The following story fragment is one that was begun as a game. One player starts the story and after a predetermined amount of time stops, leaving the next player to add. This particular round of the game didn't get further than a couple of turns, but is interesting none the less... (the other participant in this round is author, Christian Gindlesperger)
(circa 1998)
DOLF:So the man took account of his troubles, taking care to neglect any that are the cause of his own lacking--thereby bringing about unnecessary duress--and went about beating the snot out of a pair of bible thumpers. This, of course, was obviously his way of expressing his hostility towards his young pentecostal girlfriend. I've met this bird, my friends and I think you'd do something not far from the same if you were in our hero's galoshes. This was no place for the enterprising sprit of a purehearted young man,evil lurked at every path blocking it, constricting it... one would think it was intentionally done. And yet, it was very subtle as if it was done by the CIA or a sub-entity of the Disney Corp. He needed something new, something fresh, where he could be his own man with his own identity. This, my friends was no place for him. He could already feel his brain turn to shining steel.
People looked strange to him. Almost as if they were gutted completely, or perhaps they were concealing some strange deformity under their sweatshirted and kakki panted appearance. Perhaps four extra testicles for the girls and the dudes had teeth grown in neetly around their
urethras.
But this was no bother to our hero, he simply had a life to live. He must remain free of judgement, he must live his live on his own and not worry about image or the invoices of life. He was a producer, not a recorder. He must find reason and live only for that reason, and by God people would respect him for it.
He had a start. He had a girlfriend from the heartland of theUSA. Sure, she was brainless: perfect. He had a car. Sure, it was a 1986 Pinto: perfect. He had a vision.
CHRIS: His vision was blurred: perfect. It obliterated his poor spelling. What he really needed was a spell-checker, and not some fabricated-mechanical contraption sprung forth from the silicon loins of Mr. William Gates.
No: he needed a nice juicey bit of human slop, with two legs and a neck, whose lips were never to far from a dictophone. But no, it was pointless garble; it was a way in, not a way out--it was a pyhrric victory, a self-fufilling prophecy, soft destruction in a pair of non-descript jiggling appendages.
He tried to sweep it aside, brush it into the sewer, intestines in the slaughterhouse drain, but the drain was clogged and backing up spewing forth onto billboards of buxom bikini beer girls, driving Chevy Malibus and smoking long, thick throbbing cigars with Hef. It was vomitous; it was everywhere. No average Johnny Roto-Rooter could handle this clog in the arteries of the American Dream.
The answer was the Brainless Girl--the dream without the responsibility. She was serviceable, emaciated, rusted red hair and corpse pale, and never spoke a complete sentence unless it ended with "...but then I'm an idiot" or "...but I'm too fat" or "...but I love you". Funny, what she
didn't realize was tha they all amounted to the same thing. The answer was also the Pinto--
now THAT was a CAR. Every time you strap in, you strap your life onto a slug in a salt mine. Firey death takes you to the grocery store to pick up your carton of eggs and some laxatives--firey death brings you home. Driving that car back and forth from work every morning and every night was like a kiss from god. It was all part of of the vision, a driving purpose, a clarity,
ending in an eventual inevitable baptism by greasy petrol fire. He smiled as he dropped the hammer down, and the needle pushed towards 33 MPH. So our hapless hero sped of to work--or was it his life? His life's work, he thought and glanced to his right. The Brainless Girl sat
next to him, snoring, a small thread of drool waiting to be born in the down- turned corner of her mouth. She was his work, about all he got paid for, anyways. But not a life's work. More of a sketch, an idea not quite half-baked, an outline. She would never wake up, he decided, which was a shame. He had hoped that one day a praying mantis would climb out of her chrysalis, and try to bite his head off after copulating--you see, dear reader, our protagonist is a romantic at
heart. Too bad the lingo of his time is the opposite, every word eating itself alive, gnawing on its own emptiness, the jargon, the zeitgiest, the mode-du-jour; all essentially gateways to the sulpherous abyss. This was to be avoided at all costs, our hero thought. But really he was wrong. Thoughts were like sex: every conceivable form had been tried, and rejected thousands of years
ago for something else, something new. He wasn't any different, just another click-bug scurrying across the earth--pop was still pop, backwards or forwards. At this point, our hero deftly reminded himself that he should not judge, and not a moment too late either...there's nothing but trouble in that line of thinking, friends. Leave it in your closet with the skeletons.
The Pinto putted down the asphalt road, and the signs began to read "Bridge--Tay River, 1/4 mile". He could see the silvery gleam in the distance, and the wind howled oooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" through the beams of that magnificent bridge. Things were looking up. Gwen, the girl with no hope was looking down through closed eyelids.
DOLF: "Fuck you! I said fuck you man."
The farmer at the front of the room didn't seem to hear the revelatory oration from our hero -pobably he hadn't said it aloud. It was only more cliched thoughts of frustration. We mustn't say anything until someone can think of somehing new. So until then, fuck you. Fuck your jealous
and petty minded god.
"Praise the lord!"
Pentecostals, he thought. No one can be that sincere man, forget it. It's not possible, ive tried.
SOmeone is saved, the Orioles score a touchdown and Mary had nother orgasm. What's the big deal? Happiness and miracles are to belive in the convenient. How can you get so excited about being convenient.
"Have another pint mate?"
By some bizarrre twist of fate I found myself in a festering, catatonic pub in Edinburgh. I must have blacked out after i was force fed carcasses of infants stuffed with narcotics and truth serums administered by the talk-show, media infested, fascist elders. I was somewhere near Panama City... or was it Pittsburgh. No matter now, the best thing was to take a hold of the situation. don't panic! Employ age old tactics of survival: find food, shelter, and a mating partner. Leave it to the leftist Germans to fuck up the system. All was lost, i must abandon the misson and blend in. "Fuck you. " said our hero, and drank up.
CHRIS:Minutes later, he felt the vomit welling up in his throat. He frowned, swallowing hard, and then smacked his lips. "At least it's not Guinness". Thinking about that for a second, he screamed "Barman!" and ordered a black and tan. What our hero didn't see was the wily bartender (a hairy, swarthy Slovenian exiled to the godforsaken lush green hills of Edinburgh) drop a fizzy opiate into the strange alcoholic concoction. He slapped the mug on the table with the drink still spewing bubbles of narcotic poison into the stagnant pub air. Tho our man of virtue paid no mind, the bartender left mumbling something that like "I'm soury. I hef to gho...and so do you, pig..." and stomped into the mildewy kitchen. The spores of underhanded, underworld schemes were in the air--our fearless hero began to gag uncontrollably on the ominous mood, and reached for the nasty liquid trip floating in the unpalatable brew. With out a twitch, he tossed the contents from the heavy glass mug down his swollen thraot, and stood up. After a few ticks of the old pub clock, the barman stumbled out from behind the swinging kitchen doors. "You shuld be on the flur, you ruttun drunk bastard! ...Drinking like that!"
"Nascentes morimur--Life kills, friend. Not your rotten witches' brew." To punctuate this thought, our hero vomited loudly all over the barman's apron, and stumbled out the door.
DOLF:Through the scottish haze our life's example spotted two figures discussing the amiability of things. "Ya can't be doin' those sorts of things man." "And whoo are yoou to be tellin' me that now jimmy'" They were obviously discussing the past... and not the future of things. It is so clear that the past was always made when you were wrong. Everybody was wrong in the past, and everyone is always right inthe present. Lord help us for the future. It reminded him of the NAZI's, the question is never to dwell or even to move forward. The question's answer always lies in singing a sad song, looking at the moon, and having a lager. One of the Scottsman glanced up the road and our hero instantly recocognized that he was not in a safe position. This was obviously a spy working for the agents of the Over-Committee. "I must escape," he thought, and ran accross the street directly into the Hospital for Manfred the Patron Saint of Underachievers. He picked a room at random, found a bed, climbed in, and found himself very close to a woman that closely resembled Anike his redheaded girl named Gwen -the girl with no hope. He awoke the next morning in Singapore, surrounded by little men in green labcoats asking him with a contented look on their faces if he liked Jello. One man in particular, looked as if he hadn't had a good bowel movement in seventeen years. He had that sort of stale look to him. He knew he was in Singapore... he always knew Singapore by the smell. He couldn't think, something had to be done. Regroup, plan, stay clear, but for god's sake BE CAREFUL! One thing was for sure: hallucinations cannot be trusted! First thing to do is to find out that our man-of-the-hour is not in Singapore, or any other God forsaken IGA stained and rusted nail, tarp-tent, staked mud, makeshift capitalist state-for that matter. Ringo Starr wasn't there when our hero was surrounded by test tube grown sprouts of Communism (Communists always grow for science teachers-it's the bubble-gum-chewing, red-hair-twisting, pieces of ass that can never get chinks pulled out of their fermented curd in Communist-growing class.) so there was no use singing to me about happy and contented nights in Liverpool. No help, no help. Climbing meaningless trees in avoidance was not the answer. I had to convince them I wasn't there. Act cool. Talk about sports. This was the plan-the best method of conversation- "if I got them bored of me and talking about themselves i could be left to slip off unnoticed and convince myself i wasn't there in the first place." What was he doing there anyway? No use pretending-progress had to be made. What about his life's work? It must be continued. He must get back. He was getting completely lost in excuses and the overseers (his contact network to the world) hadn't even noticed. This was no good for anybody. Our chameleon clad cleric cared less than anybody about why he was stuck festering, decaying, forgetting who and where he is and was. He just had to work- that's all- to make something god damned it!
