The best party of the summer

Filed under:personal,writing,Rob Andrews
Usually, when my Korean or Chinese friends hang out with my white friends, I take the opportunity to mess with them a bit. For example, when I went to Humpty's a couple of months ago and got an omlette served with a slice of pineapple. I told that Anson that in Canada that if you were served a slice of pineapple with your meal, you were supposed to use it to clean off your face, then afterwards you could eat it. I demonstated to a wide eyed and rapt Anson the technique of washing one's face with a pineapple and told him that next time he eats with us that he should do that. Luckily for me, the next time that we went out, Heather was with us and he dutyfully showed her how to wipe off his face with the pineapple. Heather punched me a couple of times for laughing so hard. Since Megan was coming to Jung's farewell party last night, I decided that it would be fun to flip the tables, and teach her non-sensical "Korean traditions" that didn't exist. I had planned on telling Megan it was the first time that she was going to come to a Korean party, that she was supposed to bring some smoked salmon. During the party, she would be instructed to get on her knees, place the salmon in her palms and make an offering to Jung, saying that it would be example of goodwill between Canadians and Koreans. Sadly, since the party was moved down form 8:00 to 7:00, I didn't have enough time to give her the head's up. On the way to the party, when I was picking up a going away gift for Jung, he came across a bunch of cards. Stephen pointed out to one, saying that we should give it to Megan and tell her to give it to him as a gift. I nixed the idea as being too cruel. The card was "Congratulations! We hear that you're expecting a baby!".

Stephen and I arrived 10 minutes late to the party, but didn't miss that much considering that half of the people were there. Jung was there, of course, since it was his going away party, as well as Joe, since it was his house. The cadre of Japanese girls that always hang out together were there too: Miwako (Vivianna's room mate with a bad tooth), Manami (cute girl, who Anson told me who was single, a little shy), Mari (extremely cute girl, fantastic dancer) and Takane (one of Anson's obsessions). Last, but not least was Natalia, a Columbian girl who was leaving on Sunday. Since not much was happening up to that point, Jung tossed me a deck of cards, and I performed a bunch of card tricks for the girls for a while. The hardest part was trying to explain to the girls what they had to do.
"You can choose, the third card if you want," I'd tell them.
"I choose three cards?"
"No, not three cards, one card, but you can choose the third card, if you want, or the fourth one, or the fifth one"
"Can I choose 8 cards."
"No. Just one."
This went on for about 20 minutes. None of us were drunk by that time.

The party eventually warmed up once more people arrived. I spent most of my evening sandwiched between Mari and Jung-woon. I wanted to chat with Jung-woon for most of the evening since I had been told by Jung that she had wanted to go out for a beer with me. When comfronted, she agreed that she did, but the reason for doing so was for me to introduce her to more men that I knew. The topic changed to Korean women, and the guys and Jung-woon wanted to know who I thought was the best looking. I told them, honestly, that I liked Jung-woon and Narae the most. Jung-woon spent the rest of the evening lamenting the fact that she wasn't married, and kept on talking about how fat her thighs were. I didn't think that she had anything to complain about.

Megan came about two hours later than planned. She announced to all of us that she had forgotten her keys in her truck and apoligized for being late. I introduced her to litterally everyone at the party, which boggled her.
"You know that I'm gonna forget these names, right?" I shrugged, and continued to re-introduce her to everyone until she knew a couple names. She spent the first bit alone, not chatting with anyone while I was hanging with the Koreans. Not wanting her to feel alone, I got her talking with Manami. I busted on her for a while, calling her names in Chinese and in Japanese. Manami caught on, told Megan what I was saying and I got punched a couple of times for it. Despite that, she said that she had a good time and left early to spent time with her mom. For the rest of the evening, I had to explain to everyone that she wasn't my girlfriend, and just a friend. Not that many people caught on.

I spent a fair bit of the evening chatting with Natalia. Federico introduced me to her at his going away party, but we really didn't chat that much until then. At the time, Federico mentioned that she was his kind of girl. Smart, nice and kind. She blushed when I told her this, and agreed too that Federico was an outstanding guy.
"He called me all the way from Columbia to wish me a happy birthday. I will never forget that." I found out that she and Federico live near the capital city, Bagota, and made fun of the way he dances.
"I was under the impression that's how men danced in Columbia," I told her.
"Oh no no. It's aweful. It works for him, but he moves like a snake."
"That's weird. He always reminded me like a cat. Him moving like that and his chesire smile."
We danced for a bit, and I tried my hardest to capture Federico's moves. My gaucky gyrations were nothing close to his moves.

Around 1 or so, the party was winding down. Since Natalia was the only Columbian girl there, I thought that it was my duty as a man to walk her home, so that she wouldn't go alone. We spent most of our walk home chatting about her life, and occationally bursting into song. I'd sing the English version of Evita and she'd sing in Spanish. When passersby made fun of us, she swore at them in Spanish.
"Puta!" That's motherfucker, or whore, in English.

"You know what's weird," she asked me.
"What?"
"We've only known each other for four hours, and I feel like I've known you for days."
"Funny how that works, eh?"
"You know how you meet someone and make a connection? I feel that way with you."
I put my arm around her waist and we looked at the clear night sky. A meteor shot overhead. I pointed to it.
"In Canada, if you see a shooting star, you have to make a wish."
She broke down, her body heaved with sobs.
"I wish that I could stay here for longer." I hugged her and massaged her back. I whispered in her ear that it was all okay, that I'd miss her too. I held her hand, the bare tips of our fingers touching, until the tears wouldn't come anymore. I went to Tim Hortins afterwards and asked for some napkins. She wouldn't let me look at her when she blowed her nose.

I dropped her off at her house later that evening, around 2:30 in the morning. I asked her if she wanted to go on a date the next day, telling her that I'd make her last day in town special. She agreed and we hugged again. It was a good Friday the 13th for me.

The next day, I took her to Fogg 'N' Sudds for supper and afterwards I took her to my old place in Taylor. We watched the sunset together over the Peace River and chatted about our futures. I told her that I'd love to visit Columbia one of these days, saying that I could pick up Columbia pretty fast and could hang out with her and Federico.
She blew the seeds off a dandylion and watched them drift to the river.
"I would love that very much."

We drove back, not saying anything to each other. We listened to Modest Mouse. I found the music apt.
"I love my friends, my habits, my family. They're so good to me." I sang along to the music and she looked outside, collecting the Canadian landscape for the last time. I dropped her off at her place and wished her well for the future, and gave her a going way gift. A card and a photo-album. She gave me a kiss.
"I'll see you in Columbia." I watched her walk to her house, and she waved to me. I waved back. I made my way home and she made her way to hers.

That's the last I saw of her.

Janet's wedding night.

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Industrial saliva when C577 kisses Janet, industrial pistons coughing out smoke. Her tongue artfully dodges his grinding gear teeth of her husband savouring the tang of steel.
"REMOVE YOUR DRESS!" C577 mechanically intones, his clunky radio voice box echoing through their upscale hotel room. Thick mechanical fingers glowing with snake green wires helped her unzip her dress revealing pale milk skin. Despite her attempts to upgrade C577, he still moved in jerky staccato at times. Ackward pauses as his brain would whirr with input and instructions. When he cupped her breasts she couldn't help but shiver, warm electric pulsations vibrating through his hands. Hours earlier, a bee hive of reporters had covered their wedding. "The cyborg marriage" "Hardware meets wetware" A curious spectacle, acording to the rest of the world. A car crash; a messy mix of flesh and metal. Her family had avoided the wedding, agast that their daughter would marry a machine. C577's creator gave Janet away instead.
"Call me if you need repairs," he whispered in her ear, before he took her down the aisle.

He pulled down her panties, black french maid cut and inserted his slick robotic cock into her pussy.
"DOCKING PROCEDURE COMPLETE!"
She sighed. This is love, she thought.

Angel of the Arches

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews

On the third day, Big Extra Meal, only 3.99, an angel removed Ronald MacDonald from the arches. Young perky, her face scarred with grease stained acne. Naked with silk feathered wings. She removed the nails made from yellow red straws and chaulk white spoon holding Him to the neon iconograph. MacDonald's stigma was caked in brown blood, smelling of coke syrup and grease. Below, the sleepy disciples had awoken. Their belief of MacDonald's doctrine was manifest in their weight. Fat turtle shaped bodies. Hunched over, heads swallowed up by celulite. The more devoted sit in scooters, gold plated arches dangling from their tree trunk necks. The angel cradled Ronald in her freckled arms and began to ascend into evening sky. For following years, the followers would re-enact the last days. They would share coke and pass the fries. The Last Happy Meal of Ronald MacDonald. Supersized.

Ideamine

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Miniscule specter vultures orbit our thought aura, the unseen sticky storm mess of ideas, searching for paradigm fetuses. Through their cholesteral eyes they see them, the larva of half formed thoughts, smelling of New. On silver specled wings they descend with the precision of a brain surgeons' scalple and bursts through the placenta of the aura. The beak, curved like an ancient sword, swallows the thought-form. The vulture flies out again, curving through electrical charged brainstorms and tsunami waves of amnesia to it's ultimate destination, the ideamine.

The paradigm fetus doesn't wither inside the vulture's beak. Its umbilicle finds leech mouthed holes on the tongue and burrows deep, sucking ghost meat and blood. The fetus will survive. The vulture follows the phermonal scent of the ideamine and moves into a razorwind channel. Oil feathers smoke, smelling like burned glass. Scenery changes. Powder blue skies are replaced with the ruffled blanket curve of the blood dome. The air sounds different here. Chalk board screams instead of the whisper of ghosts. Potched in stereo mountain like an acne scar is the ideamine. Glass moles expande the mine in decades long slow-motion. Deeper inside is the Vatican Without Light where the Calculus Pope waits for his birds. The vulture lands on the coal cobbled floor and desposits the fetus in the hands on a needle eyed monk. The Calculus Pope rewards the animal with mole charion and ushers the monk to the monestary.

The monk's lips are sewn shut, years old scabs covering the thin steel stitches. The Pope asks them to take a vow of celebacy. They are verbal eunuch. Curving through tunnels smelling of mole shit and methane, find their way to the library. There through the glittering reflection of incubating diamonds, the Pope performs the Sacrament of Whispers. The fetus evaporates into brown smolder and His Creepiness applies the ashes to the monk's ears.
"Hear what has been unthought," he tells the monk, "And capture it in stone." A sliver of enlightment for the monk. The idea is chisled into the stone in a mathematical language known only to the order. Sheet music for ideas. The Pope leaves the monk to toil away at his thankless work. He returns to the tower and waits another another vulture, contented that the Status Quo has been maintained for another day.

Maria artwork

Filed under:art,Mike Myhre

Artwork by my good friend, Mike Myhre, inspired by the story Maria.

The Suicide of Alice Templeton

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Alice bought the cement blocks at Walmat. The bricks were orange, perfectly rectangular. Oversized lego blocked sanded down. She couldn't find any rope while she was there. She could have prowled the box store looking for it, or she could have asked a moon faced acne scarred employee to help her. She didn't want them to make the grim connection. Cement blocks plus rope equals suicide, she mentally calculated. She was afraid that her purchases would secretly alert an anti suicide squad within Walmart. An amber alert for those who were left with nothing to live for. In retrospect, it would seem that Alice over analyzed things. She bought bootlaces instead, thick red ones that looked like minature snakes. She stared at the contents of her cart: a handful of bricks and shoelaces. This wouldn't do. Lingerie would be the answer. She rolled her cart to the underwear section and bought herself the sexiest pair of underwear that Walmart allowed. Pink french cut. The cart was looking better. The next stop was the pharmacy. There was a plefora of prolfilafics. She had to bend down to examine the condom boxes. Ribbed for her pleasure. Magnum XXL. Flavoured. Assorted Colours. Choices, choices. Having never tried the ribbed ones, she went with that. She bought a tub of butter too. Something to give the clerk to think about when she swiped her choices. The clerk didn't comment. Perhaps she should have bought more butter.

Alice had put a lot out thought into her suicide. She had read about what happened to the human body when it stopped functioning and decided it would be wise to go for a colonic before the big event. Two hours later, a couple pounds of shit were sucked out of her body and she was 10 pounds light. This corpse would have clean panties, thank you very much. She bought herself the wedding dress that she wanted as a child, a silk red Chinese one. A pile of hundred dollar bills reserved her a top spot at the local beauty spa. She told them what she wanted. A tower of curls. Dark, the blonde washed off like paint on a beach house. Death would be her groom.

She wrote out multiple copies of her suicide letter, mailing out a couple of personal ones to her friends. They were each hand writen. Inked in her blood, red turned brown. For her ex-lovers, she sprayed the letters with their favourite perfumes. She gave detailed reasons for ending her life. It took hours to write them, personal and painful. Cursive looped letter "l"'s that looked like needle eyes. "I love you." Over and over again. She licked each stamp and feed the envelops into the mail box.

Alice choose a bridge that was 30 kilometers out of town. It smelled like mould. Wooden, moaning like harpies when cars walked on it's back. She parked her car off to the side, far from traffic. She had to hike up her dress to tie the bricks to her feet, double knotting them for luck. She looked at the sky one last time, before she dropped off the bridge, her body making her look like a badmonton birdie. Alice was surprised how long it took to drop to the bottom. Her dress slowed her down, no doubt. Her eyes were closed until she felt the bricks hit the bottom. The last bits of life squeezed out of her body slowly. Before her vision turned hazy and dark she appreciated the bottom of the lake. the beautiful asortment of tires and pop cans. She knew then that she'd be a wonderful addition to the lake. The world's most beautiful corpse.

Hungry an hour later

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
She broke up with me in a chinese restaurant and to this day I don't like chow mein. So you say, well of course, Logan, I understand why, no one wants to be reminded of bad memories. It's not that simple. You don't know this, but I've always felt like I've been trapped in the wrong body. You've heard of transsexuals, right? Men that feel like their lives would be better if someone chopped of their dicks and woman that slice off their breasts like butchers and grow boy band beards. I'm sorta like that. No, I don't want estrogen pumping through my veins. There's a reason that I'm hung like a horse and am is hairy as fuck. Mother fucking testosterone. Can you smell me? I'm strong alright. I dont' use deoderant. I'm no pussy. Oh yeah. That's the shit that I'm talking about. You understand what I'm talking about so far? I'm a man, through and through. But like I said, there's this problem.

I don't feel right in my body. Since I went to the zoos when I was a kid and saw the apes, I felt a kinship to them. I'd look into their soulful eyes and I knew that I was looking at my cousins. I started to feel like an alien, a creature wearing the suit of a human being. I told my parents that I wanted to be like the simians. They laughed it off. Childhood phase. We didn't bring it up again, a buried secret in our family.

I found out later that I had this rare genetic disorder. There's a scientific name for it, but I won't bore you with the details. Thanks to this disorder, I a believe that I'm an ape stuck in the body of a man. Transsexualism for the animal kingdom. Very hush-hush in the medical kingdom. There's only a handful of doctors in the world that know about it and couple dozen fetishists. There's a treatment for it too. It's called the Real Life Test. They splice and dice you with animal DNA. High tech stuff, the Russians dabbled with it during the Cold War. They wanted bat people. It had mixed success and it was expensive as fuck. It helped bring down the wall, so it was aces as far as the American government thought. That's dusty history. Who cares, right? We're not history buffs. Anyhow, the Real Life Test works like this, you're pumped full of chemicals, see a shrink on a weekly basis to make sure that you're not fucking up your life. The counselling is pretty important. Some people do it for sexual kinks, their attempt to bypass sexual laws. Kinky bastards. They're screened out pretty quickly and rarely go the full way.

You're encouraged to slowly transition to a more suitable environment as you prepare for transition. Some guys go to the jungle, others, liking the comfort of the city go to zoos. You know Koko, the sign language monkey? She's one of us. Very bold. She loved the spotlight. After the chemail pump and dump, they cut up your brain, paring it down to it's most base insincts. There's no second chances, once you start the gravy train, it don't go back.

I told this to my girlfriend at Chinese buffet. She puked into her food. I don't think that me slinging my shit at the waitress made things better. I thought that her response was extreme, but she's prone to historonics. I guess that's why she called you, officer. Not many women can stand for public masterbation and walking on all fours. Looks like I won't be getting any bail for a while, she has my bank card and access to our account. But you gotta stay true to yourself, you know?

the Milky Way

Filed under:biographical,writing,Rob Andrews
This is how it went down

Anson handed me a piece of paper. On it, was an address and a name. Zerong. Anson had told me about this girl two days previously. She night before, she had arrived in Canada.

"Oh! She vely nice! She likes movies and dancing. I think that you like this girl." Anson gave me her backstory. When he lived in China, he got in a bad traffic accident and was in a hospital for a while. The girl was the only one that visited him daily and helped him get better.

"I would do anything for her," he told me later that evening, after we dropped her off.

We drove through the crisp January air, navigating through the city like a mouse would run through a maze looking for cheese. I doubled the address scribbled in blue ink on a small coloured paper that Anson gave me, and pulled into an unshoveled driveway. The house was large; two stories high. High class, for Fort St. John. As we walked up the driveway, Anson reminded me that we’ve been here before.

My mind rewinds to the Christmas break and I remember being here. I had dropped off a Korean girl here on her last night in Canada. Earlier that evening, we went to a Christmas party thrown by the Pentacostal Church. After getting bored, we headed to the pub, dressed in our Sunday finest and ordered a couple of pictures of beer and the best nachos in the world. The Korean girl, who Evita called "Honey-butter", was going to Victoria the next day with her brother. In between bouts of beer and mouthfuls of chips, I told her what my life was like there, and told her that she had a lot to look forward to. At the end of that evening, I gave her a big hug, and wished her well. I usually don’t hug people that I know fewer than five hours. I blame the alcohol. It’s ironic to note that the house that I found myself at someone’s last night in town would be the same house that I’d be at for someone’s first night.

At the door, Anson told me the rules for the evening.

"Speak slowly. If you speak too fast, she won’t understand you."

"Like. This. Anson?" I pantomined. No laughter. My sense of humour is lost on non-Canadians. He continued.

"And you must not look at her too much. This is Chinese Rule." That wasn’t the first "Chinese Rule" that Anson had dictated, and I doubt that it would be the last. I practice the girl’s name over and over again. Zerong. Zerong. I’m gonna fuck up the "Zei" sound, I tell myself, and we enter the door.

The doorway is packed with Whites. Anson and I are on the way in, and two twenty something women are on their way out. We introduced ourselves, Anson with more flair than I. He gets a perverse kick out of introductions, I think. Out of the two women whose hands I shake, the younger cuter unmarried one has the better handshake; as first as Andrea’s at the comic shop. They depart and we look up the stairs. On the top was a petite Chinese girl. She wore a red button up shirt; red for good luck, if my understanding of Chinese culture wasn’t fucked. Underneath, a jade pendant. Her eyes, brown as bark. Anson introduced me as "Rob, my best Canadian friend". I shook her hands, tiny, cold.

Because a lot of Chinese names are unprouncable to us Whites, more often than not, an English name is adopted. In some cases, an English name will be used that sounds similar to their Chinese name. For example, my friend Stephen’s mom is called Elanor, similar to her Chinese name of Wang Nor. In other cases, names are chosen because of afinity for the name it’s self. Alice, for example, is called such because one of her favourite stories is "Alice in Wonderland". That said, Zerong inexplicably chose to call herself "Milky".

"Like Johny To’s production company, right?" I quiped. Blank stares from both Anson and she. I know more about the Chinese film industry than they do.

We made idle chit chat. Anson tells her about his working out at the gym and how he’s trying to lose weight (he’ll tell this to anyone who will listen). He flex his arms, showing off the development from the last couple of weeks. Milky looked at him like a cat, and scampered across the room and poked Anson in the chest a couple of times. She then scurried to over where I was sitting and poked me a couple of times. This is how she checked muscle mass. She bit her lips and looked up and smiled at me.

"Rob! Your muscles are bigger than his." Milk got into my good books, straight from the start.

Since our family owns a small business, we get our gas for our fleet of vehicles from a place called the UFA. The UFA is one of those ugly gas stations that they stick on the outskirts of town so that no one can see them. Truckers and rig pigs go there to fuel up. As the van was running low on gas, I had to make a detour to fill up the tank, lest we run out of gas halfway through the evening. Anson graciously gave up shotgun, so I used it as an oportunity to grill Milky for a bit. I learned that "yes", she did like to dance, as Anson said, and "yes", she did like movies. I asked her if she sung too. A couple of the Chinese girls that I know are decent singers. Anson piped up from the back and told us that she was a great singer, the second best in the school. Then, I almost hit a deer. After sliding across the black ice, we came to a halt in front of the deer.

"That’s a doe." I told Milky, "A deer, a female deer."

"Ray, a drop of golden sun, " she sang. And so we went, ping ponging lyrics from the song, back and forth until we hit the gas station.

I wanted her to be impressed on her first night in Canada, so a plan was made. We’d go out for bowling for a while, after that, we’d go out to Backwoods, grab a couple of drinks, and dance for a while. If we were hungry, we’d head off to Humpty’s, like we did on Chinese New Years and fill our bellies with as much eggs and cheese that we could stand. As we drove off to the bowling alley, Anson gave her a quick history lesson about Rob Andrews.

"You know, Rob date a Chinese girl once. She is his ex girlfriend." I’m never sure if this is a good idea, Anson telling another Chinese women that one of my ex’s is Chinese. I usually feel compelled to tell them that I’ve dated whites and a hispanic girl too. But this time, I don’t, and I let it slide. I told Milky that yeah, I did date a Chinese girl and that she ended up cheating on me. I explained to her what a broken heart was and what it meant. She nodded a lot, so I think that she understood.

We compared shoe sizes. Compared to Milky, my shoes looked like oversized clown shoes. Considering the garish colour and style of bowling shoes, this isn’t completely false. Milky was a little apprehensive at first about bowling, but she turned out to be a bowling queen. A queenpin. Despite her protestations about the ball weighing too much for her little body, she managed to get a strike and a couple of spares in the first couple rounds. Each time that she’d knock down a couple of pins, she’d do a little victory dance. It’s hard to explain her victory dance to those who haven’t witnessed it, but I’ll attempt to do it justice. The victory dance would involve her standing on one foot, moving her foot in the same way that Wong Fei Hung would while he did his no shadow kick and waving her arms like a raver. She’d do this for a good 10 seconds after each time a pin was knocked down, and attempt to give Anson and I high fives. Due to her short stature, she’d often have to jump to do it. As the game went on, my bowling got better and better (as it always seems, apperently) and I managed to beat Anson by a couple of points. Milky’s lead at the beginning failed to keep momentum.

We switched gears after bowling and decided to go dancing. Since neither Milky nor Anson were in the mood to drink (Anson never being in the mood to drink due to his heart), we decided to head off to the mall to play some Dance Dance Revolution. I told Milky that my ex-girlfriend, Heather was a DDR fanatic, so I decided that I’d invite her out with us and headed off to her workplace. She wasn’t there, so we headed off to the pool. Since we were in the neighbourhood, I thought that I’d kill two birds with one stone and see if Megan wanted to come with us and phone up Heather and invite her out too. Checking the parking lot for her car (which seemed not to be there), I went in and dialed Heather’s number. After some prostestation, she agreed to come out with us. Megan was there too, and she told me that she did have plans for that evening, much to my surprise. On Thursday, I had asked Megan if she had any plans for Friday. She told me that she would be busy with work and couldn’t do anything with me as she’d have to pick up her sister afterwards.

We picked up Heather and headed to the mall. The arcade was crawling with mallrats. I spotted Megan, already having arrived wrapped around some guy, like a leach. Her arms wrapped around him, she kept on repeating the words "sorry" over and over again until they lost their meaning to me. I introduced her to Milky, and vice versa. After that, we turned our attention to DDR. Milky explained to me that in China that the game was a little different than it is in Canada. Instead of focusing just on feet like we do here, they also have hand movements that you have to follow. This might explain her victory dance during bowling. Who knows? Heather and Megan insisted that they have a couple of dances with Anson (he being irrestible), before Megan headed home with her ex boyfriend. After Anson and Milky were volleyed back in forth between Megan and Heather, I got a chance to dance with Milky. Despite the fact that I’ve been in band and have played music for the most of my life, I totally lack rhythm and the ability to dance. That said, I’m not that bad at following the instructions given out by the machine, assuming that they’re slow and rather clear. We danced until we had to take Heather home.

Heather and I said her goodbyes and she thanked me for the evening, always a pleasure, and all that jazz.

After she departed, Milky said "She is a beautiful girl. She smell so nice."

"Yeah," I replied. I remembered the evenings where she and I would give each other passionate kisses in my truck, sitting across from the theater. I’d bury my head in her neck kissing her there. My nose pressed near her beautiful ears, smelling her perfume. "She smells like yesterday."

Milky rubs my chin while we’re at Tim Hortons, having a coffee to end the evening.

"You are so cute. I love your chin. It’s like beer."

"Beer? Like the drink?"

"No, beer. Like the animal. In China, the beer is cute.:

"You mean a bear"

"Oh yes! Beer!"

"In Canada, bears are considered dangerous. They maul people and eat them. As much as I’m open to eating you, I’m not much into mauling."

She looked at me with a blank expression, showing her teeth, the bottom row slightly jagged.

"Mall? Beers are in the mall?"

"Never mind."

"If I punch both your eyes, you look like panda beer." She smiled. And so did I.

the stars are out on this rusty night

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Radiotopes made for beautiful sunsets. We sat upon Mouldy Hill, a battle scarred zit over seeing the Quiet City. The rusty three footed birds would squack their car alarm songs as my wife watched the sun dip into the earth blister scarred hand in hand. We sat and pointed at the husks of cars, mining our memories for names and models. Half finished skeletons. Paint stripped back like skin, deperately trying to keep their tenacious hold on the metal frame. There were no others outside. The rest sayed unground like fearful moles. We came out once a year, like groundhogs to watch the sky on the longest night. It wasn't scientific.

The dogs came to us, blender mixed snouts and half formed ears. They sniffed our sterilized suits, smelling like ghosts to their canine noses. My wife tossed the pup a branch from a twisted oak. The dog stared at us like aliens. They had forgotten to fetch. They left us as quickly as they came, hobbled paw prints following them like an elongated tail. Life had survived up here, a carnival reflection of what it had been.

I pulled a canteen of water of out my backback, connecting the hose to my face plate, savouring the clean taste like wine. My wife flicked on a rusty hand light and made sketches of the night life. Moths the size of fists. Night bees darting in and out of piano husks, harvesting brain matter and carion. I laid down on the grass and stared at the shattered moon. The stars blinked in morse code. They asked us how it could turn out like this. I didn't have an answer.

Janet's breast

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
It wasn't the best time for Max to tell us that he was getting a sex change. It was worse that he already got his breasts agumented.
"I want to feel more like the woman within," he told us, diamond hard nipples poking through his t-shirt. Max was speaking in his singning voice, high pitched falsetto. He didn't sound like a woman as much as he did a grotesque parody. Dane Enda for the pre-teen set. We had other problems too. We were an internationally recognized band. Mystique. A pre-fabricated boy band. I stumbled into my position as the "Surly-One" via hand handling, the fluffer's job in the hand modeling industry. My manager said that being in a boyband was like modeling, except that the drugs would be better and there'd be less homosexuals and more young girls. This was appealing. So I went for it.

Max supposed to be non-threatening and androgenous. Parents like that. Max had broken the Trust that our producers had talked about by pumping himself full of silicone and whoring himself to the roadies.
"I'm gonna ask a guy to titty fuck me on stage tonight," Max told us. I wasn't sure what had snapped in his little brain of his. You could hear his synapses burn and smell it fry as he passes by, lording his fantastic tits near us. There was a wiff of genius in the air. And so we went on stages and broke the brains of ten thousand girls. Hand modeling looked good after that.