New Story Up!
Hey all-
Best wishes, happy holidays and so on. BBT has four entries in our flash fiction holiday contest-including one by me- reprinted below.
Celebrate and enjoy!
Mr. Pub’s Book of Impossible Paper Magic
By Gordon Weir
Christmas was always a busy time for Roy. Work this time of year was murder but even after a 16-hour shift at the warehouse he needed to find the strength to pick himself up and get out there in his Pontiac and cruise from neighborhood to neighborhood, to steal all the packages he can grab.
Roy has been pulling delivery grabs since he dropped out of college, which is to say, this would be the third year in a row that he’s driven around various neighborhoods and housing developments, looking for packages that UPS or the post office has left on someone’s front steps, and, if no one is around, snagging them. In all honesty, Roy steals mail year-round, keeping an eye out for mailboxes sprouting for those bright envelopes that mark a DVD or video game from the on-line rental services, but the weeks after Thanksgiving are prime time for him. It wasn’t unusual to finish a six-hour crawl around the city with a car full of swag, topped off with a double-handful of Christmas cards swiped form mailboxes that could contain tens, twenties, checks, or gift cards. An enveloped taped to the inside of the storm door with the words ‘Paperboy’ or ‘Mailman’ was like hitting the jackpot.
Christmas was an important time for Roy. The rest of the year, he felt that perhaps failing out of college and being bounced out of the army both had been terrible mistakes and that night shifts at the Postal headquarters was a dead-end, loser career. But around the holidays, when Roy augmented his own humble lifestyle with scores of gifts meant for others, he began to feel that he had gotten some value out of his experiences. College had taught him how easy it was to steal, and his misadventures in the army had taught him not to shit where he ate. So although countless pieces of mail and packages passed through his hands every night while at work, he had never stolen one of them. He kept that separate.
Roy had few friends and he’d burned the bridges with his family long ago, so Christmas morning was spent alone and not with brightly-colored gifts but brown pasteboard shipping boxes. This season’s haul was a solid one but not a record-breaker. The DVD sleeves contained films he’d already stolen copies of (the risk you run when everyone is renting the same few blockbusters) but the packages were solid: a hefty cookbook, a watch, some jewelry, and some Christmas ornaments. What he didn’t want, he’d sell on-line.
There was also a book, a large, hardcover called ‘Mr. Pub’s Book of Impossible Paper-Folding Magic.’ The book had a garish cover and was filled with bright photographs of some stooge wearing a light blue arrow shirt demonstrating various ‘magic’ tricks that could be performed by folding sheets of paper. Roy was only slightly interested in the book but the word impossible caught his attention. So when everything was opened and the floor littered with packing peanuts and plastic air bladders, he came back to the book.
Roy had recently heard a news story where someone had folded a piece of paper without tearing it in half twelve time- the previous record had been eight. As the paper’s thickness doubled each time, it soon became thicker than it was wide and could not be folded. But the book claimed to show how a piece of paper could be folded twenty-one times.
Roy got a piece if paper from a printer he’d taken off of a stranger’s doorstep last year. Seven folds was the best he could do. He studied the book. He made eighteen folds on his first try.
#
Three hours later, Roy had folded a sheet of 8.5X11 paper in half twenty-one times. He had made an origami Klein bottle hat had no inside or outside. And he was working on a complicated fold called ‘The Inverse Tesseract.’
The directions for the trick came with a warning: ‘This fold will amaze your friends, but may also disrupt your personal spatial relationship with reality as a whole, so this fold is for experts only!” the man in the blue shirt was smiling and holding up a incredibly complex jumble of angles made from crisp, white paper. The object looked like a giant starfish trying to have sex with a Gehry building with the whole thing reflected in a hall of mirrors, but the directions said it took only eight folds, made at precise angles, to create the thing.
Try as he might, Roy couldn’t get it right.
He took a break, got up from the couch, and went into the kitchen for a beer. He stepped into the living room and saw the book before him. Looking down at his hand, there was no beer. He turned and went back though the door and into the living room.
Roy stopped. He turned again and looked through the doorway into the kitchen. He faced the kitchen and took a careful step forward into the living room. He turned again, put both hands on the doorjamb, concentrated on the refrigerator, gave a mighty pull- and threw himself head first into the living room.
He gave up on the kitchen and tried for the hallway to the stairs. He kept coming back into the living room. He tried the window- he was on the third floor, but what the hell. He felt the cold air, saw the snow swirling in as it stuck to his ragged wool sweater, stuck his leg over the sill, and climbed into the living room every time.
He tore his carefully folded paper model apart- tore all his efforts apart, each one coming undone like a complex knot of bundled time, each exhaling a soft breath as their structure came unknotted and whatever possibilities they contained were released.
Roy waded through drifts of crumbled white paper, rushed through the kitchen door and into the living room.
Roy began to worry.
The End
Best wishes, happy holidays and so on. BBT has four entries in our flash fiction holiday contest-including one by me- reprinted below.
Celebrate and enjoy!
Mr. Pub’s Book of Impossible Paper Magic
By Gordon Weir
Christmas was always a busy time for Roy. Work this time of year was murder but even after a 16-hour shift at the warehouse he needed to find the strength to pick himself up and get out there in his Pontiac and cruise from neighborhood to neighborhood, to steal all the packages he can grab.
Roy has been pulling delivery grabs since he dropped out of college, which is to say, this would be the third year in a row that he’s driven around various neighborhoods and housing developments, looking for packages that UPS or the post office has left on someone’s front steps, and, if no one is around, snagging them. In all honesty, Roy steals mail year-round, keeping an eye out for mailboxes sprouting for those bright envelopes that mark a DVD or video game from the on-line rental services, but the weeks after Thanksgiving are prime time for him. It wasn’t unusual to finish a six-hour crawl around the city with a car full of swag, topped off with a double-handful of Christmas cards swiped form mailboxes that could contain tens, twenties, checks, or gift cards. An enveloped taped to the inside of the storm door with the words ‘Paperboy’ or ‘Mailman’ was like hitting the jackpot.
Christmas was an important time for Roy. The rest of the year, he felt that perhaps failing out of college and being bounced out of the army both had been terrible mistakes and that night shifts at the Postal headquarters was a dead-end, loser career. But around the holidays, when Roy augmented his own humble lifestyle with scores of gifts meant for others, he began to feel that he had gotten some value out of his experiences. College had taught him how easy it was to steal, and his misadventures in the army had taught him not to shit where he ate. So although countless pieces of mail and packages passed through his hands every night while at work, he had never stolen one of them. He kept that separate.
Roy had few friends and he’d burned the bridges with his family long ago, so Christmas morning was spent alone and not with brightly-colored gifts but brown pasteboard shipping boxes. This season’s haul was a solid one but not a record-breaker. The DVD sleeves contained films he’d already stolen copies of (the risk you run when everyone is renting the same few blockbusters) but the packages were solid: a hefty cookbook, a watch, some jewelry, and some Christmas ornaments. What he didn’t want, he’d sell on-line.
There was also a book, a large, hardcover called ‘Mr. Pub’s Book of Impossible Paper-Folding Magic.’ The book had a garish cover and was filled with bright photographs of some stooge wearing a light blue arrow shirt demonstrating various ‘magic’ tricks that could be performed by folding sheets of paper. Roy was only slightly interested in the book but the word impossible caught his attention. So when everything was opened and the floor littered with packing peanuts and plastic air bladders, he came back to the book.
Roy had recently heard a news story where someone had folded a piece of paper without tearing it in half twelve time- the previous record had been eight. As the paper’s thickness doubled each time, it soon became thicker than it was wide and could not be folded. But the book claimed to show how a piece of paper could be folded twenty-one times.
Roy got a piece if paper from a printer he’d taken off of a stranger’s doorstep last year. Seven folds was the best he could do. He studied the book. He made eighteen folds on his first try.
#
Three hours later, Roy had folded a sheet of 8.5X11 paper in half twenty-one times. He had made an origami Klein bottle hat had no inside or outside. And he was working on a complicated fold called ‘The Inverse Tesseract.’
The directions for the trick came with a warning: ‘This fold will amaze your friends, but may also disrupt your personal spatial relationship with reality as a whole, so this fold is for experts only!” the man in the blue shirt was smiling and holding up a incredibly complex jumble of angles made from crisp, white paper. The object looked like a giant starfish trying to have sex with a Gehry building with the whole thing reflected in a hall of mirrors, but the directions said it took only eight folds, made at precise angles, to create the thing.
Try as he might, Roy couldn’t get it right.
He took a break, got up from the couch, and went into the kitchen for a beer. He stepped into the living room and saw the book before him. Looking down at his hand, there was no beer. He turned and went back though the door and into the living room.
Roy stopped. He turned again and looked through the doorway into the kitchen. He faced the kitchen and took a careful step forward into the living room. He turned again, put both hands on the doorjamb, concentrated on the refrigerator, gave a mighty pull- and threw himself head first into the living room.
He gave up on the kitchen and tried for the hallway to the stairs. He kept coming back into the living room. He tried the window- he was on the third floor, but what the hell. He felt the cold air, saw the snow swirling in as it stuck to his ragged wool sweater, stuck his leg over the sill, and climbed into the living room every time.
He tore his carefully folded paper model apart- tore all his efforts apart, each one coming undone like a complex knot of bundled time, each exhaling a soft breath as their structure came unknotted and whatever possibilities they contained were released.
Roy waded through drifts of crumbled white paper, rushed through the kitchen door and into the living room.
Roy began to worry.
The End