Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day 11

Theme 222: Chess

On the far western edge of the town square, which is an empty expanse of sixty-four by sixty-four meters paved with travertine blocks, Detective Sergeant Elsa König of the Petty Larceny Squad has perched herself at the top of a curved amphitheater, dead center. Opposite her, on the far eastern edge of the square, the portly, middle-aged Lawrence Sovrano, wearing a black silk shirt and a diamond pinky ring, sits at the central table of an outdoor café, sipping a frullato di frutta and fiddling with the handle of a curious valise at his side. After a rash of pickpocketing incidents in the town square, König has made it her mission to catch Sovrano in the act of spiriting away stolen goods in that valise of his, as Sovrano is the suspected majordomo of the young pickpockets responsible for the thefts. Sovrano, for his part, wishes to embarrass König by pinning her with another spate of unsolved pickpocketing incidents, this time occurring right under her proverbial nose.

The subjects of prospective thefts whom König has vowed to protect, and whom Sovrano is set on victimizing, are the shoppers, tourists, and other patrons of the town’s establishments. They take congenial strolls in straight, plodding lines through the square, looking directly before themselves to the left or right, but otherwise remaining oblivious to surrounding threats. Mixed among these well-heeled folk are tatterdemalions and other misfits who also move in plodding lines, and whom Sovrano depends on as obstructions to the eagle eye of his opponent.

At König’s disposal in her task are: in the far northwest and southwest corners of the square, two patrol officers mounted on bicycles poised to race down orthogonal lines; two more patrol officers on foot who move along sweeping diagonal routes through the square; and König’s partner, an athletic junior detective who is able to sprint in any direction to pounce on culprits he or König spots.

Sovrano, on the other hand, has his own assets to command. First, his two statuesque younger brothers, Bruno and Castello, act as body guards by waiting, respectively, at the café bar on the northeast corner of the square and the barber shop on the southeast corner, ready to switch places with Sovrano at his signal, which will enable him to escape from the square through their protection. Then there is Sovrano’s mistress, a shapely redhead whose long legs take her swiftly to any location in the square, so as to intercept and bewitch male officers before they can discharge their duties. Finally, there are the two teenage expert pickpockets Sovrano has groomed while acting as a go-between with fences (for a large percentage of course). These pickpockets have learned to move in the most devious manner of all the players in the square today, darting forward in short bursts, seemingly toward clear targets, but then swerving away at the last instant to the left or the right in order to stealthily pilfer carelessly dangling chains or loose wallets before it can be determined where they have disappeared to.

Will this be the day D.S. König finally outmaneuvers Sovrano and catches him in the act of placing hot items from the hands of one his pickpockets into his valise? Or will Sovrano escape her again by switching places with one his brothers and leaving the square unseen? Or may it perhaps end in a stalemate when one of the pickpockets under Sovrano’s command is apprehended in the commission of a grab?

Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Ten

Theme 514: Volcano!

At twilight, Procrustes once again knelt by the hole under the basin pipe in the far corner of his cell and rasped into it. “Feculent! Are you there!” he rasped. Soon he heard a familiar creak of bedslats followed by sullen shuffling that signaled his friend in the adjacent cell’s approach to the corresponding hole under his own basin pipe.

Feculent’s voice picked up a metallic ring as it traveled through the wrought iron pipes. “Yeah, I’m here,” the voice said.

“I’ve decided to reveal to you the reason for my current internment! Our alliance has progressed to such a stage, I feel we are ready for this next step, don’t you?” Procrustes queried, straining against the upper limits of susurration with excitement.

“I suppose so,” Feculent replied.

“Good. Now what I’m about to tell you will burden you with forbidden knowledge, which entails an onerous responsibility, so stop me at any time if it becomes too much, if it becomes too frightening or overwhelming.”

“Sure,” was Feculent’s response.

“Good. You see,” Procrustes began his briefing, “it has to do with the Volcano 9000 Mega-Lottery of Washington state, at the time the largest bounty in the country. Now, as you know, I am an unparalleled genius in the fields of numerology, etiology, mental projection, air-loom devices, and advanced ratiocination. This genius allowed me to devise a perfect system for learning in advance the number balls that would be selected by the Volcano 9000, to be erupted up through its cinder cone of molten cash …”

After a pause to catch his breath, Procrustes continued, “My theory of lottery numbers will be too complex for you to fully comprehend, I’m afraid, but suffice to say it involved measuring the precise relationships between factors seldom considered by other lottery theorists, such as the number of days since the last eclipse, fluctuations in the rotation speed of the earth due to irregularities in public transportation, and the number of black birds sitting on a wire outside my apartment window at any given time. Clearly my system could not fail to determine the correct numbers!”  

“Clearly,” Feculent concurred.

“And yet, and yet! When the time for the cash eruption came, the balls produced did not match a single number on my ticket! How could this be? I asked myself. Surely, if my system had needed adjustment, I would have been off by several numbers—but not all! It was then that my mind was struck by a vision of the truth, revealed to me by way of my powers of universal attunement. What I saw was simply this: the Volcano 9000 was no impartial lottery number selector machine, no, but was rather in fact an obfuscation machine!”

“You don’t say,” Feculent commented.

“Yes, it’s true. In fact, the numbers had been fixed long in advance by a cabal as ancient as numbers themselves, whose ambit was the Washington Gaming Commission, in order to influence the fate of humanity by selecting the ‘proper’ winners and matching them with the ‘proper’ numbers, sometimes years, even decades in advance. The name of this group? The Nonagonal Knights of the Volcano Machine! You see, their method is to insinuate the numbers chosen by their inscrutable secret system into the minds of their selected winners-to-be by planting subliminal numerical cues all around them by such means as: specially curating the commercials sent to the subjects’ televisions, altering the phone numbers on the billboards on the subjects’ habitual routes, even controlling the number of black birds sitting outside the subjects’ windows! Then, when the Volcano 9000 picks the number balls, a hidden device in the cinder cone of molten cash overwrites the numbers on those balls with the ‘proper’ numbers implanted in the mind of the selected winner—in the blink of an eye!”

“Shocking,” Feculent noted.

“Indeed, my friend!” Procrustes agreed. “And so I was left but with one choice: to take things into my own hands! By relying on my aforementioned genius for esoteric ratiocination, I was able to analyze the profiles of the previous winners and accurately predict who the next person to be selected would be. That was how I discovered that I would need to abduct Mr. Colin Corbin of Wenatchee—”

Procrustes’ narrative was interrupted by rude clattering and jingling noises outside his cell: the dinner cart had arrived. Procrustes heard a sullen shuffling through the basin pipe, indicating he no longer had his friend’s ear. He stood up and scratched the forest of twisted wires springing from his chin. “Had this interruption been precisely staged to prevent Feculent from learning the full truth?” Procrustes wondered amongst the vortex of his other thoughts.



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Nine

Theme 712: Animals

At the kitchen table, Eunoia scowled at her brother Fred, and Fred scowled at his ham and Swiss sandwich. Though Eunoia was nine and her brother twenty three, it was she who had been instructed by their mother to watch her brother and ensure he ate his sandwich. You see, Fred was a microcephalic with a flattened melon-shaped skull who tended to erupt violently when things went against his wishes, which is why he was strapped into a massive custom-built high chair with asylum-grade leather.

Eunoia, meanwhile, was an anomaly in the opposite direction, in that she had already attained college level in her mental acuity and knowledge of the physical sciences. Indeed, she had opened in front of her, on a linoleum placemat depicting a rustic mill, Nestor’s Mechanisms of Microbial Disease. She had intended to assimilate the entire text this afternoon before yet again being pinned down to guardianship over her brother.

“Want go zoo,” Fred pouted.

“Do you?” Eunoia asked. “Well, don’t you know that as soon as you eat your sandwich, we are going straight to the zoo?”

Fred’s watery eyes began to glisten. “Go zoo?”

“Yes, certainly. Straight to the zoo,” Eunoia affirmed, nodding vigorously.

“Zoo!” Fred cried. He wolfed down his sandwich at once in excitement, choking himself in the process, which he resolved by letting out a thunderous cough that ejected a substantial gob of bread and ham. The gob splattered on a picture of an Apicomplexa Protist in Eunoia’s book. “Now go zoo! Zoo!” Fred demanded, frantically pounding on the sides of his high chair.

“No. I lied,” Eunoia seethed. She snatched the napkin from Fred’s tray and attempted to salvage her Apicomplexia illustration from Fred’s masticated gob.

“Waaa?” Fred asked, suddenly quiet, his face flushing with blood, his jowls beginning to tremble.

Eunoia knew that look. She became concerned she had gone too far. She looked down at her book. An idea caused a smile to creep into the corners of her diminutive mouth. “No, but you know why? It’s because you are already at the zoo, Fred. You have a zoo inside you.”

“Waaa?” Fred looked down at himself. His face began to change color again, this time to fish-flesh white. “Zoo—zoo?”

“On that piece of cheese you just ate, in your stomach now,” Eunoia explained. “There were thousands and thousands of little creatures on that piece of cheese, and now they are all running around inside you, down your throat and in your belly. There are the Lactococci, which look like squirming little balls. They like to form chains with their friends so they can crawl around like centipedes. Then there are the Lactobacilli, which are like long fingers that grope out all over the place, eating sugar and spitting acid. Oh, and another kind you definitely have in there are the Streptococci. They’re nasty little ring-shaped creatures that sometimes like to eat your flesh. Hopefully yours are feeling nice today.”

As Fred listened to his sister, his moist eyes widened and widened. He looked down at himself again and began furiously clawing at his belly, scratching into his skin with his jagged nails. He bellowed, “Get out! Get out!” Their mother ran into the kitchen. As soon as she saw what Fred was trying to do, she opted to sedate him by sticking him in the neck with a tranquilizer. 

When asked what had happened, Eunoia shrugged. She noted that she had managed to get Fred to eat his sandwich, for what it was worth. With a sigh, she resumed her study of microorganisms. 

Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Eight

Theme 856: Recent Dreams

Following are scenes from a fragment of a mysterious cult film called “Marginalia.” The film is both incomplete and ever-expanding, as new VHS tapes with hitherto unseen footage, some of dubious authenticity, keep appearing in unlikely locations around the world. Some believe that the film’s footage is a product of an experimental process wherein the film maker, an individual known only as “Thurmer,” is able to translate images from his own dreams directly onto celluloid. The fragment described here is a secondary, alternative narrative set in the early 1900s that runs parallel, in a somewhat ambiguous fashion, to the main narrative of the film set in present day.

1.   The main character, a nondescript man (who may or may not be played by Thurmer himself) known only as “the Participant,” disembarks from a steam train in a small southwestern town. The year is 1903. The town is mostly deserted, almost a ghost town, and is everywhere covered with yellow dust. The Participant is anxious, as if he is afraid he is being pursued, but we see no one else get off the train after him.

2.     The Participant soon steps into an inn off the main street, looking for somewhere to stay. The innkeeper, an ancient and very thin woman, is the only person in the place. The inn seems to fall apart as she speaks, as it is revealed to be infested with enormous, ravenous termites that fall from the ceiling with heavy thuds, sometimes rolling off the innkeeper’s bonnet or falling from her unkempt hair. The innkeeper explains that she can no longer put anyone up at the inn, things are too far gone, but she tells the Participant that there is a large manse several leagues beyond where a man of the Participant’s description has long been expected. Intrigued, the Participant leaves and makes his way out of the town to the manse.

3.      [Redacted until further notice]

…

Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Seven

Theme 127: The Rocket Ship

As the elevator had “Under Repair” signs posted warning off employees this morning, Sophia Quincunx took the stairs to the sixth floor. When she came to the sixth landing, she walked to her office door, which was just adjacent to the teasmade cart and a few yards down from the restrooms, grasped its handle, and was instantly teleported to the Horse Head Nebula, or thereabouts.

Sophia found herself in a starship, or rather, she herself was the starship. A tangled array of biosynthetic cords ran into and out of her cerebellum and medulla oblongata, via a pulsing grommet at the base of her spinal column. Her eye sockets now stretched out in a limacine fashion and poked through the ship’s outer hull at their termini. In place of her eyes sat multi-faceted sensor spheres capable of perceiving the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma radiation to radio waves. Her arms split out into thousands of conduits, braces, and furiously working arachnid-like appendages that tapped and twisted buttons, levers, and webbing on the inner surface of the ship. From her pelvis, cosmically shielded skin and cartilage spread forward to form a translucent lotus bud-shaped envelope around the entire craft. Behind this envelope, her legs, also cosmically shielded, opened out into scintillating zero-point energy sails.

As soon as Sophia came to appreciate her new circumstances, she turned herself about, leaving the Horse Head Nebula behind her and pointing herself toward Sol. She decided to put her capabilities to the test. Her sails became radiant as she tore off in the direction of Earth. She was travelling at close to light speed, 290 million miles per second, when her zero-point field engaged and all of space and time became fluidic around her. She pressed herself onward, faster. Every node in her body-craft reached forward to connect to every other point in the galaxy. She mounted the threshold of universal presence …

Sophia awoke slumped against the bars opposite the door to her office. Dazed, she looked up into the face of a stocky electrician who stood fretting over her. The electrician became relieved when he saw that she was conscious, and he quickly assured her that emergency medics were en route. While they waited, he proceeded to explain in a rapid but stuttering fashion that somehow, he didn’t know how, a conduit from the elevator under repair had fallen behind the wall and made contact with the doorframe, so that when Sophia had touched the handle, she had been electrocuted and thrown back against the bars.

Sophia nodded. She could hear the EM’s hustling up the stairwell now. She looked up at the wall and imagined her starship-self contacting every point in the cosmos at once.



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Six

Theme 180: First Eye Contact

The old glazier Ichor nursed a vodka tonic at the far end of the bar, furtively watching the door.

“Master Ichor! What a rare treat!” exclaimed a thin man who took Ichor by surprise, as he seemed to have materialized instantaneously in the seat beside Ichor. He clapped his hand on Ichor and gripped his arm. He was wearing the unmistakable flannel gray of a Party official.

“I—” Ichor began.

“No, please, no false modesty,” the thin man interrupted. His mannered formality veiled a slight accent. “Though we’ve never met, your hallowed reputation as a master of glassworks proceeds you. I am only too, too honored to speak with you. As it just so happens, I have something with me, or rather two things, I would love for you take a look at and get your expert appraisal of. I know you’ll appreciate them!” The thin man placed a small teak valet on the bar. He unhooked its latch and took out from its padded interior a glass eye, which he held up to Ichor’s face.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the thin man remarked, turning the eye between his thumb and forefinger through a narrow shaft of daylight that ran across the bar, illuminating the eye’s pale blue iris. “Of course, you’d have to have seen it in its proper setting, its owner’s head, to fully appreciate it. Unfortunately, the owner was a young woman, barely nineteen, who was shot earlier this morning. It seems she was an agent against the Party. Can you believe it? So young, so fresh …”

“You see,” the thin man continued after a pause, “she had managed to get through undetected at the Security Checkpoint—which, as I’m sure you’re aware, is very thorough in its cavity searches. She would have gone unpunished on the other side, too, if I hadn’t personally tracked her down after noticing an odd statistical irregularity: a second person with a glass eye of the same make went through the Checkpoint, on the same day!”

The thin man placed the first eye beside Ichor’s drink and took out a second glass eye from the valet, which he again held up to Ichor’s face. This eye’s iris was deep green. “Equally exquisite, don’t you agree? This one was taken from a young man, also barely nineteen, also shot this morning, under very similar circumstances—though we’re fairly certain these two young people had never met. Sad, isn’t it, that this is the way a young man and woman’s eyes should first meet? Ha!” The thin man took up the eyes and clicked them together to make his point.  

“You say they were killed—for having glass eyes?” Ichor inquired haltingly.

“Oh no, of course not. What a monstrous thought! Though it did turn out that both of these unfortunate young people had suffered ‘accidents’ not a week prior, resulting in a loss of the left eye in both cases. But even such an extreme statistical anomaly would not be cause enough to bring accusations. Herein lies the ingenious point, which, again, I know you will appreciate as a master glassworker. For we never would have noticed that both eyes were from the same craftsman if not for a most incredible maker’s mark they both have.”

The thin man carefully turned one of the eyes to show Ichor its rear portion. “You see, there is a transparent space at the back here. It allows light to come in and then out through the iris on the other side—though the difference between the translucent and opaque parts are imperceptible from the front. Just beautiful! Now watch what it projects when the light comes through.” The thin man moved the blue eye into the sun and adjusted its angle until a bluish hook shape appeared on the surface of the bar. He did the same with the green eye, resulting in the appearance of an identical, except greenish, shape beside the first. “The maker’s mark: the Greek letter, iota!”

“You’re right, this is quite ingenious work. But the young people were killed for this?” Ichor asked.

“No, no. I’m not finished. Watch.” The thin man now slowly turned the eyes toward one another until their lines of sight met and crossed, causing the two maker’s marks to overlap exactly. And here a hidden turquoise image appeared inside the iota symbol. It was an intricate set of patterns that would have to be viewed under a microscope—perhaps they were floorplans or blueprints. A smile broadened across the thin man’s face as he looked from the patterns to Ichor. “Such cleverness, I almost wish I could have let those two go, let them meet for the first time on the other side. Almost. But again we have an instance of the new Party science of statistics outmatching the old arts. So it goes!”

The thin man placed the glass eyes back in the valet, stood up, and put the little valet into his coat pocket. “Now, may I ask you to accompany me to my office, Master Ichor, so that together we may identify the craftsman who made this wonderful, treasonous artifact, the one signified by the iota mark, whoever he may be? You understand the importance of doing so, don’t you?”

“Yes,” croaked Ichor, and he stood and left the bar with his captor.



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Five

Theme 276: What’s for Dinner?

The chef and the owner’s wife reconnoitered in the supply closet behind the kitchen while the owner looked over the week’s returns and debated with his manager in the office upstairs. 

The owner had entered the restaurant with his wife just after closing. He had asked her to remain in the kitchen, to which she had replied, “I think I’ll ask the chef to whip something up for me, if you don’t mind.” In doing so, she had locked eyes with the chef behind the counter, a tall young man with an aquiline nose who perennially rode his Schwinn to work. The chef had returned her look with a familiar smile curved with cupidity.

“Fine,” the owner had said as he turned to climb the stairs with a labored grunt.

In the closet, the owner’s wife could feel the cool stainless steel of the wobbly cabinet table on her skin, since she had hiked her dress skirt up, allowing the chef to hook his forefinger under the hip-joint of her underwear and tug.

“Tell me,” the owner’s wife requested, grasping the chef’s nape in her slender digits, “what do we have on the menu today?”

“Well, madame, let me first tell you about our appetizers,” the chef said, guiding the auburn ribbons of her hair behind her ear. “First we have two of the finest, most delectable little lobes I have ever personally tasted—if you will allow me.” He put first her left and then her right ear gently into his mouth, causing her neck hairs to prickle and her buttocks to clench. “But let us not forget this dainty button chin—and this creamy neck.”

The owner’s wife pulled on the chef’s belt buckle while swerving her head out of the trajectory of his mouth. “Very good! But for the main course?”

The chef, in one neat motion, unzipped the entire length of the back of her dress. “Oh madame, we have such a wonderful variety of options for your pleasure today.”

The pair then heard a creak of floorboards above them. The owner’s wife laughed breathlessly and whispered, “Well, let’s get to it then—chop chop!”



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Four

Theme 965: Dancing

“Hey, hey, Feculent, are you there!?” Procrustes hoarsely whisper-yelled into the hole under the basin pipe in the far corner of his cell. Crouching lower still, he strained to move his shock of ear hair closer to the hole. Soon he heard a creak of bedslats and a sullen shambling.

“What is it?” queried the voice of Feculent, made tinny by its journey through the plumbing between the two cells.

“You won’t believe what’s happened!” Procrustes whisper-cried in response.

“I won’t?”

“No, I doubt anyone would, but I know you can trust me, er, that I can trust you, correct? So I’ll tell you.”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

“Remember the two big mayflies I told you about yesterday? The ones stuck between the screen and the outer bars of my window slit?”

“Of course. The mayflies.”

“Well, I’ve taught them to dance!”

“Hm. Are you sure they didn’t already know how to dance?” Feculent wannishly susurrated.

“No! You see, I’ve established a mental link with them. My mental tuning ability has progressed to such a level, I can communicate with insects. I can even elevate them to a higher level of consciousness. You should see these two dance!” The thought was exciting Procrustes, clearly, since glistening globules were forming on his forehead.

“What did you teach them? The jitterbug?”

“No, nothing so sophisticated, only a little jig of my own invention. Can’t you see the potential in it, though, Feculent? This is only the beginning. Imagine a vast swarm at my command. They would have to let us out then. My swarm would give them no choice!”

“You may be right,” Feculent admitted. “I have some business to attend to now, though, in bed. Keep me updated.” There followed once more the sullen shuffle and the creak of bedslats.

“Yes, I will, I will!” Procrustes rasped. He stood up and turned his eyes with pride to the window slit. Two mayflies crouched in the pale lightwell, twitching.



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Three

Theme 199: The Vessel

Captain Cage-de Ratte strode the length of his quarters on the U.S.S. Eagleclaw, a mighty Baltimore-class cruiser, alternately casting his eyes on the chop of the stormy night sea rolling past his porthole and then on the model sailing ship he had just completed atop his tidy desk. The roar of the four mammoth steam turbines reached his ears merely as a low hum. Updecks on the bridge, beeping and pinging instruments kept his crew alerted to all threats for miles in every direction. The instruments both plotted the ship’s course and laid it in with scarcely any human interference. Captain Cage-de Ratte huffed and muttered, gesturing to the model frigate, “In your day, men tasted the salt air, gazed at the horizon from atop the masts, to know what to do. Now we just do the bidding of blips and beeps!”

Aboard the H.M.S. Nonesuch, a weather-besieged three-masted frigate, Captain Heartstrings crashed down into his cramped chair in his cramped cabin, lit by sputtering lamp-flame, for the first time in three days. His livery was soaked through, his cowhide boots sloshed, and his teeth chattered. He had gone hoarse screaming over the bitter winds. Not half an hour prior, he had seen vindictive sprays tear two of his crewmen from middecks and toss them out to the churning void, never to return. The Captain’s belly groaned, unsatisfied with the meager allotment of stale grain he and his crew had been consigned to since the meat preserves had become infested. His eyes turned to the illustration on the cover of a French novel that lay on his desk: it was of a mechanical ship many times the size of the largest galleon, made all of silver, that was charging unperturbed through a roiling night storm. “Aye, that’d be the way to be!” Captain Heartstrings muttered between coughs. 



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day Two

Theme 307: Feelings about Unrequited Love

Between clawed and wedged apart slats, cracks in the ceiling plaster offer light and space just enough so that Desirée, her etiolated cheek sweating against the pinewood, can view Clive from the attic—as he dries dishes, as he strings the rigging on his model clipper, as he combs his hair, as he twists in his bedding. “Oh Clive,” Desirée whispers, her thick, greasy strands trembling with the expulsion of mephitic breath. “Clive. Now do you have time for me, darling?” As she gazes down at him from the darkness, her tongue slathers a cool board as if it were the back of his neck.

Clive sometimes becomes possessed of the conviction he hears someone whispering his name. And his anxious speculations over the creaking in the rafters have begun to creep into his dreams, though a thorough investigation has assured him no animal could enter the attic from either the sealed hatches or the painted-over venting.

Never once, however, has Clive wondered what became of that terminally shy woman from claims.



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Vignettes by Me, on Themes Picked Randomly: Day One

Theme 21: Weather outside the Window

Lazy lariats of slime slide down the elliptical outer portals after sputtering against the domed eaves, blotting out the dayshine.

“It’s clear to me,” Hilbert says, pointing to an unseen expanse beyond the clogged portals. “The weather regulators are tapping into the recycling vats again. They thought they could siphon off resources and give us a rainbow show. Instead, look what happens: the system overcorrects, and we get this again!”

Water beads inside the portals from the humidity caused by the overheated slime as it streaks away on the other side.

“Doesn’t bother me,” Hilda says, shrugging vaguely in her husband’s direction. She shifts position on the sofa pillows and reaches to open a transparent cubical enclosure. Now she can return to her latest passion, one she has neglected for her colonial duties: imprinting an uplifted micro-oraristrix with linguistic engrams.



Explanatory Postscript: When I say “picked randomly,” I mean picked from a Master List that I’ve compiled of 999 themes intended to serve as creative writing prompts (from the following sources: 501 Writing Prompts; 25 Creative Writing Prompts; Examples of Themes; List of Themes; 365 Creative Writing Prompts; 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts; List of Journal Ideas; and Top 10 Types of Story Themes). To pick a theme at random, I roll three ten-sided dice (the first for the hundreds place digit, the second for the tens, and the third for the singles) and find the theme under the number I have rolled. If I hit a theme I have already written on, I roll again. If I ever roll 000, I make up a theme. The Master List is a secret, so don’t ask for it.

Bits and Passages

A SPROOKJE

Under a bridge, a lubricious wodge of tatterdemalions sheltered from the rain.

THAT I AM REALLY LYING

I should say, when I say I believe this or that, that I am really lying, in a sense, since I am a complete speech-act pragmatist, and so I am only looking for the operational value in holding various beliefs as precepts to various potentially interesting philosophical practices. Though I do believe stable truth values hold within paradigms.

I would not go so far as to say that philosophy is a kind of literature, since it has definite governing aims and ways of positioning and contrasting arguments, independent from particular linguistic instantiations, and even has ways of proving things locally, under provisionally given precepts, but I would say that it is more like literature than science. 

RESISTANCE TO HEGEL

Don't you understand that your resistance to Hegel contains the seeds of your acquiescence to Hegel? By denying Hegel you are only sublating Hegelian discourse and allowing it to flourish within the edifice of your denial, which propounds the positivity of its own negativity. 

SAVE THE MOSQUITOES

In 2nd grade, apparently already an incorrigible satirist, I conducted a "Save the Mosquitoes" campaign; I made signs and passed out individually crayon-scrawled awareness-raising fliers. This was in Orlando, Florida. My teacher was more bewildered than annoyed, but she made me stop anyhow. I think it was my way of asking, "Is environmentalism hopelessly anthropocentric?"

BUT

Seriously though:
Fish people.

Proving Conspiracy Theories

The realization that humans and their institutions are in fact small and vulnerable overwhelms some people’s sense of truth. People resist the idea that one man who was a pretty good shot could kill the most powerful figure in the world, by himself, or that a small group of guys with box cutters could orchestrate a disaster that would plunge us into decades of war.

However, if you want to show that a sensational theory that contradicts loads of accepted evidence is true, you need very strong counter evidence—not some circumstantial bits and pieces cobbled together with your speculations about what seems likely to you.

You have to prove that an incredible thing is true, not prove that it hasn’t been disproven—or ask me to disprove it.

If you want me to believe that there is a species of giant hominid secretly lurking in North American forests, I don’t want to see your blurry pictures of something that may or may not be a guy in an ape suit, and I don’t want to hear your speculations as to why this idea “just makes sense.” I want the actual body of a Sasquatch, dead or alive. It’s on you to prove it with strong, undeniable evidence. It’s not on me to disprove your silliness.

This is important because when you become willing to play around with the truth and suppose the world really must be the way you feel it to be, you begin to think that your enemies may really be inhuman monsters, which opens the door for the worst forms of bigotry.