Stuff that's not true (fiction)

Monday, April 20, 2009

Fish in the Sea

This is a bit from the “cutting room floor.” I wrote this, thinking I’d be able to squeeze it in to my novel thing-y somehow, but I just don’t think it’s going to work with my main character. So, yeah, I’m shoveling it out to my blog. It’s either this or a picture of me in a one of my new hats.

You’re welcome.

“Hey, buck up little camper! There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”
“Oh, excellent, I pour out my soul and you shoot back a clichéd platitude.”
“Yes, but just because it’s a cliché doesn’t make it untrue.”
“Let me tell you a little secret about me and ‘the fish.’ I don’t actually enjoy any aspect of fishing. I don’t like having to go to the sporting goods store and pick out a special rod and reel for the occasion. I don’t like getting up at the crack of dawn and trekking down to the sea. I don’t like to bait the hook. I hate waiting forever for a nibble. I hate the excitement of feeling that initial tug on the line, only to feel the crushing disappointment that I’ve merely snagged my line on some piece of garbage from the bottom. Then you have to re-bait the hook and the worms are all dead by then and too much time has passed and it’s hot and uncomfortable out there while I endlessly cast a line into the water and so I realize that since I’m never going to catch anything anyway I may as well stop trying even though I’ve put this huge effort into the process. Add to that the fact that I look and see all these other stupid, moronic and disgusting fishermen who have landed amazing catches off the same pier and I wonder what the hell is wrong with me, I can’t even catch one lousy fish and I just go home dejected, depressed, eternally empty handed and smelling like the stale beer I drank while waiting interminably on the shore for any fish to come by.”
“Um.”
“And! What about the fact that I don’t even live close to the sea? I live in a land-locked version of reality. In truth, I live in the desert on the ruins of a dry lake bed. Sure, millions of years ago, there was an inland sea and it teemed with life and vitality, but those days are long gone. Now it’s a vast wasteland of horror and sterility. There is only dust, a million fossils littering the ground and the past to examine and try and guess what happened. There are no more fish. There was one sea and it held one fish in it. I came along exactly at the right time and she was the one fish willing to…” and I faltered for a moment.
“Go on, say it, she was the one fish who’d consent look at your worm and nibble at it.”
“Well, I didn’t want to be gross, but, yeah, exactly, I hit just the perfect moment to hook her and that moment has passed. Plus, I’m just saying, it’s a terrible cliché and it’s also not based in reality.”
“I think you’re wrong, it is based in reality and I think you’ll find that out eventually, but I also think you may have strained the limits of the ‘fish in the sea’ metaphor to the limits. It’s possible you may have even broken your line.”
“Rim shot.”
“Rim shot, indeed.”

Monday, January 26, 2009

Learning to Think Before You Speak

Roger’s Wife, Nancy: Oh. Honey, looks like you’ve lost a button on your shirt. You should let me sew that back on for you.

Roger (in his head): Since when does Nancy know how to sew? She doesn’t know how to sew. She’s never known how to sew. Why would she be offering to sew a button back on my shirt? We’ve been married for twenty-five years. She’s never even picked up a needle. I don’t even think we own a needle, much less thread, for crying out loud. And a thimble? Forget about it! Does she even know what a thimble looks like? I seriously doubt it.

What is going on here? Why this sudden offer to pick up a needle and thread and do this for me? What’s her angle? What could she possibly be thinking, standing at the kitchen counter and seemingly innocuously putting together a batch of Chex Mix? She must have something up her sleeve.

Unless.

She’s not really Nancy. I mean, sure, she looks like Nancy and everything, but maybe it’s not really her. That first batch of Chex Mix she made tonight and then threw out? Did that taste like Nancy’s Special Chex Mix? No, it most certainly did not taste like Nancy’s Special Chex Mix. She said it was because she forgot to put in the worcestershire sauce, but how can that be? She’s been making her Special Chex Mix with that recipe for the last thirty years! Forgot the worcestershire sauce? Come on! Does she think I’m a fool? What’s really happening here?

I’ve got it.

She’s a cyborg. She’s been replaced. Yes. Yes! Look at her eyes. Not quite the same shade of blue as Nancy’s. Those idiots! They think they can fool me? Ridiculous. Though, I must admit, they did do a decent job. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was Nancy herself standing there dumping Wheat Chex into our oversized mixing bowl. They even made the hair fall down into her eyes the same way as Nancy’s. But obviously they didn’t do their homework properly. Idiots. If they’d even done even one ounce of research they’d have known about Nancy’s sewing deficiency. I bet this poor automaton doesn’t even know the first thing about Chex Mix and is panicking right now, believing it’s been caught. Yes, look at it, staring at me uncomprehending. It knows I’m clued into its clever rouse. I almost feel sorry for it, poor pathetic machine.

More important than the feelings this crude similitude of a human, though. What is this hunk of robotic junk doing in my house? Why would they replace Nancy with a cyborg? And, even more importantly, where the hell is Nancy? Those bastards! My poor Nancy! Well, if they think I’ll talk to this collection of faulty logic circuits, they obviously haven’t done any fieldwork on me. But what happens when I don’t talk? What will this bucket of bolts and blood do to me then? What if I can’t keep up the facade that I believe that it is the real Nancy? It’s probably been programmed to eliminate me. And there’s no way I outrun that thing. Not with my hip. Which is probably what happened to Nancy. She probably wouldn’t talk, either; and just like that, they extinguished her. Well, that won’t be my fate. No way. After she’s “asleep,” tonight, I’m out of here. I can play along until we go to bed, I’m sure. Just have to concentrate. But then I’m gone! Outta here, baby! And I’ll torch the place as I leave, too. Just for good measure. Bastards and their blasted robots. They won’t have what’s in my head. No way.

But still, that nagging question will linger, even after this house is a nothing but a smoldering pile of ruins, the stench of “Nancy’s” putrid burned plastic shell loiters and the real Nancy’s Special Chex Mix recipe is lost forever to the ages: What could they possibly have wanted to learn from me?!

Hm.

Learn.

Huh.

Wait, didn’t Nancy say something last week about starting to take a class at the community college? Yeah, she did.

And didn’t she say that class was a beginning sewing class?

Oh.

Roger: Oh, well would you look at that! I have lost a button, haven’t I? Sure, you can fix it for me, that’d be great! Have you started on the advanced button repair part of your class yet? Ha ha!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

I’m Not Really Anti-Valentine’s Day

More dialog from an unfinished novel thing-y. (A different one, wouldn’t you know).


“But you said you loved me! I even have it in writing.”

“Oh. Well, I was just being polite.”

“Polite?! You were just being polite? That’s insane.”

“What? Why? You told me you loved me and I didn’t want to be rude. So I said ‘I love you, too.’ I didn’t want things to be weird between us.”

“Well, congratulations, I don’t think things could be any weirder between us now.”

“You say that like it’s my fault.”

“But what about over dinner at La Torre the other night? We were waiting for the appetizers to come and you raised your glass of Piñot Grigot and said, ‘I love you, Benjamin.’”

“Oh, yeah. That. Couldn’t think of anything to else to say.”

“What?!”

“Neither of us had said anything for a while, so I was feeling kind of uncomfortable. And the restaurant was so quiet. Seemed like a nice thing to say. I guess not.”

“So let me get this straight. You told me that you loved me simply to fill dead air?”

“I’m in radio. We hate dead air. You know that!”

For past year’s Valentine’s Day messages see here and perhaps even here.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Dialogue

A few lines of dialog I wrote a long time ago, from a short story I never finished. Found on an ancient zip disk. Slightly edited.

“Yes, she definitely wears that shirt a lot. She wears it at least twice a week. You know how I know that she wears it that often? Because that is the shirt with the deep V-neck and, depending on any number of factors such as wind speed, the angle of the sun, barometric pressure and her being RIGHT in front of you, you can ABSOLUTELY see her almost her entire chest. It practically plunges down to her navel and allows easy discernment the brand names of her bras. Bali most days and La Perla if she’s going to a client meeting. Seriously, that shirt should be illegal, that’s how revealing it is. So, you know why I notice that sort of thing and why I can tell you that she wears it at least once a week and that she wore it yesterday? Because I’m a GUY and guys notice things like women’s breasts. We like them. We notice them. We even admire them, though generally we try not to be all creepy about it and stare at them. But if you think I’m not going to notice when they are practically invading my personal space bubble, then you are absolutely off your rocker. Plus, the shirt is a nice green color and it sets off her eyes nicely.”

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago

I found an old report card from elementary school. And JUST FOR YOU I spent all afternoon transcribing Mrs. Eggelston’s old-school-marm-script comments from the margins. I aim to please.

— Jon is reading well, but his fascination with mucus and, please forgive the term, “mondo-boogers” [his term] has gotten out of hand. Please ask him not to touch the other children’s nostrils.

— He needs to stop playing the blues harmonica during recess for tips. He is not a 1920s black sharecropper.

— His Math skills are formidable, but I’m worried that he is spending far too much time trying to “telnet” into First National Bank from the Library’s computer.

— While we strive to be as tolerant as possible, we do not understand why he occasionally dresses as a “ninja-pirate-warrior-prince.” He’s very creative with his costumes, but we have a hard time understanding his “pirate talk.” And when he goes into “ninja-stealth-death-mode” and creeps against the wall; he makes the entire class pretend they can’t see him. This is very distracting to the learning environment and I’ve had to warn him about this conduct.

— I’m thrilled with his interest in Civics, but he must stop burning Richard Nixon in effigy. It’s against the fire code to have an open flame in the classroom. Although he does know quite a bit about the Watergate scandal and seems to be able talk forever about President Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Does he watch a lot of news shows?

— His vocabulary is impressive, but what he has suggested in numerous essays is both anatomically impossible and seems like it would be quite painful. Is someone in your family currently a sailor or used to be in the Navy?

— It’s true that February is Black History Month and we should be more sensitive as a culture, but we have to refer to the children by “their slave names” (Jon, Mary, Billy, etc.); it’s very confusing to call him “Shabazz X” just for one month.

— During the Biology section he became physically disturbed during the frog and worm dissections. After grabbing as many samples as he could hold in his little hands, he ran out of the classroom, screaming “You may NOT hurt my pretties! Stay away from them, you visigoths!”

I am very happy to have in in the classroom as he is certainly a lively little fellow. We will have to work on some of these more “disturbing” behaviors as the year progresses.

Thank you.
Linda Egglston

Proximus

 

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• Partners
• Correspondence
• Help Wanted
• From the Office of Mis-directed Email
• A Word from the Small Person in the House
• RNT Product Review: Chocolate Mix Skittles Left Me Sterile!
• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• Letters from a Homeowner to His General Contractor
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2010 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.