Bukkhead.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

Space aliens have landed in the American Midwest and taken on the form of indigenous peoples of the region from 10,000 years ago. Despite hailing from a star system several million light years away, these bioforms now look and act like Indians. “But don’t call us that,” says X!3gkrk Twofeather, one of their leaders. “The forms we have now predate such nomenclature.”

“Even travelling faster than the speed of light,” Twofeather explains, “it took us several thousand years to get here. We took readings with worm-hole scanners to find a form we could shape ourselves to and in that way blend in. We chose what was, at the time, one of the most stable, long-lived forms. We used a controlled evolutionary process, which took as many years. What we were before was, basically, sentient rocks. The switch from silicone to carbon was itself a few millenia.”

Astride his horse, wearing a war bonnet and gazing regally out at the plains, Twofeather is utterly unmistakable from an authentic Native American– at least our modern sense of one. “We didn’t expect your planet to change so rapidly. But here we are. And we’re adapting as quickly as we can. This horse, for example. The bioforms who dwelled her ten thousand years ago didn’t have horses. We’re just catching up.”

As expected, the arrival of foreign bodies has stirred up protest. Hundreds have gathered at the edges of the designated encampments to expression their displeasure with the new visitors. “Go back where you came from!” reads more than one sign.

Zk*tp7r Lurking Bear tries to engage some of them in conversation. “I’ll go back where I came from if you do, brother,” he says.

“I was born here, ya martian,” shouts his fellow interlocutor.

Lurking Bears eyes flash a dark green, as he performs a retinal DNA-residue scan on the protestor. “No you weren’t. You were formed in the back of internal-combustion powered vehicle some several thousand miles from here. I, however, was in vat of forming proteins until five days ago. I was “born” 200 hundred feet from this spot.”

“You know what I mean! Go back to your mother ship, asshole.”

Nearby, actual Native Americans are in conference, deciding how to approach these doppelgangers. Max Brandt, one-eight Sioux, explains: “On the one hand, it’s hilarious to see white people tell natives to ;go back home.’ On the other hand, these advanced beings are not us. They’ve appropriated our culture.”

Presented with this opinion, Twofeather shakes his head. “We have not appropriated their culture. We have appropriated the culture of their ancestors, and have adapted to modern expectations. Indeed, technically, it’s Mr. Brandt and his kind of who appropriated our culture. But we aren’t going to complain. Our understanding is that complaining about cultural appropriation is the purview of so-called Social Justice Workers, and we don’t want to steal their raison d’etre.”

Molly Waldring, a survivor of the Tumblr revolution who identifies as a bi-straight penguin kintype with homo-normative kanga (non-roo) tripolarity, has presented the New (Old) Natives with a manifesto, detailing grievances of the Uncis Nation. “And using phrases like ‘raison d’etre’ ranks right up there; stealing the linguistic heritage of French-born multikins, no matter what they’re self-designated geospatial centering coordinates are, is tantamount to brain-slavery,” s(h)e[it-they] explains while having bandages applied to stress fractures from rapid typing. “We won’t stand for it!”

Waldring’s colleauge, ex-Olympic bronze medalist sprinter Kart Mittering, who identifies as a quadraplegic snailkin with snake-formative sex-prey commercial-unbranding, scoffs. “Stand for it? Enabling shit-lord.”

Back in his intersteller neutron punch-drive wigwam, Twofeather goes over his people’s  seven-point plan for assimilating and thriving on planet Earth. “We’ve already contacted the heads of state around the world, and provided them with information as it pertains to cancer, infectious disease, super-bug suppression, improved forms of non-animal nutrition distribution, the ozone layer, global warming, the roles of women and minorities in the motion picture industry, reducing head trauma in contact sports, and inoculations against Boy Bands and Top 40 Radio. Of course, we sent them this information some 50 years ago, before we arrived, so we’re not sure why they’ve taken so long to implement our solutions.”

“Nevertheless, we’re hopeful,” he goes on to say. “We’ve encoded information on large squares of fabric by precision-cutting them to a ratio that, when measured to the appropriate decimal point, will contain information on all of the secrets of the universe. We’ve taken these “blanks” and sliced them into holographic portions, and distributed them around the world. And, we made sure each of this “blank-ettes” is appropriately coated with self-replicating copies of our original DNA. Kind of like your so-called earth ‘viruses’ but much more hearty.”

Twofeather smiles. “We’ve been reading up on your theories of Manifest Destiny. We think it’s a really great theory.”

fiction by Jason Edwards

I’ve never been the sort of person who just goes out and buys something if I can get my design team to make it for me, but I made a spelling error in the req and now I’ve got myself an electric cab opener.

And let’s be frank, this things is completely useless. Nevertheless, I’m not about to let all that R&D go to waste. So I went downtown to do some shopping. I put on my three-piece suit, the sharkskin one with a hint of salmon, a black silk shirt, a tie the board gave me as a thank you for 2012. 2012 was a great year!

I looked good for a guy in his late fifties, shaped like a butterball, going bald. I love it when people underestimate me. That’s how I get ’em. No one was going to underestimate me in my sharkskin and silk, though. I had my driver drop me at West and 144th, and walked a block to Jazeray’s. Think Bed Bath & Beyond but everything costs about as much as a decent family-sized home in the mid west.

I mean, can you imagine. Standing there, trying to decide between a blender and a split-level ranch in Nicoma Park, Oklahoma? And don’t tell me none of the houses in Nicoma Park are split-level ranches, or I’ll go there, build one just to make this illustration work, and then jack the price up to a queen bed-sheet set or even one of them “art prints” they got hanging in droves at the front of the store. Talk about overpriced. Tell me shag carpeting and popcorn stucco ceilings are worth 5 year’s salary and I’ll call the loony bin on ya myself.

Where was I. Oh yeah, West and 145th, since I walked a block from 144th. That was fun, walking on the street like a regular person. I went into Jazeray’s, bought about a dozen ice cream scoops, some refills for my Soda Stream, a throw blanket with a sport team logo on it– I forget which one. I was into sports in 2011, when me and the boys from the club where buying and selling shares in each other’s franchises. It was like a game- pun intended- to see who could own the most shares of the most winning teams. Kind of like fantasy football, but all that money shuffling put a couple thousand people out of work. Don’t worry, we got ’em all dream jobs scattered around the country. One guys piloting a desk and getting paid to answer the phone once an hour. I’ve called himself a few times. Nice fella. Knows a lot of movie trivia.

Went outside with my purchases, hailed a hack. You look like I do, you don’t wait long for a taxi. Tried out the electric cab opener– had it on the wrong setting. All four doors, hood, trunk, glove compartment, poor guy’s lunchbox. Woops. He started apologizing all over the place. I guess he didn’t know it was my doing. I didn’t set him straight. Apologetic’s less stress than anger on the ticker, and he looked about as old as me but without the room full of doctors sitting around playing Canasta in case I get a papercut or throw a clot.

He asked me where to and for a second there I forget my three assistants hadn’t faxed him my whole day’s itinerary that same morning while he was having his daily monkey-butt coffee. You know, that coffee where they give the beans to a monkey and his gastric juices break it down so when he craps it out it’s ready for roasting. My driver has expensive tastes. He used to be a Fortune 500 CEO with his own island in the Caymans. But I talked him into the job after a heart-to-heart about what corporate life was doing to his kidneys. Pour guy was on his fifth and sixth ones, respectively, and the AKF was flush and didn’t need any more charity.

Oh, and those rumors? That I started the American Kidney Foundation, the first non-profit to earn the equivalent of the GDP of half the countries in Scandinavia, just to put this guy in a position to need us and then need me? Not true. I mean, I’m on the board, but that’s coincidence. I don’t get off on having billionaires drive for me. Not at all. He’s just a fantastic driver.

Finally came to my senses and told the cabbie to drive me home. On the way I handed him an improved meter. It was way better than the one he had. He was reluctant at first, but I told him to keep it and I’d pay both meters. He wised up when he realized that while his meter said seventy-six bucks, mine said Tuition for All Your Kids.

And I paid both, too, even tipped him on the seventy-six. But not on the Tuition. I’m not an asshole.

Daily Writing Exercise, 750words.com

“Fiction” (?) by Jason Edwards

I as much as I am sitting here trying to write my daily words, I’m afraid that by saying exactly that I am sending myself down a rabbit hole where that’s all I can talk about, and there will be nothing inventive or creative. This self-analysis stuff is boring, Boring for me, boring for the reader. Look at her, poor girl, sitting there, reading this. She’s just come from the car wash. Her little Prius. Nice day outside for a change, so she grabbed a stack of quarters that had been gathering dust since the days she bought the washer/dryer combo and no longer needed to go to the laundromat. Old creepers there anyway. What had she been thinking? She’d been thinking about college, Duds n Suds, and all the cute guys. She’s better than that, she doesn’t need men to define her, but what’s wrong with a little eye candy? The only candy at the laundromat had been the kind leftover in a bowl at your aunt’s house, all stuck together and is that an actual mouse turd there on the side?

But it had been colder outside than what shined through the window promised, so instead of going to the wash-it-yourself she went to the automatic one, where you pull up and ask for the basic and the kid tries to hard-sell you the Premium. How many takers does he get? Does he get some kind of commission? Does he get up in the morning and log onto the internet and go to Amazon and gaze lovingly at some piece of just-out-of-reach desiderata, and think to himself “just five more premiums and I can finally get Call of Duty 16” or whatever one they’re on now.

Like she has any room to talk, the way she pined for that Prius. “Tell me about yourself” a guy she met through J-Date said to her. “I’m going to get me a purple Prius,” she’d replied, and before “I’m” was even out of her mouth his eyes were glazed. Not that she was ugly or anything. Maybe not stunning, but stunning’s never permanent, is it. Still, he’d obviously picked up from somewhere to ask girls questions, he just hadn’t bothered thinking beyond that part of it.

At the end of the date, which had been, well, a way to spend an hour, she insisted on splitting the check, which he took as a sign, which she didn’t intend but was glad it happened that way, and as they left, he’d said “Good luck with that Prius.” The way he said Prius.

Yes, most Prius drivers are assholes, it’s true. Either because they think, because they’re driving a Prius, they’ve contributed somehow and are now entitled. Or, because there’s, like, almost no visibility out the back, or on the sides, and they figure, if I can’t see them, they’d better do the seeing. She, on the other hand, is a very conscientious Prius driver. She’d taken a class. Read a book. Her brother wrote a paper on “Geo-Spatial Awareness in Top Athletes” which she had helped him research. He’d gotten a B but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that she knew that there’s an ability to see where everything is, see how it’s moving, and be able to keep track of all of it for a few seconds or even longer. She paid attention when she drived, damn it, and for hell’s sake she’s driving one of the few purple cars on the road, so how is it you didn’t notice me and then decided to honk your horn you BMW driving jerk?

Which is what had happened, coming back from the car wash. Like, the car is clean and shiny any bright, and it’s a nice day, no matter what the temperature is, she’s not going to take the long way home, on the highway? That new Carly Rae Jepsen on the radio, singing along, you don’t have to know the words, and then HONK!

Out of nowhere. He must have come on from the last entrance ramp and swerved over, like, five lanes, sat in her blind spot. Who cares if it’s the biggest blind spot on the highway, it’s still a blind spot, and he should know that. But BMW drivers are all jerks.

Which is what’s she’s searching for, now, to make herself feel better about what happened. She’s used Google and found my blog for some reason and wants to know why BMW drivers are such assholes. Instead she gets me just talking about how I need to write something. Sorry, Lacey.

daily writing exercise, 750words.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

There is neither rhyme nor reason in the arrangement of the forks found in the cutlery drawer of Able House, in Eastern Pigback, Montana. A veritable miasma of disorganizational styles. For to call it merely disorganized would be a disservice, akin to the insult applied to those erstwhile lexinauts wandering The Library of Babel as described by Jorge Luis Borges. Rather, the forks as they lay are purposefully chaotic, an oxymoron of placement, intent, and silverware.

Legend has it that a hobo found himself lost in Eastern Pigback, no mean feat, as he had never been in Montana in his life. He came upon Able House and entered. Inside he found anything and everything he might need: cans of beans, sticks for making bindles, extra large king-sized beds, matches, decks of cards with only a few missing, foreign coins, a bidet, small shiny bottles for trading, hand-built folding knives. But the cutlery drawer drew him. Called to him and seduced him. He opened it, saw the forks there, all higgledy-piggeldy, and went mad. His ghost still haunts Able House, they say.

That the hobo had never been to Montana in his life but was there for all of his death was the very character of Able House and the cutlery drawer. Put Fate on trial, for all the good it would do. And as legends go, the story of the hobo is especially troubling since no one has ever visited Able House and lived. So where do the stories come from?

A man sits on a bench on a train platform waiting for the number seven at 5:30. Another man walks past him, and the first man only realizes later that this man is now sitting on the bench as well. Minutes go by, as does the number 7, and 5:30. The man has a moment of self-realization, self-awareness, occupies a temporary duality as he watches himself listening to the other man tell stories of Able House. The cutlery drawer of madness. The upstairs bedroom dresser drawer of socks and madness. The door in the pantry the once led to a small garden but now only leads to madness.

The man puts a spoon into his mouth, blinks a few times, tastes soup. He looks around himself. He is at home, in his kitchen. His wife is there, telling him about the price of beef. He’s been home for a while, having taken that train, having picked up his car, having pulled into the driveway, entered his house, changed his jacket for a sweater, shoes for slippers. The soup is mediocre. His wife is mediocre. His life is mediocre. He resolves, over a stiff drink, to leave it all behind and find Montana. Later, he reads the evening paper, fornicates, sleeps, and the next day goes to work for the rest of his life.

He never tells anyone the stories he heard about Able House, but whenever his brain detects connotations and permutations of memory pointers that drift towards the places where the stories are sequestered in his head, he recalls them. He’s at a mediocre dinner party, a man named James waves his fork around for emphasis as he relates his distaste for government and mass murder, and the man recalls Able House, understands for a moment that there’s more to mass murder than mere madness, goes back to his cutlet. It tastes of sand, but then everything does.

The cutlery drawer, the sock drawer, the door from the pantry to the garden. These are only a few of the elements that make Able House one of the most evil places in Easter Pigback. Eastern Pigback is one of the most evil places in Montana. Montana itself is evil, as is the United States. And so is the Earth, and our Solar System, our galaxy. Scientists have more or less proven that our galaxy is but one of billions in a cluster of galaxies, each separated from the other by vast reaches of empty, cold, indifferent, and hostile space. The only thing that makes such large empty regions fathomable is that this cluster of galaxies is itself within a wall of clusters, and the empty regions separating these clusters is nearly but not quite infinitely larger. And then there are other walls of clusters of galaxies, and the space between them is madness.

Are these walls of clusters of galaxies themselves grouped in some sort of collection of walls? But what is a collection of walls? Let us call it a house. Able House is a collection of walls, of clusters, of galaxies, of stars, of planets, of countries, of counties, of vast acreages, of places where hobos find themselves lost, are driven mad by willfull chaos, and in death live only inside the entropy-making minds of tired old men who hate their wives but hate them gently.

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

Hello everyone, my name is Bananas Sunday. Thank you all for coming out tonight. I think there are still some chairs in the front, for those of you standing in the back. Don’t be shy! I don’t bite, not at these rates, anyway. My little joke.

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: yes, that’s my name. Bananas, as the fruit, although technically it’s an herb, and Sunday as in the day of the week, not the ice cream dessert. So no jokes or nicknames like Parfait, or Split. If you must know, it is a family name. We think it might have been Bananas on Sunday, once, but we know for certain that it was never Bananas on a Sunday, or for that matter, on a Sundae. Alright?

Oh, and my last name is Smith-Wopington. Bananas Sunday Smith-Wopington. When I was in infants we used to joke about how difficult it would be to put my name on the back of a football jersey. Not to mention the color commentator on the radio fumbling over my name every time I put one through to Brainless, our striker.

Which might as well act as a segue, since we’re all here to talk about the Zombie situation. I’m sure we could spend the entire evening on my name, but let’s not let ourselves be distracted any further. It’s just a name, and I do appreciate your using the whole name when addressing me. I’ve chose not to answer to “Bananas” or “Bans” or even “Smith-Wopington.” Reminds me of Army.

Now of course if I was loitering on a street corner smoking a dog-end and pawing through an American stroke book and you were to shout “Bananas! Zombie!” and one of them was behind me, I’d have no choice but to respond, wouldn’t I? But, for example, when we dined at Chez Egal, they always said “Mr. and Mrs. Bananas Sunday Smith-Wopington, right this way please.” Or at least they used to before, well, the incident.

That’s why I’m here, you see. The zombies. They’ve touched me personally. My wife, Elephant in the Room, was taken from me. And that large sigh from me was as much sadness as it is frustration that I have to explain her name as well. I mean really, we have zombies to talk about. But if that’s what you want.

When my late wife’s mother was with child with her, no one would talk about it, except that when they did it was always after using the phrase The Elephant in the Room. And so when she was born, her mother, in her delivery delirium, named her that, leaving off the word The, of course. That we both have and had unique names is entirely coincidental. It has nothing to do with how we met. I’m telling you because people always ask.

I met Elephant in the Room Smith-Dentist at a Catholic mixer. The romantic part about it is that neither of us were Catholic. I’m a God fearing protestant and my sweet Ellie was raised Zoroastrian. We were crashing. We met, lied about our names because we were young and foolish, fell in love, finally revealed our true selves, and the rest, as they say, is history.

A history snuffed out by zombies, which is the point, so if you’d let me get back to the matter at hand, that would be delightful. I mean, it’s what you paid me to discuss, isn’t it?

I mean, really, we usually wait for questions until after, and they’re usually on the topic of zombies. I have no siblings. Neither did my wife. We did not have children. Not that it’s any of your business, but we didn’t believe in the sort of activities that one would do that would eventually lead one to having children. I’m not talking about sex, you filthy perverts. We went at it like rabbits. I’m talking about reading the books, timing one’s copulation with the moon, preparing the house with gates on the steps and little plastic safety covers in the outlets.

Listen to me, I know what I’m talking about. You think fornication creates offspring, but then you thought zombies were a kind of fiction, too. And now here you are, huddled in a small auditorium and paying me to give you some insight and instruction. Is it my fault you can’t get past my name? Do you think I owe you something for my fee, some duty to change my name so it doesn’t distract? Well, I’m sorry, that’s not the contract I signed.

See? You see? There they are, at the doors, all this time wasted on my name and now they’re here, and you all packed in like sardines, an apt metaphor as they’re about to eat you were you stand. And to think some of you had the opportunity to move up here closer to the front. Always the first to go.

If anyone owes anyone anything it’s these damned zombies who owe me thanks because I always seem to be giving these lectures to what amounts to future dinner morsels. I’ve already cashed the cheque, so I’ll leave now.

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

One of those self-satisfied, smug little shits. Always with the half-grin on his face, and looking down as if “oh gosh look what I did.” Like, even when he’s peeling a fuckin satsuma orange. He sits there at his desk and peels it in one go, the whole peel still together, and that smile, and then sort of dangles it over his trash can and lowers it in. I hate that smug little prick

You know what I should do. I should find a hooker, and pay her to shave her pubes, and then put ’em in a baggie, and then go fetch one of those peels out of his trash can. Then I can sew it back together, and stuff it with the hooker’s pubes. Wear gloves so my fingernails don’t get crabs. And then give it back to him.

Here you go, Blaine. You always seem to peel these things in one go, and I was thinking, like you could put one back together, and I was thinking, why not give it a try, and so I did, and well, here you go.

What kind of fucking name is Blaine?

I can see him, he takes the orange, he goes oooookaaaay… like it’s weird or something? Like he’s not sure what to do? Use your fucking imagination you little twat. Pull your head out of Dartport’s ass or Greenport or whatever fuck port town you grew up in you little hipster piece of shit. How do you know I’m not an alcoholic? And sewing up this orange was my way of dealing with a bad night when my sponsor’s phone wasn’t picking up and my wife was four glasses into a seven-glasses-of-Chardonnay night? You want I should be ashamed of the gesture, go back to the sauce, beat Chardonay a few more times.

That’s her name, in my head, Chardonay, my fake wife with the drinking problem. Fucking Blaine’s probably dating a Jessica. I can’t stand Jessicas. We had one here, a few years ago, a Product Manager, or PM as she liked to call herself. Idiot. Program Managers are PMs. Product Managers are just product managers, what the fuck.

So get with the program, Blaine. Or maybe I got a secret crush on you, ya ever think about that? Look at me, I’m five seven, two hundred and forty five pounds, oily skin, hair is disappearing right off the top of my fucking head, I’m supposed to spend my whole life picking up rent boys and getting mugged or AIDS? Like I need some snot nosed prick with a holier-than-thou attitude and a trash can full or rotting orange peels to judge me just because I made a gesture. Suck my dick ya faggot.

Well, lucky for you Mr. Probably Watches Indie Films, I don’t have a crush on you, and I ain’t no alcoholic. I can hold my booze. Where was I last Saturday night, huh? While you were squinting at sub-titles and burping up your shitty shawarma? That’s right, I was at the Hop Cat, making with the small talk with a broad. A real broad, too, not the skinny Jessicas you take back to your place so you can show her the Sitar you bought when you were pulling a Habitats for Humanity gig in Edison New Jersey.

Yeah, so what, turns out she was a pro, and had a dick. Point is, until I knew she was a hooker with a penis, I was doing what men do. Talking to a woman in a bar. Listening to the Eagles. Drinking a White Russian and checking the baseball game over her shoulder ever few minutes. Big broad shoulders, come to think of it. Fuck you, that’s not the point.

The point is, you a smug little self-satisfied prick, if I give you a sewed up satsuma stuffed with a prostitute’s pubic hair, you take it and you thank me for it, god damn it. You put it on your desk and when you’re sending in your reports you hit spell check first and then you let your finger hover over the mouse and you look at that orange before you click send. And you think, what would Gabe do?

Gabe would hit spell check again. Gabe would make note of it. And when Gabe’s boss points out a spelling error in one of his reports, and Gabe says spell check must have missed one, and then chuckles, and his boss says Well I guess you need to read these more closely before sending, and then when he gets to Blaine’s reports, and says No spelling errors here, at least, Blaine better not have one of those smug little self-satisfied half-grins on his face or Gabe’s going to shove that pubic orange down his fucking throat.