lost time incident 63
This week, we’ve got a few short pieces of fiction in convenient bite-sized form. They reach their conclusion before you have time to wonder what else you could be doing with your time. Additionally, there’s an actual slice of life, sliced from a week-and-a-half spent hosting my brother, who was visiting from Pennsylvania.

It’s much like every other week. No surprises. (Or is this how we lull you in to a state of complacency?) (It’s not.) (But isn’t that what someone would say if they were LULLING?)

Anyway. On with the show:

 

teenagers, you know
We were pretty typical small town kids. Jean jackets, cheap cigarettes. Bootleg cassettes and boomboxes with D batteries in basements, thin rugs on the concrete floor. Always drawing maps of the neighborhood with little five-pointed stars marking where there were supernatural occurrences.

A star for where there were lights spotted dancing in a half-built house in the new subdevelopment that’s still mostly dirt lots. A star for where Cheryl said she felt an unexpected cold spot on a summer night, as if she had been suddenly standing in front of an opened Amoco gas station’s refrigeration unit, looking for a Fruitopia or something. A star for where Bob “accidentally” ate human meat, which started the whole process where he became a wendigo, which is why we kept him locked in the basement’s bathroom pretty much full time.

For the first few weeks, Bob wasn’t too bad. Sure, he talked all the time about wanting to eat more human meat, but we could laugh it off. After all, he still liked to play SORRY with us on that rickety card table we had, or he’d still debate about the best era of Van Halen. He got a bit more furry than he used to be, but we were all going through some changes at the time. Whose body didn’t have unexpected hair, right?

Anyway, it ended up being a good thing that our pal Apollo, an exchange student, was staying with the Lammenwursts who ran the hardware store because we ended up needing a lot of chain to create a barrier over the basement bathroom door for Bob.

We were also starting to have some success with girls at about that time, and it’s a shame that Bob missed out on most of that. Through the door, during a lucid moment, he asked us if we could talk to Sarah on his behalf.

“You can tell her— I thought of this joke and you can tell her ‘You know what they say about wendigos… They take a while to warm up, but oh boy… when dey go…!’ Go tell her that and if she thinks it’s funny, maybe you guys can take all these chains down and she’ll go to the Autumn Formal with me.”

We didn’t tell Sarah anything.

Sarah hated wordplay.

the business
I had just splashed some rubbing alcohol into a drinking vase when she walked into my office looking like trouble. She was a pistol and her eyes were bullets and I hadn’t taken a gun safety course since the War. “What’s the story?” I said and her safety came off and it came to me that I was drunk and talking to my gun again. Another unsolvable case. My office was the underside of a couch. “I live here now,” I said, detectively.

 

burnt out signs
My younger brother was in town this last week, which means he got up close exposure to fraternal weirdness. For example, my brother, my wife and I were walking to the grocery store. I noticed that the sign above the Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts was partially burnt out, leaving something that looked like JO-A_IN lit up.

So I sang (to the tune of Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine”) ♫ If you want to do crafts / you should speak with our staff / Jo-ain’s ♫

My wife Amanda immediately hated it, having never developed an appreciation for my sign-based silliness. She’s still never forgiven me for pointing out that a Thai restaurant on Solano Avenue can be sung like a Neil Diamond song: ♫ Sweet Basil Thai (BUM BUM BUM) ♫

Only a few steps further was another partially burned out sign on the side of the grocery store. Its PHARMACY sign was reduced to PH___ACY, prompting a bit of Seal (♫ We’re never gonna survive / unless / we get a little / phacy ♫ )

Amanda raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t go with Gnarls Barkley instead? Or even Patsy Cline?”

My brother frowned a bit in thought, then added “You should go with something Def Leppard-related. Because the sign is missing an ARM.”

We’re related, all right.

Further proof: Hours later, long after we’re back home and settled in, my brother comes back inside from smoking a cigarette and serenades us with ♫ Pour some sugar PHA-CY! ♫

Anyway. He’s on a plane back to the East Coast and I’m sure Amanda’s glad to have this sort of monkeyshines reduced by half. But it was nice to have a week of “it’s not just me” moments.

 

ending theme song
Our header image for this week’s newsletter is from Ian Keltie (http://www.iankeltie.com/). I snatched it off some image-sharing site years ago, but was conscientious enough to save the file with the artist name because I knew that at some point, I’d need to offer a credit. Apparently.

Thanks for reading! Or thanks for deleting this email unread! Whatever you’ve done— and you KNOW what you did— thank you for doing it! You’re the only one who could do it!

Now I’m going to move on with the rest of the day, which I’m hoping is going to include progress on a project I started back in February. (Yeesh.) But if you want to help me procrastinate, just hit me up and say you want some new music and I’ll send you something via Bandcamp. Those are the other browser windows I have open… music to listen to while I work.

Save me from productivity.

See you later, alligators.

—Michael Van Vleet

On the North American continent, countries are attempting to enjoy anniversaries, despite the fact that politics at present is charting a course that will make for delightful reading 100 years from now, our mutant descendants shaking their heads at what idiots we were.

“Someone could have just said ‘No,'” our descendants will squeak through their flesh-beaks. “Politics is a mass delusion that requires consent of the governed. Anyone could have stopped it at any time, but instead they passed every day murmuring ‘Well, it can’t possibly get any worse… We can wait it out’ and now we huddle in caves to hide from the rhino roaches that want to dine on our twisted flesh.”

Politics.

Yup.

Anyway, here’s some words.

 

DISCOUNT POTIONS (2 for 3 Pricing – Everything Must Go!)
LOCKPICK’S DELIGHT – 2 sips and the bones in your index finger liquify, allowing you to jam your finger into any lock and gain entry.

WHICH WAY – A quick 8 sips and any boneless finger is reinvigorated, sprouting more bones than your finger has ever known! In all directions!

SUMMON DOG – 1 sip and all of your external bones become irresistible to nearby canines. Cover teeth before use.

MINT – Freshens breath.

NO MORE JERRY – Get Jerry to drink this one. That jerk.

PHANTOM FINGER – Replace any damaged finger with a ghostly replacement. WARNING: Will anger the ghost donor!

 

four signature scents to kick off summer
Sea Breeze – The waves call to you: Renounce your limbs! Shimmy off of your bones and rejoin the ocean as a jellything, shedding pounds for the perfect beach body!

Book Fire – Relive your childhood with the scent of hiding from the Amnesia Corp, your most beloved story taped to your chest to avoid detection!

Mud – Our beauty staff hired a pig– a literal pig– and she’s a great writer, but has her own thoughts about signature scents, so… “mud.”

MRC20083 – Sure, it burns, but everyone who smells it comes unstuck from time and can ask questions of their ancestors! Get it!

ending theme song
Short and sweet this week. My younger brother is visiting from the wilds of Pennsylvania, where they drink morning dew from the hollows of giant leaves and sleep on pillows made of rainbows. I assume. I haven’t asked him anything about Pennsylvania.

But that’s why we’re keeping it short.

Hey, on the plus side, that gets you back to your day faster! I hope it’s a day you’re happy to go back to.

lost time incident 61
Last night, the wife and I finally got around to doing something about our dwindling social life and we tried attending a Meetup event for the first time. We took a Lyft to the home of a stranger and figured that whether we met new friends and had fun playing board games— which was the theme of the Meetup event— or whether we got murdered by strangers who enjoy disguising their murder lures as board game events, at least it would be something different.

We didn’t get murdered.

Unless it was one of those rare murders where your soul roams free afterwards, and you keep living your life, sleeping in your own bed, waking and making coffee, totally SIXTH SENSEing yourself because no has told you you’re haunting your own life.

I wouldn’t mind that either, actually. I would love to be the first ghost to successfully type out and send an electronic newsletter after the events of their tragic murder.

BOO!

Ha! Did I get you?

Can you see this? Are you the only person who can see this, you little Haley Joel Osment newsletter subscriber? Ask the person next to you if they can also read this.

Anyway, yeah, we played board games all night. Three of ’em. All cooperative games, where it was us against the game itself. We lost every time. The theme of the night (“Losing”) was set early with PANDEMIC: REIGN OF CTHULHU. Do you know this game?

In it, all the players are characters who are aware that terrible occult things are happening in their neighborhood. For one thing: There’s friggin’ cultists everywhere. Doing cult things. They want to summon elder gods from other dimensions, even though anyone could tell them that’s a bad idea. Lesser monsters keep hopping through gates to other realms, which is awful. In short, the world is falling apart and our task is to do something about it.

Using our wits (and some cards representing magical artifacts), we race from town to town, knocking cultists on the head (with a hearty “Hey, jerks, knock it off!”), trying to shut down portals that would otherwise invite the otherworldly evil to enter our world and muck it up. Get evil all over everything. Tough to get off. Bleach and a lot of scrubbing required, I’d imagine.

There are many ways to lose this game and we lost in perhaps the oddest way: We ran out of cultists. Yup. If you ever reach a point where the game says you need to put new cultists on the board, but there are no more cultist figurines available that aren’t already on the board, the game just says: Okay, you’re done. You’re not keeping up. Just assume that the cult gets more and more popular, their recruitment campaigns have posters all over town, there’s sign-on bonuses available, steak knife sets, even your nice grandma joined just to have something to do on weekends now that she can’t bowl. Your grandma, in a hooded robe, baying for blood and having a great old time while the sky is rent open and winged forms with strange geometries erupt like cosmic hernias.

So we dusted ourselves off and set up a different game, and then failed to defend a town from being overrun by the undead. In the last game of the evening, we failed to keep the submarine we were on from exploding. All in all, it was a great night!

Anyway. This week, we’ve got some miscellany which started their lives as blog post headlines I stole from womens’ magazine websites, and an original short piece exclusive [a-a-a-a-a-air horn!] for you kind readers.

But first: some politics…

 

cw
You may dislike the President, but I admire his form. Not many people know this, but he’s made from a single sheet of flesh, carefully folded and crafted by a talented Flesh Origamist. If you were to unfold him, he would stretch halfway to the moon, which would be a good start, especially if it’s the further half away from us.

 

4 of the biggest myths about pregnancy and childbirth
1) You can always tell if your child is destined to overthrow you. Honestly, most soothsayers make this call based on whether you act like a jerk when you ask about what forces threaten your kingdom. Always tip!

2) Playing music for a baby makes it smarter. Nope! Not with your musical taste, poseur.

3) The fae want to swap a mushroom baby for your child as soon after birth as possible. Actually, the fae are quite patient and have even replaced teenagers!

4) They only let experts write these articles for mothers. Actually, any idiot can just write anything.

 

15 weird things that are making you anxious
1) That strange figure standing among the fruit trees, just there. Can’t you see it? When the lightning strikes, briefly?

4) The unknown fate of numbers 2 and 3.

5) The known fate of numbers 7 through 10.

11) Life’s fleeting nature. Every bird and bug, every enemy and friend, just ripples on water.

12) The taste of your own tongue. It curls back. What are you?

13) The crying sound the number 8 makes. But it’s just looking for attention. QUIET DOWN, 8!

14) Lists from health/beauty magazines that make you think your life could be better if you just read one more list.

15) Capitalism.

 

fast-forward
A typical-looking white family in a station wagon: father, mother, son, daughter, dog. The car whips along winding roads, each of the family’s faces seen in rapid sequence as they talk and laugh. There’s luggage attached to the roof of the car which stops in front of a multi-story house. Sun’s shining.

Credits fly by, unreadable at this speed, while the family unpacks.

Dinner is take-out around a table in a mostly empty room. Lights flicker, probably, or maybe it’s the flickering of the tracking on the film… no, it’s the lights. Father’s got a flashlight, looking in the basement. Outside, from behind, an unfamiliar figure stands by a tree, looking in through the house’s windows from a distance.

In the basement, red lights, the flashlight fails, father’s face is terrified. Upstairs the family has candles lit and the father returns from the basement, uncommunicative.

Night time. Panning shots around the house. External, internal. Low to the ground, rising up the stairway, zipping along to the doors that line the second floor. The children share a room. Whispering in the dark. The daughter sees something outside. The brother doesn’t get out of bed.

>>

Play.

A priest yells “YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE” and for a split second, you can see his head replaced with a latex replica, right before it explodes.

>>

Shuffling legs, black with age, come creeping up basement steps. The mother is pinned to the ceiling by an unknown force as her children cry, jumping and failing to grab her and bring her back to the safety of the floor.

Somebody is tossed through a window. There’s a fire in the house. Lots of flashing lights. A glowing portal and children, pushing forward against a powerful wind, throwing something through it. A few seconds of darkness, then a bright day and a subtitle that included the words “years later” but went by too fast to see the detail.

PLAY

A basement door slams shut. Lights glow through the cracks between the door and its frame. A heavy concentration of dust or smoke causes the light to separate into almost solid branches.

Credits. Credits. Credits. And finally, a Muppet Special, taped off the television years ago, interrupts the credits with song and a soft parade of felt.

THE END…… ?

 

ending theme song
Oh man. What a twist! Did you see that coming?

I didn’t. And I wrote the thing!

I’m just a vessel for The Muse, man. The characters, they just speak to me, and I am but a humble transcriptionist. I can’t take any credit for any of this. I’m a random collection of electronic impulses in a meat machine. But thank you, thank you for all the effusive praise. You really don’t have to do that.

Not for more than 10 minutes minimum, to maintain your subscription privilege level. This month only, we’re offering a special upgrade package. For 15 minutes of praise, you can get bumped up to PLATINUM VELVET level, with all that that entails. You’ll be taught an additional secret handshake. You’ll have 2 weeks of bonus time in the catacombs. Plus: frozen yogurt!

But for now that’s it. We’re done. Just… as soon as we’re done… typing this. And this. One last thing: THIS. Okay, now we’re done. Okay. That’s it, we’re at the end. Goodbye. GOODBYE.

—Michael Van Vleet

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