Subjective Morality

Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category

The man was tall, no doubt about that. He was tall and lank, looked almost like the popular representation of Abe Lincoln. He even had a tall hat. Tall legs too. A child s standing next to him. What this child is doing here is anyone’s guess. Yes, anyone’s. Does he have any purpose in this story? We don’t know. Let’s find out. The child is tubby, probably has asthma or some other disease of the lungs which complicates his ability to physically act. The tall man’s name is Steve.

The child looked up to the tall man, a sliver of drool leaking down his double-chin.

“You know,” said the tall man.

“I know?” said the child.

“Do you know how the phrase ‘still-born’ came about?”

“I reckon’ I don’t, sir.”

“Of course you reckon’. Don’t we all reckon’?” A pause. Silence. “Well, once, long ago, there was this woman whose beauty surpassed all that is surpassable. 99.9% of the men in her village pawed after her like, I don’t know, paws, and all the women envied her beauty and stuff. The problem with all of this was that she was an abstinent woman. At least until she got raped one day on her way to the Kwik-e-Stop.”

“They have Kwik-e’s in villages?”

“Be quiet! The rapist forgot to use a condom and she had forgotten to take the pill. Why an abstinent woman needs birth control, I’ll never know. Well, the rapist impregnated her.”

“I don’t understand…”

“I’m not finished yet, impatient child!” He took out a pipe, lit it, threw it at a passing squirrel. “The woman grew heavy with each passing month. She thought she was getting fat. So, she stopped eating, went on a diet, exercised three hours every day. Of course, that didn’t help anything.”

“Why not?”

A stern stare. Continuance. “She grew lean. Poor child didn’t even understand what was happening to her. She was so young, so young. I think she was 90. I’m not sure. Don’t quote me on that. Well, when the baby was finally ready to burst out of her like slf-loathing from a lecher, she didn’t know what to do. Didn’t even know what a baby was, poor girl. Abortion wasn’t an option for her. Her parents were Catholic. They took her to the local hospital, and in those times the local hospital was the squishy herbalist’s house.” He stuck out his tongue and kicked a puppy into a garbage can. “The herbalist knew next to nothing about birthing a child. Huh, what is next to nothing? Of course, we could never know, but it’s an interesting question to posit. Anyway, when the baby was born, it was strangled by the umbilical cord. But, it was still born. Hence “still-born”. Not the best story, is it?”

The man stuck his tongue out at the child, who was probably traumatized. Who cares?

The spotlights all focus on the twelve contestants as they exit from behind the curtain and line up on the floor, all facing the moderator, who is standing on a dais and rather surprisingly looks nothing at all like Ryan Seacrest, but more like Dustin Hoffman with a severe heroine addiction. The spotlights now converge on the nameless moderator who then announces his name as Bill Osmo (good name for a moderator; short and easy to remember, which is one factor the TV shows consider in determining who they hire for their moderator. I doubt Mr. Seacrest would have gotten his job at American Idol if his name was Flangly Blingblam, but I digress) and he addresses the live studio audience in a voice somewhat reminiscent of a P.E. teacher’s, but not as harsh or strained from overuse. He introduces us to the general idea of the show (cleverly entitled “Down Your Neck”), which is pitting random homeless and/or bored and/or stupid people from the street in a competition of breathing. The contestant who can breathe the best is awarded a thousand and sixty-four dollars in check form, and the losing contestants get these adorable rubber duckies with the faces of popular U.S. presidents who have been rendered with inexplicably large foreheads in an attempt to make them look somewhat comical but really come off as looking incredibly creepy, which is why I like them and would prefer them to the thousand and sixty-four dollar check, but that’s just me.

Several crew members come out from behind the curtains and equip the guests with these machines that kinda look like scuba gear, the purpose of which must be to determine which contestant is breathing the best according to some predetermined scale of breathing. When the contestants all look comfy in their scuba-mask-things, the moderator yells, “Let’s get this show on!” which sounds rather lame for a TV host. You’d think they could come up with something less lame, wouldn’t you? Oh well. The moderator now briskly turns to face the contestants. The roar of the audience accompanies the spotlights as they turn towards the contestants as well. The Contestants wait for the moderator to start the competition. The moderator pauses, watching the audience with all their beady little eyes, like little chihuahuas’ eyes only creepier because they’re human and stuff. “Go!” the moderator shouts, giving the contestants a jump as they start breathing. There are cameraman all over the floor, getting close-ups of that breathing action. Yes, it’s very exciting.

About half an hour has passed. The audience is still on the edge of their plastic seats. Suddenly, but not quite suddenly enough to be considered sudden by, say, Spiderman, an audience member yells, “He’s wheezing! He’s wheezing!” while pointing franticly at the contestant on the far right who is indeed wheezing. Maybe he has asthma. I’m not sure. Posit a guess? No? Alright then. The wheezing contestant continues wheezing and the audience settles down again.

Five minutes have passed. The wheezing contestant is still wheezing, though it’s more pronounced, and he appears to be sweating vigorously.

Another five minutes have passed. The wheezing contestant is doing very freaky things. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with him. He’s flailing his arms and feet about wildly, panting and sweating buckets. The other contestants have stopped breathing and are now stepping away from him. I don’t know why the crew members haven’t taken him away and given him some medical attention. Maybe they’re scared. Maybe they want this spectacle to continue. I hope they do soon. That guy don’t look too good.

Three minutes have passed. Oh God. That contestant’s head appears to have mutated into some sort of alien proboscis with teeth. He’s jumping on the moderator’s dais. He’s eating the moderator’s head. My word, this is fucked up. I’m leaving now.

The boy sat at his desk, homoerotic thoughts plaguing him. Thoughts about boys and naughty things. He had been warned against those naughty things before by those that are no longer there; those that are but a mere memory in the fabric of existence.

The boy had a magazine in his backpack. A pornographic magazine that he had unwillingly stolen from his now-gone friend’s house, special in the fact that it was a gay pornographic magazine, displaying all sorts of naughty things happening between consenting adult males. His backpack was against his leg, which was shaking in a manner best befitting a nervous tick. He looked around: all was silent and empty. He reached for his backpack, intending to retrieve the magazine. “No,” he said to himself, his hand poised over the zipper. “No.”

He stayed his hand, kicking his backpack away from him, leg still shaking. He looked away from it. He bit his lip. He started sweating.

She had watched. Watched as the man she used to love began vigorously licking the black woman who’d been standing there for well over a decade; watched him slither his serpentine tongue across her bosom. She could not believe what she was seeing, watching, experiencing. The figurative sound of her heart rending in two was far more than just merely palpable; it was inescapable, filling the chamber with the screams of agonized heartstring. He had not noticed, nor had he cared. He continued flailing his tongue about, laughing deep in his throat; a diseased laugh, a diseased man. She wept.

like omg this dude came up to me one day and asked me if I’d like to you know get in his car or whatever so I did and he took me to his house and showed me his collection of rotting fish corpses and like idk why but just the sight of those corpses with their big bulging eyes and pale pink gills made me really horny like I just felt like I wanted to fuck a complete stranger on the street like that one time. you remember right? that one time when I fucked Josh in the bathroom and the condom got stuck inside me and he was like trying to pull out but he couldn’t? kinda like this whole think in iraq huh? yeah so anyway he like tried to put one of his dead fish in my vagina but I was like no dude and he just stood there for awhile and stared at me with his mouth half open and I was like dude you ok? and then he just threw the fish at me and it hit me in my boobs like my boobs that haven’t fully developed yet you know? no you don’t cuz you have the biggest boobs in the entire school, Stacy, I so wish I could have boobs as big as yours just so I could stick them in Josh’s face and say eat it! eat it you cocksucker! but I already know what Josh’d do he’d like totally hit me in the face, you know? like that one time when his condom got stuck in me in the bathroom and he like got really frustrated cuz’ it was hurting him, you know? so he just starts beating me and beating me and I’m like crying by the sink while he’s standing over me with that really stretched out condom and he’s just looking down at me with disgust but then he starts trying to pretend like nothing happened and he starts apologizing and shit and I’m just crying there cuz’ I’m hurting and it hurts oh so much. I’ve never hurt like that before, except for that one time when I was in my room and I tried to lick my own clit and I ended up spraining my back with my tongue right on it and I can’t move so I’m like stuck in this awkward position with my tongue on my clit and my mom comes in the room and starts screaming at me and calls me disgusting and says that I’m an agent of satan and then she starts hitting me with her broom and it hurts so badly, Stace, it hurts so much but I can’t move so my back just feels like it’s about to break in two when my dad comes and starts beating my mom calling her a crazy nazi bitch and all this shit and my dad came up to me after he was done beating her and she was crying in a corner and he says he thinks I look hot. can you like imagine that, Stace? he said he thinks I look hot and for some reason that reminded me of that time with those freakily sexy fish corpses that made me so hot and like how that guy just ran down his stairs leaving me in his livingroom thing so like idk if he was ok or not so I slowly walked downstairs and like when I get down there I find him hanging by his nipples from the ceiling by two clamps hooked up to a car battery and like the wires are all around his throat and he’s just hanging there twitching occasionally and like idk but I couldn’t resist, Stace, I started masturbating right there and then over this dead dude’s twitching electrified corpse and I swear to god, Stace, I’ve never come so hard in my life.

Once upon an arctic circle, there was a penguin born with 70 wings. All the other penguins could fly, but poor little Oswald, the 70-wing monstrosity, couldn’t. All the other penguins made fun of poor Oswald, saying “Squack, squack!” One day, the littlest flying penguin teased Oswald. Oswald then proceeded to take out 70 katanas and kill them all, making them into sushi for him to feed upon. Oswald lived for 70 years off penguin meat, then was hit by a bus.

Shut up, it’s my story.

That man. He been down on the farm. I see him sometimes. See him down there in the barn. I seen him suck a rooster once.

One day, I’s just walkin’ through the fields, mindin’ my own business when I see him. He took the rooster and just started suckin’ on it’s legs. I never seen somethin’ so strange.

Nex’ day that man come up to me ‘n’ says, “Damn, it sho’ is hot out here. What say you ‘n’ me go down to the barn? You know, get in the shade.” I didn’ want ta insult the man, so I agreed. I didn’ come out alive.

Boolean: Today I saw a wrapper outside on the street, fluttering in the breeze while They were taking me home. It was a wrapper from one of those Neutrino bars I like so much. You know the one?

Mr. Boy: Yes.

Boolean: Yes, well as I watched it there, fluttering in the breeze the way most thin plastic packaging material has an ever-so-slight tendency to do, I wondered ‘What if that was my wrapper?’ And the more I thought about it, the more I disliked the thought. I thought, ‘Oh, God, am I responsible for poisoning the environment with this plastic wrapper? Am I the one who will kill another fish or polar bear or as-of-yet undiscovered species of the mammalian or fish archetypes because I was too lazy to simply throw the wrapper into the oh-so-conveniently located trash can that just so happened to be a mere five feet—I  measured—from me, even though I was getting ready for They to take me There and They always come at 6:30 A.M. sharp and I only had exactly two minutes to walk all the way down the street to the stop where They usually, but not always, pick me up as well as that other girl who waits at my stop for They to also pick her up with her offensive pink hair and her bag that says “I am a member of the Homosapien Society”.’ And she talks, Mr. B. She talks so damn much.

Mr Boy: Indeed, I think I recall her. She does have a certain knack for rambling on and on about stuff.

Boolean: Well, as I was saying, the thought of doing any harm to the oh-so-precious environment with my neglection of throwing that Neutrino bar into the ever-so-five-feet-away trash can got me thinking about suicide. I haven’t thought about suicide since that sweet little girl threw that razor blade at me and told me to ‘eat shit and die’.

Mr Boy: I remember her as well. Nice kid. I think her father was a troll.

Boolean: Anyway, I was thinking about suicide when I felt a sudden epiphany slap my cranium. Aren’t we all committing suicide? I mean, to put it simply, we all know that we have a certain chance of dying by going outside to, say, check the mailbox, or yell at the neighbor for letting their stupid dogs pee all over our plants again even though we’ve threatened to call Animal Control numerous times, but if, say, we slip on a patch of ice and crack our oh-so-thoughtful heads open, or that same neighbor’s dogs maul us to death and then pee on our corpse, knowing full well that there was a chance of  that happening, wouldn’t it be suicide?

Mr Boy: It depends on how you define suicide.

Boolean: And how do you define suicide?

Mr. Boy: With a dictionary.

Boolean: No, I mean how do you, personally, as in your own opinion, define suicide?

Mr Boy: Noun, verb, word. An act by which a person willfully and intentionally takes their life, either because they’ve discovered that the divine entity known as Dog does not exist, or that, for example, their house has been burned down by the bum that’s been living in their attic for three-to-four years, smoking joints and having a jolly good time while he listens to their children play with their Hot Wheels or whatever downstairs on that beautiful carpet that their richy rich relatives just bought them.

Boolean: So if I am interpreting your definition of the word correctly, it would be suicide.

Mr. Boy: No, no, no. I think you forget an integral part to my definition, which I shall hereafter call “Mr. B’s Def. of Suicide”.

Boolean: And what part is that?

Mr. Boy: That suicide must be willing, and intentional, and other such words denoting a conscious decision, at least according to Mr. B’s Def. of Suicide.

Boolean: So then you must want to commit suicide in order to commit suicide.

Mr. Boy: Exactly, my dear Boo.

Boolean: But then what do we call it when people who don’t want to commit suicide die from that ever-so-slight chance of death that’s embedded in every daily or nightly task we undertake in our drudgerous lives?

Mr Boy: We call those occurrences “happening shit”. Then we go to the funeral of said people, and either get drunk and ramble and hit on the man’s mother, or tell all who will hear that said man must be looking down on us from an as-of-yet undiscovered layer of sky that presumably is dense enough to hold the weight of a full-grown man, or pretend that we actually gave a shit about the man while actually wanting to get into the dress/pants of whichever male or female relative we happen to be dating at the time.

Boolean: Ah.

Mr. Boy: And sometimes the same drunken person who previously was hitting on the man’s mother may slur his words and proclaim that said dead man must be looking up at us, presumably from the Judeo-Christian concept of Hell, which most of the man’s relatives and friends—except maybe the one’s trying to get into the undergarments of the opposite or same sex—find offensive in the extreme, in which case they may ask the drunken man to leave, to which he will undoubtedly respond, “WHA’RE YOU TALKIN’ BOU’?! I AIN’ LEAVIN’!”, to which the angry relatives/friends will counter by promptly kicking him outside where he will grumble and curse and eventually stumble over to his car and go on a drunken-driver killing spree, murdering 16-and-a-half people while under the influence.

Boolean: Wow.

Mr. Boy: Indeed.

Boolean: I love you, Mr B.

Mr. Boy: I love you too, Boo.

A: “Oh dear God, that man just caused!”

B: “What? WHAT?!

A: “He done caused something!”

B: “What did he cause?!”

A: “I don’t know! But he caused something!”

B: “That hasn’t happened since an infinitesimally exponentially small time ago!”

D: “WHY?!”

And that’s how the alphabet was destroyed.