Another short story written by me and posted on my personal short stories blog. It's a kind of ultra-short fiction story, in an postmodern approach.
Hey you by John Fiction:
“Hey you,” I thought as I was waving my hand goodbye. But no sense of remorse took over me as I saw her leave. Her little pinkish scarf was drifting beside her medium curly red-hair as he walked to the car.
As I reach into my pocket and touch the key to her apartment that she had forgot last night on the kitchen table, the faltering clouds gather in a sort of ludicus un-human play. The big cloud soon covered the rest, just as the dominating person in a relation tends to eclipse the other. The other turns into the next, and the next into the rule. The rule is: even if they leave a key, you’ll never see them again.
The mere thought of running after her made me regret ever leaving the house that day. I almost dropped the cigarette I didn’t even know I had in my left hand.
One smoke, than it’s poof-goodbye, I start a seriously-sickening-flight-over-the-street, planting ash over the pedestrians’ heads. As I drift over Anne I notice my shoe lace is untied. I bend to tie them and hit my head against the now-near-me concrete sidewalk. I notice her car is gone...
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The blue damn think - John Fiction
A very short story writen by me some time ago and posted a little while ago on my personal short stories blog. Here goes The blue damn think by John Fiction, hope you like it:
It just so happened that I’ve been thinking about that little blue damn thing for a few days now. The sun was rising, the coffee boiling and other cinematic elements occurred, still I was unable to think straight for a single minute. Why was I thinking about that damn blasted thing and how come it came to mind after all this time. Of course, first I thought it was just a bad misunderstanding that my brain didn’t want to elude because all the recent events that have been trembling with my peaceful, quite life.
Descriptive as it may seem, the blue damn think is something like a topaz, only a little darker and much more elusive, its contours are undetermined in a way in which it seems endless and nothingness together.
Doorbell rings. It’s my mail. I’ve always wondered my sometimes the mailman comes to my door like most of the time he leaves the mail in the box, or I sometimes find it half torn on the buildings entry hall. No express, no nothing, but he still rings that awful-sound-ring-a-ding doorbell: bills, bills, and a letter. The envelope was blue. The tip of my fingers started to sweat and bits of the blue color soon merged with my skin.
I haven’t finished the second sentence when all of a sudden the room started to spin and twirl, and without knowing how I landed on a chair, next to a coffee table. I could still hear the coffee boiling, I was thinking that it was going to evaporate and I had to make some again. I placed the letter on the table and started to gaze at my hands. They were shaking. My eyes only perceived a blurry image and added to this was the trembling of my blue-tipped-hands, the sensations was almost tripping. I calmly placed my hands on the arms of the chair, and then it hit me:
I couldn’t remember what was the blue-damn-thing.
It just so happened that I’ve been thinking about that little blue damn thing for a few days now. The sun was rising, the coffee boiling and other cinematic elements occurred, still I was unable to think straight for a single minute. Why was I thinking about that damn blasted thing and how come it came to mind after all this time. Of course, first I thought it was just a bad misunderstanding that my brain didn’t want to elude because all the recent events that have been trembling with my peaceful, quite life.
Descriptive as it may seem, the blue damn think is something like a topaz, only a little darker and much more elusive, its contours are undetermined in a way in which it seems endless and nothingness together.
Doorbell rings. It’s my mail. I’ve always wondered my sometimes the mailman comes to my door like most of the time he leaves the mail in the box, or I sometimes find it half torn on the buildings entry hall. No express, no nothing, but he still rings that awful-sound-ring-a-ding doorbell: bills, bills, and a letter. The envelope was blue. The tip of my fingers started to sweat and bits of the blue color soon merged with my skin.
I haven’t finished the second sentence when all of a sudden the room started to spin and twirl, and without knowing how I landed on a chair, next to a coffee table. I could still hear the coffee boiling, I was thinking that it was going to evaporate and I had to make some again. I placed the letter on the table and started to gaze at my hands. They were shaking. My eyes only perceived a blurry image and added to this was the trembling of my blue-tipped-hands, the sensations was almost tripping. I calmly placed my hands on the arms of the chair, and then it hit me:
I couldn’t remember what was the blue-damn-thing.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
The Dead Time (II) - J.G. Ballard
Part two of the short story The Dead Time by J.G. Ballard:
"At the same time the absence, with few exceptions, of any wounds or violence suggested one or two unsettling alternatives plague, perhaps, or some sudden epidemic. Steering the truck with one hand and eating my rice with the other, I eased my foot off the heavy accelerator, opening the interval slightly between Hodson and myself. But for all this I was hardly concerned about the bodies. Too many people had already died in and around our camp. The business of loading the corpses into the trucks had placed a certain mental distance between them and myself. Handling all those bodies, pulling on the stiffening arms and legs, pushing their buttocks and shoulders over the tailgates, had been like an extended wrestling match with a party of strangers, a kind of forced intimacy that absolved me from all future contact or obligation.
An hour after leaving the stadium, when we had covered some ten miles, Hodson began to slow down, his truck bumping over the rutted road surface at little more than walking pace. Some half a mile from the river, we had entered a landscape flooded by a slack, brown water. Untended canals and drowned paddies stretched away on all sides, and the road had become little more than a series of narrow causeways. The vanished peasants had built their burial mounds into the shoulders of the road, and the ends of the cheap coffins protruded like drawers from the rain-washed earth, lockers ransacked by the passing war. Across the paddies I could see a boom of scuttled freighters that blocked the river, funnels and bridge-houses emerging from the swollen tide. We passed another abandoned village, and then the green shell of a reconnaissance aircraft shot down by the Americans.
"At the same time the absence, with few exceptions, of any wounds or violence suggested one or two unsettling alternatives plague, perhaps, or some sudden epidemic. Steering the truck with one hand and eating my rice with the other, I eased my foot off the heavy accelerator, opening the interval slightly between Hodson and myself. But for all this I was hardly concerned about the bodies. Too many people had already died in and around our camp. The business of loading the corpses into the trucks had placed a certain mental distance between them and myself. Handling all those bodies, pulling on the stiffening arms and legs, pushing their buttocks and shoulders over the tailgates, had been like an extended wrestling match with a party of strangers, a kind of forced intimacy that absolved me from all future contact or obligation.
An hour after leaving the stadium, when we had covered some ten miles, Hodson began to slow down, his truck bumping over the rutted road surface at little more than walking pace. Some half a mile from the river, we had entered a landscape flooded by a slack, brown water. Untended canals and drowned paddies stretched away on all sides, and the road had become little more than a series of narrow causeways. The vanished peasants had built their burial mounds into the shoulders of the road, and the ends of the cheap coffins protruded like drawers from the rain-washed earth, lockers ransacked by the passing war. Across the paddies I could see a boom of scuttled freighters that blocked the river, funnels and bridge-houses emerging from the swollen tide. We passed another abandoned village, and then the green shell of a reconnaissance aircraft shot down by the Americans.
Friday, May 6, 2011
The Dead Time (I) - J.G. Ballard
The first part of the shorts fiction The Dead Time by J.G. Ballard:
"Without warning, as if trying to confuse us, the Japanese guarding our camp had vanished. I stood by the open gates of the camp with a group of fellow-internees, staring in an almost mesmerized way at the deserted road and at the untended canals and paddy-fields that stretched on all sides to the horizon. The guard-house had been abandoned. The two Japanese sentries who usually waved me away whenever I tried to sell them cigarettes had given up their posts and fled with the remainder of the military police to their barracks in Shanghai. The tyre-prints of their vehicles were still clearly visible in the dust between the gate-posts.
Perhaps even this hint at the presence of Japanese who had imprisoned us for three years was enough to deter us from crossing the line into the silent world outside the camp. We stood together in the gateway, trying to straighten our shabby clothing and listening to the children playing in the compound. Behind the nearest of the dormitory blocks several women were hanging out their morning's washing, as if fully content to begin another day's life in the camp. Yet everything was over!
"Without warning, as if trying to confuse us, the Japanese guarding our camp had vanished. I stood by the open gates of the camp with a group of fellow-internees, staring in an almost mesmerized way at the deserted road and at the untended canals and paddy-fields that stretched on all sides to the horizon. The guard-house had been abandoned. The two Japanese sentries who usually waved me away whenever I tried to sell them cigarettes had given up their posts and fled with the remainder of the military police to their barracks in Shanghai. The tyre-prints of their vehicles were still clearly visible in the dust between the gate-posts.
Perhaps even this hint at the presence of Japanese who had imprisoned us for three years was enough to deter us from crossing the line into the silent world outside the camp. We stood together in the gateway, trying to straighten our shabby clothing and listening to the children playing in the compound. Behind the nearest of the dormitory blocks several women were hanging out their morning's washing, as if fully content to begin another day's life in the camp. Yet everything was over!
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Divining Stones - Yahya Haqqi
Egyptian short-story writer and critic Yahya Haqqi won a scholarship to the Cairo School of Law, graduating in 1926. Soon after, he began a long and distinguished career in the diplomatic service, representing his country in several Middle Eastern and European capitals. Other than his own language, he was proficient in English, French, Italian, and Turkish. On the literary level, Haqqi is regarded as a pioneer of the short story in Egypt, which he began writing in 1923, but it was not until 1944 that he published his famous work, The Lamp of Um Hashim. The Divining Stones by Yahya Haqqi:
"I don’t believe in fortune-telling. I refuse even to consider it. I don’t understand how anyone can believe in those people who read the sands—people who, most of the time, simply draw the lines as they want to, as many as they want, and could just as easily make them foretell evil as the good fortune they claim to see. Then there are the cards. Just who laid down that the ace means a letter, the three a trip and the four a house? Who on earth decided all that? And what’s to stop their meaning changing just like that, so that, if the fortune-teller says you’re going to get a letter, it means you’ll be going on a trip; or, if she congratulates you on some money coming your way, she’s actually predicting your bankruptcy? I don’t see how the life of a human being can be linked up with the numbers on playing cards.
"I don’t believe in fortune-telling. I refuse even to consider it. I don’t understand how anyone can believe in those people who read the sands—people who, most of the time, simply draw the lines as they want to, as many as they want, and could just as easily make them foretell evil as the good fortune they claim to see. Then there are the cards. Just who laid down that the ace means a letter, the three a trip and the four a house? Who on earth decided all that? And what’s to stop their meaning changing just like that, so that, if the fortune-teller says you’re going to get a letter, it means you’ll be going on a trip; or, if she congratulates you on some money coming your way, she’s actually predicting your bankruptcy? I don’t see how the life of a human being can be linked up with the numbers on playing cards.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The Mailman - Tawfiq al-Hakim
Famous Egyptian dramatist, novelist, and short-story writer Tawfiq al-Hakim was born in Alexandria and studied both in Alexandria and Cairo. When in Cairo, he discovered his love of theater and attended many performances by the most famous Egyptian actors of his day. He also studied at the Berlitz School in Cairo where he read a great amount of French literature. The Mailman by Tawfiq al-Hakim:
"It was by the seashore that I came across him: an odd fellow, carrying a bag just like those that mailmen use. His whole air was one of languor and stupidity—even the weary way he looked up at the sky put you in mind of an imbecile. He had the bearing of someone who was totally exhausted, at war with himself and the whole world. His vocabulary, I reckoned, would be exhausted after the single word “Ugh!” I went over to talk to him.
“If I’m not mistaken,” I said, “you’re a mailman on his day off.” He didn’t even bother to look up.
“Day off!” he retorted contemptuously, obviously trying to swallow his annoyance.
“Why not?” I said. “Don’t you get time off each week?”
“I’ve never had a day off in my life.”
“But how can the Post Office do that? Don’t they have a system for time off?”
“My dear sir, the Post Office doesn’t know what time off is.”
“What do you mean?”
"It was by the seashore that I came across him: an odd fellow, carrying a bag just like those that mailmen use. His whole air was one of languor and stupidity—even the weary way he looked up at the sky put you in mind of an imbecile. He had the bearing of someone who was totally exhausted, at war with himself and the whole world. His vocabulary, I reckoned, would be exhausted after the single word “Ugh!” I went over to talk to him.
“If I’m not mistaken,” I said, “you’re a mailman on his day off.” He didn’t even bother to look up.
“Day off!” he retorted contemptuously, obviously trying to swallow his annoyance.
“Why not?” I said. “Don’t you get time off each week?”
“I’ve never had a day off in my life.”
“But how can the Post Office do that? Don’t they have a system for time off?”
“My dear sir, the Post Office doesn’t know what time off is.”
“What do you mean?”
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Zelig - Benjamin Rosenblatt
Zelig, a short story from 1915 by american author Benjamin Rosenblatt:
"Old Zelig was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him "Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent - "Mr:' "The old one is a barrel with a stave missing:' knowingly declared his neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres:' For "to belong:' on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew must join ''A Society for Burying Its Members:' to be provided at least with a narrow cell at the end of the long road. Zelig was not even a member of one of these. ''Alone, like a stone:' his wife often sighed.
In the cloakshop where Zelig worked he stood daily, brandishing his heavy iron on the sizzling cloth, hardly ever glancing about him. The workmen despised him, for during a strike he returned to work after two days' absence. He could not be idle, and thought with dread of the Saturday that would bring him no pay envelope. His very appearance seemed alien to his brethren. His figure was tall, and of cast-iron mold. When he stared stupidly at something, he looked like a blind Samson. His gray hair was long, and it fell in disheveled curls on gigantic shoulders somewhat inclined to stoop. His shabby clothes hung loosely on him; and, both summer and winter, the same old cap covered his massive head. He had spent most of his life in a sequestered village in Litde Russia, where he tilled the soil and even wore the national peasant costume.
"Old Zelig was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him "Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent - "Mr:' "The old one is a barrel with a stave missing:' knowingly declared his neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres:' For "to belong:' on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew must join ''A Society for Burying Its Members:' to be provided at least with a narrow cell at the end of the long road. Zelig was not even a member of one of these. ''Alone, like a stone:' his wife often sighed.
In the cloakshop where Zelig worked he stood daily, brandishing his heavy iron on the sizzling cloth, hardly ever glancing about him. The workmen despised him, for during a strike he returned to work after two days' absence. He could not be idle, and thought with dread of the Saturday that would bring him no pay envelope. His very appearance seemed alien to his brethren. His figure was tall, and of cast-iron mold. When he stared stupidly at something, he looked like a blind Samson. His gray hair was long, and it fell in disheveled curls on gigantic shoulders somewhat inclined to stoop. His shabby clothes hung loosely on him; and, both summer and winter, the same old cap covered his massive head. He had spent most of his life in a sequestered village in Litde Russia, where he tilled the soil and even wore the national peasant costume.
Monday, May 2, 2011
From the Memoirs of Satan - Wilhelm Hauff
A collection of devil tales: From the Memoirs of Satan by Wilhelm Hauff:
"In this way the jovial stranger had kept myself, and twelve or fifteen other gentlemen and ladies (our fellow guests), in a perpetual whirl of delight. Scarcely any had any special business to detain them at the hotel, and yet none ventured to entertain the mere idea of departure, even at a distant day. On the other hand, after we had slept for some time late on mornings, sat long at dinner, sung and played long of evenings, and drank, chatted, and laughed long of nights, the magic tie which bound us to this hotel seemed to have woven new chains around us. This intoxication, however, was soon to be put an end to, perhaps for our good. On the seventh day of our rejoicings, a Sunday, our friend Von Natas was not to be found anywhere. The waiters gave as his apology a short journey; he could not return before sunset, but would certainly be in time for tea and supper.
"In this way the jovial stranger had kept myself, and twelve or fifteen other gentlemen and ladies (our fellow guests), in a perpetual whirl of delight. Scarcely any had any special business to detain them at the hotel, and yet none ventured to entertain the mere idea of departure, even at a distant day. On the other hand, after we had slept for some time late on mornings, sat long at dinner, sung and played long of evenings, and drank, chatted, and laughed long of nights, the magic tie which bound us to this hotel seemed to have woven new chains around us. This intoxication, however, was soon to be put an end to, perhaps for our good. On the seventh day of our rejoicings, a Sunday, our friend Von Natas was not to be found anywhere. The waiters gave as his apology a short journey; he could not return before sunset, but would certainly be in time for tea and supper.
Father Matthew - Guy de Maupassant
The short fiction story Father Matthew by Guy de Maupassant:
"We had just left Rouen and were galloping along the road to Jumieges. The light carriage flew along across the level country. Presently the horse slackened his pace to walk up the hill of Cantelen.
One sees there one of the most magnificent views in the world. Behind us lay Rouen, the city of churches, with its Gothic belfries, sculptured like ivory trinkets; before us Saint Sever, the manufacturing suburb, whose thousands of smoking chimneys rise amid the expanse of sky, opposite the thousand sacred steeples of the old city.
On the one hand the spire of the cathedral, the highest of human monuments, on the other the engine of the power-house, its rival, and almost as high, and a metre higher than the tallest pyramid in Egypt. Before us wound the Seine, with its scattered islands and bordered by white
banks, covered with a forest on the right and on the left immense meadows, bounded by another forest yonder in the distance. Here and there large ships lay at anchor along the banks of the wide river.
"We had just left Rouen and were galloping along the road to Jumieges. The light carriage flew along across the level country. Presently the horse slackened his pace to walk up the hill of Cantelen.
One sees there one of the most magnificent views in the world. Behind us lay Rouen, the city of churches, with its Gothic belfries, sculptured like ivory trinkets; before us Saint Sever, the manufacturing suburb, whose thousands of smoking chimneys rise amid the expanse of sky, opposite the thousand sacred steeples of the old city.
On the one hand the spire of the cathedral, the highest of human monuments, on the other the engine of the power-house, its rival, and almost as high, and a metre higher than the tallest pyramid in Egypt. Before us wound the Seine, with its scattered islands and bordered by white
banks, covered with a forest on the right and on the left immense meadows, bounded by another forest yonder in the distance. Here and there large ships lay at anchor along the banks of the wide river.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Head and Shoulders (V) - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter V and the final one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (though not that short but it's one heck of a story, memorable from chapter I is: "I consider kissing intrinsically irrational") - Head and Shoulders (for all the chapters click here):
V
"“Sandra Pepys, Syncopated,” with an introduction by Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, appeared serially in Jordan’s Magazine, and came out in book form in March. From its first published instalment it attracted attention far and wide. A trite enough subject—a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York to go on the stage— treated simply, with a peculiar vividness of phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness in the very inadequacy of its vocabulary, it made an irresistible appeal. Peter Boyce Wendell, who happened at that time to be advocating the enrichment of the American language by the immediate adoption of expressive vernacular words, stood as its sponsor and thundered his indorsement over the placid bromides of the conventional reviewers.
Marcia received three hundred dollars an instalment for the serial publication, which came at an opportune time, for though Horace’s monthly salary at the Hippodrome was now more than Marcia’s had ever been, young Marcia was emitting shrill cries which they interpreted as a demand for country air. So early April found them installed in a bungalow in Westchester County, with a place for a lawn, a place for a garage, and a place for everything, including a sound-proof impregnable study, in which Marcia faithfully promised Mr. Jordan she would shut herself up when her daughter’s demands began to be abated, and compose immortally illiterate literature.
V
"“Sandra Pepys, Syncopated,” with an introduction by Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, appeared serially in Jordan’s Magazine, and came out in book form in March. From its first published instalment it attracted attention far and wide. A trite enough subject—a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York to go on the stage— treated simply, with a peculiar vividness of phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness in the very inadequacy of its vocabulary, it made an irresistible appeal. Peter Boyce Wendell, who happened at that time to be advocating the enrichment of the American language by the immediate adoption of expressive vernacular words, stood as its sponsor and thundered his indorsement over the placid bromides of the conventional reviewers.
Marcia received three hundred dollars an instalment for the serial publication, which came at an opportune time, for though Horace’s monthly salary at the Hippodrome was now more than Marcia’s had ever been, young Marcia was emitting shrill cries which they interpreted as a demand for country air. So early April found them installed in a bungalow in Westchester County, with a place for a lawn, a place for a garage, and a place for everything, including a sound-proof impregnable study, in which Marcia faithfully promised Mr. Jordan she would shut herself up when her daughter’s demands began to be abated, and compose immortally illiterate literature.
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