STAND UP FROM YOUR GRAVE

("STAND UP FROM YOUR GRAVE" is a super short story as I'm currently in the midst of getting ready for a weekend wedding on Vancouver Island.

If you want to see me reading a story while you wait for me to get back drop by zed for a little bed time story.

Enjoy...

STAND UP FROM YOUR GRAVE

The unusually large tombstone read: After finally achieving a state of total contentment through twenty years of Vipassana meditation, he was hit by a runaway septic tank trunk. Alan Frommer 1971-2004.

Dan and Walker shivered in the cold of the cemetary.

Alan, a stand-up comedian's stand-up comedian, was the one everyone in town thought was really going places.

Dan and Walker stood in respectful silence, thinking up jokes for their respective routines.

DOUBLE DATE PLUS ONE

("DOUBLE DATE PLUS ONE" is a little flirtation of a short story which focuses on a couple whose needs aren't exactly compatible.

Enjoy...

DOUBLE DATE PLUS ONE

Sam lives on the axiom: the more the merrier. Right now he's applying that to sushi: "I'll have the California roll, the Unagi roll, the Yukata roll, the David Suzuki roll, the Kamakaze-Hit-Me-in-the-Belly roll and a bowl of Miso soup."

Everyone laughs at how much he's ordered.

"Thank-you please and you ?" Their server's pen looks like the tip of a sewing needle, stabbing swiftly up and down on her pad of orders.

"I'll have the Paradise Roll and the B.C. roll."

Janet, Sam's girlfriend of two years, lives on the long-windedly sincere axiom: have one close friend that you can confide in and all will go well with the world.

"Thank you please and you ?"

Everyone else at the table makes their order which is then recounted in fast foward by their server, who immediately races off into the swift current of other servers, bus-boys and hostesses.

"So how did you guys meet ?" The solo member of the evening asks the two couples.

They all laugh.

Sam and Janet have tried to find the right number of people to go out with. They're hoping that the compromise of five will work. Sam of course would be in his element with with more people, but Janet would be far more comfortable with fewer.

Perhaps tonight they'll find their magic number.

YAWN APPLES

("YAWN APPLES" is a teeny-tiny little tale about imagining what could be within the empty hollow of a yawn. The idea came to me during rehearsal the other day.

I’m currently in a play by Gertrude Stein called “A Play Called Not and Now". It’s probably the strangest theatrical production that I’ve ever been involved in. A lot of yammering like madmen. A lot of jumping up and down. It’s the most beautiful anarchy that I’ve ever been involved in. We would get arrested if we mounted the show on the streets and performed it as buskers. That's how great it is.

I hope you enjoy the following craziness.

YAWN APPLES

After having watched “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the tenth time, he realized that insanity was what inspired him the most.

“Just drop it off and don’t say anything. He won’t give late charges if you don’t say anything,” she shouted after him as he jumped out of the Honda’s passenger side. She shook her head over his failure to realize the value of money. Increasingly, this was all her beleaguered mind could muster up.

He, on the other hand, felt fresh and footloose and fancy-free. He had finally realized the lesson of this movie he now carried in his hand. He would never need to rent it again. He was finally free.

Approaching the main counter of “Videotronica”, he smiled a mile wide smile at the somber-faced clerk.

“This is a little late, but we just had to watch it a second time. Do you think you could..” he made a sweeping gesture with an imaginary broom, followed by the lifting of an imaginary carpet.

The stone face of the clerk was broken by a yawn.

“Ahh, so you are a connoisseur of the yawn apples from the tree of boredom ?” He mimed the picking of an apple and opened his mouth wide into a yawn that closed down on the apple. “A truly boring fruit, indeed,” he said, continuing to smile at the clerk.

He had never felt so free in his life, as at this moment.

Outside his wife’s car was rear-ended, rear-ended, rear-ended by three Vespas.

Free.

THE BIRDSONG SANG BACK

("THE BIRDSONG SANG BACK" is a tiny little bird of a story that opens its beak and tweets, ”Are you my salvation ? Are you my worm ?

This story is loosely based on a piece of art by Teodoru Badiu. His surreal landscapes can be found in the current edition of scene360

Enjoy…)

THE BIRDSONG SANG BACK

“There is no purpose to this immaculately crafted sentence which stretches out through a line of time and ripples of space. There is no meaning at the core of what I’m saying, motivating my words along to some great destination. I simply speak,” he says, muffled beneath layers of costume.

“I simply speak,” echo other actors on the stage.

In row 8, seat 12, a woman looks down at her program, re-reading the basics of what’s happening in front of her. “All thirty-two performers for the show you’re about to see have been dressed in two costumes. The inner costume is a suit of yellow bird feathers, complete with exotic tail feathers, legs, feet and a beak. Over this costume the performers will wear masks of human faces and oversized cloths.”

The woman looks up from this at the performers on the stage. She counts them. Yup, 32.

Around her, everyone sits with displeasure, adjusting themselves in the poses they’ve taken. Questions, like worms, wriggle through their core.

A cell phone set to a chirpy setting goes off somewhere in the audience and the sound of laughter being suppressed cannot be heard.

The chirping continues.

The playwright, hiding in the wings, lowers his face into the palms of his hands.

Ruined.

EVOLVING OUT OF WHAT

("" EVOLVING OUT OF WHAT" is a story based on a little illustration done by Geoff Keong in a tiny booklet he put together for last night's "On the Topic of Food" fundraiser. A creative little evening that will go down in the history books of our hearts as a creative little evening that will go down in the history books of our heart.

Thanks for the inspiration Geoff.

Hope you enjoy today's story...)

EVOLVING OUT OF WHAT

He lived lonely on his planet of one, wondering how he had evolved into place.

Could he have evolved out of something similar to the table that he sat in front of, he asked himself for the millionth time. He had white legs just like the table. Perhaps it was a relation from eons ago.

He kicked the table and waited in silence as planets spun overhead through their solitary orbits.

He glanced over at his bed which was one of the other inhabitants of the tiny, barren planet. There were many similarities between the bed and the man. When he grew tired of asking himself questions, he would stretch out flat on the bed, making a mirror of its horizontal nature. Perhaps he was simply the more animated half of his cousin the bed ?

Suddenly the man sneezed a sneeze which morphed - spittle and all - into cheers of joy

"I sneezed !! I sneezed !!" he shouted and laughed into the silence of space over this break from the monotony of his day.

"D" IS FOR DISASTER

(""D" IS FOR DISASTER" is a story based on this little illustration that I made a couple years back.


Is my illustration sexy ?

NO, OF COURSE IT'S NOT !!

There's nothing sexy about balloon animals coming to life and threatening ours. There is however something very enjoyable in the thought of it though.

So without further ado...)

"D" IS FOR DISASTER

"After the balloon animals came to life there was nowhere for people to hide. Tiny balloon animals would crawl into the teaniest-tiniest nooks that survivors of the massacre tried to hide in," as he told the tale in a hushed voice, his hands strangled the straight lines of the balloons together into twisted new forms.

The circle of children listened carefully as the balloon monsters squeaked into being.

"All in the hopes of turning us into balloons," as he said this he fell back, ducked his head into his jacket and released a helium balloon version of his head that floated to the ceiling.

The children cheered at the story-teller's fate.

And with one more success under his belt, the story-teller's ego inflated once again to almost bursting proportions.