Broken Pornography

Day One

2006-11-01T22:19:00.000-08:00

Wright's bullet exited his gun faster than the speed of sound and burst Simmons' head open like a dropped tomato. Blood and headguts ejected from the fresh smoking hole in his head. It was like watching a flower bloom in the morning. Simmons fell to the ground in centipede slow motion: feet, knees, waist then neck. The air smelled like gunpowder brains and skin. It was a good smell. It was the smell of success, the smell of breathing for another day. It was the smell of Mika's happiness.
Wright whistled to Selecta, "Message Scopes. Tell him that we managed Simmons." Selecta nodded her understanding and snapped her beetle to attention. She peppered it with her sachel of spices. The beetle responded and it carried her off, scuttling across the sand to the Union Station. Wright hostlered his gun and took out his Sharknife and cut off Simmon's ear. He added it to his belt, looping it via Simmons' Armada ear ring. It jingled against the other ears, the ones that were smaller, baked and salted by the sun. He took some spices out his his satchet and jingled them in his hand. His beetle, Mephisto, crawled out from under the earth and shook herself. Wright patted her horn and mounted her. He gave her more spice to indicate that he wanted to go to the Axelrod. He licked his cracked lips. The drinks would refresh him. He scanned the children's room sky. Nothing in sight. No gyros, no radio birdmen, no skyapes. Contented, he set off.

Ash burned Selecta's face as she and her beetle scurried across the Smoke Plains. Union Station was relatively close, 2 hours straight, if she rode in the shade of the Rail Project, but the Smoke Plains were safer for her. Alterbus Wright paid her good money, but they were both unlicensed managers and the DoC wasn't fond of that. So she stuck to the Smoke Plains.

Axelrod sprawled out of the desert like a maligilant weed. It was created decades ago, during the great coal rush. Workers came from

Axelrod was a mangy patchwork of a pity. On the Western outskirts were the bones of a decades old mana harvesters. They were dilapidated half domes covered in dead ether tendrils. They were frozen mid movement, appearing to look like ragged hair instead like effecient tools. Some farmers stayed there after the crash, trying to churn some mana out of the air or soil, but the dividents were sparse. Where the air onced burst with life, it now smelled racid and Godless. The eastern section of the city was the polar opposite. It teamed with life and money. They called it New Steel, after the metal economy grown bythe Rail Project. Work not done gratis by the Tinfolk of the Chinese was funneled by Domionion reps to local foremen. The the help that they needed was enourmous and varied. Hextionists magicked the rail, hoping to starve off curses from the States or potential golumnization that had occured near Temblock. The Temblock golumn put back the Rail Project several months, causing the Domion to bleed moeny to get back to speed. Constructionists and forgers strengthened the rails, insuring that when Artemis was functional and made its way past the city that the rails wouldn't buckle under the stress. The Dominion paid the workers with heavy coin, the slaves with high grade whores. But what seperated Alexrod from other industrial towns along the Project like Temblock or Packerton was the Empress.
The Empress was the economical hub of Axelrod. It was Mayor Treble's project after the Mana-crash. He wanted the city to keep clockwork and not evaporate like others after the crash. A trading port, hotel and market streched into a scythe curved tower. Mana scientists magicked the tower into holding its impossible shape, while sacrificies to the twin Luck Queens kept money flowing into the city. Cloudhooks and skylarks would dock at the bottom of the curve while their crews could supply themselves with wares and arrange opportunities for quick coin. At night, the Empress would be illuminated for dozens of klicks by a large neon green sign announcing its name in a babel of languages. Even the blind knew the name. Axelrod was a dirty city and money and opportunity flowed through it like blood. Wright hated it.

He waited for Selecta in their usual job after a management, the Sliced Thumb. It was an old underground tavern burroghed deep beneath the Empress where a Queenery once swarmed with life. Because of its past, it was a great place for wanders to keep their beetles. The soil in the caverns was rich and soft, perfect for sleep and feeding. The cantina was filled with a mixed sort. Burned out bear riders hunched in corners, empty husks of soldiers, slowly waiting to die. The rougher workers from New Steel would visit if they were looking for trouble or extra coin. Clockworkers toiled away on their creations between drinks. Air travelers would find company or fresh meet for new outputs. There was always energy in the bar. Wright occupied himself with a drink and a message from Mika that he received from the wire.
CONTST TODY. THNK IL D OK. MS U. ND U. CM BK SN!

He read it over and overa gain, filling the missing letters and exchanging it with her voice. How long will it be? Another two months?
"Congratulations," Selecta said from behind him, breaking his concentration. " Your bank account is pregnent. Scopes is the pa, and his load is mighty."
Wright nodded. "How thick we talking?"
"Fresh cow cream. The man's oiling you up, Alterbus, but you don't need me to tell you to bend over."
"Next time you go to Union Station, tell him to that I have staint scrape for him and I want him to shove it up his ass. We've sparked too much with Armada. Money aside, we can't afford to spark shit with them. I don't want to be a holy man, dig?"
"He's adamant. Says that the cream's a taste of the job. Says that it'll pay mighty."
"Mighty generous. Tell him I send my thanks, but no thanks."
Wright downed his beer and started to leave but was stopped by Selecta's hand on his shoulder. She showed him her closed hand, buzzing with life. Wright knew that Scopes meant business. Selecta held a mouth bee.
"Like I said, he's adament. Wants a meeting in the basement of your brain."
"And...?"
Selecta jingled her spice sack.
"A little bit of column a and a little bit of column bee and you're head'll be hollowed out. It's up to you."
"Sounds like he oiled you up too." She smiled an ivory grin.
"There's fat dollars in my purse and it needs to go on a diet. After you visit Scopes I'm going to help it lose weight by helping me find some release. You're a man. You understand release." She handed the bee to Wright and he tilted his head back and snorted it. At first, he felt a small buzz of vibration as it worked its way up his sinus into his skull. Then, he felt nothing. Wright started to drink, to kill time. One never knew when the bee would do its work. Then there was a spark pain in the back of his head and the room started to shutter like a moth's wing.
"See you on the flip," Selecta's voice said, distending and straining. Colours brightened and the room began to implode. The smokey skin of the room faded out and was replaced with the electrical hues of the Basement. Scopes was waiting there already, slumped into a fleshy chair grown from the room. Wright started to sit and as he did so, the ground pulsed with electricity and thought. By the time his knees were bent, he found himself sitting in a chair much like Scopes. Scopes stared at Wright with his eyeless sockets. ?He was all business.
"We have a management issue for you, Wright."
"Better not be another Armada one. They'll get fierce and they'll get fast if we don't sit some down for a bit."
"Crickets and fires. You're done with Armada for the moment. Your management helped us elevate a mole. That'll keep the sun out of your eyes for a while. Things will stay cool. You're no lizard."
"So why the quick business? I usually get some down for a bit. There's shit I need to take care of. Snap quick, move like a lunatic."
"Your situation with Mika is well known to us."
"Fuck you."
"You're going about it the wrong way, you know. Chemicals and surgery? There's better options for her situation. Do what we want and you'll be in the black all your life. Money talks, bullshit walks, right? You're always about coin."
"Bullshit's walking this evening, and it's taking the long and winding road."
Wright started to move out of his chair and the room started to dim and fade as the smells of the ar became stronger.
"Wright, we have one of the Twelve." Wright spat dismissively.
"You're talking shit."
"This is mighty fierce, and we need you for this. We got people all around. We're going to stop the Rail project and you're going to help.
"Right. And how am I going to do that? The Project's almost finished and Artemis and guarded mighty tight. There's not much you guys can do. The Dominion's tough, and they're tough. They're like the Pilgrims, oiled and spineless. You won't be able to get a bead on them."
"It's easy if you hold the puppet strings. I have one man handling the MoD. Like I said, we have a management issue for you. We want you to kill the PM."
"Impossible."
"Not if you have the President's Tear."
Wright did a double take.
"You're utterly serious? You know where the President's Tear is? I thought that bullshit. Like holy grail, or somethng like that."
"We're good as gold, Wright." Scopes spent the next hour telling him about it. Everyone in powered feared the President's Tear. It was the Magic Bullet. One shot could tear through guts and bone. It was the weapon of revolutions. And Scopes knew where it was.

All Thumbs

2005-11-29T16:17:00.000-08:00

Under a toenail moon, Hollywood elite gathers. A nest of pearl handled teeth, surgically carved buttocks and corn shapes cocks. They buzz like WASPs. It was thumb night and thumb night was delicious. Served on stainless steel tables, obsidian jewels would orbit cooked thumbs, brownish grey. An alminac of world flavours is represented. Fat American ones with loose, flavour saturated skin to tiny Cambodians plucked from the finest child soldiers. Retired, naturally. Adam West greedily tears the flesh off a meaty Samoan. His comments alternate from the piquant aftertaste to how Tim Burton fucked him over of a cameo apperence in Batman. Porn starlet and subpar hotel, Paris Hilton, a neophyte to the scene, comments on how much freshly cooked skin smells like pork. Robin Williams, informs her in the high pitched voice of a New York Jewish matriarch that the food is kosher. Really. Meanwhile, Matt Damon tries to win the favour of his best friend's wife, Jennifer Garner. She'd be rosy with the happy bloat of pregnancy if Matt didn't bore her his vacation with Walter Murch after filming the Talented Mister Ripley) Sensing that he'll never be the Godfather of her unborn child or have another threesome with Ben (who quiped that she was lactating ambrosia, and it was turning him off of normal milk), he brings out the big guns. He removes his tuxedo and removes his machette expertly hidden in his back fat. He explains to her that machettes are a fine example of fine German engineering and won it in a game of poker with Franka Potente. He steadies his left hand on the floor with a ten thousand dollar shoe and carfully saws through his thumb. He finds it hard to continue his conversation with her on the benefits of using machettes versus swords, especially as he cuts through the bone. He switches to quick chops instead. It seems to work better. He offers her the thumb. She chews on it thoughtfully. If Richard Gere was there, he would have remarked that her mastication reminded him of the peace he saw in the dull eyes of a Buddist cow. While cradling his bloody hand and waiting for Jen's vallidation, he watches her pumpkin shaped belly. A baby grows in there. He decides to use his X-Ray eyes. The first bits of Mattflesh slowly tumbles their way into the baby. It kicks in approval. At least the evening wasn't a total loss.

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews

God Only Knows

2005-03-09T04:42:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
I've wanted to meet Felicia since I saw her. A glamour shot in a glossy fetish magazine. Slick leather, black, covered her mouth gagging her like a winter scarf. The rest of her body was contained in tight belts. Zebra marks on her smooth skin. Her eyes were delicious. Apple sized and bulbous, they threatened to escape from her skull. An anime girl brought to life. In one of the photos, my favourite, a bald man with metal hands licked her eyeballs with his tongue. Toad long, split in two at the end, snakish. The write up mentioned that her eyes had halucinogenic properties. She cried LSD tears. I googled her name and discovered her website. It was an extention of the magazine. She naked, cruxified to power lines with electrical stigmata. Stump armed men massaging her back with smelly pink lotion. Finned mermen swimming around them, trailed with seahorse eggs. Glorious. I paid my fifty quid for perfered membership and downloaded an ocean's worth of content. I wanted to meet her and I asked her how I could do so. She told me that if I wanted to meet, I'd have to find her. She told me that she was Shangrila. A coveted golden land explorers longed for. A challenge. I accepted. I dug through the site like an archeologist detective, sifting through video, audio files. What I needed most was an olfactory file, a new file type offered to scent fiends on smell fetish sites. Hidden deep, encrypted with a googleplex password I found it. I connected my deepwire to the B: drive and began to download. An audible ding and days later, the wire glowed red. Download complete. I took the wire to the queen's room. It was time to make some bees. I sampled her scent: sweaty leather, lemon soap and handwashed blue jeans. I programmed the maker with Felicia's biometrics, instructing the bees to find her. They would harvest her location like polen and make information honey. I sent out the bees. An old age king waiting for his carier pigeons.

Weeks later, they returned, carrying invisible packages of fleshy bits. Dandruff, hair folicles, microscopic nail clipping. The abandoned snake skin of her body. To their combs they went creating their strange honey. Dead skin yellow instead of lustrious gold. I hungrily ate the honey and waited for the information to congel in my brain. It comes slowly, like a fog on a river. Shapeless ideas and half formed sights and smells. Like an alcoholic buzz in reverse, the image of her location calcified in my brain, becoming stronger and stronger. Blocks of salt, twisted knots of trees and saphire waterfalls. And then there she was. Beautiful, lounging on an a Victorian sofa surrounded by doors of differing shapes and sizes. Ten in total. She diligently worked on her fingernails, sculping them into intricate shapes. Keys. Her hair flowed like a basket of snakes, writhering with enough life that suggested that she had an electrical generator brain. She stuck her finger into a door and twisted, and it opened with a sound that sounded like a mixture of a slurp and a kitchen vent. In front of her was a vortex with the consistency of oatmael, sticky and thick. She stepped into it, swallowed by the liquid and my senses were overwhelmed with the sensation of drowning in a deep ocean of carpet.

She wasn't going to make it easy for me. That's why I loved her.

The best party of the summer

2005-02-19T22:42:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-02-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-16T08:09:00.001-08:00

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

2005-02-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

Filed under:art,Mike Myhre

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

The Suicide of Alice Templeton

2005-02-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-06T21:59:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-06T01:08:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-02T01:33:00.000-08:00

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.

The Ballad of Jung-woon Shin

2005-01-30T18:15:00.000-08:00

Filed under:biographical,writing,Rob Andrews

"Wob! Teach me some slang!" Jung-woon would ask me this during lunch at the college. I'd hover around her, and the rest of the Koreans in between classes, stealing noodles, rice or meat from her. She wanted me to earn my keep. And so I would, poisoning her English with slang and profanities.
"Shit."
"Sheet."
"No, shit. Euh-tuh."
"Sheeet!"
We'd practice during the lucnh break, poluting the air with half assed curses. Her class mates, younger and male would chip in with their versions. It was like being in the middle of dueling bands, hearing Guitar Wolf's version of "Straight Outta Compton" followed by Chibo Mattos. A car crash of language.
"Sheet!"
"Okay, never mind. Lets try something else" Eventually, she managed to get her paws on a book of Engish slang. She'd pass me in the hall, full of snark and confidence.
"Wob! How's it going!"
"Fine. Thanks"
"You are a turkey! I will see you later, stinker!" She was a throwback to blowdried hair and leisure suits. I tried to correct her, but gave up. She recycled 70's slang like pop cans. I'd bust her balls about it, but she never caught on. It's hard to handle the subtleties of the English language.

Jung-woon was the oldest of the Korean students at the college. My first meeting with her never stuck out in my mind like the first time that I met Miwako or Booyan. She was the wallpaper of the Korean set. Background. Unintrusive. our paths intersected because he had a friend in common, Jung. Jung was a supposedly straight Korean man who enjoyed drinking, but spent most of his time telling us which men he found handsome. He'd often put his arm around the shoulder of my good Federico Federico and I would joke afterwards that Jung probably had the hots for him. Jung would invite Jung-woon to see movies with us during the early summer and eventually started to bring her to the house parties during the summer. The Korean guys gave her a hard time about her age. Every time that we went to a party, the Korean men would bug her not being married, asking if she was looking for a man. She'd dismiss it with her hiccup laugh, denying it. She was an independent woman. Strong. Who needed a man in this day and age? It became sort of a creed at the parties during the summer. The men would bust on her about not having a boyfriend and she, in turn would tell them that she was happy. She didn't suffer fools gladly.

We got to know each other better as the summer went on. I found her enigmatic and aloof. Not very serious for someone of her age. I'd joke with her all the time, calling her "grandma" or old lady. She'd laugh it off. I found it hard to take her seriously.

Near the end of the summer, there was a lot of parties for the international who were leaving. One such party was for three students. One of them was Jung, who was going to move to Seatle to live with his extended family, another one was a Japanese girl called Now, a mousey Japanese girl that never shaved her legs, and lastly, Natalia, a Columbian girl who was a friend of Federico's. Of the three, I knew Natalia the least. The party was at Joe's apartment, a Korean who had a bad reputation with lots of the international students for being an asshole. I went with my friend, Stephen, a banana who didn't like to drink. He's sit in the room and drink water, occationallly shuttling people home when they got too drunk or tired. I also invited a white girl I knew, Megan. She had a hardon for Jung, and wanted to know him better. Jung didn't care for her that much, finding her loud and fat, but didn't mind having her there. She didn't come until later that evening. The party was slow going and I amused the Japanese girls with card tricks until the beer started to flow. I spent my time with the Koreans since my buddy Anson had decided to go to AvP, chatting it up with his room mate Tim, Kyoung and Jung-woon. The beer loosened us up and Jung-woon began to open up. She told us that she was lonely, and was envious of Booyan who had a boyfriend. She needled me for most of the evening about introducing me to good looking white men. I told her that all the white guys that I knew had boyfriends, with the exception of me. She said that she'd pass on me, and disapeared. I was told later that she went on a walk to clear her head. I met her later that evening, but she kept on dodging the question about she being lonely. The conversation eventually degenerated, like it always does, into a analysis of oral sex and how it could do her some good. She drank more that evening and disapeared for good, wobbling home on her bike.

Here's another snapshot of her, this one, on the first page of the scrapbook of my brain. We were at Tim's birthday part, the last one that he'd have in Fort St. John before he left to Korea. He invited all the Koreans there, so naturally, Jung-woon was there. She was unnaturally sedate that evening, not speaking that much, never joking. It was like another actress was playing her in a movie. The men, like usual, had been bugging her about single, saying that she went to the part to meet men again. She dimissed it with her patented laugh. Her eyes told another story. All throughout the evening you could watch as they tracked her friend Booyan with her boyfriend, a baby faced white guy who spoke in too perfect English. He pronounced each word with the skill of surgeon. I wasn't surprised to find out that he was the vice president of the city's Toastmasters. Jung-woon didn't say that much that evening. I walked her home that evening, the only time that I did that, following her on her bike before I crossed through a farmer's field to my cabin. I asked her if she was feeling lonely, but she denied it. We went our ways, her hollow eyes filling my dreams that evening. I never asked her if she felt lonely after that night.

Last summer's night

2005-01-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
John kissed Helen for the last time, under the dying sun. The press photographed it for posterity. He looked into her red eyes for the last time, trying desperately to memorize the flicker of the fire inside her head. Their relationship had an expiration date the the whole world could see. L'amour fou. He licked his lips, savouring the last taste of her. And then she was gone, disapearing into the shuttle, and entering his memories. The shuttle ripped free of the earth and made it's ascent into the heavens. A column of white smoke against the purple sky. John watched as it became a speck of sand.

The ship made it's merry way to the sun. He followed the news. It was unbearably cold. There had been no light for days. John had heard the whispers, that Helen's mission had failed, that she wasn't the right one for the job. He had seen inside her head. He knew that they were wrong.

In outer space, Helen approached the waning sun and exited her spacecraft. Her head blossomed like a flower as the star inside her brain exploded. A sacrifice to the sun goddess. The earth wouldn't die for a while. It would live on Helen's heat.

John stayed away from the celebrations. To him, it felt like they were celebrating her death. Instead, her stared at the new sun. He gazed into it, letting the new features blind him. The after image burned into his retinas. It was worth it, he thought. No matter what, he'd see the firey outline of Helen.

The Conjoined

2005-01-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
When the Conjoined entered the world, they arrived a bloody terrible mess, killing their mother during childbirth. Triplets, joined at the head. An ugly human starfish. Spokes for a wheel that didn't exist. X-Rays showed that they shared a brain cluster and ruled out seperating them. A more careful examination of the scans showed that there was a supernova explosion of minuturature brains inside their head. Dormant, some dead. Their mother had obviously used an unaproved drug to up her fertilization. Lacking family, they were put up for adoption.

The head of the orphanage, a curved backed turtle of a man, was William Zeus. He would stare at the triplets and get headaches. He was't sure if it was the stress of wanting to rid them or their grotesque anatomy. They languished in the orphinage, kept away from the rest of the children. They were considered damaged goods. Prospective parents wanted to see smiling youngsters. Blonde hair and doe eyes. The Conjoined were a hard sell. Their mal-developed brains retarted their learning process. They couldn't control their bowels and constantly smelled like piss and shit. They were the mangy dogs at the pound. Ugly and unmanagable. They didn't do much for the orphinage's reputation. The headaches got worse. He started to wake up with nose bleeds.

Years passed and Zeus had no luck. He knew from experience that as children got older, it would be more difficult to have them adopted. He had a small advantage, though. The Conjoined didn't seem to age. They remained a snapshot of an unfinished abortion. The headaches were the deciding factor to get rid of the triplettes. He gave the triplettes away to an unscrupulous pornographer. He killed himself soon after.

The Conjoined were a hit on the gonzo porn scene. Internet traffic was swift and bountiful. They made millionaires of the pornomancer. Two girls and boy? They were an automatic threesome by themselves. The Conjoined were incredibly an incredible influence on the skin industry, although they probably weren't aware of it. Freaks became the buzz word among producers. A well hung midget ended up becoming a pop icon because of the trend. The holiday didn't last forever. Performers began to complain that the triplettes were giving them headaches. The complaints were silenced with pay raises. If they lived longer, they would have died of tumours.

Puberty changed everything. Everyone knew about the Conjoined then. Their hormone soup bubbled over and the mini-brains acheived conciousness. There was a physic shockwave and everone in the surrounding states died, their brains filled with imagry of bizzare gang bangs and forced fellatio. This was the Conjoined second birth. Their placenta, an army of bodies sent to kill them. They floated around the world, bouyed by the thoughts and dreams of those they murdered. A force of nature, an angel of death. Four horsemen turned three. They couldn't be stopped

Building Steam on a Grain Of Salt

2005-01-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
He's the 10 thousand dollar man. A mix of flesh steel and Aboriginal magic. A shining example of the Dominion's ideal of the Stained Glass Mentality. The Engineers put him to work on the railroad, followed by a garrison of mechanics. He was one of the expendable once. The pulled his body out from a collapsed mountain side, a doll in the shape of a man. His heart no longer worked. They replaced it with a coal engine. Soot and smog would flow instead of blood. His arms and legs were reinforced with steam pistons. Grubby fingers were replaced with oversized mechanical mole hands. Pickaxe nails. Primitive lights were screwed into the top of his skull. An Elder coaxed the Spirit to return the Chinaman's soul, bartering for the lowest price. The soul returned, moody. He had been with his family. They told him when he finished the railway, they'd kill him. He agreed to the terms. His body sputtered and smoked, and he was put to work.

The Chinaman works ceaslessly, inspiring the other workers. Mountains become tunnels. Plains become railroads. The Chinaman doesn't complain. He does his duty, linking sea to sea. He only speaks when he wants to be fed, thick smog escaping from his mouth, his teeth turned blue. They open his chest and shovel coal into his heart. At night, when the pay masters sleep, Chinese children feed him rice. He accepts it, without comment. It's the only reminder that he's still human.

His fleshy bits begin to rot and the metal begins to rest. His skin dries up and shrivels in the scortching desert sun. The workers stay away from him. He smells like a corpse. Buzzards begin to pick at his skin. They carry away clumps of hair and pieces of ear like trophies. A cloud of flies covers him, a personal cloud. The Chinaman continues to work on the railway. Train tracks follow him, like a tail, crossing from province to province. He doesn't know when he'll finish.

The Eldar releases his Spirit when they can see his bones. The Chinaman whispers his thanks into his ear. A cold kiss. His followers bury his body and sing prayers to his bones. Thee Dominion takes his heart. The technology is expensive. They'll need to find another body. Soon, the railroad will be finished. Two more provinces to go.

Blue Shit

2005-01-19T01:04:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
He can't stop staring at her stump. It's beautiful. They met on the internet, one of those trendy new dating services. They flirted for months, progressing from flirty e-mails to dirty phone calls. The picture that she sent him showed her from the chest upwards. Her face glittered with piercings of all sorts. A human Christmas tree. A fashionable pin cushion. She's a kinky devil, but the man doesn't mind. He'll do anything to please her.

The stump was a surprise on their first meeting in person.

"How'd you get it?" he asked. Her arm ended right where her wrist was. Perfectly smooth. It was as if a carpenter had shaped it. Sanded down by hundreds of man hours. Polished until it shined like an expensive car.

"Truth be told, I removed it myself. I'm into body modding. But this is the real deal." She pulled out a syringe from her purse pocket. There was a liquid in it. Saphire. Pungent. The man wrinkled his nose. The woman continued.

"I got it off of the internet. It's the next new thing. I call it Blue Shit." The needle is plunged into her stump and pumps the chemical in. She continues.

"You know phantom limbs, right? Pain people feel when they lose limbs. The military has been doing heavy reseach into it, with all the casualties in Iraq. I don't know what happened, exactly, but some smartass scientist found out a way to use phantom limbs. Get this, he found a drug that brings back the sensation. Your missing parts become Casper the Friendly Ghost." And the man sees it. A smoky aparition of her hand. A medical cross section of what a hand should look like. She flexes her fingers, and the man can see the sinew bend. Ghost blood pumps through transparent veins. Her phantom hand picks up a pencil. She doodles with it.

"Pretty cool, eh?" The man nods. "You haven't seen anything yet." Her takes her hand under the table, unzips his pants. What he feels on his cock isn't quite the feeling of her hand. It's a mixture of flesh and a gaseous liquid. It's warm, sexy. She gives him the best handjob of his life.

"Now do you understand the appeal?" He catches his breath and nods. She smiles. She pulls an ornade pair of scissors.
"You understand why I want you cut off your tongue?" The man takes the scissors and greedily cuts. The bloody slab on the table shows that he understands all too well.

As fast as you can

2005-01-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Since his creation in Germany by a baker with knowledge of the occult, Ginger Bread Man has always been running. Leaving his native home after he discovered he was created to provide nourishment for his father, Ginger Bread found himself soon in the Land of the Free, America. Like most immigrants, he made his living as a taxi driver. In his free time he pursued his pashion, which was running. Neighbours and joggers close to Ginger Bread noted that he was a runner unlike any other. He could do sprints, long distance runs, anything. He never seems to tire.

Soon Ginger Bread's reputation grew and he was recruited by a running coach, and was featured in the 1992 olympics. He astounded the world by winning Gold in all running events for the United States. This caused an international conterversy, however, with Germany laying claim to him. Ginger Bread spoke on the issue saying that Germany had done nothing from him and that he was a proud American citizen.

The olympics lead to fame, which lead to incredible wealth. You couldn't go anywhere in the mid ninties without seeing a Ginger Bread endorsed shoe or clips of his hit animated series. He was doing the talk show circuit and the Tabloids said that he was attached with various young models.

All stars fall, however. Ginger Bread soon developed a love for threesomes and wild coke binges. He lost his lucrative marketing deal with Nike and
parents groups complained about how he wasn't a good role model. He lost his fortune in the backlash and he quickly became the joke told at office
watercoolers.

Five dead and 14 wounded later, Ginger Bread had the money to pay off his bookie and some extra blow. It all went wrong when his getaway driver chickened out and drove off without him. He ran and ran as fast as he could, but to no avail. He was shot in an alley clutching a sack of bloody 100 dollar bills and broken dreams.

Yule

2005-01-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
We don't know how the Christmas Tree Girl came to be, but she makes us happy, in this season of the Yule. What is she? A cocktail of flora and fauna, delicately mixed, served on ice. She appeared with the stockings and the candy canes, her feet planted into the frozen soil with a great deal of effort. She can't move, but then again, trees don't. City workers water her daily. Generous shoppers pour coffee and hot chocolate on her feet .Except for the flashing lights draped around her like a sarong, she's naked. Her skin is a mixture of flesh and pin needles. If you touched her face, you'd be surprised how smooth it is. Tough jade. Her breasts are bountiful, like fruits. Her areolas are wooden knots. She smells great, men lick their lips when they pass by. Her fingers are long, fragile. A zealous child breaks off a finger, as easy as a branch. She bleeds blood and sap. Guards are stationed around her after that. Don't hurt her.

She holds a Salvation Army bucket and smiles. The eyes of a child, the vocabulary of a dog. "Merry Christmas!" She'll say, repeating, over and over again. That's the sound of wind blowing through her branches. People from all over come to see her, and soon her bucket fills over. The local cable station has a camera tracked on her, pre-empting the log channel. Strange pornographers webfeed her picture to the internet. There are more perverts in the world than you think.

Network cable infests the city like voles. The Christmas Tree Girl is the Next Big Thing. They interview her, ask her what she thinks Christmas is about. She smiles to the rest of America, acorn eyes glinting.
"Merry Christmas". News spreads around the world. There's debate. Does the girl represent Christmas? What happened to Christ? Should a woman, with the intelligence of an infant be promoting charity? And so on and so forth.

Time passes and Christas is over. Crows sit on her arms, snatching stray wrapping paper. She's ignored. Christmas decorations are replaced with candy hearts. Valentine's Day is coming. A fat worker cuts her off at the ankles and throws her in the back of a truck full of Christmas trees. Did she scream? The fat man wouldn't know. He's listening to a junky old walkman, a soundtrack to his work. The media doesn't record her death, they're more pre-occupied by Artificial Prime Minsiter of the Moon. Her body is tossed into a firepit with the rest of the trees. She's baptised with gasoline. A match is thrown onto her. She wriggles as her skin bubbles and burns. The smell is unpleasant. The worker leaves. There is little fanfare for her death. No eulogy, no songs, no pictures. Back at the square are what's left of her feet, rooted and growing. It'll take a while, but she'll be back. Christmas comes once a year.

Jewels

2005-01-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
The afternoon was as mean as a hook, and so was Jewels. He’s 10 pushing on Neanderthal. If you miniaturized yourself and drove yourself around his head, your destination, the front, you’d have a pleasant smooth ride until you reached the end. So yeah, Jewels had a flat head, and his brow looked like a cliff. Wanna make something of it? Furby wouldn’t. No, of course not. In the swinging 60s, Furby would have been called a book worm. A spineless mass of a boy, chewing his way through a library of books every night. It’s the 21st century, and Furby prefers the internet. He’s plugged into the infoweb 18 hours a day. Like astronauts being bombarded by cosmic rays, Furby is constantly being bombarded by spam viruses and pop-ups. The most violent thing that he’s done in his life was close errant windows on his computer using ALT-CTRL-DELETE or killing virtual monsters. He doesn’t want to fight Jewels. His parents, bleeding edge geneticist (EXTREME! Geneticists, they tell him, because They Are Cool And With It) tell him to ignore the bullies. This seems like good advice. Jewels is a badger (he tells us), and once he bites, he doesn’t let go.

“Did your mom make your mitts?” Jewel said. “They look like girl’s mitts!” Yeah, Furby’s mom, creativity abound, made those mitts. Knitted bright pink, covering his ham sized hands, yeah, they looked like girl’s mitts. Furby never takes off his mitts.

“I have sensitive hands,” he’d tell his teachers. They didn’t push once they found out that Furby’s parents made financial contributions to the school. New Library, anyone? Yes please! Willing to tolerate a small quirk was worth it. Money was the blood that flowed through the veins of the administration. Keep it coming!

“Are you deaf?” Furby continued to ignore Jewels.

Is Jewels co-dependent? That’s up to a shrink to say for sure. That said, it’s easy to see that he was empowered by his posse of thuggish 9 and 8 year olds. One day a rap producer will put them in a music video. They’re fantastic at posing and cheering. What’s a bully (or multi-platinum selling rapper) without a cheering posse? Now: the posse encourages violence. Jewels eagerly responds by pushing Furby to the ground. One of his amigo assists by extending a foot, a classic maneuver, tripping Furby. This is the extent of their teamwork. Furby falls like a Canadian Spruce. Jewels is on top of him in an eyeblink and shatters his nose like a China plate. He doesn’t block. In the small instant before the second blow, if you filmed the blood gushing out of his nose at 200 frames per second, the playback would make the blood look like beautiful lava. A slow moving crimson river flowing down the side of his face. The second blow loosened some baby teeth and chipped an adult one. Furby blocks the third hit with his right hand. The crunch sounded like a miniscule car accident. Jewels pulls his hand back, holding the deadened fist. Furby begged him to stop, and Jewels responded by kicking him in the ribs. The posse makes gesters to indicate that a teacher was coming. With time evaporating, Jewels decides to humiliate Furby by tearing off his mitts. Instead of hands, his fingers with fused together in a grey carapace. He had lobster claws. Shiny, hard and thick, Furby’s claw squeezed down in panic. He sliced through Jewels’ hand effortlessly. His fingers fell to the ground like dropped coins. Furby whipped the blood off of his face and blood bubbled through his nose as he sobbed.

“Give me back my mitts.”

Maria

2005-01-16T13:25:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
“Take me to the graveyard.” She wheezes the words through her too small mouth. Her voice is decades old newspaper, her face isn’t much better. She’s old. I comply with her wishes, and I pull out of the driveway to head to the cemetery on the outskirts of town. She wears too large shades, probably a relic from the 50s or something. I drive her in the mornings and the evenings. This is our routine: on the weekdays, I take her to Wal-Mart, where she greets shoppers.
“They put me in the front, in case I die,” she told me. “They don’t want us deeper in the store. Imagine the commotion it would cause if you had paramedics combing the store for a body. Not good for business.” Weekends, I take her to the park. She hobbles out to a bench, her back like a question mark, and she sits in her bench. When I leave her, she has week old Italian bread that she feeds squirrels and birds. When I pick her up in the evening, she’s asleep, pigeons picking at her ears. She must be tasty. I shoo them off, and take her home. Today, is an exception. The graveyard.
“Do you know Mary?” she asks me. I shake my head.
“The one in the Bible? Jesus’ mother? I think about her often.” She takes her hand off of the window and a ghostly imprint remains. It evaporates like a spirit.
“The Bible tells me that it was an emaculate conception, but I always thought that God had sex with her. Imagine, how that would have felt. Probably the best sex that she’d ever had. It’s no wonder she never slept with Joseph after that. Nothing could compare.” We drive in silence for a bit.
“I wonder if she ever tried to re-create it? Back then, they had more gods that we do now. Maybe she went to the old temples, asking the other gods for the experience. Like Leeda being fucked by Zeus as a swan. Yeats wrote a poem about that, I think.” We arrive at the cemetery. I stop and open the door for her.
“Walk with me.” It’s cold outside. It just finished snowing and the ground looks like sketch paper, new. I hate to walk on fresh snow, hating to spoil it with my brown slushy footprints. She doesn’t however, and pulls me to a large statue of an angel, it’s hands folded in prayer. The angel is pristine, with the exception of a small pencil markings on its lips. Lipstick like a geisha.
“My son the Son of God too, you know? He didn’t cause the second coming, or nothing. He lives on welfare. Thought that he’d end up a doctor, or something, with Holy Blood in his veins, or what not. He’s drunk most of the time, turning water into cheap wine. What a disappointment.” She takes off her glasses and I see that she has no eyes. Hallow caves. Miniature bats could live there. She tongue kisses the angel. Her salvia freezes on contact.
“Take me home,” she tells it. She begins to cry tears of blood. They fall into the snow, and become rubies. “The world is so sick and so am I. Take me home.” The angel embraces her, holding her until her sobs stop. I make smoke “o”s with my breathe and watch as the angel picks her off and they fly into the heavens. The snow picks up again and buries our tracks. I stand there, waiting.

Antholes

2005-01-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Carlos snorted his blow, John Woo style, two straw her nose. Don’t fuck with Carlos. That’s what his shaky homemade tattoo explains, in mixed case letters. He’s sitting on a major trash of cocaine, genetically modified by award winning scientists straight outta Bogota University. Carlos is like a dragon. He fucks those who have the audacity to take what’s his. Like his trusty machete, he keeps his senses constantly shape with coke. Only one enemy had the balls to fuck with him. Ants. He can hear them all the time, chittering their morse code and perfume language. He sees them, vague phantoms in the corner of his eye, always out of sight. Chittity, chittity. Carlos stops eating lobster and crab because of this.
“You shouldn’t subsidize their compatriots!” he screamed when asked in a seafood restaurant if he wanted the day’s special. He fled the place when he noticed how popular the shrimp cocktail was. Carlos desperately wanted to unfuck the situation with the ants ASAP. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving his coke cave for an extended period of time. Visions of ants carrying off back after bag of his shit made it impossible to sleep. So he stayed with his stash and started to make enquiries. His lieutenants weren’t too helpful, so he put word on the street that he was offering a considerable bonus to anyone that could take him to the ant hill that was threatening business. Money exchanged hands. Ants were not found. Retaliation was swift and feet were removed from those who had the balls to fuck with him. Fuckage was reduced to zero amongst informants.

It was by chance that he found the anthill. He was taking a piss when he noticed an ant patrolling down his arm and onto his wrist. He squashed it, hoping to discourage more from fucking with him. It was after he brushed the carapace from his hand that he had an epiphany and looked at his arm. The hairs on his right stood up on end, and for the first time in his life he realized that it wasn’t covered in course hairs. They were antennae. The insects furiously unburroughed themselves, tearing through the flesh with their terrible mandibles. Soon his pale white arm was an oil slick of black bodies. He removed his machete from his boot and made three quick chops to his arm, removing it from his elbow. He went to the hospital smelling like burnt flesh and kerosene. Cauterizing his stump proved to be harder than he thought. He didn’t want to leave his stash to the ants, but he had no choice. Next time he’d be prepared for them. He told himself, with great powder comes great responsibility.

The Caul

2005-01-16T13:01:00.000-08:00

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
An anti-time diamond cuts a gash in the rainbow and a time wave breaks through. The scientists are prepared. Time drains into a four dimensional caul the size of a windmill. A signal. The diamond repairs the gash. They call in the chrononaut, a savy man culled from the prison. A lifer. He remembers everything. A five sense camera. He's going to be their chimp. They lather him up in soap and remove his hair down to the follicle. He decends into the caul and they pull him out, seconds later. The body is not the same. It's twisted by time. One arm belongs to a cadaver, a leg, an infant. He tries to speak with his malformed mouth, teeth alternating from rotting to full. Words tumble out like children down a hill. After he dies, the scientists re-play his last words over and over again. They never decipher it. The scientists leave the time pool the best they can. It waits for another man