In a fourth dimension somewhere, on a windy day, Jackie Leven is carrying a rustling Somerfield carrier bag towards what appears to be the Fareham Burger Van. The man in the van, the Burger Man, seems to be Russell Hoban. Inexplicably, he is wearing a Sunderland team soccer jersey. He is holding a bottle of bright red, almost radioactive chilli sauce.
“We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.
1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.
2. Write the story that has to be written.
(Author: Gwen Bell – no relation, as far as I am aware.)
My ‘story that has to be written’ follows.
DIGITALLY I HAVE ceased to exist. Like most things it happened gradually. I first began to notice that no one was replying to the comments I leave on blogs. Then my emails began to disappear – or at least people gradually stopped thanking me for them, and then they stopped replying altogether. There always used to be a little something in the Junk Mail folder, and I’d have to go and check for false positives in the spam folder at my ISP every couple of days. Now there’s nothing. Louis has stopped telling me at length about 3D/2D Animation services – Cartoon Movie – 3D modeling. No naughty Russian ladies who want to meet me. No naked pics, no fake Viagra, No generous Nigerians, no Chinese belt conveyors, no unexpected lottery wins, no PR agency press releases.
This short-short was inspired by a vintage advertisement for a product which, as far as I know, is sadly no longer available.
Even Timo can see this is a moment that will change everything, and he is only eleven. Set in Germany in 1989.
The Franz Kafka masterpiece known as Metamorphosis in English isn’t about a cockroach. Gregor Samsa’s transformation (Verwandlung without the masculine article was its original title) was from man into “Ungeziefer”, which can be translated only to “vermin”. The generic term “vermin” didn’t work in translating Metamorphosis into English. I wondered what would happen if I wrote a short story that turned Metamorphosis on its bug-headed head.
On the spur of the moment the European decided to head north in search of adventure. He hired a hatchback for 29 dollars a day, all inclusive, and at 18:15 on Saturday he found it on top of an ancient Maori fortification, Rangikapiti Pa, just north of Mangonui on New Zealand’s North Island.
“In this world,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, “nothing is certain but death and taxes”. That was in 1789 and there have been a lot of deaths and tax returns since then. What if, in an uncertain future, the Revenue became literally ‘Internal’ and, through the wonders of cortex implants, began demanding a tax based on what citizens were dreaming?
Memory works in mysterious ways. Often, the images and fragments that resurface from our subconscious are unsolicited. There are some memories that seem, inexplicably, fundamental to what we are. So what do we do with them when we have them? Where do we put them? These fragments belong in a symbolic place, one that stands for both the experiences we can and those we can’t remember. It doesn’t need a name but, if it were to have one, it might as well be The Barn.
A short-short first published in the 2005 Random House NZ Home anthology. And no, I have not registered that internet domain yet.
