It was true. Henge had hubris, per se. Clint Dossier’s observations were right, at least from a far. Hubris, that expression originating from the Greek: a classical crime of pride, of gloating. Henge’s hubris, however, was a rare case of preemptive gloating. A sort of bragging prior to victory, which in modern parlance has become the ( Read more... )

            Henge watched the blue crown of the gas burner cup the bottom of the percolator pot, and meditated on the blurbs of hot brown organic coffee lapping the inside of the yellowed percolator bulb on the top. He went over his notes for the day’s Hubba Bubba radio show. On a few crumpled sheets of yellow legal paper, Henge had transcribed his ( Read more... )

            Sax fashioned a crank mechanism out of an old Huffy bicycle pedal, a cam from a John Deer riding mower, a door hinge, and some lengths of steel strapping. When finished the thing looked like a gun on a turret, with a two handed crank at the butt end, and a swivel mount in the center. Running down the side of the cannon was an intake ( Read more... )

    Lou thought about the naval battle. He thought about the Lake Me Saga, the Lake Me Situation, and all of her misfit principles and auxiliaries.
    Under the shimmering white blue screen of Lou’s laptop, he hammered on the delicate thin keys. Tapping out thoughts in a rhythmic staccato, as words, formulated as representations of those thoughts ( Read more... )

            At Len Wiedeshofer’s place later that night, Henge and Len went into the master bathroom and filled up the bathtub.

“It’s cold bubba,” said Henge. He dabbed his hand in the off pink tub basin, and flung water droplets into the broiling maelstrom. He toweled off his middle and index fingers with a chenille scalloped shelled ( Read more... )

            With the pump on the front passenger seat of Chomsky, buckled in, Sax Taxson roared back down US 27. It was three in the afternoon, and Henge was slated to pick up the finished water cannon at Len Wiedeshofer’s house around seven. Big Ernie Shores supposedly had the underlying structure and barrel of the weapon completed - an ( Read more... )

            “Drive carefully,” said the trooper.

“Oh I will officer,” said Sax. “Boy oh boy I will.”

Sax Taxson looked out the driver side window and craned his neck down the straight ribbon of US 27. Shimmers of heat rose up, and a wall of corn six feet high buttressed each side. US 27, from that view, was a flume. US 27 ( Read more... )

            Henge walked slowly to the back, and as he passed each table, and each tables’ patrons made their obligatory gaze, each patron bowed their head. Henge spread his white trench coat like a slow moving flasher, as he sauntered in a one man glacial procession. He wanted to sit at a hard slate slabbed table in the back.

A waitress ( Read more... )

            Pete made out some faint garbles. Flimpojshowahsheeoh uuffff.

“What the fuck was dat,” Pete mumbled. His toothpick, sitting limply on his lower lip, bobbed up and down with his words. He adjusted the knobs again, and this time he directed the parabola not to the wall in front of him, but to the steel door leading down to the ( Read more... )

            Pete Limpelli, the Queens Mafioso. The owner of the Winged Tip Shoe, the wagerer on naval battles. The eater of holistic, organic foods. Witness to Thirty Days of Death, and interloper in Charleston, South Carolina. Pete wheeled his big Towne Car the two and one half blocks over to Cheviot Machine and Screw, to spy on Len Wiedeshofer, ( Read more... )