what i am hinting in this post is that you are not allowed to judge me based on this
Hey, internet! Are you bored at work! Well, get back to work! Are you bored at home, alone, smelling of masturbation? Well, so am I. And in celebration of this, herein follows the first chapter or two of the novellete Certain Fools, which took me about two years to write and about two minutes to consign forever to the trash heap of 'Not Good Enough'. But hey, who the heck knows, you might like it.
It is a pretty damn unsubtle story about a dude, and shenanagins.
I
Pick a color, any color.
Was it lightly scented spruce? No?
Guess I win!
- Riddle 38,
101 Things An Anarchic Surrealist Communist Libertarian Dadaist Fundamentalist Boy Can Do (To Fuck People Up)
(Attributed to Eli Schunasfter)
If we must describe Eli Schunasfter, which we unfortunately must, as he is the hero of our story, we will sum it up thusly; He was a man of no less than 20 years and no more than 30 years of age, he weighed between 70 and 85 kilograms, he stood to a lofty height of 1.9413 meters precisely, his head held a permanent amused expression and was adorned with a short flash of shocking red hair. He was a gambler and a ne'er do well, a trickster and a conniver, an aficionado of woman who considered himself the greatest lover to ever walk the earth. And he was a master of his trade, which was (of course) obfuscation and uncertainty, the joke within the truth, riddles without answers, confusion and merry chaos.
He was also, by virtue of all this, rather tightly in debt, considered the scum of the earth by the grand majority of society, and subsisted in life by relying on a surprisingly large group of friends; which, for reasons we could not dream of contemplating, seemed to expand exponentially.
Now it came to be that one of his major debtors was a prominent board member of a certain scientific foundation which struggled under the powerful name of "The Cerebral-Mortialogy Institute" - CMI to its friends, if scientific institutes had friends, perhaps a MySpace page or a blog in which it told all of its intimate details, if scientific institutes had anything intimate that you would find interesting to detail.
And it was a representative this institute, a man by the name of Dr. Edward Blanton, who approached the wayward riddler -on his way back from yet another failed attempt to get a loan - on a beautiful windy morning, which seemed to breathe the very stuff of new beginnings and possibilities, which signaled the beginning of our story. Looking back on this day later, Eli would stop looking.
"Mr. Schunasfter! cough Eli cough Schunasfter!"
(said the doctor.)
Eli turned to the direction of the voice, found nothing but the opening of an apartment building, and was forced to look down. A short, thin man in a white trench-coat stood before him, with an oval face and glasses that screamed 'intellectual' in a needlessly high voice. He immediately took a step back
"Mr. Schunasfter?" the figure said, raising the clear glasses and peeking up like a scientific chipmunk. "I am Dr. Edward Blanton,"
Eli blinked once, and turned the sentence "I'm sorry, we seem to have a case of mistaken identity" over in his head. It had, he noticed, precisely forty four characters. It seemed to fit the occasion. He opened his mouth;
"And I'd like to offer you a deal-"
(continued the doctor.)
At the word 'deal', Eli's mouth shut itself and threw away the key, finely tuned senses tingling like a dozen hummingbirds giving an erotic massage. Money! Shrieked the hummingbirds, all as one. Money was involved.
He immediately smiled kindly (indeed, a kindlier smile we have never seen, this smile was worthy of a Gandhi, a Mother Teresa, a whore behind on her rent) down at the little man. "It is a pleasure, a grand honour, nay, a beautiful finish to this beautiful day to meet you, Doctor. What was that last again?"
The doctor (Neurosurgery) coughed nervously, a habit he had developed as a small child when frequent attacks of asthma were good for getting candy off unsuspecting nurses. "I said that I… that is, the Cerebral-Mortialogy Institute of which I am a part," he coughed again, "Would like to offer you a deal, Mr. Schunasfter. Quite a," cough, "Lucrative deal."
If one looked very closely at the riddler at the close of that sentence, focusing on the absurdly soft creases of his face, one would see a sudden inexplicable twitch of flesh. This was the only outward sign of a quick-born pitched battle between his urgent desire for money and his well-sharpened instincts as they screamed at him to either walk away from this story or - preferably - run. Needless to say, his well-sharpened instincts didn't survive long, and Eli scratched his hair as he looked around the natural walkway for a bench among the wet grass. Finding one, he led Dr. Blanton to it, and sat down himself.
"So, Edward…can I call you Ed?"
Dr. Blanton opened his mouth to say something, certain to be boring and stammered. Eli wisely continued before he could. "Great! So, Eddie, what exactly does the," he spread the words through his mouth as though masticating a piece of hard candy "Ce-REB-ral Mor-TIAL-ogy Ins-TI-TUTE want with me? And (though us men of science are reluctant to discuss these piddling details, let us get straight to the point) how much is it (I must ask simply because I have a child and several small wives to support) willing to pay?"
"Er," cough, "Yes." Said the esteemed doctor, "I have it written," cough, "Somewhere here…" Fishing inside his pockets, the eminent physician removed from them the various accessories one always finds in pockets; A coupon for half off on a weed-whacker, coins from some country he had never visited nor known someone who had (in this case Thailand), a shopping list ('Tomatoes', 'Onions', 'Don't forget the chicken!!!'), and so forth, until at least he found a found a scrap of crumpled paper which was the specific scrap of crumpled paper he had been looking for. He meticulously unfolded it and handed it with a coughing apology to the taller man, who had already pocketed the Thai coins.
Eli wordlessly read the number on the piece of paper (Full text: "Ed: this is the utmost we are willing to offer him, he'll certainly do it for less!"), his eyebrows steadily rising to zenith as he slowly counted out the zeroes. He blinked, read it again, and looked up with slightly glazed eyes. "This…" He stopped, attempting to frame a sentence, his vocabulary scattered under the heel of a large dollar sign, settled on banality as his only chance for a grip on reality; "This is a lot of money."
"Oh," said the Doctor, the irrelevance of money being one of the few things of which he was certain, having been raised in a family supported entirely by government grants, "Is it?" He shrugged, then continued in the tone of one who had memorized a statement and isn't going to go away until he has recited it all; "All for one small service for the Institute, for which you were specifically chosen."
Once again, Eli heard the small but insistent voice telling him to run like hell. He read the number on the piece of paper again, and the voice gradually quieted its tone and admitted that it would like a yacht. Eli was direly caught on their hook, and knew it. "What," he asked, purely as a formality, regaining his wordage by strength of will, "Is this arduous task, test, the reason for this-" the sheer enormity of the lie caught at his throat, but he overcame himself," -merely trivial amount of cash granted?"
The doctor raised a hand to his head, removing his glasses. "Well, Mr. Schunasfter..." he said, looking rather embarrassed, "We want you to die."
"Ah." Said Eli, nodding thoughtfully.
He looked down at the piece of paper, then up again. His eyes slowly focused as he ran down what he had just heard.
"What?"
It is a pretty damn unsubtle story about a dude, and shenanagins.
I
Pick a color, any color.
Was it lightly scented spruce? No?
Guess I win!
- Riddle 38,
101 Things An Anarchic Surrealist Communist Libertarian Dadaist Fundamentalist Boy Can Do (To Fuck People Up)
(Attributed to Eli Schunasfter)
If we must describe Eli Schunasfter, which we unfortunately must, as he is the hero of our story, we will sum it up thusly; He was a man of no less than 20 years and no more than 30 years of age, he weighed between 70 and 85 kilograms, he stood to a lofty height of 1.9413 meters precisely, his head held a permanent amused expression and was adorned with a short flash of shocking red hair. He was a gambler and a ne'er do well, a trickster and a conniver, an aficionado of woman who considered himself the greatest lover to ever walk the earth. And he was a master of his trade, which was (of course) obfuscation and uncertainty, the joke within the truth, riddles without answers, confusion and merry chaos.
He was also, by virtue of all this, rather tightly in debt, considered the scum of the earth by the grand majority of society, and subsisted in life by relying on a surprisingly large group of friends; which, for reasons we could not dream of contemplating, seemed to expand exponentially.
Now it came to be that one of his major debtors was a prominent board member of a certain scientific foundation which struggled under the powerful name of "The Cerebral-Mortialogy Institute" - CMI to its friends, if scientific institutes had friends, perhaps a MySpace page or a blog in which it told all of its intimate details, if scientific institutes had anything intimate that you would find interesting to detail.
And it was a representative this institute, a man by the name of Dr. Edward Blanton, who approached the wayward riddler -on his way back from yet another failed attempt to get a loan - on a beautiful windy morning, which seemed to breathe the very stuff of new beginnings and possibilities, which signaled the beginning of our story. Looking back on this day later, Eli would stop looking.
"Mr. Schunasfter! cough Eli cough Schunasfter!"
(said the doctor.)
Eli turned to the direction of the voice, found nothing but the opening of an apartment building, and was forced to look down. A short, thin man in a white trench-coat stood before him, with an oval face and glasses that screamed 'intellectual' in a needlessly high voice. He immediately took a step back
"Mr. Schunasfter?" the figure said, raising the clear glasses and peeking up like a scientific chipmunk. "I am Dr. Edward Blanton,"
Eli blinked once, and turned the sentence "I'm sorry, we seem to have a case of mistaken identity" over in his head. It had, he noticed, precisely forty four characters. It seemed to fit the occasion. He opened his mouth;
"And I'd like to offer you a deal-"
(continued the doctor.)
At the word 'deal', Eli's mouth shut itself and threw away the key, finely tuned senses tingling like a dozen hummingbirds giving an erotic massage. Money! Shrieked the hummingbirds, all as one. Money was involved.
He immediately smiled kindly (indeed, a kindlier smile we have never seen, this smile was worthy of a Gandhi, a Mother Teresa, a whore behind on her rent) down at the little man. "It is a pleasure, a grand honour, nay, a beautiful finish to this beautiful day to meet you, Doctor. What was that last again?"
The doctor (Neurosurgery) coughed nervously, a habit he had developed as a small child when frequent attacks of asthma were good for getting candy off unsuspecting nurses. "I said that I… that is, the Cerebral-Mortialogy Institute of which I am a part," he coughed again, "Would like to offer you a deal, Mr. Schunasfter. Quite a," cough, "Lucrative deal."
If one looked very closely at the riddler at the close of that sentence, focusing on the absurdly soft creases of his face, one would see a sudden inexplicable twitch of flesh. This was the only outward sign of a quick-born pitched battle between his urgent desire for money and his well-sharpened instincts as they screamed at him to either walk away from this story or - preferably - run. Needless to say, his well-sharpened instincts didn't survive long, and Eli scratched his hair as he looked around the natural walkway for a bench among the wet grass. Finding one, he led Dr. Blanton to it, and sat down himself.
"So, Edward…can I call you Ed?"
Dr. Blanton opened his mouth to say something, certain to be boring and stammered. Eli wisely continued before he could. "Great! So, Eddie, what exactly does the," he spread the words through his mouth as though masticating a piece of hard candy "Ce-REB-ral Mor-TIAL-ogy Ins-TI-TUTE want with me? And (though us men of science are reluctant to discuss these piddling details, let us get straight to the point) how much is it (I must ask simply because I have a child and several small wives to support) willing to pay?"
"Er," cough, "Yes." Said the esteemed doctor, "I have it written," cough, "Somewhere here…" Fishing inside his pockets, the eminent physician removed from them the various accessories one always finds in pockets; A coupon for half off on a weed-whacker, coins from some country he had never visited nor known someone who had (in this case Thailand), a shopping list ('Tomatoes', 'Onions', 'Don't forget the chicken!!!'), and so forth, until at least he found a found a scrap of crumpled paper which was the specific scrap of crumpled paper he had been looking for. He meticulously unfolded it and handed it with a coughing apology to the taller man, who had already pocketed the Thai coins.
Eli wordlessly read the number on the piece of paper (Full text: "Ed: this is the utmost we are willing to offer him, he'll certainly do it for less!"), his eyebrows steadily rising to zenith as he slowly counted out the zeroes. He blinked, read it again, and looked up with slightly glazed eyes. "This…" He stopped, attempting to frame a sentence, his vocabulary scattered under the heel of a large dollar sign, settled on banality as his only chance for a grip on reality; "This is a lot of money."
"Oh," said the Doctor, the irrelevance of money being one of the few things of which he was certain, having been raised in a family supported entirely by government grants, "Is it?" He shrugged, then continued in the tone of one who had memorized a statement and isn't going to go away until he has recited it all; "All for one small service for the Institute, for which you were specifically chosen."
Once again, Eli heard the small but insistent voice telling him to run like hell. He read the number on the piece of paper again, and the voice gradually quieted its tone and admitted that it would like a yacht. Eli was direly caught on their hook, and knew it. "What," he asked, purely as a formality, regaining his wordage by strength of will, "Is this arduous task, test, the reason for this-" the sheer enormity of the lie caught at his throat, but he overcame himself," -merely trivial amount of cash granted?"
The doctor raised a hand to his head, removing his glasses. "Well, Mr. Schunasfter..." he said, looking rather embarrassed, "We want you to die."
"Ah." Said Eli, nodding thoughtfully.
He looked down at the piece of paper, then up again. His eyes slowly focused as he ran down what he had just heard.
"What?"