Category: microfiction

Read Donald Barthelme’s horror/comedy short story “The School”

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“The School” by

Donald Barthelme

Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that … that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems … and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don’t know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn’t the best. We complained about it. So we’ve got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant and we’ve got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.

It wouldn’t have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes – well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that … you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes they weren’t too disturbed.

With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably … you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren’t looking. Or maybe … well, I don’t like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander … well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.

Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they’re belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.

We weren’t even supposed to have a puppy.

We weren’t even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under a Gristede’s truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to the school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then… And that’s what it did. It wasn’t supposed to be in the classroom at all, there’s some kind of regulation about it, but you can’t tell them they can’t have a puppy when the puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping. They named it Edgar – that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, “Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!” Then they’d laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. I enjoyed it myself. I don’t mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply closet and all that. I don’t know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn’t had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew what was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.

And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program, all the kids brought in a quarter a month, that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing, the kid’s name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn’t have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think, nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the school, particularly, I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier this year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.

The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they’re excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There’s a court case coming out of that, the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. It’s been a strange year.

I forgot to mention Billy Brandt’s father who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home.

One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of –

I said, yes, maybe.

They said, we don’t like it.

I said, that’s sound.

They said, it’s a bloody shame!

I said, it is.

They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done?

We know you like Helen.

I do like Helen but I said that I would not.

We’ve heard so much about it, they said, but we’ve never seen it.

I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.

They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.

I said that they shouldn’t be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value everywhere.

Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door, I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.

Read “The Fifth Story,” a very short metafictional horror story (or five) by Clarice Lispector

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“The Fifth Story”

by

Clarice Lispector

translated

by Giovanni Pontiero

This story could be called “The Statues.” Another possible title would be “The Killing.” Or even “How to Kill Cockroaches.” So I shall tell at least three stories, all of them true, because none of the three will contradict the others. Although they constitute one story, they could become a thousand and one, were I to be granted a thousand and one nights.

The first story, “How To Kill Cockroaches,” begins like this: I was complaining about the cockroaches. A woman heard me complain. She gave me a recipe for killing them. I was to mix together equal quantities of sugar, flour and gypsum. The flour and sugar would attract the cockroaches, the gypsum would dry up their insides. I followed her advice. The cockroaches died.

The next story is really the first, and it is called “The Killing.” It begins like this: I was complaining about the cockroaches. A woman heard me complain. The recipe follows. And then the killing takes place. The truth is that I had only complained in abstract terms about the cockroaches, for they were not even mine: they belonged to the ground floor and climbed up the pipes in the building into our apartment. It was only when I prepared the mixture that they also became mine. On our behalf, therefore, I began to measure and weigh ingredients with greater concentration. A vague loathing had taken possession of me, a sense of outrage. By day, the cockroaches were invisible and no one would believe in the evil secret which eroded such a tranquil household. But if the cockroaches, like evil secrets, slept by day, there I was preparing their nightly poison. Meticulous, eager, I prepared the elixir of prolonged death. An angry fear and my own evil secret guided me. Now I coldly wanted one thing only: to kill every cockroach in existence. Cockroaches climb up the pipes while weary people sleep. And now the recipe was ready, looking so white. As if I were dealing with cockroaches as cunning as myself, I carefully spread the powder until it looked like part of the surface dust. From my bed, in the silence of the apartment, I imagined them climbing up one by one into the kitchen where darkness slept, a solitary towel alert on the clothesline. I awoke hours later, startled at having overslept. It was beginning to grow light. I walked across the kitchen. There they lay on the floor of the scullery, huge and brittle. During the night I had killed them. On our behalf, it was beginning to grow light. On a nearby hill, a cockerel crowed.

The third story which now begins is called “The Statues.” It begins by saying that I had been complaining about the cockroaches. Then the same woman appears on the scene. And so it goes on to the point where I awake as it is beginning to grow light, and I awake still feeling sleepy and I walk across the kitchen. Even more sleepy is the scullery floor with its tiled perspective. And in the shadows of dawn, there is a purplish hue which distances everything; at my feet, I perceive patches of light and shade, scores of rigid statues scattered everywhere. The cockroaches that have hardened from core to shell. Some are lying upside down. Others arrested in the midst of some movement (hat will never be completed. In the mouths of some of the cockroaches, there are traces of white powder. I am the first to observe the dawn breaking over Pompei. I know what this night has been, I know about the orgy in the dark. In some, the gypsum has hardened as slowly as in some organic process, and the cockroaches, with ever more tortuous movements, have greedily intensified the night’s pleasures, trying to escape from their insides. Until they turn to stone, in innocent terror and with such, but such an expression of pained reproach. Others—suddenly assailed by their own core, without even having perceived that their inner form was turning to stone!—these are suddenly crystallized, just like a word arrested on someone’s lips: I love . . . The cockroaches, invoking the name of love in vain, sang on a summer’s night. While the cockroach over there, the one with the brown antennae smeared with white, must have realized too late that it had become mummified precisely because it did not know how to use things with the gratuitous grace of the in vain: “It is just that I looked too closely inside myself! It is just that I looked too closely inside …” From my frigid height as a human being, I watch the destruction of a world. Dawn breaks. Here and there, the parched antennae of dead cockroaches quiver in the breeze. The cockerel from the previous story crows.

The fourth story opens a new era in the household. The story begins as usual: I was complaining about the cockroaches. It goes on up to the point when I see the statues in plaster of Paris. Inevitably dead. I look toward the pipes where this same night an infestation will reappear, swarming slowly upwards in Indian file. Should I renew the lethal sugar every night? like someone who no longer sleeps without the avidity of some rite. And should I take myself somnambulant out to the terrace early each morning? in my craving to encounter the statues which my perspiring night has erected. I trembled with a depraved pleasure at the vision of my double existence as a witch. I also trembled at the sight of that hardening gypsum, the depravity of existence which would shatter my internal form.

The grim moment of choosing between two paths, which I thought would separate, convinced that any choice would mean sacrificing either myself or my soul. I chose. And today I secretly carry a plaque of virtue in my heart: “This house has been disinfected.”

The fifth story is called “Leibnitz and the Transcendence of Love in Polynesia.” It begins like this: I was complaining about the cockroaches.

“Wash,” a very short story by Stuart Dybek

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“Wash”

by

Stuart Dybek

In a slip that is the only thing pink about the day, she strains from the décolletage of a third-story window. Rain beats her with an intensity reserved for glass while she reels in the pulley line hand over hand, a shoulder strap down, a breast nearly slipping free as clothespins drop from between her teeth, just before she disappears into white furls, fighting in the sheets as the L streams by with its cargo of eyes.

All you’ll ever know of her is what you’ve already learned about hanging out wash.

Read “On the Train,” a very short story by Gene Wolfe

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“On the Train”

by

Gene Wolfe

When I look out the window, the earth seems to have become liquid, rushing to flow over a falls that is always just behind the last car. Wherever that may be. The telephone poles reel like drunks, losing their footing. The mountains, white islands in the fluid landscape, track us for miles, the hills breaking to snow on their beaches.

The entire universe can be contained in three questions, of which the first two are: How long is the train? And from what station does it originate?

I do not remember boarding, although my mother, who was here in the compartment with us until a moment ago, told me she recalled it very well. I was helped on by a certain doctor, she said. I would go up and down the cars looking for him (and her), but one cannot thus look for a doctor without arousing the anxiety of the other passengers or exciting their suspicions. Certainly, however, I did not get on at the station of origin; my mother told me that she herself had already been riding for over thirty years.

The porter’s name is Flip; he was once my dog, a smooth fox terrier. Now he makes our berths and brings coffee and knows more about the train than any of us. He can answer all the unimportant questions, although his answers are so polite it is hard to tell sometimes just what he means. My wife and I (all the children we helped aboard have gone to other cars) would like to make him sit with us. But he threatens to call his uncle, the Dawn Guard.

I have formed several conjectures concerning the length of the train. It is surely either very long or very short, since when it goes around a curve (which it seldom does) I cannot see the engine. Possibly it is infinite—but it may be of a closed as well as an open infinity. If the track were extended ever westward, forming a Great Circle, and all that track were filled with cars, would not the spinning earth rush past them endlessly? That is precisely what I see from the window. On the other hand, if straight trackage were laid (and most of it does seem to be straight) it would extend forever among the stars. I see that too. Perhaps I do not see the engine because the engine is behind us.

At every moment it seems that we are stopping, but we continue and even pick up speed. The mountains crowd closer, as if to ram us by night. I lie in my berth listening to the conductor (so called because he was struck by lightning once) come down the car checking our tickets in the dark.

“A Parkersburg Vocabulary” — David Berman

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“A Parkersburg Vocabulary”

by

David Berman

Sad Fingers (sad-fin-gurs) n. Nostalgia for an old area code. Ex: “He has sad fingers.”

Hoxter (hock-stur) n. A fellow who lacks the energy to live up to his own sociopathic heritage.

Roycambellside (roy-cam-bul-zid) adv. or adj. To be in the vicinity of Roy Campbell.

Blue Emberton (blu-embr-tun) n. A wealthy man who subsidizes his own murder, often through the employment of an idle hoxter.

Dratchell (dratch-II) n. A piano tuned to the shadows cast on a vacant lot.

Cloud’s Index (klowdz-in-dex) n. Spiral-bound notebook listing the names of people who have never returned Fred J. Cloud’s phone calls.

Pollygosters (poli-gos-turz) n. Tiny candy construction hats tossed out to children from the Persevering Light Pencil Company’s float during the Clown Baking Days Parade.

Dorchester Reproach (dorch-est-ur reap-roach) n.: Dismay at the enthusiasms of poor people.

Multipulchomy (mul-tee-pulko-mee) n. The performance of plastic surgery on a crowd; first tested at Parkersburg Civic Center in July of 2006.

Disinfecting the Toy (dis-sen-fect-in thu toy) v. The nightly pond-side ejaculation of subdivision security guard Jimmy Food Hill onto the head or back of a swan.

Quadriplegic Beekeeper (kwad-ruh-puh-lee-gic beak-eaper) n. Door County slang for an ineffective person; a poor employee.

Galsworthy Rideout (gals-wurthy rye-dout) n. A locally-built electronic circuit that allows pinball machines to speak in contractions.

Acroplarf (akro-plarl) n. 1. German aspirin manufacturer’s waltz, usually played on an upright dratchell. 2. Suicide pact written by teenagers on parchment paper with goose quills.

Emberdome (embur-dom) n. An arena built on the Techwood Industries campus for the purpose of crushing employee suggestions.

Door County Hum (dork-ownty hum) n. A sensation often experienced by area men while wearing bathrobes; that they have suddenly been transformed into little terrycloth churchbells, inside of which their balls jingle jangle when they walk.

Tohapaxno’s Bias (toe-ha-pax-noze bi-us) n. The bothersome late-night invocation of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, by Mixed Emotions bartender, Jim Tohapaxno.

Hobbledehoys (hobbul-dee-hoiz) n. Crowd-control tacos distributed by Parks and Rec. Department vans during the state butterfly census.

Polish Infinity (poal-ish in-fin-uh-ti) n. 1. Cologne imprinted on an empty elevator. 2. The nowhere vibe of a new megastore. 3. The EKG of a boulder or large stone.

Read “Fictional Exits,” a very short story by Alasdair Gray

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“Fictional Exits”

by

Alasdair Gray

Because of a mistake (though I do not know whose) someone was shut in a windowless room with nothing to look at but a door which could only be opened from outside, a lavatory pan and a wall poster showing the face of the nation’s ruler. After imagining a great many dealings with this official the prisoner tried to find pleasure in a landscape behind the face. This first soothed by its suggestion of spaciousness, then annoyed by its completely tame nature. On one side wellcultivated farms receded to a distant line of blue hills, on the other was a seat of government, a cathedral, university, and very clean factory and workers’ residential block. There were no clumps of forest or winding rivers to explore; the bland distant hills clearly contained no ravines, torrents, cliffs, caverns or mountain passes, they were a mere frontier, shutting off the horizon. Though designed to advertise a sunnier world than the electrically lit cell, the poster showed the inside of a larger jail.

On the brink of melancholy madness the prisoner found a pencil on the floor behind the lavatory pan. When this had been carefully nibbled to a sharp point it might have been used to draw anything on the whitewashed walls: faces of friends, bodies of lovers, the scenery of great adventures. Not able to draw these convincingly the prisoner carefully drew a full-size copy of the room’s unopenable door, with one difference. The drawn door had a key in the lock, and it could be turned. Then the prisoner turned the lock, opened the door and walked out. Though describing how fantasy works this is a realistic story. Free will being the essence of mind, everyone who feels trapped must imagine escapes, and some of them work. New arts and sciences, new religions and nations are created this way. But the story of the door can be told with a less happy ending.

A blind man living alone in a municipal housing scheme heard people breaking through his front door, so phoned the local police station. While he was asking for help the housebreakers got to him and knocked him down. They were policemen who had mistaken his door for the door of someone they suspected of selling dangerous drugs without a licence. The mistake was discovered when one of the housebreakers lifted the telephone receiver and found he was talking to a colleague. He told the colleague in the police station not to worry, because the blind householder would be stitched up. So the blind man was summoned to a court of law and charged with assaulting the police while they were trying to do their duty.

In Britain all emergency phonecalls to police stations are recorded twice: once by the police stations for the use of the police: once by the British telecommunication company for the use of the caller. The blind man’s defence lawyer played the Telecom recording to prove that his client was innocent, pointing out that stitched up was slang for arrested on false evidence. The police witness agreed that stitched up meant that in criminal slang, but explained that in police slang it meant properly arrested with no hint of falsehood or perjury in the procedure. The sheriff on the bench (magistrates are called sheriffs in Scotland) believed the police witness, since our nation will sink into anarchy if magistrates distrust the police. So the blind man was fined, but not imprisoned, as would almost certainly have happened in an old-fashioned fascist or communist nation.

Like the sheriff on the bench my sympathy is mainly with the police. Opening a door with the big key (which is police slang for sledgehammer) is a desperate deed, even if you think someone behind the door is wicked, and that if you grab them fast enough you may find proof of this. Nearly all our experience and education, besides the natural law of do-as-you-would-be-done-by, teaches us to handle doors gently. They are usually quiet, unthreatening, protective creatures. Some of our dearest joys and most regular functions have been made easier by them, so smashing one MUST feel like punching a face, or bombing pedestrians from an aeroplane in broad daylight. We may earn a wage by doing it, we may believe we are defending decency and justice by it, but we cannot help feeling abnormally excited, so mistakes are inevitable. I also sympathize slightly with the blind man, for I am not one of those who think everyone in a municipal housing scheme deserves what is done to them. The man’s blindness may not have been his own fault, and may have stopped him seeing he ought to live in a better part of the city. But he should certainly have used his imagination, which would have let him see in the dark.

The big key unlocked the blind man’s door in 1990 when Glasgow was the official Culture Capital of Europe. The story was not reported by the press. I give it here because the police, like the prisoner in my first story, found themselves in a terrible situation but imagined a way out. They created a fictional exit which worked.

“Queen Elizabeth’s Rhinoplasty,” a surgical microfiction by J. G. Ballard

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“Queen Elizabeth’s Rhinoplasty”

by

J. G. Ballard

Many views were expressed as to what would be the ideal shape of the Queen’s nose, and how it could best be obtained. Some of her surgeons favored the profilometer (Straith, 1938), by which Her Majesty’s nose would emerge after operation with a standard height, tip angle, and bridge line. Other surgeons modeled the patient, trying out various patterns of the future nose in the attempt to obtain Her Majesty’s approval for a particular one.

The principle here was rather like that of trying out a new hat.

Unfortunately, human tissues are prone to thicken and behave in a way that is unpredictable. It was felt unwise, therefore, to lay too much emphasis with Her Majesty on exact details. Generalities were discussed, such as whether a straight or a hollowed-out bridge line was to be aimed at, whether her nose was to be retrousse or not, and whether the tip was to be narrowed or left alone.

Preoperative preparation. The Queen’s nostril vibrissae were cut short and her nose packed with cocaine and adrenalin as for a submucous resection of the septum. General anesthesia was preferred, the Queen’s trachea being intubated and the pharynx carefully packed off around the tube.

The incisions. Bilateral vestibular incisions were made through

the lining of the lateral wall, placed between the alar cartilage and the lateral cartilage. These incisions were carried forward over the apex of each of Her Majesty’s nostrils and met centrally at another incision made by transfixing the septum just below the lower border of its cartilage.

The skin covering of the Queen’s nose was freed on a deep subcutaneous plane right up to the glabella and well around to the sides. This was done with a pair of small curved scissors with blunt points. Where the saw cuts were to be made along the posterior margins of the Queen’s nose, an elevator was introduced via the small lateral incisions. A pair of straight scissors carried up on either side of the cartilaginous septum now left this structure standing free and allowed the lateral cartilages to fall away on the sidewall of the nose, being carried in a mucosal flap. The septum was then trimmed along its anterior aspect to complete the reduction of the bridge line.

There were two schools of thought regarding the instrument to be used for the bone section. One favored the use of the osteome; the other preferred the saw. Much was made of the dangers of bone dust, and its part in producing thickening after operation. Joseph’s nasal saws angled differently for left and right sides were good saws for the purpose. In the revision of the nose tip after previous unsatisfactory surgical intervention, asymmetrical alar cartilages presented special problems difficult of solution by the usual intranasal techniques. The so-called “Aying-boat approach was employed, as described by Rethi (quoted May 1951).

The radical operation on the Queen’s nose carried with it a tendency to bleed. Hematoma formation would lead to excessive thickening, and possibly even to infection. Iced compresses during the first forty-eight hours diminished the edema that occurred in the Queen’s eyelids and cheeks. Packs were removed after twenty-four hours. Her Majesty’s nose was interfered with as little as possible during the next few days, the air way being cleaned with a pledget of cotton wool. The splint was removed after seven days and the Queen instructed in the digital pressure required to maintain the position of the nasal bones. A brisk reactionary hemorrhage was controlled by packing.

Her Majesty was warned that some bruising (black eyes) was likely up to three weeks after the operation, and that her social activities would have to be curtailed. The Queen was also informed that she should not attempt to blow her nose until the intranasal incisions were soundly healed (two weeks).

During after-care, Her Majesty found it difficult to understand that her nose was swollen, and that such edema would settle down slowly and irregularly. Her Majesty was warned that her nose should not be operated upon for a further time within six months of the previous operation.

“Pieces (III)” — Katherine Dunn

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“Pieces (III)”

by

Katherine Dunn

from the collection

Near Flesh

It was a numb, starless night in the jungle. They were dug in when the attack came, but Davey’s partner in the foxhole was killed by the first rattle of fire. When the small man in the black pajamas slipped into the hole, Davey knifed him and kicked him and then stood on the corpse, listening, waiting for more. At the first seep of dawn Davey sliced off the enemy’s right ear and buttoned it into his breast pocket. Then he dragged his buddy’s body back to the unit. Davey was eighteen at the time.

Later, back home, Davey’s mother found the ear wrapped in tinfoil in his drawer. She threw it out and screamed at him. He was drinking a lot and getting into fights, so it wasn’t just the ear that set her off.

After a while his war dreams sifted away and left only the one dream of the ear. The earless one wanted something from him. This was the message. Davey read about Eastern religions until he understood that the earless one couldn’t go to his heaven with a piece missing. He would wander the dreamscape forever.

Davey felt bad about it but other things were happening—heroin and politics and motorcycles and women. There were sojourns in the Veterans Hospital to sober up and read. There was some college time, several jobs. Sometimes he wouldn’t dream at all. Other times the earless one was with him every night for weeks. During one of those sieges he went to a refugee temple and asked the priest how to make amends. The priest said Davey would have to figure that out for himself.

He was thirty-three then. He worked clearing trails in the steep, wooded parks. The crew chief was a pacifist who’d spent the war in jail. The two became friends. Davey usually worked hard but mornings after a bender he’d flop in a grassy clearing and sleep. The chief understood and didn’t bother him.

One morning Davey took his sharpest ax and drifted away from the rest of the crew. He spread his left hand out on a tree stump. Breathing carefully he lifted the ax and cut off the smallest finger.

Lifting it, he offered it to the earless one. “Fair trade, man,” he said. “Peace, man.” He tossed the finger into the brush.

At the hospital he tried to explain why he was so happy. But the crew chief told the admitting nurse it was an accident on the job, that the wounded man was in shock, delirious. He whispered harshly into Davey’s ear, “Shut the fuck up. Workers’ comp won’t pay for spiritual atonement.” Davey shut up, but he couldn’t stop grinning.

“The Question,” a very short story by Stuart Dybek

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“The Question”

by

Stuart Dybek

A mime is climbing stairs. He climbs reluctantly, each leaden step an act of resignation, which may explain why, despite his effort, he’s not ascending. He no more wants to reach the top than a man mounting another kind of stage—a platform where an executioner stands waiting with an ax.

Or perhaps the executioner is seated in a portable director’s chair, puffing through a slit in his hood the cigarette meant for the condemned while stropping the blade of a guillotine that has just failed the cabbage test.

Or perhaps the stairs lead to a hangman tying a knot with the care that his wife expended just that morning braiding their daughter’s hair.

The mime climbs and climbs, but cannot conquer the three-step flight that peaks in the space reserved for him in the mercy seat.

Or perhaps … but wait!

There’s been an error in interpretation. The mime isn’t climbing. All along he’s been marching in place. Still, from his body language, not to mention the look engraved on his face, it’s clear that misinterpretation is not to be confused with a stay of execution.

Okay, then the mime is marching—marching down a buzzing, fluorescent corridor in the bowels of a prison, toward a gurney for an operation that requires only an anesthesiologist and a chaplain.

He is marched at dawn across a deserted square to a send-up of pigeons, and takes his place against the riddled wall that faces an unshaven, disheveled firing squad. Their hungover master of ceremonies, a captain, smelling of women, stands sipping menudo from a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup, sheepishly aware that he has just smoked the cigarette prop. Instead of a sword, the captain raises a blood-red parasol that theatrically pops open. Instead of a sidearm to deliver the coup de grâce, he’s holstered a cell phone that is carrying on its own nonstop, one-way, outraged conversation. As for the blindfold, well, each member of the audience seems to be wearing it. On further inspection, each soldier in the firing squad is wearing one, too. And yet, despite the disordered proceedings, and just before the Ready, aim, etc., command, the captain remembers to ask, “Any last words?”

“The Birds” — Emmy Bridgwater

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“The Birds”

by

Emmy Bridgwater

from

Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (ed. Penelope Rosemont)

“The Birds”

One

He pulled the blanket over and he drew up the blind. The yellow mice rushed into their corners. The spiders ran behind the pictures. The lecture began on Christ the Forerunner. Only the very young mice sat still to listen. The blackbirds flying near the window passed the word to each other. “Come on. Here we may find something. Something to put our beaks into.” Snap went the window cord; down came the blind. The birds, disappointed, did the best they could. They flew nearer and nearer the windowpane. It was dangerous. It wasn’t worth it. But they wanted to get the news—to be the first to know—to pass on the news. What had come to the lecture on Christ? Did one still lie under the blankets? The spiders laughed into their hands to think of the birds outside all twittering and over-anxious.

Two

As she walked into the garden the birds flew down to her pecking at her lips, “Don’t do that,” she cried, “It’s mine. I’m alive you know.” “Well, why don’t you wear colors?” She heard them talking. “Dead people walk, but they don’t wear colors. They scream and they talk too.” The birds went on chattering about dead people. They all perched up on the holly bush but they didn’t peck the soft berries. They just stared down at her. All of them stared with their little black beady eyes. They were looking at her red lips.

Three

“Sing a song for the King. Come on, now sing.” The child was shy to start, but her mother, standing behind her gave her a little push which startled her into opening her mouth and she began, “Wasn’t that a dirty dish to set before the king?” “Begin again dear,” whispered her mother, “at the first line,” “O.k. ma,” and she chanted, “Four and twenty black… oooh,” for a peacock had walked in front of her and spread out its tail and croaked “Frico. Frico.” The little girl went very white. “Frico. Frico,” she said. The birds, who had been sitting on the cornice as part of the decoration, flew down into the court and circled about the heads of the King and Courtiers, fluttering as close as possible. All the people flapped their hands helplessly. Suddenly the little girl pointed at the King. “You must get out of here,” she said in a grown-up voice. “This is their Palace.”

“Each Person to Her Paradise” — Diane Williams

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“Each Person to Her Paradise”

by

Diane Williams

In the long run, as a sequel to our other less strenuous raptures, he undressed and put himself on the bed belly down—lying cross-ways across it.

This was his come hither. His arms were pressed against his sides, I think.

He was facedown, I think. Facedown, really? Like a swimmer. Were his arms really stretched out in front?

And the stress that ensued was not the strange thing.

I did my best, keeping my lower part centered when I met up with him—after he had moved his location and changed his posture accordingly.

I was awkwardly raising a leg, flexing a knee.

But this is my motto: While you can’t figure out how, you do it.

And I was wearing my skin unfresh and sallow and some sympathetic restoration in that regard is still called for.

But by the time he stuck his hand out toward me . . . Did he then?

So . . . no, neither of us accomplished anything particularly tender then or later.

He had a habit—how he took my arm, as if with a heavy pincers, on a subway platform to maneuver us if we were in a crowd—and I really enjoyed that aspect of our relation.

Each person to her paradise.

That grip of his, as a matter of fact, was, and still is, when I think of it, a source of inspiration—like a legend or wisdom—like humor can be.

When water gushed down his body when he rose from the tub, after he had bathed, that flow of water was a drumroll.

The god in this story is this man and I do not accuse him of anything. I could.In the long run, as a sequel to our other less strenuous raptures, he undressed and put himself on the bed belly down—lying cross-ways across it.

This was his come hither. His arms were pressed against his sides, I think.

He was facedown, I think. Facedown, really? Like a swimmer. Were his arms really stretched out in front?

And the stress that ensued was not the strange thing.

I did my best, keeping my lower part centered when I met up with him—after he had moved his location and changed his posture accordingly.

I was awkwardly raising a leg, flexing a knee.

But this is my motto: While you can’t figure out how, you do it.

And I was wearing my skin unfresh and sallow and some sympathetic restoration in that regard is still called for.

But by the time he stuck his hand out toward me . . . Did he then?

So . . . no, neither of us accomplished anything particularly tender then or later.

He had a habit—how he took my arm, as if with a heavy pincers, on a subway platform to maneuver us if we were in a crowd—and I really enjoyed that aspect of our relation.

Each person to her paradise.

That grip of his, as a matter of fact, was, and still is, when I think of it, a source of inspiration—like a legend or wisdom—like humor can be.

When water gushed down his body when he rose from the tub, after he had bathed, that flow of water was a drumroll.

The god in this story is this man and I do not accuse him of anything. I could.

“The Lock-Eater,” a short piece by Henri Michaux

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“The Lock-Eater”

by

Henri Michaux

translated by David Ball

from Plume

In the corridors of the hotel, I met him walking around with a little lock-eating animal.

He would put the little animal on his elbow, and then the animal was happy and would eat the lock.

Then he would walk further down the hall, and the animal was happy and another lock would be eaten. And so on for several, and so on for many. The man was walking around like someone whose home had expanded. As soon as he opened a door, a new life would begin for him.

But the little animal was so hungry for locks that its master soon had to go out again and look for other break-ins, so that he got very little rest.

I did not want to ally myself with this man. I told him that what I liked best in life was going out. He looked blank. We weren’t on the same side, that’s all, or else I would have allied myself with him; I liked him but he did not suit me.

Read “Lamb Chops, Cod,” a very short story by Diane Williams

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“Lamb Chops, Cod”

by

Diane Williams

She had stopped insisting that they have heart-to-heart conversations, but for stranded people, they had these nice moments together, and he had his professional enjoyment at the newspaper. He approved the issues there with a scientific mind and he made quite a contribution. He was a consultant in the field of efficiency.

She should have appreciated that, I guess. I don’t know—she felt lonely.

After dinner, he would go into his room and sometimes read or do his engraving or follow up on his stamp collection or solve math problems from that year’s baccalaureate examination. Once he told me that once a year he reread Our Man in Havana. It had something to do with Havana. You know—petty things—I guess my mother wanted full attention, not for him to have private time by himself. I don’t know what my mother did when she was in her room. She was working. She was working a lot. She devoted herself to family matters, making trouble. But I am convinced that she did love him extremely and after he died she said that that was the fact.

Then they had golf together and they did trips. There was a French newspaper that would invite him to solve a technical problem. He was amazing that way.

They would playact around the occasion of having dinner. I’m not sure, but I’m afraid that they did it for every dinner. She would put on her best gown and wear the diamond ornament, which she felt free to pin anywhere on her garment if it was necessary for the brooch to cover up a soiled spot.

He wore black lacquer pumps, silk stockings that went up under the knees. His breeches were tied under the knees and he would have tails and white tie on. My mother would provide the basic meal—cod or lamb chops. He would provide—he loved to go to the store that was similar to Fortnum and Mason and buy smoked salmon, cheese, fruit in season, asparagus. They had cocktails at five o’clock. They would listen to the news and then they’d sit down to the table, light the candles. They would have their little feast together. Then after the meal, he’d sit down and do work in his room. His French was very good, so sometimes he translated manuals from French or the other way around. And before bedtime, they’d have a cup of tea together with a cookie.

He loved an existence of this kind and to eat food.

He died while he was still glossy and smooth at the dinner table between the fish with dill—a great favorite—outstanding with butter—and the boiled blue plum dumplings.

“Wedding Night,” a very short story by Henri Michaux

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“Wedding Night”

by

Henri Michaux

translated by David Ball

from The Night Moves

When you come home on your wedding day, if you stick your wife in a well to soak all night she is flabbergasted. Even if she had always been vaguely worried about it  .  .  .

“Well, well,” she says to herself, “so that’s what marriage is like. No wonder they kept it all so secret. I’ve been taken in by the whole business.”

But since her feelings are hurt, she doesn’t say a thing. That’s why you can plunge her into it for a long time, over and over, without making any trouble in the neighborhood.

If she didn’t understand the first time, it’s not very likely that she’ll catch on after that, and you have a good chance of being able to continue with no problems at all (except for bronchitis) if you really want to.

As for me, since I suffer even more in other people’s bodies than in my own, I had to give it up right away.

“The Sausage Cellar,” a very short fiction by Henri Michaux

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“The Sausage Cellar”

by

Henri Michaux

translated by David Ball

from Life in the Folds

I love to knead.

I get hold of a field marshal and grind him up so fine that he loses half his senses, he loses his nose that he thought really had flair and even his hand that he can’t raise to his cap any more even if a whole army saluted him.

Yes, through a series of grindings, I reduce him, I reduce him—a sausage unable to do anything from now on.

And I don’t limit myself to field marshals. In my cellar I have lots of sausages that were once important people supposedly out of my reach.

But my infallible instinct for jubilation triumphed over these obstacles.

If they act up after that, it’s really no fault of mine. They could not have been mixed and ground any more than they were. I’ve been told that some of them are still moving about. It’s printed in the papers. Is this real? How could it be? They’re rolled up. The rest is the tail end of a phenomenon, the kind that one might encounter in nature, a sort of mystery comparable to reflections and exhalations whose importance should not be exaggerated. No, absolutely not.

In my cellar they lie, in deep silence.

Read “The Marker,” a very short story by Robert Coover

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“The Marker”

by

Robert Coover

One of “Seven Exemplary Fictions” from Pricksongs and Descants 

Of the seven people (Jason, his wife, the police officer, and the officer’s four assistants), only Jason and his wife are in the room. Jason is sitting in an armchair with a book in his hand, a book he has doubtless been reading, although now he is watching his wife get ready for bed. About Jason: he is tall and masculine, about 35, with strong calloused hands and a sensitive nose; he is deeply in love with his wife. And she: she is beautiful, affectionate, and has a direct and charming manner of speaking, if we were to hear her speak. She seems always at ease.

Nude now, she moves lightly about the room, folding a sweater into a drawer, hanging up Jason’s jacket which he had tossed on the bed, picking up a comb from the floor where it had fallen from the chest of drawers. She moves neither pretentiously nor shyly. Whatever meaning there might be in her motion exists within the motion itself and not in her deliberations.

At last, she folds back the blankets of the bed (which is across the room from Jason), fluffs her short blonde hair, crawls onto the fresh sheets on her hands and knees, pokes gently at the pillows, then rolls down on her back, hands under her head, gazing across the room at Jason. She watches him, with the same apparent delight in least motions, as he again picks up his book, finds his place in it, and inserts a marker. He stands, returns her gaze for almost a minute without smiling, and then does smile, at the same time placing his book on the table. He removes his clothes, hooking his trousers over the back of the armchair and tossing the other things on the seat cushion. Before extinguishing the light behind his chair, he glances across the room at his wife once more, her tanned body gay and relaxed, a rhythm of soft lines on the large white canvas of the bed. She smiles, in subtle recognition perhaps of the pleasure he finds in her. He snaps out the light.

In the darkness, Jason pauses a moment in front of the armchair. The image of his wife, as he has just seen her, fades slowly (as when, lying on a beach, one looks at the reflection of the sun on the curving back of the sea, then shuts tight his eyes, letting the image of the reflected sun lose its brilliance, turn green, then evaporate slowly into the limbo of uncertain associations), gradually becoming transformed from that of her nude body crackling the freshness of the laundered sheets to that of Beauty, indistinct and untextured, as though still emerging from some profound ochre mist, but though without definition, an abstract Beauty that contains somehow his wife’s ravaging smile and musical eyes. Jason, still facing the bed, walks steadily toward it, his right hand in front of him to feel for it in the dark. When he has reached the spot where he expects the bed, he is startled not to find it. He retraces his steps, and stumbles into… what? the chest of drawers! Reoriented now by the chest of drawers, he sets out again and, after some distance, touches a wall. He starts to call out to his wife, but hears her laugh suddenly: she is up to some kind of joke, he says to himself with a half-smile. He walks boldly toward the laugh, only to-find himself—quite by surprise—back at the armchair! He fumbles for the lamp and snaps the switch, but the light does not turn on. He snaps the switch several times, but the lamp definitely does not work. She has pulled the plug, he says to himself, but without really believing it, since he could not imagine any reason she would have for doing so. Once again, he positions himself in front of the armchair and crosses the room toward the bed. This time, however, he does not walk confidently, and although almost expecting something of the sort, is no less alarmed when he arrives at, not the bed, but a door. He gropes along the wall, past a radiator and a wastebasket, until he reaches a corner. He starts out along the second wall, working methodically now, but does not take more than five steps when he hears his wife’s gentle laugh right in his ear. He turns around and finds the bed… just behind him!

Although in the strange search he has lost his appetite for the love act, he quickly regains it at the sound of her happy laugh and the feel, in the dark, of her cool thighs. In fact, the experience, the anxiety of it and its riddles, seems to have created a new urgency, an almost brutal wish to swallow, for a moment, reason and its inadequacies, and to let passion, noble or not, have its hungry way. He is surprised to find her dry, but the entry itself is relaxed and gives way to his determined penetration. In a moment of alarm, he wonders if this is really his wife, but since there is no alternate possibility, he rejects his misgivings as absurd. He leans down over her to kiss her, and as he does so, notices a strange and disagreeable odor.

At this moment, the lights come on and the police officer and his four assistants burst into the room. “Really!” cries the police officer, pulling up short. “This is quite disgusting!”

Jason looks down and finds that it is indeed his wife beneath him, but that she is rotting. Her eyes are open, but glazed over, staring up at him, without meaning, but bulging as though in terror of him. The flesh on her face is yellowish and drawn back toward her ears. Her mouth is open in a strangely cruel smile and Jason can see that her gums have dried and pulled back from her teeth. Her lips are black and her blonde hair, now long and tangled, is splayed out over the pillow like a urinal mop spread out to dry. There is a fuzzy stuff like mold around the nipples of her shrunken breasts. Jason tries desperately to get free from her body, but finds to his deepest horror that he is stuck! “This woman has been dead for three weeks,” says the officer in genuine revulsion.

Jason strikes wildly against the thighs in his effort to free himself, jolts one leg off the bed so that it dangles there, disjointed and swinging, the long yellow toenails scratching on the wooden floor. The four assistants seize Jason and wrench him forcibly away from the corpse of his dead wife. The body follows him punishingly in movement for a moment, as a sheet of paper will follow a comb after the comb has been run through hair; then, freed by its own weight, it falls back in a pile on the badly soiled sheets. The four men carry Jason to the table where his book still lies with its marker in it. They hold him up against the table and the police officer, without ceremony, pulls Jason’s genitals out flat on the tabletop and pounds them to a pulp with the butt of his gun.

He leaves Jason writhing on the floor and turns to march out, along with his four assistants. At the door he hesitates, then turns back to Jason. A flicker of compassion crosses his face.

“You understand, of course,” he says, “that I am not, in the strictest sense, a traditionalist. I mean to say that I do not recognize tradition qua tradition as sanctified in its own sake. On the other hand, I do not join hands with those who find inherent in tradition some malignant evil, and who therefore deem it of terrible necessity that all custom be rooted out at all costs. I am personally convinced, if you will permit me, that there is a middle road, whereon we recognize that innovations find their best soil in traditions, which are justified in their own turn by the innovations which created them. I believe, then, that law and custom are essential, but that it is one’s constant task to review and revise them. In spite of that, however, some things still make me puke!” He turns, flushed, to his four assistants. “Now get rid of that fucking corpse!” he screams.

After wiping his pink brow with a handkerchief, he puts it to his nose and turns his back on the bed as the men drag away, by the feet, the unhinged body of Jason’s wife. The officer notices the book on the table, the book Jason has been reading, and walks over to pick it up. There is a slight spattering of blood on it. He flips through it hastily with one hand, the other still holding the hand kerchief to his nose, and although his face wears an expression of mild curiosity, it is difficult to know if it is sincere. The marker falls to the floor beside Jason. The officer replaces the book on the table and walks out of the room.

“The marker!” Jason gasps desperately, but the police officer does not hear him, nor does he want to.

“Vladimir,” a very short story by Robert Walser

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“Vladimir”

by

Robert Walser

translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

We shall call him Vladimir, since it is a rare name and in point of fact he was unique. Those to whom he appeared foolish tried to win a glance, a word from him, which he rarely gave. In inferior clothes he behaved more sanguinely than in elegant ones, and was basically a good person who merely made the mistake of falsely attributing and affixing to himself faults which he did not have. He was hard primarily on himself. Isn’t that inexcusable?

Once he lived with a married couple and was impossible to drive away. “It is time that you left us alone,” was intimated to him; he seemed hardly able to imagine it, saw the woman smiling and the man turn pale. He was chivalry itself. Serving always gave him a lofty notion of the bliss of existence. He could not see pretty women burdened with small boxes, packages, and so on, without springing forth and expressing the wish to be helpful, at which he first always fought back the slightest fear of intruding.

From whence did Vladimir descend? Well, certainly from none other than his parents. It seems peculiar that he admits when down on his luck to having often been happy, when successful to having been morose, and that he says the driving force of his existence is his industriousness. No one ever saw such a satisfied and at the same time dissatisfied man. No one was quicker and in the very next instant more irresolute.

Once a girl promised to meet him at such and such a time and then kept him waiting. This came as a surprise to him. Another asserted, “It befits you to be swindled. Do you not have a peculiar predilection for jokes which border on disregard?”

“You are mistaken,” is all he answered.

He never bore a person a grudge, because “I, too, have often played unfairly with people.”

At the ladies’ cafe he was amused by the mimicry and expressions of the customers. By the way, he was no friend of too many diversions, as much as he valued them by way of exception. He thought about everything only to forget it in an instant, was a good reckoner because he did not permit his feelings to have power over his mind.

The women thought little of him, but not without always becoming interested in him again. They called him timid, but he likewise them. They played with and feared him.

To one lady, who flaunted her wealth before him in perhaps too clever a manner, he was most courteous, as one is when one feels for that person nothing. He found uncultured girls inspired by their need for instruction and on the other hand also such who have read everything and now wished to be almost ignorant. For injustices suffered he never avenged himself and perhaps avenged himself sufficiently in just this way. Those who did not treat him as he had wished, he let go, dropped; that is to say, he accustomed himself to not thinking about many unpleasant things. That’s how he protected his soul from confusion, his thoughts from unhealthy hardness.

Music put him in a tender mood, as it does most people. If he saw himself favoured by a girl, it seemed as if she wished to hold him down, and he kept clear of her. He was as suspicious as a southerner, of himself as well as others; frequently jealous but never for long, because his self-respect quickly freed him from the persecution of envy, envy which to him seemed hardly awakened, unfounded, and of no substance.

Once he lost a friend, and said to himself, “He’s losing as much as I.” He worshipped a woman until she made one error, and it was no longer possible for him to pine for her. A rash remark from her had the result that he laughed at her, and he was happy about it. Feeling sorry for her, he no longer needed to be sorry for himself.

He stayed young and used his strength for the acquiring and exercise of attention to people who most needed not to be glanced over insensitively, the feeble and the aged. Do we speak too highly of him?

Sometimes he carries on like a gad-about-town, visits so-called vulgar dives. There are people around who rebuke him for it, but who would themselves gladly be mirthful, which their spheres so seldom allow. He has had imitators, but the original remains himself. Imitation, by the way, is quite natural.

Copies can also be appealing, but only from the original can great value come.