Category Archives: Flash Fiction

Potty Mouth

Potty Mouth-80 

Something in the smell wafting from the bathroom told me that things were going badly.  The crap being shouted was definitely not appropriate for television.  Negotiations had broken down and a strike was well underway.  Worse…the strikers were in open revolt,  flinging their sacred deposits all over the walls and ceiling.  The trust between us was broken.  Innocents were soiled, stained and who knew if the scars would ever heal…..but all that was secondary to the fact that…I really had to go.  I REALLY had to go — BAD!

Shamefully, in typical corporate fashion, I snuck out to the back yard, found a tree and used it like a primitive monkey.  Disgusting.  Yes, I found a cheap scab replacement to the striking toilet — but I just couldn’t hold out any longer…ugh!  I felt dirty.

I say, give the strikers whatever they demand before this gets any worse and we have a real shit storm on our hands…our shoes… our trousers…..

***Two weekends and two 3-day shows in a row, selling our beautiful clown books and hawking amazing (and tasteful) ‘Poop’ stickers…..boy oh boy, this is the life.  If I knew this was going to be so good I’d have quit my old career 10 years ago.  John wholeheartedly concurs.  But, Now we have a clean stretch of uninterrupted time to finish “Bludgeon the Clown”, hopefully in early May so we can resume our show schedule.  -Marsha

 

Doug the Slug

Doug the Slug-77 

Doug felt sluggish sitting through another mind numbing meeting.  Boring people, like him, in boring suits, like his, sat around the conference room table giving boring briefs on their departments.  Doug’s section had nothing to report, he was only there to fill his boss’ seat while he was off golfing.  They droned on and on like lazy bees;  “Turn to page 68 and review diagram 123g…” and “good news in marketing assessment accounts payable, see the bar graph in addendum 6…” and Doug was too hyped up on caffeine to fall asleep like Bob from Legal.

Then…..he had a funny feeling.  Not a laugh out loud feeling – a strange, funny feeling…and the last thing he heard before it all went sideways was another inane comment from Alice, the CFO;  “…and sales were sluggish again last week…” and POW!!

A drip formed on the tip of Doug’s nose and slid off onto his tie, which he noticed was already flowing like liquid into his lap.  He watched as his fingers dissolved into sludge and his hands turn to pulp.  He felt his hair and eyebrows melt, his skin go flubbery and sag and finally his whole head collapse into an eggy mess down his torso before everything sploshed down into a viscous puddle of goo around his shoes (which didn’t take part in the transformation for some reason).

Funny thing is, he doubted that anybody in the meeting even noticed what had happened.  Perhaps everyone there was melting like him…but he doubted it…he could still hear Alice droning and Bob snoring.

***I think melting in meetings was the best part of working in corporate America, surpassed only by exploding like a hamster in a microwave just to see the mess all over everybody’s boring suit.  Happy Spring everybody.  -Marsha  

Sausage Fest

Sausage-Fest-76      Willy arrived at the party with his friend Willy and his other friend Willy.  He was happy to be invited, he and his friends didn’t get many invites (they were kinda nerds) but it soon became apparent that this party would be another sausage fest.  The prospects looked pretty gloomy when he saw that everybody there was a ‘Willy’.  At least there was plenty of beer.  After a while he noticed the place getting really hot and humid.  There might as well have been flames licking up between the gratings in the floor…and all the Willies were getting some awkward, nasty looking tan lines – just like his – and they were drinking gallons of ice-cold beer to compensate for…

That’s when he realized…it was all a scam. This…was a…..bar-be-que!

***Today, in the midst of the ‘Blizzard of 2017’, all I can think of is bar-be-que and beer.  This is a new one from our “Body-Oddies” project, a craptastic journey through the rancid mind of my artist, John Allemand.  So glad that’s over.  We have enough material to do the book but now I guess we’re just spewing out material as a compulsion.  -Marsha

Foot In Mouth

Foot-In-Mouth-72      I woke up this morning feeling disheveled. I must have tossed and turned all night and tied myself into a knot, because when I woke up I fell out of bed…tied in a knot.  I didn’t know I could do that…and survive.  Worse than that, when I finally got myself untangled, I realized I had a foot where my hand used to be, my tongue was attached to an elbow and my hair had migrated down my back to my buttocks.  One of my hands had switched places with my wiener and one was dangling from an armpit but for the life of me, I could not find my other foot.  I wasn’t in any pain but the sight of it all made me want to scream…..except, when I opened my mouth…well, that’s when I discovered where my other foot had gone…

***This exact thing never actually happened to ME…but something resembling the ‘foot in mouth’ part definitely happened to the last loser who tried to pick me up in a bar, which…come to think of it, happened a few years ago on this same minor holiday celebrating the Marquis de Sade or something…..Valentine’s, whatever!  We’re too busy finishing our new book (‘Bludgeon the Clown’) to worry about it right now.  -Marsha

Zebulon the Wizard

Zebulon-71Zebulon The Wizard

Piscataway, NJ. Zebulon the Wizard (formerly Joey the Clown) was about as common as clowns come…but with a knack for burgling.  He was the best: clever, adaptable, insightful – qualities still highly regarded by the clown community.  Once a petty thief, Joey changed his stars by stealing a magical Christian spell book from a secret Vatican warehouse. With the recipes in his new book, he was able to build a ‘time cauldron’ through which he could reach forward – or back – in time and steal more stuff…..better stuff.

Zebulon let me use his cauldron a few times to document some of the great  historic clowns from the deep, dark, misty past.  Its how we know so much about Saint George the Clown (from 299 A.D.) and Barge the Giant (circa 1330).  Zeb got me a Tubakazoo for Christmas last year, its a popular folk instrument from the year 2232.  It makes a (terrible) whining wheeze like the sound of a horse being strangled…while gently farting (I got him that red wizard costume).

***”Zebulon” is a page that just got cut from the latest draft of my new book ‘Bludgeon the Clown.’  I’ve trimmed it down from 186 pages to 100, so I can keep production costs low enough to sell it to real people.  I hope to have it published and ready to bring to Comic Cons in the spring.  John and I thought it would be harder to cut our own beloved writing and art out…..turns out there was a lot of crap and fluff and redundancy in the older drafts.  The new book is better now and Zebulon will work better in a different project.  The image was originally a commission for a 2 page spread for an issue of Analog Magazine.  -Marsha

Splitting Headache

Splitting Headache-69 

Hey!… Do you remember that thing? You know…that THING??  Oh, you remember.  We saw it the other day when we were doing the other thing…..what’s-is face was there.  Oh, you know who I mean, the one from… oh gosh…from over yonder with the thing-ummy-thing on his who’s-is-what’s-it?…And we laughed and laughed about it the whole time?  But he wasn’t so amused.  He took the issue up with…oh, you know who, the one at the place…..um, the place right next door to the other MAIN place?  And she went totally ballistic about everything, especially that one thing…..but not the thing I’m talking about.  I meant the OTHER thing.  Yeah!  The thing with the thing-a-ma-jig…Yes!!!  You know the thing!  UGH!!!  I seem to forget EVERY thing…but I definitely remember THAT!

***This conversation isn’t all that unusual. It happens more often than I’d care to admit.  What amazes me is how often we completely understand each other whenever we do…..whoever it is.  -Marsha 

Second Skin

second-skin-66 

Mick was always an awkward fellow. He tried to be a regular dude like everybody else but it never really felt right.  He did his best to dress normal, he had an average haircut, dated respectable girls…even got a boring middle management job in a large corporation, just as everybody expected, still, Mick was never quite comfortable.  He had the constant urge to break out of the box, jump up and sing, to run about, dancing with joy to be free.  He struggled with it every day…and sometimes he slipped;  He would catch himself about to smear his face with lipstick and crack lewd jokes – or smash his bosses face down into the banana cream pie he accidentally brought to work – or pull out the condiment bottles he had in his trouser pockets (for some strange reason) and paste everyone in the board room with goopy ketchup and mustard.  Worse, some days he would get all the way to work and realize he’d worn one striped sock and one plaid sock (weird).  And every day it just got harder and harder to fight the urge to shred his dull grey business suit, to peel off his own mundane skin and release the amazing, passionate (spectacular) monster that was trapped inside…..and one day, when he no longer had a reason not to…he did just that.

***The first post of 2017.  Peel away all the crap and crud and wash off the slime of last year so you can be clear headed and ready for the clusterfuck that’s coming.  The image above was adapted from an Analog Mag. spread John did in 2013.

Winter Weather Advisory

thesanta-64It was June and sunny.  The first sunny day he’d seen in months.  Standing atop a 60 foot snow drift, Santa surveyed the landscape of Death Valley, Nevada. This was no way to spend his vacation.  Where were the buzzards and the fire ants?  Where were the salt flats and sand dunes?  This place looked too much like home this year…how awful!

Well, what did he expect?  This is where things like consumerism, waste, greed and stupidity get you – and he had to admit, he played his part.  Ever since they hired him to sell capitalism to the huddled masses, back in the 30’s and 40’s…..a snowpocalypse was inevitable.  Mother Nature swings like a sassy pendulum, knocking the idiots aside with the good ones.  Maybe the random survivors will come through smarter and better this time…but he doubted it.  Oh well, he still had to find sunscreen for Mrs. Clause or she’d have his head.

He got back into his sleigh and flew off in search of a frozen supermarket, hoping the looters left some Twinkies…or some milk duds…

THE SANTA  (an excerpt from ‘Bludgeon the Clown’) Possibly the best known clown of all and the greatest Christian icon in history.  Santa is the hardest fellow to meet.  When I flew to the North Pole for an interview I found nothing there but a giant peppermint flavored pole…and simply planning to intercept his holiday flight got me a visit from Homeland Security (again). Frankly, I couldn’t confirm he existed at all (I was crushed).  Yet somehow, he still manages to deliver the most fabulous gifts, each year, to the most affluent (undeserving) children in the world…..maybe its just as well I didn’t find this clown.  -Marsha

Open Mike

open-mike-63 Mike stood on stage in the spotlight…..terrified. Something about it seemed to be working for him.  They probably found his trembling voice charming as he spoke sincerely about his life…his completely bizarre, absolutely strange, totally unlikely life…and the cynical way it came across.  The crowd laughed at the tragic death of his wife in a mundane laundry incident.  They howled at how the wind blew her ashes into everybody’s mouth at the funeral.   And the five-day-old lasagna in a broken fridge, causing a vivid conversation with Lucifer, left them in stitches.  Every word he spoke, every glib anecdote, felt like a hole being ripped open in his soul, allowing his demons to spill out – only to be consumed and obliterated in the laughter of the audience…and when it was over…Mike stood open and bloody and spent and…..completely relieved.  It was better than therapy, better than liquor or sex or CHOCOLATE.  And he walked off stage to a standing ovation feeling light as a feather.

***This post is another excerpt from our ‘Body-Oddies’ book project and the art will be available as an original art print soon.  I am rewriting ‘Bludgeon the Clown’ and John is reworking the layout so it will be published and ready for sale in the spring of 2017.  Find our 2 books at www.sallemander.com or search ‘EEW Books’ at Etsy.com and Amazon.com.  They make a great gift.  -Marsha 

Foreheads

foreheads-62 

Mulberry Jelly sat on the edge of the stage covered in sticky egg juice and rotten vegetable pulp.  He couldn’t figure out what the crowd hated more, his cliché street-rapper name or the combination-spoken word/death metal version of “I’m a little tea pot” he was performing before the riot broke out.  One thing he knew for sure;  His brilliant career in show biz was over before it started…again.  The same thing happened last week when he tried a blues/ballet combo of “Freak” in front of the local Middle School Talent Show Fundraiser.  He refused to accept his Mom’s advice to study dentistry or go into his sticky Uncle Morty’s carpet cleaning business.  Who were they to call him a talentless hack?  No!  He would go on!  He would make Mulberry Jelly a household name and prove to the world…

Aw hell!  Who was he kidding?  The only reason people showed up to these things was to gawk at him for the bizarre growth on his…..

***This piece is slated for our “Body-Oddies” book.  Its another unrevised rough concept sketch by John.  While he works on the final artwork for that, I am rewriting and reworking our “Bludgeon the Clown” book so it is ready for print and sale in the spring.  There are links to our books above or you can find them on Etsy and Amazon (search EEW Books)…’they make an excellent gift’  -Marsha