Archive for the ‘David Kopaska-Merkel’ Category
An Abruptness of Gulls
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
The rain-slicked cobblestones.
The pleasure girl, and what she saw.
The pallid man and his burden.
The unwelcome attentions of hired guns.
A dock, and what was moored there.
A cabin, and what was hurled there.
A father and his grief.
The bloodhound and a soiled dress.
The alley’s end.
And what was found there.
An abruptness of gulls.
The sameness of days.
A rocking of swells.
An eternity in the dark cabin.
A dockside tavern and a looseness of tongues.
An open palm and the readiness of coin.
A ship, most excellent and speedy.
A pursuit and the hope of rescue.
A port, the shining sand, a singing in the trees.
The tendrils that writhe.
Calls that echo and reply.
The narrow and winding path.
A bicep gripped by a tall man’s hand.
An ancient rune-carven stone.
An intonation of Words.
A flowering of crimson.
The opening of a Door.
The silence of leaves underfoot.
An imposition of tendrils.
The virtues of tempered steel.
The silence in a clearing.
Some consequences of tardiness.
A buzzing of flies.
The stickiness of that which remains.
A gathering interest of crows.
The end
For Fritz Leiber
My Very Best Friend
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
Chelsea always had everything first. Antigravity car. First one in town. Clone. Her twin force-grown two years before they were available outside of Korea. Alien pet (that didn’t look like a beach ball with chicken feet). So what if it had to be put down after eating a Dairy Queen? She had the record. Lost her virginity first, after downloading the entire Kama Sutra into her frontal lobe. Valedictorian of our middle-school graduating class. Me? I did just about everything last. My claim to fame was being Chelsea’s only real friend. I felt so bad for her. She did all of these cool things, but no one really liked her. Some of them pretended to, but I knew, and she knew. It was my idea for her to be the first to have lesbian sex. Of course the plan was that she would have it with me, and so I would be first also. Karin never really liked Chelsea. She just did it to be first. I babysat Chelsea’s twin little brothers. I hardly charged anything; I just wanted to be in her house. She usually wasn’t there, so I went in her room. I wore some of her things. The boys would never tell. I unlocked the Internet controls for them. I hacked her computer, broke into her secret diary, found what she wrote about everyone. She said a lot. She wrote a lot about me. And the next day, when Chelsea got in her anti-gravity car to go to high school? The controller must have frozen up, because it shot straight up in the air, flipped over, and then shot straight down, at top speed! It was terrible! I ran over. But when I got there I could see there was nothing I could do. And when the rescue AIs arrived, there was nothing they could do either. It seems Chelsea had been carrying some high-grade nano with her. That stuff is illegal! Especially in school, but some people don’t always obey the rules. The nano pack somehow got activated by the crash and there was nothing left of Chelsea’s brain to scan.
I get along much better with her clone. She’s nicer than Chelsea was, and she has more than one friend. But I’m her very best friend. I always have been.
the end