The little room is humid, and much warmer than the air outside: moisture condenses where it touches the plexiglass. Water drops find other water drops and bunch up together, until they collect enough weight to start their arrhythmic slides down to the baseboard. There’s some bamboo in the room. It’s not healthy bamboo.
The little pool in the center is lined with black garbage bags, and the filtration unit at its side wheezes and shudders. It’s choking on deposits of minerals and ammonia. The ammonia is from dissolved koi waste. There are seventy-eight koi in the pool, and Marguerite’s cold hand.
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
How do you get to be a writer? Cheat. Lie, rape, steal and backstab.
There is nothing new in existence, which is justification enough. Consider the books you read fresh meat. Find the devices everybody seems to like and replicate them as exactly as laziness permits (remember, effort spent writing is effort largely wasted). Take fanfic to its logical conclusion: copy sentences or, if possible, paragraphs in bulk.
Sleep with anyone who can get you out of the slush pile. I mean anyone.
They’ll tell you there’s no money in writing, of course, but of course they would. Think about that.
Thursday, December 9, 2004
Lorraine’s been in the jury box so long she’s worried she’ll forget how to talk. You don’t get to talk, in the jury box, and she’ll have to soon.
It started when they couldn’t agree over the stenographer’s accounts, so they put her hand on a Talmud and made her a witness. Then they wanted the bailiff to corroborate, so they stuck him on the stand. Then the judge.
The foreman’s finishing his cross; Lorraine’s getting nervous. It’s inevitable. And after the jury, then who? The audience? The news crews? The
Hold on. Hello? I’m sorry, I–
Is this a subpoena?
Monday, December 13, 2004
Warwick actually did start a scab collection once, in fifth grade, inspired by a moment of vengeful hatred for his sister (he was going to put them in her soup). He waited carefully for them to fall off in the bath, then he saved them in a Russell Stover box. After a week he forgot the whole thing.
It isn’t until sixth grade that he finds the collection, and at first he doesn’t realize what they are–they’ve mostly disappeared, leaving behind little black fragments. Even these puff apart at his touch; they in turn leave behind the smell of rust.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
“‘Noble gases,'” says Vernon, “man, you’d never get away with that now.”
“Yeah, too poetic.” Sarasota grins up at a neon LOTTO. “You’d have to call them ‘centigrade-stable gaseous nonreactive elements’ or something…”
“You don’t think that’s poetic?”
“And they’d think up the names for new ones with those big new-drug-name computers.”
“Vartifex,” Vernon announces grandly. “Glookinor!”
“There should be common gases,” she says. “No, that’s boring. There should–there should be whimsical gases.”
“Oxygen,” says Vernon.
“What, because of fire?”
“Because most of what it does, apparently,” he says as he squints at a penny, “is turn things different colors.”
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Real coma victims don’t always recline with that kind of dignity, of course. Every other day, Somerset and somebody else (usually Caillie) go through the ward and flip them like pancakes. Somerset does the flipping; Caillie negotiates the IVs.
“What do you when I’m on vacation?” he grunts, wedging an arm under Ms. Whenzel.
“Wait until you get back,” she smiles. “We can’t all be big strong male nurses.”
“And if I ever move to another ward?”
“We’ll just leave them,” she says dismissively, “until their bones burrow all the way down and out, and they float away like big jellyfish.”
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Dresden feels things turn inside out. His vision’s broken and he can’t walk. He braces himself against the wall and tries to vomit, managing only a mouthful of sour bile. He spits on the ugly carpet; it’s the same ochre yellow as the drink AJ handed him at the bar, calling it a Pissguzzler. He smiled. He had green eyes. Dresden wanted to show off, so he slammed it, then another, and not long after he was feeling much too drunk, too heavy, and as he felt the air cool on his sudden legs he wondered what “AJ” actually stood for.
Friday, December 17, 2004
“These things are worthless,” mutters Fred. “Sure, my forelegs were tiny. But if I wanted to move a flap of hide, dig for meat, okay, I didn’t have to shove my whole face in!” He looks really upset, for a nuthatch.
“Hey, I’m on your side,” says Gary, a swallow. “I had these… pointy thumb things, and–”
“Exactly! And now we get this crap!” Fred does an angry flapping dance. “Wings! The hell do I need wings for? Eating berries or fucking seeds?”
“Evolution,” sighs Gary. “Biggest mistake we ever made.”
“Right!” snaps Fred. “Let’s fix that!”
So they do.
Monday, December 20, 2004
“Because I just filled the tank!” Dad shout-says.
“Do you want to take turns?” says Mom coldly. “Do you want a chart on the refrigerator, Edmund?”
“God!” yells Gilly. “You guys!”
“Go feed the rabbits, Gilly,” they say together.
Gilly slams the door so hard the house falls down like a deck of cards: the roof flutters away over the collapsing walls, and her parents stand speechless in the middle of the kitchen rubble except not really. If only.
She stomps out to the hutch to pitch food at Fur-Fur and Bingo, who, like every day, look astounded to see her.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004