Jason the Physicist wasn’t surprised at all when Jason the Physicist walked through the door to his bar. Since that time travel incident back in college, he’d actually been expecting something like this to happen someday. What really surprised him though, was when a third Jason walked through the door. The arrival of the third Jason seemed to unnerve Jason #2 as well. For a moment they all stared at each other. The Original Jason broke the tense silence.
Gerald Baily had enormous hands. Each one was as wide as his torso — if he held his hand as if showing the number five, they measured thirty-four and a half inches from the tip of his pinky to the end of his thumb. In all other respects, Gerald was normally proportioned.
His unusual hands were first noticed when Gerald was still in his mother’s womb. The doctors marveled at the size of the tiny infant’s hands — at that point they were bigger than the foetus’ head. Gerald had to be delivered by cesarean section as the risk to his mother was too great for a normal delivery.
For his arms to support the weight of his hands, Gerald’s quickly grew strong. Even at an early age, he was able to lift very heavy items.
His hands made him a popular choice in school to participate in certain sports. As a young boy, he played goalie his school’s soccer team — he never allowed a single goal, much to the chagrin of the opposing teams. In high school, he lettered in swimming and was the star receiver on the football team. He never missed a pass.
The enormity of his hands presented certain problems. He could not wear normal clothing, for example — his hands would not fit through the sleeves. His mother had special shirts make for him that snapped down the sleeves. He could remove his shirts very quickly, if necessary, thanks to these snaps.
Contrary to what many people though, Gerald was very dexterous with his hands. As a hobby, he painted people’s names on grains of rice and sold them at the state fair in a small booth, next to the deep-fried bacon stand.
Gerald met his wife in college. As soon as he saw Barbara, he knew they were destined to be together. She had an enormous class load, and Gerald had a lot of respect for her work ethic. They were married a few years later by Elvis in Las Vegas. Not the real Elvis, just an impersonator, but it was still a happy day for both of them.
Gerald and Barbara had three children together, all of which had normal size hands. Secretly, Gerald wished that at least one of them had gotten his gift of giant hands.
Years later, when Gerald was an old man, one of his children, Robert, had a child of his own named Ben. Ben was born with enormous hands. Robert and his wife Cindy were very happy.
When Chris woke up, he realized he was stuck in a maze.
He was in a small chamber, with four exits, and in the dim light, he could see that corridors stretched off and made abrupt turns off into the distance.
He tried to remember how he had gotten here, but his hazy memory gave no answer. In fact, other than his name — Chris — he could remember little else. There were giant, gaping holes where his life should be. It was obvious that he had a past, that he was someone, but the specific details escaped him.
His head throbbed dully and his muscles ached, but after a time, he was able to pull himself up off the floor and to his feet. He walked unsteadily over to the nearby wall to get a closer look.
The wall was made of stone, with no joints or seams to betray its construction method. It was completely smooth and featureless. There was light coming from somewhere, but Chris could not locate any obvious source.
All of these words — wall, stone, light — came easily into Chris’ mind, but beyond that his memory was a complete void.
He decided to explore. He picked a corridor and set off. The hallway was fashioned out of the same featureless stone as the room he had woken up in, and he followed it a short distance before he was presented with a crossroads — another corridor intersected the one he was traveling down. Peering to the right and left revealed more of the same — more halls and more intersections. Chris decided to go for a while, always taking the right hand corridor.
Time went by. It could have been a few minutes, it could have been a few days — the sameness of the corridors and the consistency of the light gave no hint of the passage of time. Chris arrived in a small chamber. It appeared to be the same one he had left, but he had no way to know for sure. For the first time, Chris glanced down at himself. He was wearing a loose fitting white shirt, and a pair of baggy pants. Shirt. Pants. That’s what these things are called, Chris thought to himself. These are clothes, and I don’t know who or where I am. He sighed audibly.
He reached into the pockets of his pants and found a small, wadded up piece of cloth, which gave him an idea. He set the cloth in the center of the room, and set out once again, always taking the right-hand passageway. After another interval of time, he came upon a small chamber. In the center of the chamber was the piece of cloth.
He began other patterns – always take the left-hand passage, left-right-left, left-left-right – and the result was always the same. After some indeterminate period of time, he ended up back in the same chamber, with the same small piece of cloth sitting in the middle. Tired and exasperated, he picked up the cloth and shoved it back into his pants pocket. He lay back against the wall, his eyes heavy with sleep.
When Chris woke up, he realized he was stuck in a maze.
Jeff was playing the most important game.
It was a game of chess, and the stakes were very high — the highest, in fact.
He was playing for his life. His opponent: none other than the Grim Reaper himself.
It was Jeff’s move. He fidgeted nervously, and patted down his pockets. He found an almost empty pack of cigarrettes and fished one out and placed in between his dry lips. He searched for a moment more and silently cursed his forgetfulness as he remembered leaving his lighter sitting on his bedside table.
“Got a light?” he said hopefully to the being sitting across the table.
Death answered with a silent stare, his hollow eye sockets betraying no hint that The Reaper had even heard Jeff.
Jeff spat out the cigarette and returned to the game. Trying to decide between moving his rook and his bishop, his thoughts drifted back to earlier in the day, before all this happened. Time seemed to move very slowly, like every second was a year.
Jeff was a typical twenty-something do-nothing slacker. He had a job changing back-up tapes in a giant data center, and the rest of his time was split between parties, bars and sleep, not necessarily in that order. Jeff had spent the night working, as usually, then slept most of the day. He was walking to meet his friends at his favorite pool hall, when he had been dragged into an alley, stabbed and his wallet stolen. He lay bleeding in the dark, and had seen Death approach. The Grim Reaper was seven feet tall and carried an honest-to-goodness scythe, honed to a sickening sharpness. Jeff remembered seeing “The Seventh Seal” back in a film appreciation class and with his last breath, challenged Death to a game of chess. The next thing Jeff knew, he was in a windowless room, sitting across a richly-appointed chessboard from the Grim Reaper.
Death made a gesture, which brought Jeff out of his reprieve and back to the moment. His hand was hovering over his bishop, and apparently had been for some time. The Grim Reaper was making that “get on with it” hand gesture, which in any other circumstances would have been hilarious to Jeff, but for some reason, with his life on the line, wasn’t. Jeff finally committed to the bishop, and nervously moved it to take The Reaper’s knight.
Jeff thought he perceived something. Something about the move seemed to have unnerved Death, if such a thing was possible. If The Reaper had a beard hanging from its fleshless skull, Jeff could have imagined the being stroking it just then. After a moment’s hesitation, which seemed to last forever, Death took Jeff’s bishop with his queen.
Examining the board, Jeff knew he had won, and looked up up at death with a giant grin. Jeff could see The Reaper examining the board, and after a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Death reached out a bony finger and gently tipped his king over. Jeff heard a rush of wind, and the room and The Grim Reaper faded away, leaving Jeff standing in a dusty ruin. Jeff gaped and looked around, but he knew the truth, almost immediately.
The game had, in fact, taken an eternity, and he was utterly alone in the wasteland that was once his city.
Jeff sat down in the dust and began to cry.
Walter Wiggensbottom had a giant, shaggy, white beard. He was extremely proud of it — “It’s taken me forty years to grow this thing!” he would tell his friends. Walter also had a giant problem. For the last five years, he had only been able to find work as Santa. Walter hated playing Santa, but did it reluctantly in order to pay the bills until his retirement kicked in. At 62 years old, he still had four more years until his social security kicked in, and Walter hadn’t been lucky. He had worked for a small manufacturing company his entire working life but they had gone out of business six years ago and taken his pension with them.
Walter was very, very good at playing Santa. The kids all truly believed, and even though Walter was a reluctant Santa, he took his work seriously and played the part well.
Until the day he met little Jimmy Sandborne. Little Jimmy was the kind of kid who made rotten kids look like little angels. He was nine years old, and most of his family secretly hoped he would get in some serious trouble with the law so they wouldn’t have to deal with him any more. At nine, he already amassed an impressive resume of thievery, arson and vandalism. He also had a smile that could melt an iceburg and a rogue’s charm — he got away with everything he did.
It was the 18th of December when Walter and little Jimmy met. Walter was once again filling his role as Santa at a local mall, and Jimmy had berated his tired mother to take him shopping until she finally gave in. Jimmy got what Jimmy wanted. As soon as Jimmy spotted Walter, Jimmy knew who his latest victim would be.
“Mommy, I want a picture with Santa!” he demanded. His mother nodded mutely and walked over to the booth where Walter was stationed and paid the $10.00 for a picture.
Jimmy slowly approached Walter and slid into his lap, his best smile in place.
“Ho Ho Ho little man!” Walter started his normal schtick, “what would you like for Christmas this year?”
Jimmy looked around to make sure no one was watching, then threw himself on the ground and started screaming bloody murder. Walter stood up in a panic. Jimmy was shouting “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” over and over. Jimmy’s mother came over reluctantly.
“What’s wrong Jimmy?” she asked.
“Santa touched me in my private parts!” he screamed, pointing at Walter. Walter was dumbfounded.
“I certainly did not! I would never!” he protested. Jimmy’s mother picked up the screaming boy, who by this point had started gyrating violently.
“I know you didn’t” she said, “he does this all the time.” She apologized and dragged the screaming youth away.
The very next day, Walter shaved his beard.
Jason the Physicist knew it was going to be an interesting evening when the alien walked into his bar. Jason had dealt with his share of odd an interesting events (like the time he helped the folks at CERN save the world from a tiny black hole they’d accidentally created, or that wacky time-travel incident back in college), but he had never actually seen an extra-terrestrial. The alien slapped a tentacle on the bar.
“Whiskey”, it said, sounding very much like Stephen Hawking. Jason peered around for the source of the word, and finally settled on a small black box on the creature’s belt. The box looked like it had been put together from parts obtained at Radio Shack. In fact, upon closer examination, Jason saw the tellate cirle R logo in raised platic on the front of the box, next to a small speaker whose wires disappared into the innards of the box.
Jason looked at the alien closely, trying to decide which appendage he should address as the alien’s face, and settled on a likley lump of green tissue that had a small fissure that might be the creature’s mouth.
“Well or call?” Jason asked, completly serious.
“Canadian Club,” the alien replied, “and you can call me, for lack of a better word, Max”. The words came out of the small voice box with a methodical, almost dream-like slowness.
Jason nodded and fetched Max’s drink. When he returned, Max wrapped one of its smaller tentacles around the glass and raised it to the fissure, which opened to reveal row after row of fearsome teeth. The alien dumped the contents of the glass down this ghastly gullet.
“So, what brings you to town?” Jason asked, and immediatly realized that the alien must get that line all the time.
“Actually, my band needs a bass player, and I was hoping you’d be interested.” Max replied, as if such requests were the most normal thing on Earth (or any other planet). In addition to owning the bar, Jason was also a fearsome bass player, although it had been years since he’d played in a band — running the bar took too much of his time.
Jason thought carefully, and then replied “What instrument do you play in the band?”
“I’m the singer.” the alien replied. Jason could swear the ends of the creatures “mouth” turned up in a grin.
Jason blinked, and thought for another moment and asked “Of all of the bass players on Earth, why me?”.
“There aren’t many physicists on the planet who can rock like you do, we’re all big fans” the alien replied. The Hawking-like tones produced by the black box added a serious tone to the creatures utterings. “and we are also in need of your abilities as one of the foremost physicists on the planet. We have a particular problem that we need help solving”.
Jason thought of the last time he had to use his abilities as a physicist, when the Earth was on the verge of getting sucked into itself, and what a pain in the ass that whole adventure turned out to be. He thought for a long moment and finally replied.
“I don’t believe in aliens, and it’s closing time.” he said.
Max looked stunned (or at least Jason imagined that he did), and after a time, turned and made his way out of Jason’s bar.
Jason locked up for the night and began turning chairs on top of tables.
On the day Tokyo was being destroyed by giant robots, Ichiro Ramone was 5,470 miles away enjoying a nice sandwich.
Ichiro’s mother was Anzu Watanabe, a Japanese supermodel and lead singer of the all-girl 80s punk rock cover band Bang Bang Go Go. His father was Ricardo Ramone, a multi-billionaire who oversaw an empire of Mexican factories churning out NAFTA-friendly merchandise, ranging from cars to casino chips. Ichiro never felt at home in either Tokyo or Mexico City, so when it came time for college, Ichiro chose Berkley and majored in math with a minor in art. It turns out that Ichiro was a certified Einstien-level genius, which was quickly noticed by the spooks at the NSA. They recruited Ichiro upon his graduation and put him to work on a top-secret project that involved breaking complex coded communications. These signals appeared to be between the Russians and a destination just outside the orbit of the planet formerly known as Pluto in a region of space known as the Kuiper belt.
Being born to money gave Ichiro certain advantages. He worked for the NSA on his terms; when he wanted to. The rest of the time, he made a living working in a ticket booth at a Sunset Boulevard pornographic movie theater in Hollywood. The owner, Mr. Perkins, was an ex-Scientologist who had hit it big working at a start-up during the dot-com boom and left it all behind to buy the theater from its previous owners, a transvestite named Denise (formerly Dennis) and her wife Charlene, a retired porn star. Mr. Perkins knew nothing of Ichiro’s secret life decoding alien broadcasts, but had he known, he might have re-considered his stance on the Scientologists.
Ichiro was about to take a bite of his sandwich when his iPhone started playing Bang Bang Go Go’s rendition of The Ramone’s “I want to be sedated”. Even though he was estranged from his parents, Ichiro was very proud of his mother’s rise from poverty to the heights of the super rich and elite, and had her band’s songs programmed for all of the different ringers in his phone. This particular ring meant he had received a text message from Robert Marley, his superior at the NSA. Although Bob bore no resemblance to his namesake, his name was the source of constant amusement within the coordinators of the NSA’s headquarters at Ft. Meade and he was forever finding hand-knit Reggae beanie hats on his desk.
Ichiro read the message. It was typically terse and to the point, like all of Bob’s communication. “Tokyo destroyed; parents likely dead”. Ichiro paused, trying to decide what that really meant to him. It made him sad, but he knew his parents had lived life to the fullest and would die with no regrets.
“I guess it’s true, you can never go home” he remarked out loud, then proceeded to finish the rest of his sandwich.
My friend meshealle (that just sounds weird) finally posted her Tiny Fiction. It’s starting to catch on! Soon, I will RULE THE ENTIRE INTERNETS with my Tiny Fiction empire.
Anyway, you should go check it out.
Good Job Meshealle (really, just sounds weird).
On the day Tokyo was being destroyed by giant robots, Ichiro Ramone was 5,470 miles away enjoying a nice sandwich. Ichiro was born to Anzu Watanabe, a supermodel Japanese mother and Ricardo Ramone, a rich, industrialist Mexican father 22 years ago in Tokyo. He was an outcast to both countries. So naturally, as soon as possible, he left his family in Tokyo and moved to Los Angeles, where he now makes a living working in a ticket booth at a Hollywood Boulevard pornographic movie theater. A job that had its share of obvious drawbacks, certainly, but it was not without certain perks. The owner, Mr. Perkins, was an ex-scientologist who had hit it big working at a startup during the dot-com boom and left it all behind to buy the theater from its previous owners, a transvestite named Denise (formerly Dennis) and her wife Charlene, a retired porn star. In addition to paying Ichiro a salary, Mr. Perkins allowed Ichiro to stay in a room just off of the projection booth, so Ichiro was spared the expense of an aparment in LA, which saved him a considerable amount of money. Ichiro was saving all of his spare money so he could go to culinary school and one day open his own restaurant. He needed to do this on his own, without his parent’s money, to prove to his father that he was a worthy son. When he had last seen his parents, it had been a heated, angry exchange, and he had stormed out of their penthouse apartment and not seen or spoken to them since. He eventually bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.
Ichiro was eating his sandwich in a small cafe across the street from the post office where he kept his PO Box (exclusive culinary schools frowned upon applications with a Pornographic Movie Theather as the return address). He finished the sandwich and proceeded across the street at precisely 12:05 to collect his mail, hoping today would be the day that his acceptance letter to the CIA arrived. Ichiro had no back-up plan — if he wasn’t accepted, he was prepared to spend the rest of his days working for Mr. Perkins and selling $5.00 tickets to porn shows. He opened his box, and inside was a letter bearing the distinctive circle-leaf logo of the CIA. His hands were shaking as he opened the letter, but after reading only a few words, he knew his dream was shattered. He slumped to the ground next to his box and began sobbing openly. This being Los Angeles, no one gave him a second look.
After a time, he collected himself, and slowly made his way back to his ticket booth.
This is more of a note to myself, on what I’m trying to accomplish with my experiments with Tiny Fiction, and may likely be very disjointed. The creative process for these things often starts with the first line of the story, and proceeds from there. Often, I’ll have no idea where the story is going to end up. Sometimes, I’ll have an idea of the tone I want to set (in Spies Like Us, for example, I wanted the tone to be bleak, and show how tired and worn Dmitri was by the process of being a spy). Also, in each of these little nuggets, I want the reader to hunger for more. I try to do this by including little interesting bits of detail, things I might reference in passing and never explore. I’m sure I’m breaking all kinds of rules, and if I had bothered to take any writing classes in college, I might learn the “right” way to do this stuff, but I’ve read a lot of books and short stories, and I know what I like and don’t like.
I also want to use these small pieces of fiction to explore character development, and dialog. I haven’t really had much dialog in either of them, but I’m going to work on that. Dialog is hard to do in only 500 words or so (my self-imposed limit to these stories), but I think that makes it more challenging — each word has to mean *just* the right thing.
This whole process has been interesting so far — now, all the time, I’m thinking up new ideas for Tiny Fiction. As I type this, I’m looking at 6 drafts that I’ve started, all in various states of completion. One of them only has a title “The Short and Tragic Life of Archibald Turner”. I have no idea what that story is going to be about, I just liked the title so I started a draft to capture the idea. I guess that’s one of the exciting parts for me, having a place to capture all of these ideas, and actually bring some of them to fruition.
I’m not doing so great on my goal of writing a “short story” once a month (i.e., something more substantial than Tiny Fiction). I have two ideas that I’m toying with for my first short story, and maybe I’ll just start throwing stuff out there for both and see what sticks. Both are perfect for serial fiction — they’re ripe with ideas and characters begging to get into a series of adventures and mishaps. Hopefully after next week things for me in my personal life will begin to “settle down” (ha!) a bit more into a pattern and I can figure out how to fit these activities into my life.
Ah well, enough blathering on. I’ll maybe work on a story now.
