lost time incident 68
Greetings, travelers! It’s been awhile since I’ve visited your Inbox. I like what you’ve done with the place. No need to thank me… I’m happy to improve the general tenor of your Inbox with my presence. Not every email has to be a newsletter from a vendors you bought something from once.

I just got back from watching a movie alone. I don’t do that often. I got a seatmate to the left of me, but about halfway through the film, he got up and walked out. I thought it was a restroom break, but he never came back.

Have you seen him? Kind of an old guy? Like the kind of old guy whose bladder could no way make it through a modern movie?

I didn’t check to see if the theater had replaced its Men’s Room with one of those imported-from-Knossos labyrinths like all the hip new places are doing. The trick to finding a urinal in one of those is to just pick a wall, left or right, and stick to it. Eventually you’ll find your way to the labyrinth’s dark heart where you’ll avoid eye contact with a minotaur who always seems to be standing in the way, drying his hands. How wet are your hands, fella? Just drying and drying.

Anyway, in this installment, we’ve got some more collected short pieces. They’re just below. Just… just look down. Keep scrolling. No, stop reading this part and go down.

Okay, well, I’m just going to stop typing here if you’re not going to follow directions. Then you’ll have no choice but to read below.

I’m doing it now. Here I go. Don’t think I won’t. I’m doing it. I’m doing it now.

 

top 5 secrets of the recently dead (and you won’t believe #3!)
1. The afterlife can not be described by words… only by touch. Surrender to the touch of the recently deceased. A cold palm against your cheek. You will know.
2. Coffins are not for containment. They are keys. They open the doors.
3. Where language fails, the self dilutes like salt in water.
4. A kicky red lipstick can reinvigorate your look! Match colors to scarves to really kick it up a notch!
5. The silence in graveyards is a pause in conversations, for your benefit. Move on.

 

it’s [day of the week] and you know what that means
It’s Saturday and we all know what that means! Time for the whole village to grab their sharpest knives and head to the orchard in search of the Apple King. If we find him on his branch, you’ll hear the cry of “Justice for the Pips!” as the knives strike home, banishing monarchism again from our fruit pastures.

It’s Saturday and we all know what that means! Time for the whole village to grab their sharpest knives and head to the orchard in search of the Apple King. If we find him on his branch, you’ll hear the cry of “Justice for the Pips!” as the knives strike home, banishing monarchism again from our fruit pastures.

It’s Tuesday and you know what that means! It’s time to gather the whole family and go down into the caverns as we do every week, drowning our worthless eyes in darkness, slipping into deep cold pools and gnashing cave fish with our needle-like brittle teeth. Fun for all! Except the fish! And the day ends, floating in the subterranean void, false stars of exertion in our vision, listening to the hum of the earth that will one day swallow us again.

cursive in schools
So glad kids aren’t being taught cursive anymore. Half the grimoires one can purchase in the Half-Green Market are nigh-unreadable, thanks to the lazy looped handwriting of mages and aetherpokers, running all their letters together EVEN BEFORE they get ghastslime, candle wax and cat hair on ’em.

Teach every junior candlewick bender and spirit knitter to PRINT, please, thank you, and we’ll happily spend fewer days haunted by accidentally-summoned eye-wights because we read some cursive J as a G.

ending theme song
What the hell’s an aetherpoker? I have no idea.

All I know is: the local rag-picker knows a spot where people just dump short fiction and he scoops it back up with a lucky pointy stick and when I hear his squeaky wheel going by, I lean my head out the window and shout “Hey, you got any fiction in there for me?” and he says “Sorta!” and then I lower my basket to street level with some coins and toast in it (he likes toast) and he sends me back this… stuff.

Eye-wights. “It’s Saturday.” This fiction isn’t fresh, that’s for sure. Days old. I don’t know what to make of it, but here you go. I can’t get that toast back. That toast is gone, gone, gone.

—Michael Van Vleet

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