Band of Bass by G. Arthur Brown

Mal surprises me by turning around quickly and saying, excitedly, “I pulled your mother’s pork!” 

At the time, I’m kind of in love with the idea of making a surreal tele-dramedy starring Anna Friel as a sultry dream thief and Crispin Glover as a glove-maker with the ability to read gloves like gypsy ladies read palms.  But a person would have to wear the gloves long enough to break them in, to give them creases.  Oh, and they’d have to be leather gloves.  And then, I guess, he has to put the gloves on to get the full feeling.  The premise still isn’t finalized when I’m shocked out of my reverie by Mal’s declaration.

I am horrified, to say the least. It is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me, and yet I have no idea what it means.  “What? What the hell do you mean?”

I should describe Mal to you because you’ve never met him.  He’s shrewd and cagey, and he collects jam pots, which are things that British people put their jelly in.  Mal is British. 

He doesn’t normally speak of pork, and not of my mother, either.  When he speaks, it is of lifts and lorries and gunless coppers.  He sings in a band, of course.  College radio loves him.  Can’t stop playing that first album over and over.  You have to be in college to like his band’s music.  A sophomore described them as “a Beatlesque Gang of Four with three bass players.”  Everyone in the band plays bass.  But they have electronic apparatus to make the basses sound like other instruments.  The band is the “complete opposite of the Doors,” according to one stoned poli-sci major.

Mal, with some kind of juice dripping from his chin, chooses to simply reiterate: “I pulled your mother’s pork, mate.”

“Them’s fightin’ words, Mal.  Take it back.”

“Have it your way.”  He shrugs and goes back to fiddling with his HAM radio.  “Technology won’t save us.”

“It has surely saved your band of bass.  Otherwise, you guys would sound like a retarded Claypool masturbation session.”

“Are you sure you don’t want one of these pork sandwiches?”  He motions to the plate sitting on the desk next to the radio. 

“I swore to the Jewish g-ds that I would never eat my mother’s pork, nor be stewed in her milk, though the latter is getting harder and harder to avoid.”  I peer out the window at the milk drenched landscape.  Global warming has really pulled a doozy.  You can’t go anywhere without smelling the stench of spoiling dairy.

“That’s your mother’s milk, mate.  Have some bloody respect…. Oh, hello!  Lord, is that You?  I have finally got You on my HAM radio!”  Mal is clearly excited as he speaks into the microphone, but the Lord isn’t speaking English in reply, so I have a hard time making out His end of the convo.

“First of all, Lord, I’d like to let you know we need a wet cleanup on aisle Earth,” Mal says, and then chuckles at his little joke.  “Second of all, Lord, I do want to do the live studio session.  The other lads are quite excited about it.” 

The Lord doesn’t offer to produce many bands for live radio broadcast.  Mal is honored, and he should be.  But strangely he hadn’t accepted the offer on the spot when it was first proffered last Wednesday.  He wanted to play it cool, I guess.  I think the Lord understands that sort of thing.  I get that feeling from the way He says His words, because I can’t actually divine their meanings.  And I’ve used an online translator and everything.

Suddenly the transmission is interrupted with a commercial for Rectal Assassination 8, starring Anna Friel and Crispin Glover as anal saboteurs who attempt to prolapse the rectums of five not-so-lucky college girls. It takes place during the Cold War, and there are Soviet agents embedded in the linings of their colons.  

“I can’t wait for RA 9,” Mal says.  “That one takes place during the American Revolution.  Tricorne hats abound.  John Paul Bones has his spy glass up a sailor’s porthole right in the magazine advert. Which reminds me, mate.  I pulled your mother’s pork!”

I have to assume the Lord hears the homicide over the HAM radio.  How could he not?  The murder weapon was the HAM radio.   

Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown

Stone Sex by Meg Sefton

Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done about the coupling of tombstones. First of all, their copulations are deafening — how they grunt and sigh! — and secondly, the sparks spewing from the friction — blue, green, yellow, and purple sparks — ignite fires in the dry season. (And when the fires erupt, corpses awaken and are enraged. They must be put down by truckloads of cool, damp earth.)  But the biggest problem with stone sex is this: A cemetery of newly formed stones.  And no one has managed to escape the certain pairing between death and a stone.

One time, a stone cutter, ambitious that his town should live, fashioned the tombstones into paving stones, stones for the fireplace, the threshold, the garden, thinking he could circumvent their original purpose. When he disappeared they only found a pile of stones beside the cemetery where he had been working.

What was convenient about the situation, however, was that the stone pile was a nice place for the townspeople to eat their sandwiches, so they stopped asking questions and began hanging out. Also, what was good about it was that the smooth stones made nice little ledges for their beer. So when a man did not return home at night, other women would relay this information to his frustrated wife: “Oh, he's still on the stone pile.”

One night a man materialized across the cemetery where they were sitting and drinking.

“Are you a ghost?” said Jacob. He had begun driving them crazy with this idea of diverting the creek so it ran next to the graves. They could sink a barrel of ale into its cool body, he said. It would be woman for them and they could be like the man, filling her vessel, and together, they could make cool beer. He was always wild with his crazy metaphors and his stupid ideas. His horny talk was probably inspired by the horny stones they had subdued for the season by anchoring them to the ground with chains.

“I'm not a ghost,” said the man.

“Are you a newcomer?”

“ This implies I'm staying.”

“Are you God?”

“Would God do this?” and he reached into one of their sacks, grabbed a beer, popped off the cap, and guzzled it down.

“I don't know,” Phillip said. He was the town tombstone engraver and he was a philosopher of sorts. Engraving the dash between the dates of birth and death made him shaky. What did the dash represent? It was all so ordinary. Were they all so alike? It made him depressed. “Jesus ate even after he rose from the grave.”

“Stop being morbid,” Jacob said. His wife Tatiana said the same thing. In fact, he sometimes wondered if they slept together. They said many of the same things, in exactly the same way. It made him angry, then it made him depressed and he couldn't do anything about it. He couldn't even prove anything definitively.

“Well I can assure you I'm not God. Excuse me, this is underfoot,” and he picked up a long-handled scythe they had not noticed before. Apparently it had been on the ground. He leaned it against a tree. “I hate it when stuff like this could bean you in the head any moment if you step on it wrong.”

A scythe, what a cliché, thought Phillip who expected more from the grim reaper. Did even religious clichés have to come true? Were there no surprises?

“I've had sex with your wives. They're all very good. You are lucky men.”

Was this guy nuts? Phillip thought. They would kill him, all together, with their hands around his throat. There were about twenty five of them. But he wasn't a cliché in this: He was pretty buff for the grim reaper.

“While you guys have been yucking it up on the pile, which by the way, is the grave of a dead man, I've been enjoying life. Your women are very lonely and very receptive. I've learned how to knit, how to dandle your children on my knee. They gave me tea and gossip and practically talked me into their beds. I love this town. I love this place. I think I'll stay.”

“We've got to get rid of him,” said Jacob when the man had wandered off into the misty fields with his scythe. “Our women were fine before he got here. We're screwed.”

“We must have interfered with the balance of things,” said Phillip. “Maybe that's why we're being cursed with this maggot.”

And so that's what they did. They released the stones so they could couple, except at night, when they wanted to drink, they cooled them down with water from the creek and it was quiet and peaceful again and the men got drunk and the women went back to their creative, secret occupations which involved, among other things, ruling the world. 

-------------------

Meg Sefton lives and writes in Winter Springs, Florida at the edges of suburban sprawl. In fact, keep going down her road a tad and you hit the east coast where, in her mind, she is frolicking in the surf. She blogs her original stuff, some of which have made it to publication: http://blackshattered.wordpress.com/.

Copyright 2013 Meg Sefton.

Something New (Story of Job)

I got an idea for something new while at work the other day. I've nearly completed it and hope to have something to submit by the end of this week. When the muse comes upon me, I can write so quickly that I'm glad I took a typing class in high school. I can't imagine how hunt-n-peckers can possibly write anything longer than a drabble.

But here's a little slice of "The Story of Job," tale of a 'Mongoloid,' that I'd like to share:

“Hi, Job,” I say with as much false enthusiasm as I can manage at eight in the morning. I try to scurry to the produce department too fast for him to take a real interest, but he’s predatory in that regard. My scurrying makes him hungry for my attentions. I pray to my heathen gods that he doesn’t want to touch me. But he’s coming my way and holding up his crusty, reptilian mitt because he wants to do a combo high-five/shake. Whatever grows upon him will come in contact with my flesh, but I don’t want to be rude, so I make direct, skin-on-skin contact. And I imagine the birth defects that I am liable to pass along to my future offspring, assuming my seed one day finds purchase (only $9.99 at my website).

“Hey, Leary!” he says with a warped grin. “Guess what?” And he doesn’t give me time to guess; he comes right out with: “I laid more eggs, and I hope they are going to hatch this time. The shells are still real leathery and scaly but I’m keeping them warm. When they hatch I won’t call them abominations. I will call them beautiful babies! ‘Cause, you know, I got compassion for them, ‘cause when I was a baby my mommy tried to throw me back.”