Category: Fiction

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode and previous pertinent episode

Another hatch and Abe and Rogers are walking through an evergreen forest. If Abe had noticed, he would have seen that it was just as beautiful, just as perfect, as all of the other worlds that they had passed through. Just the varieties of shades of green, and the way they meld and mesh together alone is hypnotically beautiful, for anyone paying attention. He isn’t. His head is down and he is walking. And walking, and walking. In silence. Using every mental technique he knows to avoid thought, and concentrating on the physical act of walking. Stretching his legs and closing his mind to all thoughts of….her. Rogers has to hurry to keep ahead of him. They walk all day without stopping. Abe never even thinks of rest, or food or water. There is no need for them from his body, so it never occurs to him to desire them.

Previous episode

As the words “All right, Slim” left her mouth, a hot dog and a cream soda appeared in her hands and she managed not to drop either of them. “I could get used to this!” she mumbled through a mouth full of frankfurter. They walked along the top of the cloud until long after she had finished and the detritus of her lunch had disappeared from her hands just as she was wondering what to do with it. And then they walked some more.

 

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode and previous pertinent episode

“If you are quite satisfied with your ahem, ensemble, I am afraid we shall have to keep moving for the next little while before I can fully “spill it,” but I can assure that soon we shall have the time an opportunity for a full briefing. For the nonce, we are still conducting evasive maneuvers, so if you would be so kind as to proceed after me….”

He walked down the service corridor a bit and opened yet another hatch and stepped through. She had been looking down and checking her new rig and not really paying much attention when she followed him through. So when she found herself stepping out onto, and somehow not falling through, the misty top of what her eyes registered, and her stunned, but rapidly recovering brain was rapidly figuring out was…. a thin streamer of white cloud high above the earth in an other wise crystal clear azure blue sky…..she just shrugged and followed, glad she had never been afraid of heights.

In a stunning development, both Obama and Clinton have decided to drop out of the race for President. Word from both camps is that Hillary and Obama had a private meeting last night over cocktails. According to an anonymous source, both Clinton and Obama had been nervous about their poll numbers against John McCain. They were sick of fighting with each other, and they wanted the election to be about the issues again. The anonymous source said that both candidates agreed that conceding the election to John Edwards was the right thing to do. We should be expecting a press conference announcing their withdrawals from the race later this afternoon.

more below the fold…..

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

“Nice,” she said. “now how about a gu……… She was suddenly holding a .45 automatic. She almost dropped it she was so surprised. And then she did drop it, with a loud clatter as it hit the floor…….as a hot dog from her favorite hot dog stand appeared in her other hand. Then she looked at the hand that had held the .45, and a cream soda appeared there.

She looked up at Rogers imploringly…..and the hot dog winked out of existence to be replaced by the stop sign she used to use when she was a crossing guard at her high school.

“Make it stop!”

Two walnuts, engaged in coitus, replaced the cream soda even as the words, “This is fucking nuts!” escaped her lips.

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

This time it was Rogers’ left hand that twitched which was interesting because Abe had assumed it was reaction. But most untrained people always reacted with their dominant hand, so…Rogers probably had some training. Either that, or that whole not really having a body as Abe knew it caused the interesting effect. He wondered which was …..her ….dominant hand. He wondered if she liked to punch on the line or if she preferred some kind of roundhouse action. Whether she favored palm or fist, went for the head ….or the torso first. Of course, most women were trained to go for the genitals…. Abe had actually closed his eyes and was visualizing ….her….doing high spinning back roundhouse kicks, in slow motion, when he felt Rogers’ hand strike his face

With all of the horrors inflicted upon us-as so well documented here at DD and elsewhere-it’s good to take a mind-break and go somewhere else.

This is a short story I wrote about 12 years ago. It was published in Bricolage, which has about 500 readers, in 2002. It used to be online but has since been taken down (along with everything else from 2001 and thereafter.)

I’ve been thinking about posting this here for quite a while and have finally decided to do so.

I recommend that you have a dictionary at hand or have another browser window opened to an online dictionary. (My brother laughed when I made this same recommendation to him, but later admitted that a “few” of the words were unfamiliar to him.)

I wrote the last sentence of this story first. Originally it had almost 500 words, but for the purposes of the story I edited it down to a mere 365 words. (Bonus points for anyone who can guess why it was originally just under 500 words.)

I hope y’all enjoy reading The Golden Peach as much as I enjoyed writing it.

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

Rogers had to physically go and get Abe.

He had started out with a strong ‘pssssst’ just before Abe got to the tree that was, for their purposes, the “end” of the lane. Abe had just kept walking, his body following orders to keep going no matter what. Then Rogers had coughed. Then called Abe’s name. Then, very uncharacteristically, had shouted  “Hey!” Finally he had had  to jog down the lane to catch up with Abe and put his hand on his shoulder. Abe of course, reacted by trying to grab the hand and twist it and use it as leverage to control his assailant, to pull and twist it up behind….well. It would have worked great, if the ‘hand’ had been flesh. Shrug. But it did bring him back to his senses, that he had lost completely, thinking about the person that had above all others, had now become….her….to him.

Since he was a warrior he actually knew what a poleaxe was, so he knew he had not been poleaxed, as the expression went, by…….. her. It was more as if he had been hit full force right between the eyes by one of those enormous wooden hammers things.

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

He passed like a summer storm. She watched him go ……..and then with a deep amusement at herself, she realized that while she had obeyed ‘orders’ and had kept walking no matter what her stride had decreased to the point where she was almost tripping over her own feet, trying to ‘keep walking’ as slowly as humanly possible.

She shook her head to clear it…but something of him lingered within her, deep within her. Next thing she knew she was practically skipping down the lane! And next thing after that came a thought of her husband. She stopped skipping and started shaking her head again.

Special edition to compensate for last night’s operator error!



(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

“…………To begin with, please walk down this lane at a normal pace and to the very end of its length. Do NOT turn off. Do NOT speak. Do NOT interact with, er, anyone you happen to encounter. Do nothing but walk straight ahead….no matter what may happen….until you have reached the end, where I shall be waiting for you…I would suppose.”

When Rogers finished his instructions, Abe looked him in the eye and saw how deathly earnest he was. Then he shrugged and stepped through the door. He semi-consciously noted wind speed and direction, the angle of the sun and where he could stand to put it in the eyes of an opponent, and tested the traction of his moccasins on the dirt of the little, tree-lined country lane. He resolved to keep his attention on the surrounding wheat fields, since the road was apparently ‘safe’….and he set out walking.

His senses were alert and his head was on a swivel between the two sides of the road. His mind kept going back to the cats…and in a flash, he had a memory, almost a sense-memory, of back when he had been a toddler. He had, in the rough and careless way toddlers have, been able to grab and pick up one of the semi-feral cats in his village. A calico….that had scratched the shit out of him for his trouble and sent him off wailing for his Mama. Interesting…..until.

Let’s get the terms straight.

THEY::: those who want to exploit the masses expressly and exclusively for their own self-interests.

YOU::: the one they have believing this is about somebody else: the foreclosures. the job loss. the fascism.  

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

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The corridor is quiet. None of them make much sound as they walk. They are alert. Rogers demeanor obviously indicates danger and they are all trained professionals. Attempts at questions or conversation are met by Rogers hands upraised in a shushing motion and it is apparent that he is stretching his senses down the corridor….listening for something? Abe could swear that Rogers’s ears have changed shape again, he is listening so hard. What’s worse is that he realizes that HE is now straining to change the shape of his ears, to try to listen harder….and what is even worse than that….is it feels like it is working!

He is about to reach up and check when Rogers raises his hand again.

Iglesia’s mind starts to wander, as it always does…while they are walking down the corridor. Her surface thoughts are on Paul, and her home. But the rest of her being is paying rapt attention to Rogers and every sound she can hear coming down the corridor. Which is exactly ….none. Then Rogers raises his hand again.