Month: January 2016

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

Meth for Moms is a new initiative in Seattle for single mothers dealing with overwhelming fatigue. By providing these ladies with a clean, consistent, and cheap source of methamphetamines, the city is providing for their increased productivity, as well as supplementing the meager income of area dentists.

MfM is the mastermind of Dr. Alfonse Snaps, who was the driving force behind the very successful Young Pimps program, a jobs-training course that quickly paid for itself after only three months in operation. After handing the reins over to a dedicated group of Hell’s Angels’ administrative volunteers, Dr. Snaps rounded up funding for this new initiative and was given the green light by City Hall last week.

New mothers, either abandoned by their children’s father, recently widowed, or not aware of who the father may be, can apply for a Meth grant through the city, and once a clear need is established, can receive coupons and buy-one-get-one vouchers redeemable at any one of over a dozen meth labs within the greater Seattle metropolitan area. Dr. Snaps has also solicited the assistance of pharmaceutical delivery teams from Juarez, Mexico, to facilitate the delivery, distribution, and receipt collections for the initiative.

“We’re overwhelmed at the moment,” Dr. Snaps has said “not just by the demand for quality meth, but frankly, also by the outpouring of support. After we got started with the Juarez PDs, no less than five other groups came forward with offers to participate–some even providing their own arms and militia attachments.”

Although it is still in infancy, MfM has seen very positive feedback from neighborhood and community leaders. Gerald Atrix, a small restaurant owner in Fremont, has opened up his dining floor as a clinic on Wednesdays, where new moms can consult with meth advisors for up to 90 minutes, with purchase of an entree and beverage.

The impact on other businesses has been positive as well. A new provision in the state income tax codes allows dentists to write-off any patient who’s dental work qualifies as a methamphetamine or other stimulant related health deficiency. (Unfortunately, the state has closed the loopholes that allowed for decay from sugary drinks to qualify under the so-called “caffeine schedule,” so MfM, for these dentists, couldn’t have come at a better time.)

Dr. Snaps claims that Meth for Moms, with dedicated volunteers, can more or less run itself. And then he’s on to other things: plans are being drawn up for a Boy Scout merit badge focusing on Heroin Dealing, as well as his pet project, a foundation that pairs rabid polecats and elderly nursing home patients.

“That one can’t seem to get off the ground, however,” Dr. Snaps admits. “You’d think there’d be more polecats with rabies, but so far we’ve had to settle for colicky baby ocelots and the occasional very angry raccoon.”

Still, Dr. Snaps will most likely persevere. Coming from a long line of altruistic philanthropists, Alfonse is following in the footsteps of several generations of Snaps. His father started a service in 1930s Germany that allowed young service men to collect books of daguerreotypes, photos of young Jewish girls, to select possible future brides. “It’s been likened to a kind of Fascist Facebook,” the modern Snaps explains, “But a sort of Nazi Tinder would be a more appropriate analogy.”

Before that, his great grandfather was a pioneering voice in the anti-pasteurization movement. “Today you’ve got anti-vaxxers, popular among some of the richest people in Silicon Valley. And back in the late 19th century, the right to diphtheria, tuberculosis, even scarlet fever was one enjoyed by the cream of society’s elite. Lord Aferty Snaps ensured that so long as you had a decent inheritance and little real education, you were safe to deny basic science and have access to brucellosis.”

There’s even a story told at family gatherings that Anciene Sol’nap, a Sumerian at the time of Hammurabi, was chief constable in the king’s horse manure kitchens.  “It’s an old story, and most likely apocryphal,” Dr. Snaps explains, “We do know that royalty and aristocracy alike worshiped equine dung, and used it as a medium of exchange in harems, seraglios, houses of ill repute, and churches. What’s not known, of course, is if the horse manure kitchens were indeed run by a constable, or were part of the religious wing of the military branches.”

A subtle distinction, but the Snaps family crest reads, simply, “Selibasiius, Sidharm, Sancipazi,” which, according to the family bible, comes for a long dead language, and means, roughly, “Service But Never Servitude.”

Sumerian soldiers were, of course, slaves.

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

Turn the corner off of Zunder Strasse onto Pfennig and you may be blinded by the white walls of the Z’at Ki Dak, an edifice that has been in place and maintained for centuries. The legend goes that Kind Gellen, king of the Ground People, suspicious that the Arachnid Armies would invade that summer, consulted with his wizard, Eld the Root. The wizard prophesied a long drought, by which the king deduced many hot, sunny days. Knowing that the Orcs were underground dwellers with large eyes, and that they’d be riding spider-mounts, beasts with hundreds of eyes, the king had the wall built and painted white to reflect bright sunlight at any advancing armies.

The story explains how a spy had infiltrated Kind Gellen’s retinue, and reported back to General Anathemus, leader of the Arachnid. Anethemus decided to stage a night raid– and on the very night the Orcs descended on Castle Hilo, a torrential rain flooded the plains, effectively killing the entire army. Not a single Ground People soldier was lost in the fight.

Kind Gellen was pleased, but also incensed that Eld’s prediction of drought had been so wrong. Eld pointed out that while his prediction had been incorrect, it was not his decision to paint the walls white. The king decided to banish Eld, rather than have him executed for treason. When word of this edict got out, the Ground People became nervous, since the last time a King had banished his court wizard, the resulting war had led, essentially, to the spawning of the very Orcs that had menaced them ever since. However, Eld took the banishment without any argument, and left.

Soon after, Kind Gellen had a new court wizard, who was, to many people, almost indistinguishable from Eld the Root. He called himself Ban the Branch, and like Eld, derived his power through Earth magic. Everyone assumed that this was Eld himself, with nothing more than a name change, allowing the king to save face while at the same time keeping an otherwise expert councilman.

That is, until several years later, as Kind Gellen lay on his death bed, surrounded by his retinue and family, his twin sons Gehalis and Gander, his daughter O’Nelitae, and his wife Demosa of Banyon. That was the problem– Demosa had died giving birth to the twins. Ban the Branch was using earth magic to conjure her spirit, to welcome Kind Gellen into the Summer Lands, but in doing so Ban was using graveyard earth, a touch of necromancy that Eld the Root would never have used.

For it wasn’t Demosa at all, but a demi-imp from The Fifth Oval, who, in exchange for Kind Gellen’s soul, had promised to give Gehalis the heart of his brother. Of course, as a being of purest evil, he had made the same promise to Gander. Each had approached Ban individually, asking him to assist in this plan, and Ban had decided he’d let the demi-imp have all three of them, wed O’Nelitae for himself, and become the first wizard-king of the Ground People.

That’s when Eld the Root returned. The fight between Eld and Ban was epic, lasting all through the night as even Kind Gellen struggled to stay alive. For so long as the King lived, his land gave power to Eld. As the king slipped closer to death, that power shifted back to Ban. On they fought, pyro-works and freezing sheets in a maelstrom, foul beasts against noble forest creatures, each wizard conjuring up an exhausting and exhaustive array of monstrosities both savage and divine to fight the foul battle.

On the plains outside Castle Hilo they waged relentless war, and soon the land was as black as Death’s blood from the terrible magics. Ban even brought forth those dead orcs and their now skeletal spider mounts to charge at Eld’s quickly diminishing supply of Elven archers called up from the Jade Slumber. Inside the castle itself, Gehalis and Gander discovered one another’s wiles, and fell to fighting as well, all but tearing down Hilo itself as they battled, for they were at the time the two most puissant knights of the realm, and their melee did considerable damage to stone and any person accidentally caught up between them.

O’Nelitae used what medical training she’d received from the Sisters of Broken Misery, with whom she’d been raised, to keep her father alive, battling her own consciousness, for she knew how much he suffered and that releasing his soul now while Ban was fighting meant the demi-imp would not be able to claim his soul- but she also know his very life-force was what kept Eld in the fight.

The battle between the wizards reached its peak, and Ban conjured a final massive creature, a bone-dragon from the depths of the Marching Under. Dragon, Orc and Arachnid descended on Hilo and Eld’s position in front of Z’at Ki Dak– and as the sun rose over the distant horizon, the light that reflected off those piercing white walls blinded them all, burning the eyes out of Ban the Branch as he stood locked in his final power gaze.

The battle was won, the king died, and Eld fell to his knees. From a tall tower the bodies of Gehalis and Gander fell, the two still fighting even as they dropped, only to die locked in each other’s arms at the base of the white wall.

Eld recovered, and stayed on to advise O’Nelitae until her reign as queen stabilized, and then left once more, stating that he had a duty to maintain the late king’s banishment. In his honor, Z’at Ki Dak to this this day is also maintained, its walls kept an immaculate, blinding white.

Cody, Brody, Jodie, and Rajeesh Patel-Modi were trying to have surfing lesson when BLAM! Shotgun blast. They fell off their boards, into the hot Hawaii sand.

Their instructor, Armadillo, did not. He cooly turned to see Sheriff Six-Shooter standing on the boardwalk, shotgun on his shoulder, smoke oozing from the barrel. Arma just glared.

“What the hell, dude,” said Brody. Brody had grown up in Wichita Kansas, and was a pothead from the age of thirteen. On his 29th birthday a friend had gifted him some sweet thai stick and a used copy of Point Break. Hearing him talk about that night, you’d think he was a little girl who’d been called to the nunnery at age 8 and never looked back. He gave up pot, got his Associates, got a job, and saved very penny for this trip to Maui.

“Issomeoneshootingatus?” said Jodie, who always talked like that. Jodie had a rare skin condition, such that direct sunlight turned her blood to caffeine. Not literally, but nearly. Jodie had grown up in Mesa, Arizona, an only child on account of more or less ruining her parents for more children, since she was a constant, frazzled mess. Constantly jittery, and if Antonio Dimasio is right, constantly nervous due to her brain thinking her body must know something. She’d moved to Seattle on a whim, and had been utterly calm, at peace, serene even, for the first time in her life. She’d opened a yoga studio for the homeless, and had personally rehabilitated over a dozen army vets who had previously suffered from very bad PTSD. But then she’d fallen in love with Cody, and he’d drug her ass here.

“Farm out!” said Cody, Brody’s brother. From another mother, even though they’d been raised together. Cody was the exact opposite of Brody: straight shooter, all-As, never touched drugs, Kappa Cum Laude or whatever, MBA, New York City, corporate job, wife, two little blonde girls. On more or less the day that Brody had seen Point Break for the first time, Cody had gotten fired, found out his wife had cheated on him and that the girls were not his, was arrested for drug possession, had his car stolen, and somehow pissed off a Mob Boss. On bail, the boss sent someone after him, which resulted in a very bad beating, so with what little shred of self-worth he’d had, Cody agreed to trade state’s evidence against the boss in exchange for the drug charges being dropped– oh, and it was all a set-up anyway, he’d never had drugs on him at all, he was just the victim of a bad cop looking to make collar to distract IA from some shady relationships he’d been developing in The Village. Cody had been put into Witness Protection, Seattle, specifically, where his business acumen an experience had set him up as one of the most liked and least profitable pot dealers in the state. Then he’d met Jodie, who he could not stand, but when he mentioned his half-brother was going to Maui on a vision quest or something she’d offered to pay for them to go to.

“Oh shit not again,” said Rajeesh Patel-Modi, the child of the first Indian couple to ever decide to hyphenated their offspring’s name. He was just here to learn a thing or two so he could hopefully someday impress a babe. Rajeesh was very much into babes. He had spreadsheets.

“Help you, Six?” Arma shouted. He was the very epitome of the platonic ideal of the stereotypical surfing instructor. He’s entire body was a deep golden brown, his hair was long and blonde and stringy, his face was a map of sun wrinkles, the board-shorts hang from his hips hid muscular thighs above strong calves, which themselves were dwarfed by his enormous chest, wide shoulders, and Popeye arms.

“Barbarossa’s back. Seen ‘im?” said Sheriff Six-Shooter. That was his real name. He wasn’t Native American, but through a complicated strings of marriages, divorces, adoptions, and a rat’s nest of half-finished paper-work, Sheriff Six-Shooter had grown up knowing that someday he’d wear a cowboy hat with a star on it, a handle-bar mustache, a leather vest with another star pinned to it, chaps, chinos, and boots. He hated revolvers, however, so he carried Remington Arms “Winchester” 1887. It should be noted that at the time of this story, Maui had no Sherriff, but folks put up with Six-Shooter, as all ever shot were blanks, straight up into the air, when no one was looking.

Arma just shrugged, which, owing to the size of his shoulders, was not an insubstantial movement. Sheriff Six-Shooter glared at him through the haze of the hot Hawaii sun, then turned and sauntered off.

Arma turned back to his class of surf-wannabes, and shrugged again. Then he looked at Rajeesh. “Now, what did you say?”

Writing Exercise: come up with funny pub and drink names, see what happens.

My dailypages at 750words.com

We started off at the Regis Arms, where Clarence had a Wesson’s Original and I had a Folby’s 13-Year. Clara, Mike’s sister, was there, serving instead of drinking this time, which meant she had to play nice when I smacked her on the ass. It was like hitting a velvet balloon packed very tightly with expensive cottage cheese.

From there we walked over to the Russet & Merry, where I had three bitters and a sour, while Clarence managed to make a Tiny Tim last through three repeats of “Come on Eileen” on the orchestrina. The landlord frowned at us the entire time but then when I asked for a bag of Denny’s Smash he seemed eager to sell them to me. Left them right there on the bar, I did.

Helen of Leeds was there, which is what we always called her after her dye job made that one bloke with bad acne chase her around for two weeks insisting she knew his mother. I suggested we go to the Duck’s Goiter, and Clarence explained I was thinking of the Lucky Goiter, and Helen-of set us both straight and led us to the Lucky Garter. Mine was a Champagne-on-Marbles while Clarence tried a Savoy and Seven. Helen-of asked if they carried Coke or Pepsi and when the stiff behind the rails said neither she had a Jamison in a tall glass. Cheeky.

After that, we hit several places in quick succession, tipping cabbies along the way to make sure we never had to piss in the same WC twice. The Gray Bones for a pint of Old MacMillian’s, The Chelsea Cracker for a shot of Grandmother Gilligan, and, of course, no night with Clarence and Helen-of would be complete without a stop at The Steeple and Tomato for a Flaming Cherry Cummerbund. As luck would have it, Clara, Mike’s sister, was there, drinking not serving, and when she smacked me on my ass it was like Infant’s all over again.

We snogged until Clarence got a call on his mobile from Clarissa, who said she and some mates were over at The Cooper’s Demise, so we grabbed a handy double decker and offered the driver shots of Purple Passion for most of the trip. He refused, of course, and we only stopped when he let us sniff his thermos. I’m no expert, but if his Earl Greyjoy wasn’t spiked with Little Jack’s Number Eleven, I don’t know my potables.

Clarissa’s mates were alright so we played credit-card bingo until one of them, Clayton I think, said there was a fruit machine over at Medusa’s that was usually good for a tenner. On the way there we hit The Raven and Flower, The Seven Sprinkles, Mr. Marten’s, The White Tiger (where Clarence nearly got into a knock-down with Mike’s sister Clara, who was there delivering cases of Wicked Peter, not drinking or serving) and even a quick half-glass of sherry at The Mine Diamonder, even though Helen-of’s been banned there for two years now. They didn’t even see there I don’t think.

The Mule’s Foot was closed to the public for a charity event, but Mike’s sister Clara, who was there serving canapes not drinking, snuck us out a plate of casa-queso-en-pano, which we gobbled uncontrollably until one of Clarissa’s mates, Clementine I think, pointed out that the paprika was from Madagascar, so we all spit it out. We’re not racists, for Christ’s sake.

After that Clarence dragged us up to Commodore Filbin’s where he had a Galloping Theresa while Helen-of’s was a Brutal Stone, no ice. I asked for a Teacher’s but they gave me a Philharmonic by mistake. I was going to complain but that was when Clarissa told us her mates wanted to go see Missing Chesapeake, a funk combo that were about to start playing over at The Buttered Onion. So we left before I could make my concerns known, though I was sure to leave a very fierce tip.

Of course they wanted a fiver for a cover to see the band, which goes against my principles, but Helen-of said she knew one of the roadies so we all got in through one of the side doors. I made straight for the automat because I was in desperate need of a curry, but Clarence beat me to it and got a shepherd’s stuck in the chute. He tried tilting it back and forth but then one of Clarissa’s mates, Clodagh I think, accused him of taking woman pills instead of man-roids and they started brawling. Or shagging, I couldn’t tell. Up on stage, a familiar voice started belting out an old tune about the best place to buy very expensive cottage cheese, and who was it but none other than Mike’s sister Clara, on bass guitar. Smashing.

When she was done I had that look in my eye so Clarence dragged me out and we headed towards The Jelly Tomorrow but we lost Helen-of along the way, and one by one Clarissa’s mates disappeared down alleys and up stoops to bedsits where they were squatting. Soon it was just me and by best mate once again and after a shortcut through Fitzpatrick Park we wound up in front of the Duck’s Goiter, which existed after all. That got us to laughing. It was a pretty good night.

So, listen, people will tell you that a pub crawl in Wichita, Kansas is bloody awful—but I’ve lived here my entire life, like, and I’d never leave it for anyplace else.