The Last Thinly Sliced Raw Fish

Here, today. 

Thanks for reading.

The Last Postcard

Solid black.  The last postcard, kept in a secret place in the postal system, ready to be sent to the person who breaks the system.  It’s your fault, the postmaster general will write, it’s you that’s ruined everything.  Because of Seinfeld, the postmaster general must be Wilford Brimley.  I’m comfortable with that.  Postal apocalypse—it’s the right thing to do, and the tasty way to do it.  Dad, though, would want Clint Eastwood. 

Bad Haircut #6

Our group leader is wide. His head belongs in a museum.

Disembodied, Backwards

More backwards! The idea is to take a small work and reverse the sentence order. The story I've used this time is Disembodied, another from Thinly Sliced Raw Fish, found here.

The new "backwards" version:

Fractured formulas of identity.  Why.  Where.  How.  Memories of rain on flowers and the cold steel of buildings under construction.  I’m thinking in hazy.  I’m floating in nebulous.  I’m here but don’t know where.

The original version:

I’m here but don’t know where.  I’m floating in nebulous, I’m thinking in hazy.  Memories of rain on flowers and the cold steel of buildings under construction.  How Where. Why.  Fractured formulas of identity.

Leviathan: A Dream Fragment

Extra Casolaro related material. This is not directly related to the 64 stories, but represents the beginning of a second chapter after those stories. 

Dr. Erik Vondeer, acclaimed marine biologist, known for his seminal papers on distribution of sea kraits on the Great Barrier Reef and the evolution of chondrophores in the Indian Ocean among other works, hunter of deep sea creatures, surly lonely old man that some were now calling kook landlocked at a mid-sized midwestern college known more for basketball feats than what its grizzled old professors are conjuring up with their stale labyrinthine minds, woke from his recurring dream, ready to bounce from his lonesome bed over to his bedroom desk and write notes in his journal, as he’s been doing for years now, the “journal” itself not just one book but a collection of them, the ever-expanding library of what has been his life’s thoughts and dreams.  His recurring dream was as such: he’s on an expedition boat somewhere in the seas, the landscape changing from, in no particular recurring order, the icy cliffs of Antarctica, the sunny smooth surface of the south Pacific, the raging cold waters of the North Sea with oil platforms the statues of modern civilizations off in the distance, the green and rocky Grecian coastlines with the ancient crumbling buildings and monuments secluded on hilltops or partially hidden by untamed green growth and some of the residue of dead civilizations still lurking beneath the waters, the Galapagos Islands a litter of rocks like a mouth of broken teeth, generic night time waters that could be anywhere, a full moon illuminating eerily still waters that suddenly erupt into tossing storms, the very stability of the ship called into question, the craft itself on the verge of being shattered into thousands of shards and scattered in the waters.  He’s the captain of the ship, and he’s surrounded by dozens in his crew, the faces constantly changing; and in some iterations of the dream, the crew are not providing physical boat assistance but rather are reading passages from the Book of Job, may those who curse days curse that day…can you fill his hide with harpoons…here is the ocean vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind…and Melville’s tome, the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, from hell’s heart I stab at thee, all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain.  Eventually bodies go flying off the deck into the sea; voices say, where is the great—don’t say it, he’ll scream, catching a mouth of salt water, don’t say the word, and then what will appear to be a land mass springing from the ocean’s floor, bursting through the water’s plane will become the thing he has long sought, the thing that has many appearances, many faces.  A massive shark, a prehistoric megalodon launching itself in the air with a cave for a mouth; a kraken with dozens of tentacles that are whipping in the air, snagging hapless crew members and tossing them about, itself posing for an early nineteenth century type of drawing that would be used in a natural history treatise; a sea serpent, a serpentine dragon with evil red eyes that rises high above the ship’s mast.  A unique, gigantic prehistoric monster that has managed to survive eons in the depths, or a mythological creature that is real and is an eternal dweller in the seas, or a variation of a presently existing marine apex predator that is afflicted with some sort of gigantism, or a heretofore unknown species that, despite being one of the largest creatures on the face of the earth, has escaped detection for centuries.  The thing that he has been searching for his entire life now, both in his academic work and mind, and that he believes must be out there in the world’s seas somewhere lurking in its darkest depths, the vast terrain not yet explored.  This iteration of the dream presented something new; whereas usually he stands on the ship’s deck, frozen in awe of the emerged creature and waits as if a sacrificial virgin to be destroyed by the attacking beast and waking just before it happens, here he waited and the beast spoke, saying in a roaring metal-grinding growl, “I’ve been searching for you,” just before he woke. 

Gravity Gone, Backwards

Backwards! The idea is to take a small work and reverse the sentence order. The story I've used this time is Gravity Gone, another from Thinly Sliced Raw Fish, found here.

The new "backwards" version:

She rests her forehead on the window, inhales.  Between them there are stories, there are years. He wants to say, what are you thinking, but he can’t. They’re looking out an 18th floor window. He stops, thinks about unbound bodies floating upward, colliding with rising cars, street lights and wires, stuff.  If gravity were gone, she said, the world would be a better place.

The original:

If gravity were gone, she said, the world would be a better place.  He stops, thinks about unbound bodies floating upward, colliding with rising cars, street lights and wires, stuff.  They’re looking out an 18th floor window.  He wants to say, what are you thinking, but he can’t.  Between them there are stories, there are years.  She rests her forehead on the window, inhales.

Eggplant

This presentation is a warning on eggplants.  Travel world cuisine and you will see eggplant prevalence: ratatouille, eggplant parmigiana, moussaka.  Delicious meals, surely, but eggplant, as a nightshade plant (like tomatoes, potatoes, peppers) can cause various health problems.  Stomach lining irritation, gastritis.  Worsening of arthritis.  Consider that some weigh two pounds, large enough to cause head trauma, or other parts of the body if grouped in blankets and used as beating instruments.  Have I mentioned that this presentation has been funded by the Citizens with Concerns About Eggplants, a public advocacy nonprofit?  Visit their website and you will see photos of Indians, such as these, doubled over in the streets of Calcutta, eggplant victims, their arthritic wrists at their sides unable to support their weight.  You will see people in your country, facing similar fates in hospital waiting rooms, further burdening our overtaxed health care system.  You’ll see head trauma injuries, apparent accident victims, their heads suspiciously looking as if they’ve been clobbered with eggplants.  Have I mentioned I’m an eggplant victim?  Debilitating arthritis, after years of an eggplant-a-day diet?  I can barely stand here, support myself at this lectern, click the button for this slide presentation.  My advice to you?  Please avoid the deadly eggplant.  Don’t become a statistic.  Thank you.

Clam Bake

Car breaks down on a road near the Chesapeake Bay.  Looking for help, the driver hears distant voices, walks through a corn field and some trees to a beach.  Sees people gathered around a crackling beach fire, the smell of corn, seafood cooking.  He approaches the crowd—long-haired bearded men, women with long hair, some with bandanas holding their hair back.  Several look at him, wave.  My car broke down out on the road, he says.  A shirtless man, leathered chest, gray hair in ponytail, stands.  Come, have a bite to eat.  I just want to be on my way.  Get this man a plate of food, someone says.  Soon after, a young male in red shorts approaches with fractured crabs, potatoes, oysters, corn.  He shrugs it off, but the guy is persistent, standing before him unblinking.  He eats the food, feeling as if everyone’s watching him do so.  About my car, he said.  Why don’t you join us, the shirtless man says, forget that car.  He doesn’t answer, realizes no one there will help.  Looks to the sky. Realizes dusk is coming.  What happened to the time?  Our cars broke down a long time ago, shirtless says, followed by laughter.  You should join us, he hears again, walking away, night coming.

Watching the House Burn, Backwards

The return of backwards fun! See previous entries here.

The idea is to take a small work and reverse the sentence order. This story I've done this with this time is Watching the House Burn, another from Thinly Sliced Raw Fish, found here.

So, here’s the new “backwards” story:

You clutch my hand, won’t let us leave. We don’t believe in this stuff. We’ve come here since childhood, stealing kisses in the shadows. I stare, transfixed, think I see silhouettes, black snakes of smoke moving uphill through bare trees.  We watched the flames, screaming demons eating oxygen.  The house sat on the grounds of either a prison cemetery, a typhoid-ravaged boarding school, or an abandoned psychiatric hospital.  Every other family moves in, stays awhile, abruptly leaves.   A psycho father kills his family, hangs himself.   For years we talked about its history.  We watched the house burn, holding hands.

The original:

We watched the house burn, holding hands. For years we talked about its history.  A psycho father kills his family, hangs himself.  Every other family moves in, stays awhile, abruptly leaves.  The house sat on the grounds of either a prison cemetery, a typhoid-ravaged boarding school, or an abandoned psychiatric hospital.  We watched the flames, screaming demons eating oxygen.  I stare, transfixed, think I see silhouettes, black snakes of smoke moving uphill through bare trees.  We’ve come here since childhood, stealing kisses in the shadows. We don’t believe in this stuff. You clutch my hand, won’t let us leave.

Blue Cotton Candy

Standing at her kitchen window, she drowns in the sky and ocean’s blue. His favorite color, the world bursting with it. No escape, not even the islands. Blue lollipops, cotton candy, popsicles—anything that painted his tongue blue. Whatever it was, however unnatural, his little fingers wanted it in blue.

She had recurring dreams of their last day together. Walking through carnival gates. Calliope music, game barkers. A collection of rickety rides plopped down on once green grass turned yellow. The roller coaster creaking as it rumbled over the track’s highest part, fears of it collapsing into a scrap heap. The next day’s real life nightmare: a thumping knock, the long faces of officers who must be fathers. Falling to her knees.

The village nearby full of kids, their eyes a painful reminder. This tropical paradise, water so clear you could see the sand. Fluorescent fish swim in lazy schools. Gentle breezes, the caws of bright-colored birds, the horns of departing cruise ships. Her house, painted in coral pink and teal with spotless floors, a museum of his pictures, memories.

In the distance a ship moves patiently through time. She imagines him standing on the deck, looking to shore, his lips smeared in blue confection. She waves, hopes maybe he can see.

Avocado

Appearing previously in the Fall 2007 edition of JMWW, here.

I’m not a ripe avocado, H told L, I won’t yield to pressure if you squeeze me in your hand.  No, said L, I didn’t think you were.  Avocadoes are fatty and you aren’t so in any way, he thought.  But he didn’t say it.  I am a mean guacamole, she once said, after a glass of wine, but meant she could make a mean guacamole.  They laughed about this, and he often called her a mean guacamole for giggles, but sometimes, late at night, it wasn’t funny, and she wasn’t ripe.  She looked at him funny, her eyes slicing deep.  Time to stop squeezing me, her eyes said.  You don’t know what’s inside.  He thought of it as her mean guacamole look.  But he didn’t say it.  Once, while they were drinking tea on a Friday evening drenched in storm, he rubbing her socked feet, he said, do you know that domestic animals can die if they eat avocado?  She looked at him funny.  She, the mean guacamole.  Was this squeezing, he thought, was this pressure?  She was thinking, how does he know, has he killed an animal by avocado?  He was thinking, I’m not an animal killer, if that’s what you’re thinking, you mean guacamole.  But he didn’t say it. 

Wish You Were Here!

Clear sky, foamy surf, untouched beach.  An obnoxious relative, likely drunk, is bragging about how the sand burns your soles, how laidback each day is, how margaritas magically appear before you wherever you are.  Meanwhile, here, it’s -34 degrees and snowing eighteen inches per hour.  Mom says, nope, don’t wish we there, striking this relative’s name from the Christmas list. 

Who Is Without Flaws

On the company’s last day, I stuffed black bags with file folders, broken staplers, wires, plastic shelving.

We ate takeout Chinese. Two days before, we learned the feds were coming. Two months into this job, it was time to call my parents, say, I’m jobless again.

We learned the news in a group meeting. Some assertive types raised their hands, gleefully asked, how can we help? Me, I pondered my stupidity working here.

I piled kung pao chicken onto wobbly paper plates, then talked to Jill, who, industrious as ever, was shredding papers. I asked, what’re your plans? She said, maybe get margaritas. I meant like, long term, but just nodded, depressed about our differences. See Ted for your last pay. She didn’t look up.

Ted had Eddie Vedder hair, never wore ties. He sat cross legged in a barren office. Before him, a laptop and accordion folder.

He looked up, said, Bell, retrieved an envelope from his folder. Cash--you’ll understand.

Ted, what’s next?

Well, we’re gone by 5:00, then detail guys hit this place with Q-tips and toothbrushes.

That’s not what I meant. But I just nodded.

I always stumbled explaining my job. It’s varied--database, spreadsheet, support. Dad never understood. You need goals, mom would say.

Back on the floor, shredder hum meditation was broken by packing tape screech.

Soon, I’d return to resumes, Careerbuilder, interviews with bad-breathed sharks. For now, I read my fortune cookie: who is without flaws? I tucked it into my pocket.

New Thinly Sliced Raw Fish Today

Here, and Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!

Danger Man (additional Casolaro material)

Extra Casolaro related material. I have more extras like this that I may post occasionally.

Danger Man flew to Iran in 1980 and handed their leadership promises to $40 million to not release the American hostages until the election was over and the next President was inaugurated. Danger Man spent his time on Native American reservations, working on new weapons systems and improvising new airborne explosive devices. Danger Man also dabbled in the software, the modified backdoor program that allowed rerouted spying that sort of started the whole thing, became the single dot starting point of the investigation of the Octopus. Danger Man was a drug dealer. Anything to make some cash, the dirtier and shadier the better. Danger Man was a dangerous man, as his name implied.

Danger Man eventually got busted for the drugs. A phony charge, even though he was dealing methamphetamines, but he felt that he knew too much, he was too far involved, and he had to be neutralized. When he went down, he told the court about INSLAW. They’re tracking other governments, people they think are subversives in this country. They’re tracking everyone. They know what you do.

Danger Man said that the investigator and his Octopus were nothing more than what a particular intelligence faction wanted to be revealed and there was nothing there that was revolutionary or should cause any particular uproar. It was inevitable the investigator would be done away with. That’s how these things played out back then, he said, before the current setup, the assassination by mass media. He played a part in feeding information. He knew about the hit that ended the investigator's life, framed it in a suicide.

Danger Man claimed he witnessed an alien autopsy once. His connections were that deep that if such a thing were real it would be believable he’d be a part of it.

Danger Man had seen anti-gravity technology made by the government. He’d seen scientists back track alien technology. He’d seen a manmade version of a UFO. Completely functional, unlike any other technology on this planet.

He was a danger man when he was a child (Danger Boy?). He rewired his neighborhood’s phone system, circumventing the big monopoly system, his first crack at undercover subversion. In eighth grade he created a three-dimensional sonar system, winning his school’s science fair.

Danger Man sits in prison. He’ll tell you that he’s there because they want him to be viewed as a petty drug trafficker with a devious smart mind. But he insists he’s more than that, and that you should know better.

The Real Fun of Vivian Darkbloom

I am a weakish speller.

In the department, I bury messages and play games. I talk quarks and hadrons, quarks within hadrons, and the flavors of quarks. Up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. Hear me speak. Watch me. My hair stands like burning flames. My mouth is crinkled, eyes slipping downward like melting candlewax. I start off with something like, I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form. There are a few chuckles in the crowd, those whom I’ve slipped into their mailboxes Torchwood and King’s Lead Hat, and more people get it each year. It beats talking gluons and vector gauge bosons, inverse beta decay and electron antineutrinos.

Call me Vivian Darkbloom. But I know nothing about butterflies, or that young girl. Humbert Humbert is an anagram either way. People ask me if I take drugs and the key there is the tense; present no but the past? The future? Hmmmh.

A colleague from biology walks into my office. Moon starer? No, that’s not me, go up two, take a left, take your first right, then go straight until the moor at the end. Room? Yes, but the guy is also a moor, believe it or not. We have a good laugh. This guy’s straight and narrow, pens in front pocket, but we get along. Coffees, lunches, spitballs from the math building roof.

There’s someone out there anagrammatizing your dissertation. Did you know this? He’s starting, “Though this is the air where Quentin takes the hodge of the podge. There is no amity, only that queer shake.” It’s not sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. He’s going beginning to end, so he indicates online. The whole 160 pages. Says there’s an experimental work in there, a greater meaning. A never-ending cycle, are words he used. Circular, revolving.

Who is this guy? Suddenly I’m unnerved. This treatment—it’s, there’s a word for it, I’m sure.

Greg House? Sound familiar? Didn’t indicate he was a former student, someone with an axe to grind. The worst thing to fear is the bored anonymous soul out there who somehow has picked you to exact his boredom upon.

House? Never heard of him. That shipwreck of a dissertation though. Death, it starts in ice. I wrote it and didn’t know what I was talking about. That was my true defense. So, why is he taking my penchant, turning it against me? I suppose I should be amazed someone picked it up, read it.

Maybe you could cease and desist.

There’s a word for that in biology, isn’t there? Tip of my tongue.

Yes. The word’s death.

Voices rant no more.

Later I ponder that it’s all over. All coming apart. Higher mass decaying into lower mass. The constituents falling apart, moving toward free existence, everything moving to liquid, formlessness. End is a car spin.

I find this anagrammatizer, his project. His site, hinged on my dissertation, expands daily. Page by page, a meter like a thermometer tracking blazing fever showing progress, hit counter increasing, the turnstiles of curiosity, leaving quark epoch in dust. Hey, you coward, I shout at the flickering screen. There’s a brief write-up in the odd news. He’s a mini-celeb. No one contacts me.

Down this hole, frightened, I stop circulating my anagrams. People stop by, call, e-mail: what’s wrong? A rope ends it. I focus on lectures, papers. It’s all bad news because I know where it all leads.

I see now after the final explosions, the winter over all. Here come dots to spell out the last epoch. The fine game of nil. A weakish speller, I am. Not anymore.

Now—I’m a dot in place.

Mind Meld

This is just me rambling on about movies from the 80s. There is no coherence here.

I was eleven when I first saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in the movie theater, and I was devastated that Spock had died at the end. Look, I was just eleven at the time and I didn’t know about that mind meld stuff, Spock putting his fingers on Bones’ face and saying, remember, and that meant in the next sequel he’d come back to life. My friends and I went around putting our fingers on each other’s faces and said, remember, not knowing what the heck we were doing.

Stuff like that that made absolutely no sense to my eleven year old mind was said all the time. Like in The Empire Strikes Back—Yoda says, no, there is another, and like I’m supposed to know that little line meant Luke and Leia are siblings, or Darth Vader telling Luke that he was his father was supposed to be real? Back then, we were debating whether or not Boba Fett was really Luke’s dad. Then, in The Wrath of Khan, you’ve got Khan quoting Moby Dick throughout and I’m supposed to get that? For Spock, I figured, you killed someone, he stayed dead, which I think was the big reason why my father was a big Dirty Harry fan.

Anyway, Spock dying was upsetting, but the really disturbing thing was when Khan planted those bugs into the ears of Chekhov and that other guy. I was freaked out, and there was no way any bug was getting within a foot of my ears. It was sort of like when I saw E.T. soon after. I loved E.T. but I was afraid that long glowing bony alien finger that looked like white hot metal you’d pull from a foundry would pop out from under my bed and say, ouch!, and I would scream and no one would hear. A couple years later there’d be Temple of Doom—don’t get me started. Even as a grown up I can’t even watch the scenes of the room full of bugs and the meal with snakes and monkey brains.

Baked Apple Pie

The composer was confounded by baked apple pies left outside his door.  In his place composing music, his mind and compositions growing more paranoid over time.  Concertos and string quartets that no one would hear; he kept them secret, not making public appearances, concerts of these late stage works performed only in his mind.  Days with ears to the wall, quick peeks through the shades and the door peephole to see a still life hallway; nights he’d sneak out to jazz clubs, lose himself in formlessness, drinking whiskey as he blended in with the room, leaning against a cold brick wall.  Then the pies appeared.  The first one he saw when he opened the door, looked down at the doormat.  There it was.  A pie.  Apple filling showing through a lattice-topped fence.  He picked it up—the bottom still hot, the smell intoxicating.  It sat in his kitchen untouched; he stared at it each time he went for coffee.  The next several days later.  His resistance broke; he ate a slice.  It freed him, paranoia fading the more he consumed, the forms of composition losing hardness, his works growing fluid, boundless.  The saxophone of night entered his mind, the day something he no longer feared as he waited for his benefactor’s return. 

Thinly Sliced Raw Fish #60

Work #60 of Thinly Sliced Raw Fish, here. 

Thinly Sliced Raw Fish

New one today, here. 

Fiction under 100 words.  New post every other day.  50 posts total.