Author Archives: oblongmagazine

Oct 07 2014
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Fiction

Lure

     

by Eric Williams                                                                

I’d spent all my beer money, a week’s worth in one night (it had been a long day), so I figured I’d go have a smoke down by the water. A night breeze was blowing off shore, making the palmettos hiss. I stood on the docks smoking, trying to woo a fat-headed tom with a ragged ear out from under an oyster boat that had been drug up onto the planks for repairs. He stayed hunkered down there, though, unmoved and watching.

I kept away from the dock lights and in the dark I could just make out the stars. The moon’s pale thin rind wasn’t out yet, and Apalachicola doesn’t put off much light in the off-season, so I thought I might see something of the night sky. I was looking for the faint smoke of the Milky Way when I heard the creak and clatter of footsteps coming down the dock. I felt for the switchblade in my back pocket, glad it was there and glad too that I’d left my purse back at the apartment.

I lit another cigarette and turned to look at the noise. A will-o’-the-wisp bobbed back and forth above the dock, floating closer as it passed the boats. Eventually the glow, pale blue, went under a light and I saw two small figures: a kid, swinging a flashlight back a forth, holding the hand of another larger kid, this one with a cane pole slung over her shoulder. They had the unaffected walk of children on a mission. The smaller one with the flashlight even skipped a few times.

I watched them walk, saw that they must have been related. The tall girl with the cane poll had the same red hair as the little boy with the light. They got closer and I saw they had the same freckles, too. I’m not very good with kids, but I’d say the girl couldn’t have been over twelve, and the boy, small and slight in comparison to her, was younger still.

‘Doin’ some night fishing?’ I asked as they closed the distance. The boy smiled shyly and squeezed the girl’s hand. She looked me over coolly but didn’t answer. ‘What’re you using for bait?’ The little boy waved his flashlight high in the air and giggled.

‘You’re in our spot,’ said the girl. She was gangly and gap-toothed, her tone matter-of-fact. I smiled and stepped aside.

‘Be my guest.’ I moved downwind so I wouldn’t be puffing right into their faces. ‘Over here okay?’

The girl nodded but didn’t look in my direction. The little boy, excited, switched the light on and off, flashing their shadows against the pier.

‘You’ll break it,’ she said, snatching it from him. She pulled a bundle of gallon Ziploc bags from her back pocket.

‘What’re those for?’ I asked. The boy looked up and gave me a gap-toothed smile.

‘Goin’ fishin’,’ he squeaked.

The girl switched on the flashlight, stuck it in the bag, put the bag to her mouth, and inhaled deeply. The plastic shrunk around the flashlight as she sucked the air out. She sealed the first bag in a second bag and then jammed those into a third. Then she slid a pin carefully through the sealing strip of the last bag. The cane pole’s monofilament line was bare, without a hook; it waved lazily as she reached for it. She threaded the line carefully through the pinhole before tying it off with a deft knot.

The arc of the pole was heavy over the pier as she examined her work. Satisfied, she swung it out over the water and lowered the light just below the surface. The flashlight’s beam scattering through plastic and water made a hazy, lambent green glow that hung just below the waves.

The girl sat down with her legs dangling over the pier. The boy stretched out on his stomach. Both stared intently at their glowing lure. I got a little closer too, craning my neck.

‘What do you catch with that?’ I asked. The girl gave me a disapproving look.

‘You talk a lot,’ she said. The boy giggled.

Kids are assholes. I sucked on my cigarette, tasting salt through the smoke.

‘Your parents know you’re out here?’

‘Ain’t got parents,’ said the girl.

Now I was the asshole.

‘Here they come!’ whispered the boy, pointing. I guess I must have gasped because the girl shushed me again.

They were like ghosts, writhing mercury-silver bodies shot through with blue and red streaks. The first one I saw was as long as my arm, sinuous with feathery edges waving as it slid into the light. It circled the glow, delicate feelers flexing in the water. It hung there for moment before slipping back into the dark.

It was followed by a fat bell-shaped blob, its sides alive with rows of pulsing filaments. Then there were smaller darting things, worms and jellies and coils of living crystal. Scarlet shrimp hovered around the light, then flashed away as a hairy bath mat flapped into view. The mat seemed to want to engulf the light, but it scrambled aside when something huge passed by, a vast shape just outside the glow that trailed meters of pearly droplets on shimmering threads behind it.

‘What are they?’ I asked the girl.

‘Larvae,’ said the boy, carefully wrapping his mouth around the two syllables.

‘Like, fish babies?’ I asked.

‘Maybe,’ said the girl, slowly dragging the light through the water. The things swam after it, fluttering and wriggling and flapping as they followed. There was a thump behind us, and then the quiet padding of the tomcat as he crept to edge of the pier and looked down at the water.

The four of us watched the things swim round and round the light at the end of a cane pole. I checked my watch, and hoped the dawn would never come.

            

– Eric Williams lives in Austin, Texas, on the lithified remains of a Cretaceous seaway. He’s had his needlessly combative opinions about classic literature published by The Airship, a story published at The Squawk Back, and has a story in an upcoming issue of Wyvern Lit. Say hello to him on Twitter @Geoliminal.

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Sep 30 2014
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Fiction

OK Narcissus

 

by Kim Steele

 

Cory’s skin freckles in the sun. One day he will have so many more than he has now. I worry that I won’t know him then. I worry that he will die and be burned or buried and I will have been absent so long I will no longer know how they occupy his skin.

‘Maybe everybody is born with a specific number of freckles already written in their DNA. Maybe you’ll reach your limit one day and that will be that. No more freckles.’ I drag my nail along his arm and tick them off one by one. He shivers.

We are travelling on an overnight bus from Arequipa to Lima. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve left something behind in the hostel and keep shifting through the things in my backpack waiting to remember. Finally Cory moves my bag under his seat. ‘Whatever it was it doesn’t matter now,’ he says and reaches for my hand.

In the darkness I can’t see anything but our reflection in the windows of the bus. For a while I watch the woman in front of me rock her toddler to sleep. He fights it and opens his eyes each time they droop shut. When he is finally sleeping his mother moves him to the seat next to her and puts on headphones. She falls asleep quickly, her head vibrating gently against the window.

I watch myself watch Cory who is reading.

‘We might as well be in Chicago,’ I say.

‘How do you mean?’ he asks.

‘We could be on the red line. I’m sitting here watching you read just like always.’

Cory murmurs something and nods his head.

‘Why travel I guess, is what I am thinking,’ I say.

Cory chuckles but doesn’t look up.

‘My reflection is pretty beautiful you know,’ I say.

He meets my eyes in the window. ‘OK Narcissus.’

 

I take a Dramamine and lean back in my chair. The bus stops for gas just after one in the morning and a woman comes on with a basket of water bottles and Inca Kola. Cory buys us one of each. I hold the warm bottle of soda in between my thighs. I don’t like the taste but I want to and so we’ve been buying them all week.

‘It’s a shame that things will be different,’ I say.

‘They could be better,’ he says and bites into one of the apples we packed. 

I nod. ‘Eventually maybe. In the short term I’ll get fat and then I’ll be tired. We’ll both be so tired.’

Cory passes the apple to me. I watch myself bite in the window. I realize I am hungry.

‘I think we are too close to the ocean. I think it is just there, just right outside the window. We are on a cliff and if the driver wanted to he could drive us right off into the water.’

‘A spectacular way to die,’ he says.

‘I’d be OK with it,’ I say.

Cory watches my reflection.

 

– Kim Steele is from the Midwest but currently lives in Los Angeles. You can follow her on Twitter @KJ_Steele.

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Sep 23 2014
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Fiction

Novellas

by Richard Kostelanetz

 

DIE KUNST DER FUGE

He spent a week listening in sequence to all the versions he owned of J. S. Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge, crying every time the last triple fugue ended in mid-phrase, signaling the composer’s death.

 

LOCATION

After making many calculations that he recorded on a map in his hand, he stood securely on a spot from which everything important to him in the world was equidistant.

 

HARD CURRENCY

Anxious about paper money, my parents converted all bills into coins  that filled rooms of our house.

 

IN-LAWS

On the same day that he married his ex-wife’s daughter by a later marriage, his ex-wife married his son from his first marriage, becoming in-laws like no other.

 

SELF-DOCUMENTATION

Though he took a year to paint a picture, he shot each day a photograph of himself before his work-in-progress, expecting that these snapshots would then be exhibited chronologically besides the painting.

 

– Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work in several fields appear in various editions of Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Directory of American Scholars, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in American Art, NNDB.com, Wikipedia.org, and Britannica.com, among other distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives in New York, where he was born, unemployed and thus overworked.

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Sep 16 2014
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Fiction

Commute

     

by Fraylie Nord

 

It wasn’t rush hour, so there were no excuses. Just the masking odor of cherry soda and Lysol. That’s what happens when there’s a whole fish taking up a three-seater. Somebody found a party hat, took a picture, made it viral.

The ventilation system had undone itself with a groan. Everyone could still smell the fish smell. A man in pleated khakis pressed his knees into my knees, and I wanted it for no other reason than it was good to be touched.

I knew I was missing the staff meeting, but who cared. Today was the day I’d quit my job. I had a ticket to some documentary about black holes, 7 PM, but I’d ditch. I wanted a night in the tub. Windows open so the neighbor’s kids could see. So the sitter could screech. Those beeswax candles with their film of dust. I typed an apology email on my phone, clicked the screen to nothing.

The train was stalled somewhere under Chinatown. You could tell the conductor was trying to inform us about signal problems, about sick passengers, about an army of rats, but the intercom came through like stone on gravel. I had my head against the window. My elbow hiked up on the plastic ridge. There was the inscription Chelsea loves Mario (sometimes). Nobody, least of all the lovers, knew how to do it right.

Beside me were these two little kids, a boy and a girl, the boy in dungarees and the girl in a foam crown, the sort you discover stuffed in trash bins outside Great New York City Monuments.

‘Are you a princess?’ asked a woman, standing over them.

‘No mom, I’m a queen!’

The woman nodded and turned to the boy. ‘And what does that make you?’

The boy put his palms in his lap and looked at her. ‘I’m just a regular guy going to work,’ he said.

 

So the boy goes to work and gets a promotion. He has stolen the crown and has convinced his boss that he is King. King of fluorescents, King of the masthead, he stands on a stack of paper and gets tall. So tall that he’s knocking on the ceiling like a door.

He calls a meeting. He calls a meeting and says this is his ship now. And everybody says yes, yes, you look like the kind of King we need. So tall and Kingly like you’ve escaped from a giant’s deck of cards. Thank you, thank you. But you smell like a fish, to which he says yes, that is the true sign of the King I’d like to be. I am a King of hard-to-like things.

And then everybody claps in this way that’s believable, that’s real, so real that the floor shakes and the papers start to shift. He bows, clumsily, but nobody notices his arm doing this violent twitch. He bares the gaps in his teeth. He is King, and I am underground on my way to the tub, lights dimmed. I can see the face of a new man hovering over me, blank and round like the head of an eraser. The train moves slowly, and this time there’s a snake. It’s the length of the car, and nobody knows where it came from. It’s got diamonds on its back. It’s slithering around a pole now. The snake will be famous. No, the snake will be click-bait. That snake has it better than the rest of us.

Above me, the guy is pointing to his open mouth. A kind of origin story. It is a mouth I did not know he possessed until it was a cavern, so I make a fist and place it inside.

 

– Fraylie Nord is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Tin House Flash Fridays, Volume 1 Brooklyn, The Billfold and elsewhere.

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Sep 09 2014
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Fiction

Finger Painter

 

by Kristin Ito

 

You must be painting. Your hands are covered with a viscous rainbow of acrylics, the whorls of your fingerprints obscured under layers of paint. You are calm in your movements, but frantic in your mind, the way you were when I first met you, when you showed me how your fingers are your tools.

You stood behind me as we looked at your half-finished painting of the narwhal. I joked that the narwhal would be the next hipster animal, like the bird and the owl, to have its heyday and be slapped on canvas eco-totes and reclaimed wood. You laughed gently, and then explained why you chose the narwhal, the vision you had one night of its long white tusk bursting through a cityscape. You went on, oblivious to the way it changed you, to be talking about your craft. I watched your fingers; you moved them as you spoke though they were still wet with paint. You wiped them on your jeans, briefly, before touching me.

Later that day I sat at a cafe and noticed a smudge of blue paint on the inside of my thigh. I was wearing a dress, and the LA heat made my legs sticky with sweat. I rubbed the blue off slowly and imagined rubbing you out of my mind – a protective measure because I knew you’d forget me sooner than I would you.

You are probably still painting the narwhal. You were debating, you told me, on whether the colors of the city should be muted or harsh, to show the violation of industrialism on the narwhal. You asked for my opinion, but I told you I didn’t know. A city is a city, isn’t it, no matter what hue it is.

On afternoons like this one, when my brain feels like cotton and my body feels only thirst, your eager blue fingers try to pull me in. But you forget that I, too, am an artist. I take your colors and mix them with the umber of my summer skin, until you are a watered down, washed out rendering of someone I hardly knew.

 

– Kristin Ito is a writer and copy editor currently living in California. She received an MA in English from Boston College and taught English for several years in the Seattle area. Her most recent piece appeared in Broad! Magazine.

 

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Sep 02 2014
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Fiction

My Mother Took Me To A Place To Dig

 

by Alicia L. Gleason

 

As a girl I often dreamt I was digging a hole. It wasn’t the type of hole meant to bury roses for the winter, or to mine worms after a heavy rain. It was a hole wide and deep enough for me to stand in. It was a hole dug for me to be alone. As I dug, my muscles felt supple and I saw the soil was richly layered: shadows atop agates atop red soil atop grey. The air swirled coolly around me, a summer heat descending into the pit. This place was quieter than sleep. I dug easily until I hit a patch of hard ground. I cut the tip of my shovel into the earth and water simmered from the incision. The wound opened quickly, the pressure forcing the water into a high arch, a boiling geyser. As I stood beneath it, feverish, sweating, I thought: this hole will fill, and I will drown.

 

– Alicia L. Gleason is a graduate of George Mason University’s MFA program, where she studied fiction. Her work is forthcoming in Cleaver Magazine. Alicia teaches first year writing at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

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Aug 26 2014
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Fiction

Normalize

   

by Paul Handley

 

Itchi read Narcissus and Goldmund while riding the train. A blue pant leg with black piping strode into his downward view.

‘Can you keep that close?’ Itchi looked up to see a transit officer indicating Itchi’s messenger bag on the seat across from him.

‘Of course,’ but Itchi reached for it with a gesture of disgust at the interruption.

‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ said the man in uniform with bluff good humor. After he moved on, Itchi aimed a handgun composed of his forefinger and thumb at the receding figure of authority. He laid down the hammer of his thumb while making a clicking sound in the right cheek that could have served as either a shot or urging his mount to move. Both were cowboy moves. A fraction later he raised his forefinger to indicate the recoil. Itchi thought briefly about blowing smoke off the end of the barrel but concluded a bit of restraint would be cooler.

‘I love Hesse ( HE s uh),’ said a feminine voice from the seat to his right. Itchi had noticed a person sleeping there earlier with a top hat pulled over eyes that he had assumed were male. Now the topper was raised, revealing feminine features composed of thinly shaped eyebrows and long lashes with snake bit piercing; one below each corner of her lower lip.

‘Is that how you say it? I thought it was Hess. You don’t hear his name much in conversation.’

‘It’s German.’

‘Have we just Americanized it?’

‘This is America, we drive on the right side and speak English. Don’t you just want to punch someone in the face who orders a kra-sawn instead of a croissant?’

‘I could do it. I over-pronounce Mexican food. En-chee-LAAH-dahz.’ They both laughed.

Itchi had never seen her before but it was hard for him to imagine her without the hat. Whereas at one time he had excellent recall of faces, now they all tended to blur. Trains arrived every 14 minutes so Itchi rarely saw passengers twice. Additionally, he commuted back and forth to work by a pastiche of buses, carpool, bike and train; whatever was most convenient depending upon weather or his schedule.

‘They’ve already won,’ said the young woman, who Itchi had privately named Topper.

‘What?’

‘They have already won,’ said Topper indicating the door through which Itchi’s security guard had vanished.

‘It’s not a contest. He has a job to do.’ Itchi shrugged.

‘We all have a job to do, don’t we?’ said Topper.

‘You’re right. He’s just doing what he has to do, but I still hate people telling me what to do. It’s like being back in high school,’ said Itchi.

‘Oh, so do I,’ said Topper.

‘If you’re security everyone resents you,’ said Itchi.

‘But isn’t there a point where everyone should hate you? It’s not like there aren’t any limits.’

‘I didn’t say hate,’ said Itchi.

‘What if I said I’m in Al-Qaeda?’ said Topper.

‘I’d be concerned.’

‘But you shouldn’t be. It should mean nothing to you. It’s just a name. I’m probably joking. I don’t think Al-Q even exists anymore. What are the odds that you have a bomb in that bag? There are millions of us traveling all over the country. Every time a bag is found it’s in the news. Do you remember the last piece of luggage that had an incendiary device?’

‘It’s been a while,’ said Itchi.

‘If I had odds like that…’ Topper stopped and looked up to her right to ruminate, ‘Think of all the things that have much higher odds that nobody acts on. Why is that? Do you ever think about that? Prison overcrowding, global warming, we know they are happening, but we don’t do anything about it. Not really.’

‘Follow the money?’ Itchi guessed.

‘Probably, but I can’t stop people with that kind of power. All I want is to be left alone. And if you tell me you have to give up some freedom to get it I’ll have to punch you,’ said Topper.

‘You’re very punchy,’ Itchi replied. Topper jerked her head back twice as if taking jabs, elevating her hat to mid-forehead. She was pulling the brim back down as Itchi laughed and she joined in.

‘So, this is an issue for you, huh?’ asked Itchi.

‘Why isn’t it for you? Why isn’t it for everyone?’

Itchi affected a hippie voice, ‘Because we’re all stuck in our zombie-like existence that involves watching TV four hours a day while stuffing ourselves with bacon-wrapped maple doughnuts, man.’

‘You’re mocking me, but that’s part of the truth. You’re afraid to say it,’ said Topper.

‘What?’ asked Itchi.

‘You know.’

‘Al-Q,’ said Itchi.

‘Told you, but that’s a start,’ said Topper.

‘Why Al-Q?’ asked Itchi.

‘Sounds less threatening.’

‘Are you taking ownership of terrorism, like queer for gay people?’ asked Itchi.

‘No, we are the fake Al-Q. We want to sow the seeds of a blasé attitude. Blaséism. That’s our creed. We want people to believe Al-Qaeda is everywhere and then we’d become so accustomed to the bullshit of nothing happening that we’d get back to normal.’

‘That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard in my life,’ said Itchi.

‘I think so too, but it’s a plan. Nobody else is doing anything. We all just accept the security state as the new normal,’ said Topper.

‘I’m already inured and desensitized from this conversation. It must be working. I can’t believe you are going to prison for pretending to be Al-Qaeda,’ said Itchi. Just then two female transit officers accompanying the original officer, who Itchi had dry-fired his finger at, shoved aside the sliding door separating the cabs and roughly arrested Topper. Her topper had been knocked off and she looked defiant and scared.

‘She told me she’s Al-Qaeda,’ Itchi informed them.

 

– Paul Handley’s work has appeared in Hobart, Metazen, Gone Lawn, Monkeybicycle, Pulp Diction III, Apt, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine.

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Aug 19 2014
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Fiction

That Long Hallway

    

by Kayla Pongrac

 

So I’m walking down my high school hallway asking my classmates to sign my yearbook when Adam stops me between my locker and the classroom in which we learn about past and present wars and he says, ‘Hey, what about me?’ so I quickly pull a pen from my back pocket and watch him scribble a note that reads, SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND. –ADAM and I am confused because first of all, I am not a diamond and second of all I don’t identify as crazy, but I shrug my shoulders and keep working my way down the hallway, stopping everyone who may have something kind to dust on these pages, maybe a few good words to share about how they wish me good luck in college and beyond and even though we’ll never see each other again after we graduate I hope that you’ll get to travel the world and drink exotic teas and successfully grow orchids in your living room and never doubt yourself because one day many years from now, you’ll be sitting in the passenger seat of your dad’s truck and a Pink Floyd song will play from his speakers and all of a sudden you’ll remember that maybe you had the potential to shine on, that perhaps the diamond to which Adam was referring is still spinning like a top on your bathroom sink where you have spent many mornings noticing little drops of blood fall and mix with white dollops of shaving cream, creating a light pink shade that somehow – and you’re not quite sure how – reminds you of that long hallway. 

 

– Kayla Pongrac is an avid writer, reader, tea drinker, and vinyl record spinner. When she’s not writing creatively, she’s writing professionally – for two newspapers and a few magazines in her hometown of Johnstown, PA. To read more of Kayla’s work, visit www.kaylapongrac.com or follow her on Twitter @KP_the_Promisee.

 

 

 

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Aug 12 2014
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Fiction

Dinner Menu

by Dorian Maffei

                                                                                Appetizers

Heated Eggplant Dip

You have never raised your voice at me1……………………………………………..……………………………….$4

Crispy Rye Crackers with Asiago Crust

I can tell you want to though2…………………………………………………………………………………………….$2

Tossed Garden Salad with Squash

You put your head in your hands when I start to cry3……………………………….……………………………..$7

Assortment of Artisan Cheeses

We both wonder how this will sort itself out4………………………………………………………………………..$7

With a Side of Cracked-Pepper Chips

Add one shattered plate5……………………………………………………..……………………………………………$3

 

                                                                              Main Courses

Salted Codfish in a Bed of Watercress

And now I’m really crying6………………………………………………………….…………………………………….$16

Cioppino

I don’t even remember what we are fighting about anymore7…………………………………………………$21

Triple-Fried Filet of Sole

Fighting about the same thing never helps8…………………………………………………………………………$17

Tender Pork Loin Braised in a Lemon-Lime Vinaigrette

You don’t touch me at all9…………………………………………………………………………………………………$21

Beer Battered Fish and Chips

Am I really like broken batteries to you?10……………………………………………………………………………$15

 

 

Desserts

Apple Turnover Dressed in a Blue Cheese Crumble

You feel bad you said that to me11…………………………………….………………………………………………..$8

Flan Paired with a Mango BBQ Sauce

I want to cry again and I don’t know why12……………………………………………………………………………$8

 

 

1 But instead, when you’re angry, you use your jaw to clamp your teeth together until you have a headache. You are doing it right now. I can see the muscles in your neck clenching and I have to look away.

2 It’s obvious. You tell me to stop being difficult. I’m offended.

3 I say FUCK and you are pacing around the apartment. Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Your voice drifts down the hall and I know you’re in the living room. I wait a minute before following you and I find you on our salmon-colored couch staring at the magazine you’ve just thrown. I can tell you threw it because the pages are ruffled and it’s laying face down on the floor in an uncomfortable position.

4 We also both know that it will. But right now it’s not sorted out and it sucks.

5 The one I painted for you at Doodlebug for our first Christmas. I remember when you smiled and hugged me when you opened it. We joked at how overpriced Doodlebug is. I admitted it had cost $15 dollars to paint and we both cracked up. Now, you say sorry for breaking the plate. I say I’m sorry too. But I don’t really mean it because I say it in a tone that says otherwise.

6 I’m crying a lot. I leave the living room and go into the bathroom of our apartment to rinse my face with cold water. I think about how my face is puffing up from crying so much so I gently massage the cold water over my eyelids.

7 So I go back into the living room where you are still sitting on the couch. And you say:

8 It’s true. Fighting about the same things over and over again never helps. It’s true. We’ve had this fight before. Just as I feel our rage melting, I try to explain my side again. I watch as your neck muscles tense and your lips bunch up in anger. You take a deep breath and it bothers me. You make me feel like I’m crazy. And the worst part about it is

9 It makes me really sad. I bring this up. That it’s all I want at this point. Just hug me and we can stop fighting. Show me some affection, please. You’re still angry and you tell me I’m like broken batteries.

10 No.

11 You begin to get up off the couch and I turn away because I’m hurt. We are both exhausted. You wrap me in your arms and say sorry and it sounds sincere this time.

12 I’m happy we stopped fighting, but I’m not satisfied either. I ask you if you want to go out to dinner because I don’t feel like cooking. I go reapply my makeup to hide my red swollen eyes. We barely talk in the car ride over and when we do it’s in whispers. When we are seated they bring us menus. You reach for my hand across the table and I try to take my mind off everything.

 

– Dorian Maffei is currently an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz studying creative writing. She’s a reader, writer, and most importantly, a cat aficionado. Her latest project in progress is a collection of short stories with a recurring theme of flowers. Follow her on Twitter at @DorianMaffei. 

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Aug 05 2014
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Fiction

ILF(™)

 

by Ron Singer

 

With the advent of chip implants, it seemed only nanoseconds before cell phones skiddooed, BlackBerries bombed, and so on. We all continued to walk around apparently talking to ourselves, but now that we were stripped of mechanical pretext, it became even harder to identify the truly delusional. You really had to watch your back.

One thing led to another, which led to a speech by the Mayor of —-, a.k.a. Cheerleader-in-Chief, a.k.a. Pom-Pom Boy, (fill in name).

‘I’m sure,’ he began, ‘that you have all heard the damaging expression, “—- is the a** h**e of the world.” ‘ Part of the problem is that we, ourselves, are notorious for the use of such language. Well, it’s time to do something about it. I hereby decree an exciting new program that will end our reign as obscenity capital of the world.

‘Starting on (fill in date), all citizens old enough to curse will be required to undergo a mandatory, complimentary, painless and completely safe implant of a new chip, already under development, known as the Impolite Language Filter, or ILF ™. And best of all, perhaps, where will every single ILF be manufactured? Of course! Hooray!’

Despite rumors that he had accepted a six-figure sweetener from ILF, Inc., the mayor’s audacious plan was quickly rubber-stamped by the quiescent City Council, lulled beyond even their usual torpor by the boss’s blandishments about ‘homeland decency,’ ‘civic pride,’ and the rest of the usual sh*t. Had the councilors also been sweetened? Again, rumor.

The triumph of ILF was trumpeted by the tabloids.

 

The Gazette: HIZZONER TO PROLES: ‘WATCH YOUR FUC*ING LANGUAGE.’

The Star: ‘OKAY, BOYS, TIME TO CUT THE CRAP!’

 

As for the storied Herald, they predictably resorted to condescending pontifical waffle. ‘Score another one for Mayor (Name), who never ceases to amaze. And who can say, maybe he’s right this time, when he argues that the benefits to moral tone which, let’s face it, is a key element of our fair city’s quality of life, may outweigh any possible infringement of First Amendment rights.’

Initial reactions on the street were also predictable. There were thousands of shouts, adequately summed up as, ‘Fuc* that sh*t!’ But the mayor pushed ahead, and soon obscenity scofflaws, harried and outnumbered, were driven to pursue their unreconstructed colloquies in the dark corners of bars, toilet stalls, etc. – in short, in all the usual private, insalubrious places.

Understandably, many —-ers expressed fears that their counterparts from other cities would take advantage.’Every fuc*in’ dic*head,’ commented a chippy (but unchipped) young Graeco-Irish-American construction worker (also Jewish and Latino), as he ate lunch on a job site, ‘from fuc*in’ —-, fuc*in’ —-, and fuc*in’ —-will be laughin’ their fuc*in’ heads off. What the fuc*!’ And he added the generic, ‘Fuc* that sh*t.’

‘What kind of jack sh*t this supposed to be?’ echoed a normally law-abiding middle-aged African-American postal worker, as she was getting her hair permed at a local emporium. She, too, added the generic malediction.

‘Fuc*in’ Pom Pom Boy finally shot his wad out the kazoo,’ suggested an unchipped pale male hipster with multiple piercings.

‘He must be fuc*in’ brain-dead,’ added his girl friend. ‘He’s been suckin’ the municipal bong too long.’

In fact, ‘Brain Dead’ became the mayoral sobriquet of choice. And ‘chipped’ replaced the myriad of terms for mental incompetence, including, especially, ‘cracked’.

Months passed. In the fancier neighborhoods, only trace memories remained, supplemented by ingenious new euphemisms that seemed to sprout up like erect penises.

‘The diaper prices are so flooping high,’ commented one pram pusher to another as they charged up the Avenue.

‘Tell me,’ replied her counterpart. ‘Gosh darn, isn’t inflation the poo!’

‘Tomorrow, the nation,’ quipped the jovial mayor, ‘the day after tomorrow, the world. Imagine what the Martians will say.’

‘Beep beep,’ the Martians said. But that’s what they always said. (And not ‘bleep bleep’.)

Silk-stocking types thought the outrage among the plebs was a scream.

‘They would,’ riposted an unchipped Transit Authority pensioner in a bar. ‘Those fuc*ing hoity-toity a** h**es!’

A celebrated Cultural Anthropology Professor at —- College cleaned up on the law by whipping up a spicy lecture in which he outlined ‘the movement from ritual, to myth and dirty joke, to … nothing.’ Once word got out that the lecture included the ‘f-word,’ his classroom was SRO, although, in fact, he only uttered the word (forty-seven times) in order to deconstruct it.

After a year of bland misery, the people took things into their own hands. A cottage industry sprang up in which abortionist types in dingy basements across the city removed the chips the same way they had been implanted, through the ear. The fee was nominal; the motto, ‘pro fuc*ing bono.’

‘Free, at last!’ was the most common post-operative expression of relief – often without even an expletive. When half the population of —- had undergone the procedure, and, coincidentally, when Election Day was fast approaching, Mayor (Name) finally gave in.

‘The Vox Populi has spoken,’ he gracefully admitted. ‘And what the fuc*,’ quipped the good sport, ‘you win some, you lose some. Just like, ahem, elections?’

A few days after the predictable results were in, a new bill repealed the old, and, predictably, there followed a perfect sh*t storm of obscenity. Things, that is, returned to fuc*ing normal.

 

– Satire by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has appeared in many publications (The Brooklyn Rail, diagram, Evergreen Review, Mad Hatter’s Review, Word Riot, etc.), and he has published several books. In 2010-11, he made three trips to Africa for Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders (forthcoming). His serial thriller, Geistmann, and his serial farce, The Parents We Deserve, are both available at jukepopserials.com. His work has twice been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

 

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