Apocrypha and Abstractions Announces Issue 10 — February 2012

Big Bad Bear by Jack Bristow 02/02
The Plan By B.R. Hostetter 02/06
Big Jim by Nicola Belte 02/09
Negative Relection by John Kujawski 02/13
Anthropologist by Kenneth Pobo 02/16
Cleaning Man by Stephen Hastings-King 02/20
Murder at Your Door by Stephen V. Ramey 02/23
Airplane Guy by Richard Hartwell 02/27

Our Editors’ Choice Featured Image this month is The Sun has Gone to Hell by Ralle, circa 2010. Image licensed under The Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Image courtesy of Wikimedia.org

Murder at Your Door by Stephen V. Ramey

Tags

fidelity, paranoia

Imagine a man outside your apartment door. Imagine his tentative knock.

“Sally? Open up, Sally. I want to see your face.”

Your first impulse is to look through the peephole. You don’t. Curiosity kills the cat. You’ve seen that movie where the killer drives a 40 penny nail through the portal bridging him to you.

“Sally? Come on, Sally. We have to talk.”

You wonder about his voice. You’ve heard it many times. Yet, it could be a recording. Digital. Is that static along its edge?

“Come on, Sally!”

Emotion boils through you, a volcano of the stuff. Your hand clenches. Knuckles and tendons and blood. It is made of these materials. You are made of these materials.

Is he?

“All right, Sally, have it your way.” An envelope slides under the door. You hop back. Your panicked gaze fixes on the intruder, so slick, so innocent on its surface, deadly within. One touch of Ricen and you will die.

Footsteps in the hall. A pause. They return.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Sally.” The door rattles, then a sigh. “Sally!”

Footsteps recede. He’s gone. You imagine him emerging from the building, a swat team waiting atop the roofline opposite yours. You imagine bullets descending, the subsonics and angles they create. A red hole penetrates his forehead. You recall a rose, cologne, the touch of someone’s hand on yours.

2011 Stephen V. Ramey

Stephen V. Ramey lives in beautiful New Castle, Pennsylvania, home to not one, but two pyrotechnics manufacturers. His work has appeared in various places, including The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Bartleby Snopes, and Caper Literary Journal. http://www.stephenvramey.wordpress.com

Cleaning Man by Stephen Hastings-King

The Zone is a garden of skyscrapers. Every building is a model. They say that copies are exported to the North and that the garden is a model of the North that has been put here for us so we can live model lives in a model place too.

Every night I ride a glass elevator up the outside of the tallest building. I feel like I am in a spaceship. Before I got this job, I had never been so high. Where I come from, the land is flat. They say we used to move to different places with the seasons. But the government put a stop to that. They say that the idea was to make each region unique.

People in the Zone come from all over. There are so many different types here. Living among them, I feel free.

For the first few minutes of every elevator ride, I sing to the rhythm of the floors as they fly past.

Then I stop singing to look at the galaxy spreading out below me.

When I get up so high that the fainter stars start to disappear, I remove all my clothes and press myself against the glass. I spread my legs and hold my arms out. I imagine myself the center of a universal geometry like a drawing I remember from school. I stay like that until the cold of the glass penetrates my body. Then I get dressed and wipe away my outline with Windex and paper towels.

The cameras must see me. But no-one has ever said a thing. Maybe I am invisible.

When I arrive on my floor, I wander the identical cubes in which no-one works to see the ways in which dust has fallen from the ceiling and plan the route I will take to erase the passing of time.

© 2011 Stephen Hastings-King, first appeared at Fictionaut

Stephen Hastings-King lives by a salt marsh in Essex, Massachusetts where he makes constraints, works with prepared piano and writes entertainments of various kinds. Some of his sound work is available here.  His short fictions have appeared in Sleepingfish, Black Warrior Review, elimae, Ramshackle Review, Metazen and elsewhere.  I put new work up to dry at Edge Effects

Anthropologist by Kenneth Pobo

Leon D. Slinger finished his Anthropology doctorate but decided a life in academia didn’t suit him. By the time he turned forty, he figured that no life suited him. He wasn’t lazy, but the job world felt like a hard pillow sure to cause constant neck aches.

To pay the bills, he took various jobs, anything from waiter to check-out clerk at CVS. His mother had left the family when Leon was seven. His father died when Leon was forty-one. And left him scads of money. Leon quit working and decided to think for the rest of his life. For no purpose. It was his entertainment.

He came to the conclusion that the world could be this way, the world could be that way, but the elm tree isn’t saying. Leaves overrun it in spring and dash away in fall—so much for loyalty.

Facing old age, alone as he had always been, he sits on his back porch and tells his cats, Emmylou and Barker, that he’s waiting for a hit of Enlightenment. He wants it tart like a January grapefruit. It’s a long wait.

Patience, he practices and practices, hurries away into the overly carpeted house with no pictures hanging anywhere. He suspects nothing will happen and removes the last mirror from the wall.

© 2011 Kenneth Pobo

Kenneth Pobo has a new chapbook of micro-fiction out from Deadly Chaps called Tiny Torn Maps. His chapbook of poetry, Ice And Gaywings, won Qarrtsiluni’s 2011 chapbook contest and came out in November 2011

Negative Relection by John Kujawski

I knew Sheila was trouble even before she started wearing the mask. I think things were pretty much doomed by our third date. I was driving us around that night, and we were headed to dinner. I started to get tired of talking, so I turned on the radio, and then before I knew it, an old song by The Motels came on. Sheila blurted out right away that she loved the song and made me turn the volume up. I wished I could have turned it off.

I didn’t care for the fact that she loved The Motels. I figured I was the only one around that liked them, and I was happy with leaving it at that. It was hard to be totally annoyed though because Sheila looked so pretty in her green dress, and she was the kind of redhead that I always loved.

I had a hard time loving her in weeks to come, though. She would order the same thing I did every time we’d go out to eat. The other problem was that she seemed to have gotten rid of her green dress in favor of a black one. I suppose she wanted us to match because I always wore black, but I just did that because I didn’t know what else to wear.

Sheila understood fashion and was very visual. Mostly, she did artwork, and I was relieved when she decided to spend one weekend just working on a project while I went off and found a few music stores I had never been to. The problem was, I didn’t like what Sheila created over the two day period.

The damn thing bothered me the minute I saw it.  She’d made a papier-mâché mask of my face. I hated it. I didn’t even like it the first time she showed me it in her apartment. The damn thing sure looked like me and it was horrible when she put it on and started laughing. I just stood there looking at her with her black dress and the mask and the poster of The Motels she had on her wall behind her.

Imitation may be a form of flattery. My friends kept saying I didn’t get the joke. They also said if she took the mask off, she was a pretty girl and that I should just get used to it. That was impossible though because things got weirder and weirder with her.

The strangest outing we had was when I tried taking her to see a movie and she insisted on wearing the mask in the car. I was so upset that I couldn’t stand it. Plus, every time I looked at her, she’d just start cracking up.

I wasn’t laughing the next day when I heard a knock at the door. I had a package delivery, a gift from Sheila I just wanted to break. It was a giant mirror for my apartment.

© 2011 John Kujawski

John has interests that range from guitars to the Incredible Hulk. You can find some of his other stories on websites such as Flashes in the Dark and The Fringe Magazine. He was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and still lives there to this day. You can hear him on the weekly podcast at www.comicbookshowdown.com

Big Jim by Nicola Belte

Tags

Love struck

Big Jim isn’t himself. He won’t let anybody read his newspaper, and sits in the corner by himself, drinking pint after pint; a constant layer of froth on his down-turned lip. He keeps playing ‘Against all Odds’ on the jukebox.

Everybody knows why.

Big Jim sees them looking, and whispering, and closes his eyes. He used to fucking hate Phil Collins. He clenches his fist in his pockets, and storms out before the last chorus.

Nobody makes a fool of Big Jim.

He waits in an alleyway that smells of decomposing rats and soy sauce, watching the tiny locked flat above the massage parlour as men scurry by with their collars up tight, and scuttle back with their flies down low.

He could wait all day. And night. He’s got it coming; and he deserves everything he gets.

Big Jim remembers the first time he met him. Top off, toga on, walking around like he owned the place; with all the Corleone confidence but none of the style. Fat. Sleazy. Sneaky.

He got him when he was weak. Spiked him.

The sweet curare from his arrow paralysed his thought, demolished his defences, made him as meek as a kitten beneath the hand that would strangle him, still purring as he was tied in a sack and flung into a filthy, bottomless canal.

He’d tricked him. Made him say things. Things that no man should say. Things that have seared his tongue, the jeer of a chilli he couldn’t handle.

All this cunt’s fault. Not hers. Never hers.

He punches the wall. A Morse Code of bloody knuckle prints on the white, crumbling bricks.

***

Finally, he’s there, climbing the rusty stairs and struggling to find his keys beneath his robes, cursing and throwing his bow and arrow to the ground. Dirty rainwater falls from the broken guttering, marbling his ragged white wings, making his greasy blond quiff fall flat over his face.

Big Jim taps him on the shoulder.

“Alright…mate.”

The cherub’s blue eyes open wide in surprise and confusion; his full red lips part.

He doesn’t even recognise me.

“Who the fu–?” the cherub splutters, but the question is stopped, knocked back down his throat by the impact of Big Jim’s forehead smashing into his face.

A broken nose and a few cracked ribs. Big Jim thinks he got off lightly. At least all that will heal. Not like a heart.

He wipes his hands on his t-shirt. He’s going back to the pub. Big Jim will show them. Will shut them up. Nothing breaks Big Jim.

Nothing.

© 2011 Nicola Belte

Nicola Belte lives in Birmingham, U.K, and writes fiction. You can find her at her blog, here: http://nicolabelte.blogspot.com/

The Plan By B.R. Hostetter

The plan is to kill Ben. At precisely 5 AM a 40 lb. microwave falls on his head – splat. He doesn’t know this though, not yet. At precisely 4 AM his clock radio blasts, and he rolls over. He scratches his belly, his backside too, and after, falls out of bed. The plan is, he wallops the clock because Soul Asylum is playing. The question “Are you up in the middle of the night?” isn’t something he wants to hear so early, especially not from any Grammy award-winning alternative rock band circa 1992 (how he knows this he doesn’t care to admit). So Ben slams the damn thing, and the words “There’s no way out” gurgles and then finally goes out. The plan is he rises and stretches and thinks whether he should shower – wash his face, scrub his rear – or not and go ahead and shave his craggy mug, brush his furry teeth, and comb the curly black mop that swallows his nut whole. He decides against the shower, but still cleans his face. He stares at the mirror: filmy eyes carried by two swollen bags; crow’s feet marching across a crater-laden forehead; complexion like a piebald cow – white while incongruent sun kiss splotches paint haphazard rings from ear to ear. And the plan is, Ben scoffs at his reflection, thinks, “Damn-it;” thinks also: Portrait of a failed artist as an old man – (he doesn’t care to admit his BA in English has gotten him nowhere, like the beginnings of every story he’d ever written) – and he takes a whiff of his underarm and thinks of the opening: “‘The dead smell,’ says the boy, pinching his nose at me.” Ben presses pause on the thought and imagines himself old and wrinkly: peepers gone cataract; skin loose and droopy like Play-Doh left far too long in the sun; thinning black strings, falling shy of a furrowed brow – hair that’s also found home to ears and nose. Ben shakes loose the thought and figures to go ahead with his tepid coffee and burnt toast. The plan is for him to check his wristwatch next, for him to read half past the hour. But he blinks and thinks he sees 4:29 rather than 4:30. He decides to shave his face after all, while the shower, he figures, can wait. He spends the extra minute picking at his face and popping zits at the mirror. He connects the mess with his finger and makes out constellations. “Cassiopeia,” he says, and after wipes away the muck with the back of his hand. Precisely thirty-two minutes go by, him measuring out his life in smeared zit goop.

Ben stares at the boy sweeping the mess.

“You’re late,” he says.

The plan is, Ben dies, but he’s precisely one minute late, so he stares at the microwave and its pieces.

“I’d rather die than spend another minute here.” – a good beginning, he figures, a new plan.

© 2011 B.R. Hostetter

Ben received his Ba in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. He lives in Charlottesville, VA, where he writes everyday with his cat, Copernicus.

Big Bad Bear by Jack Bristow

Tags

relationships

Debbie lay in the bed next to me, her head nestled against my chest, purring like a kitten. That was the nickname I had given her: Kitten. She was so proud of the nickname, and she would do anything and everything just to hold on to it.

Every morning, she would prove to herself and to me that my nickname for her was still valid.

“Do you like it that I am your Kitten and that you are my master?”

I said nothing.

“Do you like it when I rub my back against your strong, muscular legs just so you will pay attention to me?”

I said nothing.

“Do you like it when I lick your arms?”

Debbie was licking my forearms. This was an innocent enough gesture. Like a cat in love. Then she stopped and started licking her own fingers, the way a cat would its paws after eating.

“Since you’ve made me your kitten, what animal should I make you of mine?” she asked.

Stumped, I grabbed the pack of cigarettes from off the nightstand, shook one out, lit it, and then I said after one long, contemplative sigh, “I’ll be your…uh…Bear.”

“Bear?” she exclaimed, energetically, happily. “Why Bear?”

“I don’t know. Because a bear is always masculine,” I explained. “It knows what it wants, and it always gets it.” I wrapped my hands around Debbie, gave her a bear-hug, and then I kissed her on the lips.

Debbie, content to have been kissed on the mouth so aggressively, asked if I wanted a certain thing done for me.

“Not now, Kitten.” I stopped her. “Later, tonight maybe.” Then I went on to explain to her that I had to be at work within the hour.

“Oh Bear! My horrible frightening big bad Bear.” Debbie stood up on the bed and started jumping up and down. “Better go in and get your shower over with, Bear…” she cautioned me in mid air as she jumped off the bed. “Because your breakfast will be ready soon.” She sprinted to the kitchen, and then I could hear the pots and pans rustling against one another over her purring little voice. “A big, masculine bear like you needs a big, masculine breakfast with two eggs, ham, two pieces of toast, two French toast, some sausage, a half a grapefruit, and a side of bacon.”

I got out of the bed and then walked slowly, drowsily into the bathroom.

I stepped into the shower and pulled the switch all the way to the left so the water would come out as hot as possible, as any true big bad bear would have it, but the heat was too much for me.

Unbearable.

Standing there, my eyes clamped tightly shut, I fumbled for the dial helplessly, blindly. Invisible tears streaking down my cheek and face along with the boiling hot water.

© 2011 Jack Bristow

Jack Bristow is a short story writer living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is also a part-time bassist. Follow him, @RealJackBristow

It’s Worth Exploring by Samuel Cole

Tags

Equality, Gay Rights, LGBT, Policitcal Humor, Satire

It was the first openly gay restaurant in downtown Minneapolis aptly named GAY RESTAURANT, located across the street from the two largest gay bars in Minnesota. I mean, the Chinese have theirs. Mexicans. Italians. Germans. Polish. Vietnamese. Jews. Ethiopians. Even one Senor Frog. As an openly gay entrepreneur, I felt time had come to reach out and feed all the fabulous foodie fags like me and their tag-a-long-hags like mine. The neon sign blinking over the front door proudly announced straights are welcome too. It was that kind of place.

The grand opening coincided with the annual PRIDE festival in Loring Park, well within walking distance. The Minneapolis Star and Tribune wrote, “In name alone, it is lecherously cliché, but the food is delightful and the serving staff, creatively named after gay icons, is a hoot and a half.”

We served up fun appetizers: Twinkie fries, husky bear claws, hot-top monster dogs, bottomless boneless wings, and the colossal onion laser peel served on an oversized Botox coupon, buy one pint get another pint free at Laser Peels, Inc. The large portion lunch and dinner entrees included: The Out & Proud (served on pumpernickel if sourdough sounded homophobic); The Here, Queer, So Delicious Reuben; The finger-snapping-salmon; The Cher-broiled Chicken Linguini; The RuPaul Bunyan Brisket; The Elton Smelting John; and The Right-to-Wed Waldorf Astoria salad accompanied by our bartenders’ greatest creations: The Pink Triangle-tini; The Same Sex on the Beach; Cocks between the Sheets; The Quadruple Screaming Orgasm; The Cosmo Climax; and The Woo Woo Waterloo.

The introductory TV commercial touted, “Leave nobody out. Bring everyone in. Flirt a little bit if you want to, it’s fun.” I felt like the perfect spokesman.

On the back of the rainbow-colored menu housed a smorgasbord of informational tidbits for anyone interested in light reading before or after mealtime: where to get tested, open and affirming churches, and the history of Stonewall. Every individual, gay, straight, or somewhere in between, were welcome: Calling all demographics. We’re talking Uber-inclusive stuff. Totally bi-partisan. Friday night comics. Tuesday afternoon balloonists. Thursday evening karaoke. Sunday poetry brunch-fest.

But the gay community took insult. They hated it in fact. One gay rights activist wrote in a local gay rights magazine, “Please respectfully refuse to patron an establishment so utterly stereotypical and blatantly offensive as to call us out for profit, purchase, and parody.”

A spokesman for OutFront Midwest told three news anchors, “This restaurant typifies the shallow greed of one clueless individual who seeks to exploit an already exploited group of people.”

The Minnesota HRC Chairman told a food critic at Minnesota Mindset Magazine, “To serve moderately tasty food on the broken backs of the GLBT community, GAY RESTAURANT shines as a flaming beacon of what never to do, or say, or be.”

And then they wonder why no one takes us seriously.

© 2011 Samuel Cole

Samuel Cole loves to run, photograph old lanterns, play piano, hang with friends, and of course, write. Often, his eardrums pop from so much creative thinking. You can read more about him at www.maneuverableword.com

Hair by B.R. Hostetter

Jillian made her mind up she’d leave him. “Edmund,” she called, and checked her face in the mirror. She tried for a smile but her mouth wouldn’t curl. Her lips turned down. She dug the bottom of her purse for lipstick and powder but found only mothballs and lint. “Are you listening?” she said.

“What is it?” he said. His voice came from the other room where he sat nursing a cup of tepid coffee she had poured him. 

“I’m leaving,” she said. “Didn’t you hear?”

“I heard,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“To get my hair done,” she said.

“Again?” he said.

“Not again. I want something new.”

“You look fine the way you are.”

“I look tired.”

“You don’t look tired.”

“I look tired,” she said, and leaned forward and turned her head one way then the other and traced the crow’s feet from her eyes to her ears where she then pushed back her hair and tied it in a knot.

“Maybe it’s sleep you need,” he said.

“It’s not sleep,” she said.

“Maybe it’s age. We all get old.”

“It’s not age. It’s something else.”

“Maybe it’s work,” he said. “Is it work?”

“Aren’t you listening?”

“I’m listening,” he said.

“Tell me what I said.”

“You’re getting your hair done.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” she said, and left the mirror and went to him where he sat, sipping the cup of coffee – unmoved.

“I just don’t see what the big deal is,” he said.

“That’s just it, Edmund. Have you ever complimented my hair?”

“Would you like me to compliment your hair? Is that it? Is that something you like? Your hair looks fine the way it is. I like it.”

“I’m tired, Edmund. I need a change.”

“Change is for the unhappy.”

“Now you’re listening, Edmund.”

“I’ve been listening all along. Your hair looks fine the way it is.”

“My mind’s made up.”

“I know it is. I can see it is. Just don’t go cutting too much.”

Jillian left Edmund where he sat, sipping the coffee gone cold.

“How would you like it?” the hairdresser said.

“Shave it,” Jillian said.

“Shave it?” the hairdresser said.

“Shave it,” Jillian said again. “I want to feel new again.” Jillian smiled and tucked her chin to her chest and checked the mirror. “I made my mind up,” she said.  

The hairdresser nodded. And Jillian knew the woman had heard her. 

2011 B.R. Hostetter

Ben received his Ba in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. He lives in Charlottesville, VA, where he writes everyday with his cat, Copernicus.

Tomorrow by Sheldon Lee Compton

Tags

addiction

New pawn shop opened last week. Gram’s necklace is looking pretty good for the place. All I need is a hundred, enough for a handful. I’ll do them regular, even.

Necklace was for Helen, but I’ll get a hundred, and Bill C, he’ll take that for a handful. I’ll do them regular. Or get a ringed plate and crush them real careful. Maybe half and half. Half regular and half crushed. Just thinking about it gets me right in the gut. I can stretch it out. Half and half.

It’s some ace bad voodoo. Bad mojo to pawn it off, I know. But Helen is a bitch, and I’m shutdown for selling, shutdown for supply to dip into or trips to Florida for awhile. Goddamn UNITE task force been sniffing my ass close.

I’m itching. My arms, my legs. I’m shaking. The necklace has to go. Tomorrow. The necklace can go to hell. Tomorrow. I’m sick as a dog. Tomorrow. Okay. Tomorrow.

© 2011 Sheldon Lee Compton, first appeared at Fictionaut.

Sheldon Lee Compton is the author of The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012). He survives in Eastern Kentucky. You can find him at http://bentcountry.blogspot.com