protection of the herd, her sisters pressed against her on either side to protect her from further onslaught. But she knew that they could not protect her for long, as she felt the blood run down her hide and felt the fever that came with one of the bites. If she did not fall from fatigue, she would succumb to illness. But still her foot marched onward as if to say: I will not fall today. Soon the predators fell back, dusk painted the land bloody colors and the Thunder Lords knew that they could wait until dawn to make their kill. The stars shifted in the night sky and the old one, which was now matriarch, looked overhead. Among these lights was one that grew brighter, until it filled the darkness with daylight. Once again she was enveloped in a blinding light, as was all her kind. And the old one was no more.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Enlightenment and Hotdogs
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Enlightenment and Hotdogs
By Plot Roach
Harry watched the Buddhist monk munch happily upon his hotdog. The man seemed as content as could be, his robes vibrant with the sun’s rays as the bustle of the crowd parted to flow around him. In the meantime Harry had to repeatedly dodge pedestrians while trying to get a bite of his own hotdog. In the process he dribbled mustard on his work shirt and managed to bite the inside of his cheek twice, tainting the taste of the dog with a coppery tang.
He had had a horrible morning, what with a traffic accident making him late for work, spilling coffee on an important report for his boss and a phone call from his mother in which she chided him over not calling her the day before -on her birthday.
And now here was this foreigner, standing in his city and acting as if eating a crappy hotdog was the greatest pleasure in all the world. The more he saw the serene man’s face and the world part to accommodate him, the more irate Harry felt.
Harry tossed the rest of his hotdog into the garbage bin next to the hot dog cart and approached the monk, anger nipping at his heels like an unruly mutt. “I thought Buddhists weren’t allowed to eat meat.” he snapped at the man.
The young monk turned to Harry, as if suddenly aware that he was not the only person left on the planet. “Well…that depends.”
“Depends on what?” Harry demanded.
“Some believe that to eat meat adds to the pain of the world because an animal must die for it to be consumed.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Others believe that it is an even greater loss to the world for the meat of an animal, which is already dead, to rot away unconsumed and without purpose. If the animal has already been killed for its meat and the flesh is donated in return for my services, then it is not considered sinful.”
“But you’re eating a hotdog from a food cart, not consuming leftovers from some sacred temple.”
“I would beg to differ. Is this not a place where many come to congregate, to consume ideas as well as sustenance?”
The monk pointed to the clash of people moving in all directions, talking over cell phones and to one another as they crossed the streets. There were preachers, performers and purveyors of goods lining the walkway. The throng of citizens turned from a mishmash of chaos to a symphony of organized humanity. Harry shook his head, he would not let the monk ‘zen’ his way out of this argument.
“And someone ’donated’ the hotdog to you?” Harry asked.
“I did.” said the food stand worker. “He deserved it after the joke he told me.”
“What joke?” Harry asked.
“Did you hear about the time a hotdog became Buddhist? It wanted to be ‘one with everything.’”
Enlightenment and Hotdogs
By Plot Roach
Harry watched the Buddhist monk munch happily upon his hotdog. The man seemed as content as could be, his robes vibrant with the sun’s rays as the bustle of the crowd parted to flow around him. In the meantime Harry had to repeatedly dodge pedestrians while trying to get a bite of his own hotdog. In the process he dribbled mustard on his work shirt and managed to bite the inside of his cheek twice, tainting the taste of the dog with a coppery tang.
He had had a horrible morning, what with a traffic accident making him late for work, spilling coffee on an important report for his boss and a phone call from his mother in which she chided him over not calling her the day before -on her birthday.
And now here was this foreigner, standing in his city and acting as if eating a crappy hotdog was the greatest pleasure in all the world. The more he saw the serene man’s face and the world part to accommodate him, the more irate Harry felt.
Harry tossed the rest of his hotdog into the garbage bin next to the hot dog cart and approached the monk, anger nipping at his heels like an unruly mutt. “I thought Buddhists weren’t allowed to eat meat.” he snapped at the man.
The young monk turned to Harry, as if suddenly aware that he was not the only person left on the planet. “Well…that depends.”
“Depends on what?” Harry demanded.
“Some believe that to eat meat adds to the pain of the world because an animal must die for it to be consumed.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Others believe that it is an even greater loss to the world for the meat of an animal, which is already dead, to rot away unconsumed and without purpose. If the animal has already been killed for its meat and the flesh is donated in return for my services, then it is not considered sinful.”
“But you’re eating a hotdog from a food cart, not consuming leftovers from some sacred temple.”
“I would beg to differ. Is this not a place where many come to congregate, to consume ideas as well as sustenance?”
The monk pointed to the clash of people moving in all directions, talking over cell phones and to one another as they crossed the streets. There were preachers, performers and purveyors of goods lining the walkway. The throng of citizens turned from a mishmash of chaos to a symphony of organized humanity. Harry shook his head, he would not let the monk ‘zen’ his way out of this argument.
“And someone ’donated’ the hotdog to you?” Harry asked.
“I did.” said the food stand worker. “He deserved it after the joke he told me.”
“What joke?” Harry asked.
“Did you hear about the time a hotdog became Buddhist? It wanted to be ‘one with everything.’”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)