Category Archives: Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction, fragment, Sci-Fi

Just Pretend You’re One of Them

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Captain’s Log: Oct. 31, 2017, 4:16 pm. Earth time.

Oh my…this is going to be SO easy!  All that hard work preparing costumes and disguises for this mission…..completely unnecessary.  Just look at this place.  The natives here are CRAZY!  All day since we landed they’ve been running around dressed up in outrageous costumes, as monsters and zombies and hookers and well…even aliens.  I think we’re gonna fit in here, just fine.  But hooo-boy, when I get back home, I’m going to tear the advanced team a new one.  Their intelligence reports painted such a boring, conservative picture of this species…SHEEESH, were they wrong!?  Why, just now I saw a tiny little demon girl approaching our safe-house door…..hang on…’DING—DONG!’…..”Trick or treat!!!”

***John’s illustration was originally published in the October 2014 issue of Analog Magazine for a story by Joyce and Stanley Schmidt.  Stan is an old friend and was the editor of Analog for about 3 decades.  You can find their orig. story in the archives at analogsf.com.  This was originally posted on Halloween in 2015 (my 4th post ever), but most of you will have missed it.   Happy Halloween!  -Marsha 

Flash Fiction, fragment

A High Steaks Problem

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Oh man…not again!  They are NOT going to be ready for dinner.  Why do they DO this?  Every time I marinate the steaks, THEY treat it like a wild hot-tub party.  They invite their weirdo friends – honey ham, sausage links and chicken thigh – and make a gigantic sloppy mess of the fridge.  They drink all my cold beer, they turn my soft tortillas into soggy pulp, using them as towels, getting in and out of the sauce all day…and the Mariachi Brother’s Hot Sauce breaks most of the glass bottles, blasting their ‘Cha-cha-cha’ music!  I can’t even describe what they’re doing to my poor hotdogs and fresh vegetables, eeeeeew, but they are NOT going anywhere near MY mouth after that!  This has gotten to be a high steaks problem.  Those steaks are LIT!  They’re high as a kite…again!?  UGH!!

***We finally have advance copies of our new book, “Bludgeon the Clown.”  We were able to have them in time for the Lehigh Valley Comic Con on Saturday…it was amazing!!!  E-mail me through our website (www.sallemander.com) if you want a copy.  It’s only $29.95, 100 pages of full color clown delight (horror), and it explains…everything.  Meanwhile, we’re working on getting the book posted up on our ‘buy it’ page, as well as onto Etsy and Amazon.  We’ll also have new 4x4in stickers and a bunch of new original prints for sale, asap.  WOO-HOO!!!  I’m so excited.  -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Sci-Fi

Diplomat

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I do nothing all day but sit in my cell, chained to the wall in a puddle of rancid liquid.  The place is filthy, the toilet hasn’t worked in weeks and that awful television box is my only form of entertainment.  It screams at me and blathers their inane, selfish ‘culture’ all day, it’s all I can do to block it out, lest I lose my sanity.  The only decent people I have to speak with are the cockroaches, who seem to come and go as they please…

They take me out twice a week to show me off to their military luminaries while their (so-called) scientists run ‘tests’.  They mostly probe my anus and shock my genitals and laugh like lunatics as they torture me.  I don’t understand their obsession with my junk – and I don’t get the reference to it as “payback”.  My people have never visited this place before.

They are an ugly people.  I don’t mean their pasty, bloated flesh, two meager eyes and stubby fingers that make them look like deformed infants.  I’m referring to their brutish indifference to justice, authoritarian rule and the cognitive dissonance of the masses.  The racist, nasty things they call me…well, I can’t even begin to repeat in polite company.  This is certainly no way to treat an ambassador.

I would never have come to this primitive cesspool if it wasn’t for engine trouble – and a spread of ballistic missiles that took all the dignity out of my crash landing.  These people ignored my distress calls and now refuse to honor my diplomatic immunity…..boy oh boy, when the mother ship gets here to rescue me, they are gonna FRY this place!

***This piece was first posted on Dec. 8th, 2015 as our 10th post.  The image was a cover illustration that John did for Analog Magazine for the June, 2007 issue.  We needed an easy break this week as we gear up to release our new book, “Bludgeon the Clown.”  It’s with the printer now and we’re hoping to have advance copies to bring to the Lehigh Valley Comic Con on Oct. 7th, where John will be a featured guest artist.  Come join us (I might be there too).  -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, Freaks

Talking to a Cock

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I guess I was a little drunk, I was definitely over stimulated.  The boardwalk carnival was an intoxicating menagerie of sound and light, of beautiful bodies still in their skimpy beach wear, smelling of sweat and suntan lotion, of sweet & salty junk food deep fried in sugar and cheese.  I wandered like a leaf on the pungent breeze, my bare feet barely touching the sticky wood.

The hawkers, luring people into sideshow attractions were on fire tonight.  Business was booming at the Snake Boy house, patrons screamed in anguished pleasure.  The ‘Winged Pigs’, ‘Dragon Lady’ and ‘6 Jesters Conjoined’ had long, eager lines waiting.  But the one which caught my eye was the only booth whose crier didn’t look like an ancient, cigar chomping, sticky pocketed circus clown with mirrored shoes.  SHE was a sultry, middle aged woman with curves and lumps and hair and eyes that melted my…bones, which is probably why I didn’t read the sign on the booth properly – or even care.  I just handed her my money and walked in.

There on the podium, in the center of a dark room with red satin curtains, stood a raging red COCK…..no…I mean, it was a red rooster with bright flaming plumage.  The other people in the room sat on benches around the bird, enthralled.  I stood for a long moment, puzzled and awkward…until the cock looked over at me and said, “Take a seat there, Sparky, I’m just getting started…” in a voice that sounded remarkably like Noam Chomsky’s.

You know…I may have misheard the writing prompt today…  What?…OH!!!, “Talking to a Cop”…yeah, I don’t talk to cops.

Our new book, “Bludgeon the Clown” is all done and off to the printer.  Our publisher, EEW Books uses a tiny, local printer in Bloomfield NJ, a mile from our old studios.  There are plenty of excellent printers up here in the frosty north, but none better than Tom DeStefano and his team at Budget Print (332 Broad Street).  It’s a family owned, very professional, highest quality, friendly business whose integrity is rare nowadays.   If they were located in Reykjavik or Kathmandu or Djibouti… we would still travel there for their services.  -John

Clowns, Flash Fiction

Always the Quiet Ones

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Bilious Blunt was a bloviating buffoon.  He was the loudest, most opinionated fellow in town.  He lacked social skills and self control and nobody could stand him.  He smelled funny, had a constant menagerie of food and grease on his shirt front and dressed like a clown without even trying.  He spit and defecated in public and his Sunday sermon belches were epic.  Worst of all, he cultivated an unusually long, phallic nose that made everybody…uncomfortable.

People avoided him like a social disease and spent most of their thoughtful energy focused on his awfulness…perfect!…because nobody suspected him.  He didn’t ‘fit the profile’ and hardly a spare idea could penetrate the obnoxious, tasteless distraction he presented…..and nobody EVER found out…

body-oddies, Clowns, Flash Fiction

Making An Entrance

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      They called it ‘Body Piercing.’  It was very rare, very risky…for both the acrobat and the victim.  Frisbee the Bouncer contemplated the origins of the maneuver he had just failed to properly execute.  Willy the Clown (the victim) was finally settling down a bit, allowing Frisbee some time to think: you see, audiences had gotten bored with traditional tumbling and acrobatics, even parkour had lost it’s charm…free-runners traversing buildings, flipping and spinning across rooftops and bridge rafters, bouncing about from car to car in midtown traffic…I mean, it’s not as if everybody could do it nowadays, but people got bored seeing it all the time.

New ideas evolved to shock and awe the masses, each more extreme, risky…deadly.  The ‘Tongue In Cheek’ was already banned in 17 states, the ‘Cockeyed Cock’ was responsible for 3 temporary deaths, 12 online divorces and 41 spontaneous abortions (in Tennessee alone)…then came ‘Body Piercing.’  It was like a grizzly car crash on the turnpike that you can’t help staring at.  Frisbee recalled that the most difficult part was the need to make an entrance (not what you’re thinking).  How does an acrobat bounce right through the center of an unsuspecting victim’s body (without using an existing entrance – or exit)?  Well, Frisbee was quite certain he had it all figured out…but…..well, look at the picture!

Willy the Clown went quickly from surprise to horror, screaming bloody murder for 30 minutes straight…now he was just pissed off at Frisbee, who simply mumbled, “That should have worked!…Why didn’t that work?” over and over and over.

Somebody call an ambulance…!?!

***I wrote this piece last week, sitting out in my new back yard, atop the loveliest snowdrift in the midnight sun, watching flying reindeer dogfighting overhead.  I’m so happy in my new house at the North Pole.  The image is one from my “Creepy Clowns Coloring Book,” which you can find for sale by following the links to my website.  -Marsha  

Flash Fiction, robot, Sci-Fi

Brain Salad Buffet

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We think they consumed intelligence the way we consume food.  It sustained them and they were drawn to it like moths to a flame.  We think the people who came for the speech must have attracted them, after all, the event drew some of the top thinkers from the party; business executives, media luminaries, religious icons…all gathered together like a brain salad buffet.  We think their mistake was just a matter of bad timing, because by the time the singularity formed just above the President’s head and they began flooding through the rift like a swarm of gangly metal spiders, the bloviating buffoon at the podium had already been speechifying for over an hour.  A whole hour of engorged bravado, exaggerated assertions and pandering half-truths…reducing the (otherwise intelligent) audience to a drooling mob of seething stupidity.

We saw them spread out through the arena, randomly plucking dull witted followers from the audience like daisies, harvesting their heads for the tasty data in their brains….only to come up short.  The more heads they dissolved, the more puzzled they became…unsatisfied.  In fact they appeared to be weakening…starving – but then, who comes to a political speech, nowadays, for intelligence?

And as the rift sputtered and closed and the invaders lay down to die, we think we heard them mindlessly chanting …U.S.A….U..S..A…..u…s…a…..

 

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Fish Ed

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I woke up unconscious.  My aching head smelled funny.  There was something sticky between my cheek and the cold shelf in the refrigerator.  “Eat me!” demanded the chicken, “I taste great! Why…I taste like chicken!  Everybody loves chicken.”  He was hard to take seriously without a head – his neck hole made him lisp.  “Eat ME!!” he yelled again.

But the egg was just as bold: “NO!  Eat me!” and raising his eyebrows suggestively, with a sexy-baby voice, he said, “I’m young.  I’m soft.  You can do ANYTHING to meeee…fry me, poach me, slather me in mayonnaise… Mmmmmm!  I’m delicious!”  He grinned.

“Don’t listen to HIM!” said Chicken.  “I’m delicious with mayo too…and you LOVE barbeque and I have…”

   “WHUMP!!!”

I slammed the fridge.  I could see that the jelly was already awake and I always hated talking to her.  Besides, the guacamole was poised, just waiting for his chance to interrupt and frankly, my aching brain could not handle whatever the leftover stromboli had to say – with his nauseating salami and jalapeño breath…..and what was that funny smell?  Was that fish?  I don’t like fish.  “Hey buddy,” said the fish, “that’s not a very nice thing to think.”

“WHUMP!!!”

 

Flash Fiction, fragment, Sci-Fi

Orbital Fracture

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“Well, that was pretty weird…” Quinn’s dad said, as they strolled out of the hospital emergency room toward the car.  Quinn nodded in solemn agreement.  His brain rattled a little, still full of purple marbles and tapioca.  He winced as his now full blown concussion sent steam whistling from his ears and left a trail of silly string on the asphalt.

Just a few hours earlier, Quinn, the goalkeeper for his club soccer team, came out of his box low and fast, to intercept a couple of players desperately sparring for the ball.  He dove in, punching it away as one of the players aimed a kick…but instead of connecting with the ball, his foot caught Quinn in the face like a grizzly car crash (an all-too-common goalie accident).

Quinn’s jaw spun away with a funny “vip-vip-vip!” and hit a light post, exploding in a shower  of sparks.  His teeth peppered everyone within fifty yards…but his head flew straight up in the air at such velocity that we lost sight of it shortly before his “AAAAAAAAAAAH!” diminished into the night.  What a mess!

Willy the Astronaut was a clumsy buffoon who, for the second time this month, slipped and splashed into the molding tank at the polar ice mine on the surface of Mars…as it’s contents began to freeze.  His heavily insulated vac-suit protected him from harm, but he wasn’t discovered until the 60 ton cylinder of ice had already been rocket-lifted up to the orbital processing plant, where it would be transformed into liquid oxygen rocket fuel.

Willy’s coworkers labored fruitlessly for eight frustrating hours with a laser drill to free him, without luck…..until Willy noticed Quinn’s gnarly, high velocity head glance off the ice and careen away, still hollering, “Aaaaaaaaaah!”  Quinn’s head must have hit a sweet spot in the ice, just so, because it fractured the cylinder neatly, allowing Willy to escape unharmed and without a costly, shattered mess for the mining company.  Willy never mentioned Quinn’s head to his employers, he was a known buffoon and his credibility was already compromised.

As to Quinn; his dad managed to gather up all his bits and parts and take him to the hospital, where the clever use of duct tape and super glue had him back on his feet in a few short hours.  We figure his wild story about ice mining on Mars was probably just a symptom of his concussion.

“Well, that was pretty weird…..”

***This is a totally true story which happened to John’s son, Quinn, last week, at a soccer game in Millburn, NJ on June 9th, 2017.  Quinn is recovering (slowly but steadily) and has been corresponding with Willy the Astronaut on facebook.  Quinn’s dad is building a rocket ship in the barn out back, so they can visit the ice mine on Mars next month.  -Marsha     

body-oddies, Clowns, Flash Fiction, fragment

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

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Milton was an odd fellow. Everybody thought so. He had wild ideas about everything from politics to gardening. He thought animals would be healthier if we didn’t butcher them. He thought terrorism was a bad way to fight terrorism and had, daily, heated arguments about transference with the wooden Indian outside the smoke shop….very odd.

He painted a creepy clown face with purple polka-dots on his van (even though he can’t drive). He muttered bizarre things to ladies as he passed them in the streets, like: “Have a nice day!” and “Love your head scarf!!” – it was horrifying. Last week he predicted the world would end two years ago and hung unauthorized presidential campaign posters for ‘asparagus’ and ‘enchiladas’ (even though they were probably better candidates)…and every time he ate pickled anchovy sandwiches with mayo and peanut butter, his breath still smelled like beef jerky…..Huh!

For all this and much more, Milton was the subject of intense gossip all over town. He often made the front page of the local Gazette and people got into fist fights over the consistency of his guacamole. To some, he was a nuisance, to others a local folk hero – and to others still, a tourist attraction.

Well, that was all good and fine for most folks…but for me, seeing him stroll about with three fully grown legs – one facing front and two facing back, was truly a marvel…..and wow, what a snazzy dancer!

***This is a sketch and flash piece for my “Body-Oddies” book project, which is well underway and on schedule for publication in 2018 (that is, if John can get his lazy ass in gear and finish the illustrations).  The publisher is really excited with the whole project.  -Marsha Mellow