Flash Fiction – KNOMO CHOICIUS

They stood up and brushed the bits of damp twigs and moss off of the seat of their jeans. They lifted the forest green backpack to their left shoulder, then wriggled their right arm into the other strap. There were no papery traces of these events. Only unreliable neuronal traces. This was way before the days of the selfie stick. Way before the days of the ubiquitous cell phone camera. Way before the possibility of becoming the person whose soul lived inside their body. Way, way, way before the days of hormone blocking therapy. In fact, even for them, it was hard to think back to that scene without naming self as he.

Mom probably thought that the solo trip would reinforce the manly aspects of Marco’s personality. Were that true, mom’s idea failed. Miserably. That was the weekend when Marco became March. Not Marsha. March. From then on, only March would do.

From the Mid-Michigan Word Gatherers Prompt: Papery Traces 14APR22

Several members of the group said they liked this piece. Many of them are newer members who don’t recall my early flash fiction and who don’t care for the Knomo Choicius stories. :>(

They challenged me to write the novel. I offer this to anyone who wants to keep going with it. Acknowledge this link, please.

But maybe I will keep going a little bit. Here’s the beginning of the next chapter…

Some say that Jesus was not a man, but the ultimate androgynous being. That Jesus truly understood the human condition, in its fullness. At 17, March wasn’t sure about all the suffering stuff. But the idea of androgynous wisdom? That was worth investigating.

LauTzuTu and The Wind

I just ran across this little flash fiction I wrote back in 2015. Maybe it is more appropriate than ever. Even though I made up the monk’s name. :>)

This might be a Buddhist monk and not a Daoist monk as I envisioned when I wrote this…. So much for the selection in my clip art software.

LaoTzuTu set the pails of fresh stream water down and unbent his lean frame to look up at the darkening sky. The grey streaks were rapidly being obliterated in favor of an overall dark grey. He turned to glance back at the yard surrounding his stone hut. The branches of the trees were strongly swaying. They didn’t have the word doozie back in the year 300, but if they had, it would have entered his mind. The hut was sturdy. He had built it himself, stone by stone. It had a cellar. The old monk had laughed at him when he started digging. But LauTsuTu now, fifteen years later, felt vindicated. Yes, he had taken a vow of poverty. But that was related to money. The Taoists had no compulsion to punish the body or deny the senses. LauTzuTu had also planted some peaches and plums. Dried, they’d be safe in the cellar. A treat if bad times came. Something to break the monotony of disaster food, or no food, for that matter.

This wind was proving that his inner knowing had been sound. Fifteen, twenty, twenty five years of meditation practice left him feeling calm in the face of the storm. He was confident he would settle into his upper higher world soul, not his reptile brain, when the debris started hitting the hut. He also knew that his stone mason skills were good. He had learned from an old master. Still, the option of the shelter in the cellar was a comfort. And there were a few dried peaches left along with some sausage he had traded for a few weeks ago.

The wind was picking up now. Time to turn inward. He listened. What exactly is it that makes the sound of the wind, he wondered. Then he chuckled as he walked deliberately toward the hut, the pails of water swinging easily at his sides. He’d have plenty of time to think about it as he waited out the storm.

The Great Composer

The notes bounced off of the flat surfaces of the large boulders strewn around the landscape. The pile of dirt and small stones grew longer, and taller. The decibel level of the so called music diminished. The racket from the stones sliding down the slopes of the growing ridge of rock and dirt drowned out more and more of the sound emanating from the window of the blue pick-up truck.

The digger stepped down hard on the upper edge of the spade’s blade, wiggling the top of the handle forward and back, in an effort to pry the annoying rock away from its neighbors.

A loud sigh announced the last bang of the last rock tumbling down the side of the rock pile. Joe grabbed the five gallon bucket from the edge of the rectangular pit, turned it upside down, and tested its stability. Then, stepping on it, he hauled himself up to ground level, and turned toward the truck, pulling the kerchief off of his head and wiping his face.

“Least I can do,” he mumbled, pulling the corpse out of the back of the truck. It did not complain as he dragged it toward the pit, and laid it out atop the ridge of rocks. “Least I can do.”

“Damn self-proclaimed musician should be allowed to experience the same torture he subjected us to.”

Joe walked back to the truck, and cranked up the music. He returned to the pit, pulled out the bucket, and sat down.

“Half an hour. That’s all he gets. Time to be moving on.”

Suddenly, Joe sat upright, hearing something new. The so-called music flowed around him in ever changing combinations as it bounced off of the faces of the boulders. The complexity and subtlety ebbed, then flowed again, each time with a new hue. The barren landscape took on new life.

Joe slumped over. He realized he had erred.

Then, sadly, he rolled the corpse into the pit, filling it in with all of the rocks he had just so recently worked so hard to dig out of the ground. He left the music playing, and walked away, knowing his skeleton, or that of his truck, would open the lock of the mystery of the disappearance of the great composer.

Awesome Writing Prompts #731: Person Place Thing

world’s worst songwriter, freshly dug grave, skeleton key

A Faded Rose

Faded beyond faded, the color of the roses resembled that of the collapsed mold colony in the center of the ring of tea bag tags.

The dried skin of the corpse smoothed the knobs of the protruding bone ends.

Remains of a slip of newspaper rested in her lap.

Mouse turds decorated the pile of crumbled egg shells in the sink. The corner of a crust of bread remained on a plate, perched on the edge of the countertop.

Jill surveyed the rest of the interior of the cabin. Her eyes returned to the vase, which covered the corner of the folded newspaper, the obituaries staring upward.

Jill turned, and walked out of the door, pulling it shut behind her.

“So,” Jack asked, as he re-holstered his revolver, “is it true?”

“She wasn’t wearing the rose. And there was a whole vase full. But they were pretty faded.”

This prompt, from the site “Prompts that don’t suck” immediately brought Delta to my mind.

A pile of used teabags, an old newspaper with something cut out of it, an egg salad sandwich were three of the six items listed for prompt 733.

Creative Prompts

Today in the Mid-Michigan Word Gatherers, we used a new prompt methodology promoted by our fearless leader. We wrote a NOUN on a PIECE OF PAPER, passed it to the next person, added a verb, passed it to the next person, added an adjective, passed it to the next person, and added an adverb, passed to the next person, and added a gerund. It pushed many of us to write something we never would have in usual prompt based exercises. Plus some of us had a grammar review!

Tree Drool Flaky Lightly Thinking

The tree drooled. That was strange. But of course. This must be a dryad. A nominal tree, with the spirit of a nymph locked into it. Always a sad story, the nymph chose to give up freedom of movement in the world for freedom from sexual harassment by an obnoxious member of Olympia.

I chose to move lightly, watching in fascination as I perambulated the tree. Yes. It was definitely drool, not just sap dripping. The flaky bark had a horizontal slash that clearly hinted, if you squinted properly, at a mouth. It was a dryad’s drool.

I decided to offer the trapped being a blessing. After thinking it over, not knowing how much consciousness she retained, I chose to speak very slowly. “You paid a high price for the advancement of complexity at the hands of arrogant men. The times are changing. You have learned patience. I will report your condition to the new magicians. Maybe they can liberate you now.”

I stepped back, and slowly walked around the tree again. Yes, definitely drool. I felt sad for the dryad. Very sad. I felt sad for all of womankind. After all, it was our fertility that created the need for the male dominated armies to protect our territory. The simultaneous kundalini awakening of the entire male population of course created excesses. I hoped that the dryad experienced sufficient time to make sense of my message. I decided to tell her that I would be back. In a week, or a month, or a year, or ten years. All but the blink of an eye to a dryad trapped for the last 3000 years. A blink of an eye for her. For me, a big task, to locate a magician’s group that would help to liberate her. I needed to give her a name. A name that would entice the magicians to come to her aid. A name. But what name? What name would do the trick?

Tea Kettle, Whistled, Imaginative, Heavily, Postulating

Her postulating drove me crazy. She was crazy. She said intuitive. I said imaginative at the least, probably crazy.

When I first met her, I wondered where she got her ideas. One day I found her alone, heavily breathing, her eyes closed. After a few more breaths, she settled into lighter breathing. A trance. That must be where she got those ideas.

She never could produce a shred of evidence for any of it. But her descriptions were extremely detailed and when she told me what she had seen, I felt like I was looking into another world.

The tea kettle whistled and brought me back to the current time. The current time, until I got to listen to the latest harvest of factoids from some other reality.

She drove me crazy, but I couldn’t leave her. Whether it was the pheremones, or the simple fact that we both knew we had better survival chances with each other than without, I was never able to figure out. But that morning I started to put together a plan. I was going to drive her crazy too. Make her question her reality. But how? Either I was going to have to learn to go into a trance, or my imagination needed an upgrade.

Ask Linda When She’s Ten Feet Tall

Part A

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_and_blue_pill.jpg

Linda often harbored thoughts of conforming to society. Of wearing society’s clothes. But she knew she’d have to take the blue pill every morning, and highly preferred the red. She knew that the red pill was for reality, while the blue pill was for fantasy. It was obvious. Blue pie in the sky. Red was solid flesh, earth and life’s blood.

She finally tossed the blue pills in the trash.

Part B

Now Linda could think more clearly. Now her true thoughts came to the surface.

Linda’s nascent understanding of who she was started to grow.

She started to catch some of her perceptions on their way to being modified; on the way to becoming thoughts, feelings and knowledge.

Part C

Linda started to experience awe more often. She devoured the literature on consciousness. She learned that chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s sexual partner. Chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s social status. But chimpanzees can’t ask “Is there another I, besides the one in this body, limited to these sexual partners and this place in the social structure?”

Part D
Linda started seeing her limitations dissolve. Linda knew that she was no longer a toddler, a kid, a teen, a college student, an independent head of household, with all of those incumbent burdens.

Part E

Linda no longer saw the fields of green, the flowers of red. Instead she saw the blades of ancient grasses. She saw her far ancestors harvesting the few golden wheat seeds which clung to their stalks. She saw the flowers with the eyes of the bee, so much closer to their real glorious colors.

She saw, through the eyes of the mole, the worms wriggling under the dark earth.

She experienced the jubilation of Hypatia, at the knowledge stored in the modern library of Alexandria.

She experienced liberation from care, after sitting at the feet of Patanjali.

She saw the sunlight. She no longer needed artifice from a venerable human to create interest in the world.

Part F
Linda walked to the fridge. She still needed to eat. She saw that old magnet declaring Hare Krishna! This time she understood. This time she knew what awaited her, the next time she chanted the name.

Part G

This time she knew that she didn’t need to chant the name. She was home.

Part H

Scott’s Daily Prompt: Bang!

I hope this story makes a bit of a BANG!

The Wisest of Souls

“You’re ugly,” Jackie said to the small frog, as he picked it up and put it in his pocket.

“And you’ll do just great!” he mused, to the frog, now cozily riding in the darkness.

***

The table was set. The crystal glistened and the silver shone. Mother and Father sat at the ends of the table. Joan and her latest boyfriend sat across from Jackie and his little sister.

In preparation to serve, Martha uncovered the plate, and let out a shriek.

Jackie smiled as he noted the look of disapproval on the boyfriend’s face. Why his sister couldn’t see those gold diggers for who they were, he’d never understand. What harm could a little frog do? This frog in fact deserved a medal.

But Jackie, wise for his years, decided to let the frog return to her natural habitat.

Joan glared at Jackie. That smirk had told her all she needed to know about the perpetrator of this latest small crime, one of a string calculated by her younger brother to disrupt her chances of getting out from under the sway of their parents’ ways.

Jackie continued his smirk, which slowly morphed into a serious look of superiority. “You’ll thank me when you are 45,” he told his sister. “You’ll thank me.”

Joan continued her glare, then shook her head and reached out to touch the boyfriend’s arm. A little reassurance, she thought. Maybe there’s still hope. Maybe.

Mother nodded to Martha, a signal to finish serving the dinner. The aroma of the roasted birds was wafting its way to all of their noses. Golden roasted birds, a small heap of skinny green beans, and a mound of shredded carrots graced each plate.

Jacob walked around the table, filling the wine glasses. Of course Jackie and his little sister got theirs watered down.

But the boyfriend was still not looking pleased. Jackie’s smirk returned. He couldn’t help it. Wisdom in an eight year old was of course not fully developed, even in the wisest of reincarnated souls.

Super Shorts

A tiny poem…for your listening pleasure

The ant hills were a bit flattened by the time I thought to snap a photo.

AND….

a piece of “micro-fiction” from a prompt about an idea lighting on the mind like a butterfly… for the Peninsula Writers Group spring newsletter. This is a little different from my usual style…

Cecil and Eileen Go Camping

The idea fluttered by, and by again, finally lighting on her mind for a nano-second, before fluttering off once again. The second time, the spark at the synapse was a stronger blip. This time she could see the butterfly for a micro-second. It was an Eastern Black Swallowtail. Eileen had trained her intuitive mind to show her a specific series of butterflies when a new idea was forming. There was nothing she could do about it but wait, until the Red Admiral and Painted Lady had come and gone. When the Mourning Cloak showed up, the idea was ready for daylight.

“That’s crazy!” Cecil said, his lips split in a wide grin. “I’ll help.”

***

Eileen emerged naked from the tent, followed by Cecil, in the same condition, for moral support. He turned, reached back into the tent opening, and pulled out a paint brush and the jar of bait.

Eileen’s breathing quickened a little as Cecil opened the jar, and then more as he dipped his brush and started painting her.

The buzz of giant wasps could be heard from afar. Eileen’s breathing steadied. The wasps arrived. Eileen opened her arms and welcomed the sting. Soon the nightly pains would be over. The kindness of the anesthetic paralyzer acted quickly. The atoms which had combined their essences to be Eileen would soon disperse into millions of wasp larvae, some of whom would become bird shit, and others of whom would wing their way around the world.

Cecil didn’t know if Eileen could still hear him, but he stayed, and played his guitar for her. He sang her songs. He watched over her, until the larvae hatched, ten days later. Then he drove down the highway, to home.

A new story

“The river of cake batter was a nuisance,” Officer Blando grumbled sarcastically to himself.”

He continued mumbling as he drove away from the house, shaking his head. He knew that the river of lava was well beyond being a nuisance. It was an outright danger, and those new immigrants just didn’t understand that they needed to obey the evacuation order pronto. They thought they were far enough away from the molten rock. Akamenabar had told Officer Blando that they’d leave the following day. His family was still working on cleaning up the river of cake batter.

***************************

Commentary: This came from two sets of prompts. On March 3, 2017, we had “nuisance, river, cake.” I usually don’t do the homework for my writing group. Most of they are retired and have more time. But that day I felt smug, as I had immediately written “The river of cake batter was a nuisance.” There the sentence stood, in its loneliness, on March 22, the next time I could attend, when the prompt was a photo of a lava flow. When I read the story, one of the listeners said she saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. That’s what I like about creative writing. It’s a new story in every reader’s mind.

Interestingly, coincidentally, NPR’s RadioLab episode for today, April 2, 2017, is about translation. The first piece is about a writer who ended up with a 700 page book that resulted from multiple translations of a 28 line poem, that had only 3 syllables per line. Check it out. https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/745884

Something Silly: Cataboolie, the Unicorn Hunter

From some fun writing prompts at Mid Michigan Word Gatherers!

a unicorn hunter, a planet inhabited entirely by cats, a glitter gun, and “strange times at the cupcake pagoda”

Chapter 1: The Unicorn Hunter of Catatanga

Catatanga orbited Star X-teen 43, as it had since the birth of the multiverse, or at least as long as any of its cats could remember. The great mountain, Catmandu, towered over its base on the smallest of the five continents which pierced the surface of the smooth, green sea of Catatanga.

“Today!” Cataboolie told herself. “Today.” That was the only word Cataboolie needed. Indeed, using any other word would dilute the strength of her incantation. And Cataboolie had more self control than to do that.

She strapped her holster on, and slid the new device into the pocket. She looked out the sky light, and nodded, satisfied, at the complete darkness. She turned, and opened the door to the tunnel out of her lair, and started out toward Base G of Catmandu, her silent paws bringing her ever closer to the unicorn camp. Her skin tingled as she thought of the honors she would receive as she led the Unicorn through the streets of Tangatown.

Cataboolie found the rock she had scouted at the last dark of the moon, and slipped behind it. She steadied her breath, pulled out the glitter gun, and peeked around the rock to see the circle of prancing unicorns. “Beautiful invaders,” she thought, then quietly saying, aloud this time, “Today,” she jumped out from behind the rock and sprayed the circle of white and yellow unicorns with green glitter.

“Success!” she called. This was the cats’ price for the unicorns’ settling on Catatanga. The ritual completed, Cataboolie mounted the glittering being and urged him back toward the city.

Chapter 2: Strange Times at the Cupcake Pagoda

Business went on as usual at the post card pavilion. Briskly. Catapoochi made sure of that. His photography skills were far superior to those of the other cats of Catatanga. His network of outlets gave him economies of scale that his competitors could not even dream of achieving. Now, the Annual Festival of Uncertainty had arrived. It was the biggest event of the cats’ year, and Catapoochi had every intention of using the opportunity to build up his retirement nest-egg.

Likewise, Catakowie of the sausage pavilion was doing a brisk trade. The aromas of spicy mustard and fresh hot rolls mingled with that of the meat to attract yet more customers. Tangablu had his nephew out in front of the beach paraphernalia stand, demonstrating the latest styles of sunglasses and umbrellas. The Temple of Catachristus had a long line of devotees waiting to pray their respects.

Catapoochie looked at his pocket watch. Time to head back and make sure that Junior was keeping up with the customers. One last place to check along the way: The Cupcake Pagoda.

Catapoochi stopped and stared, along with those being pushed out of the way, as the Cupcake Pagoda expanded and bright lights flashed along the edges of both roofs. The pagoda floated off the ground. The last customers were being pushed off the floor, which was now several meters above the ground. Fortunately, the unlucky customers were encased in transparent foam bubbles, so they bounced gently as they landed on the hard planet. “Indeed!” thought Catapoochi. “Strange times at the Cupcake Pagoda!”

Good thing he had his new camera. There weren’t many who’d be able to compete with him for this postcard. Catapoochi clicked one last shot, and rushed back to relieve Junior, so his son, too, could see the miracle of the Cupcake Pagoda, with his own eyes, before it left the atmosphere of Catatanga, perhaps for good.

Category: Flash Fiction

March of the Papery Traces