The Whole Point Of The Cult

Workplace Anxiety

It was five minutes to eight on a Teusday morning, and he was up pacing nerveously around the bedroom, holding his stomach like he was about to vomit or have diarrhea. Typical behavior for him in the morning, at least on a work day. He really seemed to hate his job. I never learned what he did. There was a period of a few months during which he seemed much more relaxed, he slept better, he took care of himself, and during that time he never paced around the bedroom in the morning like that. He must’ve been out of work. Must’ve gone back to it when he went back to work.

He was doing especially bad on this particular morning. He always talked to himself, whenever he was alone, but always under his breath. On this morning he grew very agitated, talking to himself more and more loudly until he was almost yelling. Then he stopped, stopped pacing around and clutching his guts, and stopped talking to himself. He froze a moment, then hurried out of the bedroom. He must’ve gone to the kitchen, but I couldn’t see him. The kitchen was out of my field of view, and I was afraid that, if I turned the camera, he’d notice it. But he must’ve gone into the kitchen because he lived in this dinky little apartment where the kitchen and living room were on one side, and the bedroom and bathroom were on the other. He went through the doorway to the kitchen/living room area, and came back a few moments later with a pair of kitchen shears. He took them to the bathroom sink and stood there for a long while. I couldn’t see what he was doing; I could see him standing there at the sink, but he was in shadows and I couldn’t make out any details. It looked like he was cutting something— which, it turned out, he was.

He laughed to himself, a surprised little chuckle, and then came back into the bedroom. He’d cut off his left index finger and couldn’t have been happier about it. He tossed the scissors and his finger onto the bed, and called into work to tell his manager that he wouldn’t be able to come in, that there had been an accident in the kitchen and that he would be stuck at the emergency room all day. This seemed to go over fine. When he got off the phone he jumped onto the bed like a little kid and stared at the finger. It was moving, inching around his bed like an inchworm.

He cut off his left middle finger. He cut it off like he was snipping a corner off a piece of paper. He didn’t flinch, just, snip. There wasn’t any blood either. In quick succession, he cut off the other fingers of his left hand, snip, snip, snip. Five litle inchworms inched around his bed. He watched them all wriggling around there with a big grin on his face. He seemed satisfied… for a while. Then he took off his socks and snipped off his toes as matter-of-factly as if he were clipping his toenails: snip, snip, snip, snip, snip— snip, snip, snip, snip, snip.

Now he had fifteen little inchworms inching around his bed, and it looked like that would be all. He tried to cut his wrist, but it was too big a job for his kitchen shears. He couldn’t very well cut off the fingers of his right hand, because it was with his right hand that he cut. He pulled down his pants and seemed to contemplate cutting off his penis to make it sixteen little inchworms, but he pulled his pants back up without doing it. After that he seemed content to watch his new friends… for a while. Then he got the—frankly, brilliant, though also horrifying—idea to cut his face, opening his mouth wide and cutting off strips of cheekmeat and lips. These pieces added some variety to his menagerie: instead of inching around like inchworms, they stretched out long and pulled themselves forward, like earthworms.

He found he could use the same technique with any hole. He did his nostrils, making little maggot looking pieces, and his eyelids. Then he did his belly button, which turned out the be the mother lode. New creatures came pouring out of him. He didn’t have to cut them out anymore either, they cut themselves out, or each other. When it was all over, there wasn’t anything left of him, and all the pieces had scurried away to hide under the floorboards, down the drains, in dark corners and other places where no one looks and my camera can’t see.

Miss Crachen’s Camera

By day, Miss Crachen was a second grade school teacher; by night she was an inventor, though not a productive one. She would give up on an invention once she saw that it would work, being interested only in the surprising, not the obvious. Having the keen mind that she did, one able to quickly see the implications of things, this meant that she didn’t often get to the point of even building a prototype to test. The problem was aggravated by the fact that Miss Crachen was arrogant—an affliction not untypical amongst people with keen minds—and so tended to trust the fullness of her understanding too much. All her life people tried to correct Miss Crachen’s arrogance. They would tell her, “You think you know everything, but you don’t. You think ‘this’, but actually it’s ‘that.’” Unfortunately they were always wrong. “This” was, in fact, “this”, not “that”, so their attempts to correct her arrogance only reinforced it.

Miss Crachen would receive an idea for an invention while cooking, or cleaning, or taking a bath, or on the drive to or from work. The idea would fall in her lap all on its own, and she would pick it up, she would look at it, examine it, turn it over, take it apart. When she could see the whole thing, hold it in her mind all at once, she’d throw it away. Once she’d eaten the flesh, she would discard the rind, and meanwhile five or six fresh, ripe ideas would have fallen into her lap.

Then, one morning, while buttering a slice of toast, an idea came to her for a very high-speed video camera, and this proved to be a very difficult invention. An artichoke, with not much flesh, and difficult to eat. It was difficult enough that it kept her wrestling with it. She couldn’t simply devour it like lesser ideas, and so she turned out an actual prototype— not her first, but one of only a very few.

Miss Crachen estimated the time resolution of her camera at roughly one trillion frames a second, or, to put it more precisely, she estimated the time between two successive frames was close to a trillionth of a second. This is an important distinction. There are what seem to be very high-speed cameras giving that kind of time resolution, but while it may be sort of fair to describe them as capable of capturing a trillion frames a second, you cannot honestly say that the time between two of their successive frames is a trillionth of a second. They work by capturing periodic phenomena, a laser repeatedly firing for instance, at slightly different moments, and then putting the frames together, kind of like stop motion animation combined with time-lapse photography. It could take minutes, or hours, or more to capture a thousand frames, whereas Miss Crachen’s high-speed camera was straightforwardly a high-speed camera, and if it ran for a second it would capture a trillion frames.

The first test was conducted in her living room. She set up a tent around her couch and smoked several cigarettes inside it, then she fired a laser mounted on the armrest of her couch and filmed its progress with her prototype camera. She filmed for only 125 millionths of a second but captured over two hours worth of footage played back at a hundred frames a second. Once the test had been performed—a fraction of a blink of an eye—Miss Crachen eagerly played back the result.

Miss Crachen had thought it would be cute if she were in the frame for the test, so the first thing she saw on her laptop when the video started playing was what looked like a still photograph of her smiling face. After several minutes of nothing happening, a little fleck of red appeared on the right side of the frame. Miss Crachen cheered the little fleck on as it slowly—agonizingly slowly—stretched out, but she ran out of enthusiasm when the beam was as long as the breadth of her thumbnail.

She could’ve quit watching at that point—the test had been confirmed a success—but she felt the diligent thing to do was to watch the whole video, to see with her own eyes the red thread of light’s journey across the frame. She took down the tent, microwaved a bag of popcorn, and made herself comfortable on the couch. For forty minutes she watched the video play only out of the corner of her eye while she snacked on popcorn and dinked around on her phone, but then something in the video moved suddenly, catching her eye. She looked from the little screen to the bigger one. She saw her face frozen like in a photograph—as before—and she saw the laser rolling steadily onward—again, as it had been—but over her shoulder she saw the zipper on the tent being undone shakily, in fits and starts, but swiftly, as if it had been filmed at normal speed. When a crack of a few inches had been made in the tent flap, in they all poured like baby spiders bursting out of their egg sac, swarming over every surface and blackening the very air: Monsters.

Mastodon Droppings

I post very very short stories to Mastadon— my handle is @david_pasquinelli. Below are five of them. Enjoy.

Garbage Disposal

I pulled out a handful of noodles and egg shells from my garbage disposal. The water drained, but there was more. Fishing around, I pulled out: several chicken livers, which I couldn’t account for; a clump of moss the size of my fist; a dozen rotten plums that smelled awful; and, most disturbingly, clumps of red hair and teeth. I shined a light down the drain and saw a glint of gold, but when I reached in to grab it I cut myself. After bandaging my hand I looked again, but it was gone.

The Majors

I dreamt of playing Major League Baseball as far back as I can remember. I loved the game, but I loved the dream more. It was my treasure, my dream of making it to the majors. Through Little League, Babe Ruth League, high-school ball, and the minors, that dream was my best loved, most precious possession. I leaned on it when times were hard. I thought I had gone to heaven when I finally got called up. But now the dream is gone. Now it’s a job, and what do I have to lean on?

Poorly Done

He brought the muzzle of the revolver to his eye and, like the others, fired it. Just like that, there was a hole where his eye had been. But he’d done a bad job and made a mess of it. He writhed and screamed on the floor before—pop—he put out the other eye. Then he lay silent and still. The others approached the body, and stood there and starred at it through the holes in their own faces where they had once had eyes.

A Brief Interview with a Homeless Man

“If you were king of the world, what would you do to help the homeless?”

“Nothin’.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Cuz they’re assholes.”

“Homeless people are assholes?”

“Yup.”

“But you’re homeless….”

“Right, so I know. I know a lot of homeless people; they’re assholes. What do you know?”

A Spider in her Web

I was always a good and diligent wife and mother, wholesome and modest, selfless, kind, tending to her family with the attentiveness of a gardener to his garden, a businessman to his business, a spider to her web. Even after the diagnosis, my first priority was to help my family cope with a future that wouldn’t include me. At first. But now I find all I want to do is fuck strangers and kill people.

My Shoes

My shoes have holes in them, one in each, where the calluses on the balls of my feet wear on my soles. They still look pretty nice though, and they’re comfortable, as long as it isn’t wet outside. I plan on keeping them. I hate shopping for shoes. I hate that someone can pry money out of me just because I have feet. It’s like my feet don’t belong to me, like I’m just renting them from Vans. And it takes forever to pick a pair, and they never feel as good as my old pair, and they always look too crisp—not till after a few weeks do new shoes start to look normal—and the whole time I’m picking them, I’m thinking, “What’s wrong with the ones I’ve got on now?”, and it’s a good question.

So I’ve decided not to buy shoes anymore. I’m going to wear these ones out. I’m going to beat the ever-loving shit out of them. I’ll patch the holes in their soles, and the next ones, and the ones after those. If they rip, or if they pop a seam, I’ll mend them. By the time I’m through with my shoes, there won’t be a single original stitch of canvas or scrap of rubber left in them, all that’ll have been turned over forty, fifty times. I’m going to put a half billion steps on these shoes. They’ll be nothing when I’m done with them, unrecognizable. I’m going to exhaust my shoes completely. I have to. They’re the only shoes I’m ever going to have.

Clouds Don’t Evaporate

I caught a cloud that looked just like my son did when he was two years old. I took it home and fed it ice cream. Just like my son used to, it would cross its eyes in anticipation as I brought the spoon to its mouth. But it was just a cloud, and it evaporated.

The Dangers of Sugar

The 911 Transcript

Dispatch: 911 emergency

Caller: Uh, hi, this is Mrs. Robert Cole calling on behalf of my husband. We’re at 1612 South Antoine Street.

Dispatch: What’s the emergency, Mrs. Cole?

Mrs. Cole: So… I don’t know— my husband thinks he got his head stuck in the dryer. He’s always doing this sort of thing though. We go to a lot of trouble and it turns out to be nothing. But we’ve tried about everything we can think of and— I don’t know.

Dispatch: You said his head is caught in a dryer?

Mrs. Cole: A clothes dryer, yes. It looks like the door slammed shut on his neck, uh, while he was pulling something out. Maybe? I didn’t see what happened; I just got back from the market. He’s standing in front of the dryer, kind of bent over, his head’s inside of it, and the door’s shut. i just— Robert, how did you even manage it?

Dispatch: He’s conscious then?

Mrs. Cole: Let me check. (passage of approx. eight words, indistinct)

Mrs. Cole: I can’t tell. I don’t think so.

Dispatch: Can you open the door?

Mrs. Cole: Let me check….

(Mrs. Cole can be heard putting down the phone. Approx. three seconds later she can be heard struggling to open the dryer door.)

Mrs. Cole: Oh God! (several words, indistinct)

Mrs. Cole (panting): There’s a lot of blood— He’s bleeding, from his neck.

Dispatch: Okay, an ambulance is on the way. You need to apply preassure to the wound, Mrs. Cole, and don’t disconnect. I’ll stay on the line.

The Coroner’s Report

IN THE MATTER RE THE DEATH OF:

I, HERMAN SYLVESTER, Sheriff-Coroner of the County of Washoe, State of Nevada, certify an inquiry and investigation was held in the death of ROBERT NICHOLAS COLE, a 42 years old male, born in New Mexico. The inquiry and investigation revealed that the decedent died on the 19th day of June, 1955 at 1612 South Antoine Street in Reno as follows:

MANNER OF DEATH: NATURAL CAUSES CAUSE OF DEATH: BLOOD LOSS due to PUNCTURE WOUNDS to the neck.

Sustained following INJURIES FROM EXCESS DIETARY SUGAR. The incident occurred at 1612 South Antoine Street in Reno at an unknown hour on June 19, 1955. I certify that death occurred from the cause and in the manner stated above in accordance with the written findings contained herein.

Signed this 15th day of March, 1955 HERMAN SYLVESTER, SHERIFF-CORONER

Recollection of Maurice Sinclair

When Bob died it wasn’t so much a shock, really. He was always getting into tight spots, something of a daredevil. He got himself out of ’em too, but, well, we all sort of knew, you know, that one day he wouldn’t. It was that daring that we loved about him. So when we finally learned what got him, that he died from eating too much sugar, I thought, you must be joking! Look at him, his head’s nearly ripped clean off. But now, looking back, you know he did have a sweet tooth? He must’ve drunk a half-dozen colas a day for as long as I knew him. My doctor— later on I asked my doctor about it, because I drank my share of cola too, and he explained how the sugar eats away at the lining of the throat, and if this goes on long enough your head’ll just come right off and all your juices’ll spill all over the floor, just like Bob’s did. Well, I hardly have to tell you I haven’t touched a soft drink since 1963. Not even once.

Five More Mastodon Droppings

Five more very short stories from my Mastodon, which, incidentally, I now know how to link directly to.

Utopia

In the future there will be no need for money. The production of everything will be either automated or done by a person considering the work to be play, and in either case the produce will be freely given away. There will be no pollution, the whole world made from a drop of sunlight, and not a bit gone to waste. Vast tracts of land will return to wilderness and we’ll steward it like we always should have. There will be only one class owning everything in common, because everyone else and their children will have starved long ago.

Chafing

Your existence chafes me. The fact that you dare to meet my gaze is galling. That you don’t grovel before me is an insult. You think you have a right to what’s yours? I disagree; you ought to have only what I allow you to have. If I had the power, (when I have the power), I’ll snuff you out as vengeance for ever having the arrogance to stand on two feet.

But, come on, don’t be so one-sided. Don’t be unreasonable. I’m willing to compromise. Let’s meet in the middle.

My Dad Says Goodbye

I saw my dad last night, on my front porch. He had stuffed himself into a corner, back pressed into the ceiling, holding himself up by his hands and feet, like Spider-Man. He tried to pretend he was a dummy, but I saw the glint of light when his eye twitched. Last time I’d seen him we were both passing through the train station in Seattle. At the time I wondered how long it takes for the family to learn when a homeless person is found dead. I suppose it’s forever in some cases.

After snapping a photo as proof, I went to unlock my front door. The sound of the key must’ve spooked him. I heard a flutter, looked to his corner, and he was gone.

Totality

The moon passed before the sun, and under its shadow crowds cheered, and a few people cried. One minute, two minutes, the cheering continued. Five minutes, ten minutes, a worried murmuring. After an hour, everyone was crying.

Equanimity

Joann became god while riding her bike after school one day. As god, she ignored her curfew. It was dark when she got home; her house was in flames. Her dad was at work, her baby brother was upstairs in his crib, and her mom was on the lawn screaming for help between long, wheezing gasps. She had rushed into the house, over and over, only to be repelled by the smoke and the flames. Joann could see that her mom had a strong preference that her son not be burned, but, as god, she couldn’t see why.

And not a Sole for Miles

Halfway across the river, fifty feet of water beneath me, and I don’t think I can swim another stroke.

this is important.

Daily Mirror, London, March 9, 1939

Smiles and Nods

It’s twelve fifteen and a woman is waiting in a busy coffee shop for a man she doesn’t know named Scot. He was supposed to meet her at the door but when she arrived she found no one, understandable considering the rain. She looked for Scot inside, but since she didn’t know him she was only looking for a man that seemed to be looking for a woman— that is to say a man who has an appointment to meet a woman for a job interview. This will be her third in-person interview for this position, a receptionist at a small software firm, and she was hoping it would be her last.

She’d never met Scot before but she did have his phone number. She tried it but it went straight to voicemail. She tried the woman in human resources also, since she was her contact at the company and since it was her that had arranged the hiring process up till this point, but that also went straight to voicemail. This wasn’t surprising. It’d been this way with everything, not just the interviews. Her applications had disappeared twice and following up on them had shown her right from the start that the people at this company were allergic to phones. She had to take her resume in and physically hand it over to the woman in HR to get anywhere, and then it was a phone interview that she was told was on Tuesday but which was supposed to be on Thursday, and another phone interview that just straight slipped the interviewer’s mind, an on-site interview with a man who had a thousand more important things on his mind, and another at eight o’clock in the evening. That last one took place in the parking lot— the man she was interviewing with only remembered the interview when he saw her in the parking lot as he was leaving for home. They chatted at length about many things beside his car, interminable small talk having nothing to do with her ability to be a receptionist at their company, and if he noticed her teeth chattering from the cold he didn’t mind. Some people wouldn’t have put up with it. People who don’t need a job, for instance.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, her phone rings, a text from Scot asking where she is. There’s a man standing outside, holding an umbrella and looking at his phone. She crosses the coffee shop to let him in.

“You must be Scot”, she says from inside the door she’s holding open for him.

“--— —.—--—— —--— —”, he replies, as if speaking, but instead of words, hissing and buzzing and popping like an arc of electricity rippling through the air. She looks at him uncomprehending.

“…What?”

“--—------, —?”

She smiles and nods like the hard of hearing do and tells the man she’s gotten them a table. The man smiles and follows. “Do you want to order anything before we get started?”, she asks as they pass the line for the register.

“— —”, the man replies, breaking off from her. “--—— —--—— —?—--—----— —.”

“…I’ll be over at that table, over there”, she tells him, pointing to the spot where she’d been waiting. She looks around the room, watches people in conversation, and she listens. There’s a lot of noise in the coffee shop, but she can pick out their words. Then it isn’t her hearing. But she looks at the man in line, watches him order his coffee. From across the room she can hear the buzzing and crackling coming from him, but the cashier rings him up without trouble. Then it isn’t his speach….

After ordering, he waits by the counter, and his order must’ve been simple as it’s handed to him quickly. He joins her at the table, setting down the coffee cup and his phone, which is running an audio recorder.

“--—------—--------——--—--,—----—--— —.”

Again she smiles and nods. She figures he must’ve said something about the recorder. Glancing at his coffee, she sees the lid has “Scott” written on it— two t’s, but close enough. At least she knows she’s talking to the right person. Or, something like talking.

“--—----—--—----—----— —,—------,—--—--— —--—--—--—--—--—----. —--,—--—--——--—------, (— —--—--),—--—------.—--— —--—— —…—--—--— —--—--?”

She smiles and nods once more, hoping that what he’d just said wasn’t a question she was expected to answer, but he keeps looking to her like he expects more of a response than a smile and a nod.

“I’m just looking for a fast-paced team that I can grow with”, she tosses out limply, figuring that whatever he may have asked, that’s a pretty all-right interviewey thing to say, but as the words topple out of her their stupidity rings in her ears and the sad humor of the situation—that here she is, a miracle of life, and this is how she spends her time, and these are the things she uses what may be the rarest phenomenon in the universe, language, to say—makes her chortle, but she catches herself and fakes a little cough to cover it.

He smiles at her pleasantly and says, “--.—— —. —----—----—— —— —--—------—--—--—--—--—--”, and extends his hand to her. She shakes it and smiles. “--—--—— —--—----.—--—--—------?—--….”

He had shaken her hand and stood up, so the interview must be done. Short, but that could be good or bad. Probably bad, she thinks. Either way she’s glad to be done with it.

“Thank you”, she says, but the cafe is crowded and noisy and he mishears her and thinks she said “No thank you.” It doesn’t make much difference. He smiles again, she smiles back. On the way out he gives her a little departing wave. She eyes a chocolate croissants in the pastry case but decides not to waste the money on it, what with her unemployment almost gone, (not that two dollars seventy-five cents is going to save her anyway). Later on that afternoon she’ll get an email from the woman in HR, and to her surprise, it’ll be a job offer. She’ll then return to the coffee shop and buy one of those chocolate croissants, to celebrate. At last! she got a job.

Language may be the rarest phenomenon in the universe, but the job market wants smiles and nods.