I'm writing a story 140 words at a time and posting the results here
daily. Can I sustain interest? Will I lose the narrative thread? Find
out in this next installment of Bullets Ain't Cheap
one had followed me. As I opened the door I got a tingle, right up my spine. I should have paid attention. I shouldn’t have gotten in.
As I started the car I felt the cold kiss of gun metal at the base of my skull.
“Why are you working with them?”
I’d fallen asleep to that voice and I’d woken up to it. It was as familiar to me as my own, but much more welcome in my ear.
Kelly.
“I’m taking their money,” I said carefully. He hadn’t moved the pistol away. “It’s not the same as working with them.”
For what seemed like forever he waited, the gun still pressed to the back of my head. Finally, mercifully, he let the pistol drop.
“I’ll buy that. For now.”
Only then did I dare look in the rear-view.
Showing posts with label octopus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label octopus. Show all posts
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Saturday, January 8, 2011
The Stank
I went to the convenience store the other day to buy lottery tickets - because you can't win if you don't play - and right when I walked in I noticed that the place smelled like beef jerky. And I'm not talking sort of in passing, or that it was mildly reminiscent of the spices in beef jerky, the entire place smelled like it was the store room at the beef jerky factory. The stank was so overpowering that it almost brought tears to my eyes, and I have a pretty strong constitution regarding offensive odors. I asked the guys behind the counter and they hadn't noticed a thing. I'm sure when they left for the day they smelled like they'd snapped into a Slim Jim.
The next day I went to work out and the place smelled like blown insulation. Not the pink fiberglass kind, the paper pulp kind they blow into the attic crawl spaces that instantly starts to smell like the flooded basement of an old newspaper publisher. Not overpowering, but strong enough that I noticed people taking a sniff and looking around when they walked in.
After that, of course, I started noticing all sorts of aromas. Either I'm noticing smells more or smells around here are becoming more pronounced, but either way, in the past few days I've tagged distinct smells to different locations. And here are a few of them:
Beef jerky - the convenience store at Colorado and Hill.
Sewer gas - the intersection of Green and El Molino, SE corner. It's always smelled right there, ever since I've lived in the neighborhood.
Corn flakes - all of Altadena, North of Washington on Fair Oaks.
Rotten cantaloupe - the Metro station at Olive Ave. in Burbank.
Funk so strong it'll make you faint - my fencing glove. To me it smells like home...
Feet - the parking garage of my apartment building. Like somebody changed their wet socks and left them hanging from the exposed pipes.
Bad meat or good cheese - the toner store. Something's spoiled, or just about to go bad in there, and they don't even sell food.
Paper insulation - my gym.
Tacos - the sushi restaurant down by the Apple store in Old Town. Yeah, tacos... weird.
Butterscotch pudding - the Target on Colorado between Hudson and Oak Knoll, but not in the grocery section, which might make sense. Up in men's clothes.
Scotch tape - the stairs leading up from the street to the Trader Joe's at Lake and Hudson. Like somebody wrapped a thousand presents right there.
The next day I went to work out and the place smelled like blown insulation. Not the pink fiberglass kind, the paper pulp kind they blow into the attic crawl spaces that instantly starts to smell like the flooded basement of an old newspaper publisher. Not overpowering, but strong enough that I noticed people taking a sniff and looking around when they walked in.
After that, of course, I started noticing all sorts of aromas. Either I'm noticing smells more or smells around here are becoming more pronounced, but either way, in the past few days I've tagged distinct smells to different locations. And here are a few of them:
Beef jerky - the convenience store at Colorado and Hill.
Sewer gas - the intersection of Green and El Molino, SE corner. It's always smelled right there, ever since I've lived in the neighborhood.
Corn flakes - all of Altadena, North of Washington on Fair Oaks.
Rotten cantaloupe - the Metro station at Olive Ave. in Burbank.
Funk so strong it'll make you faint - my fencing glove. To me it smells like home...
Feet - the parking garage of my apartment building. Like somebody changed their wet socks and left them hanging from the exposed pipes.
Bad meat or good cheese - the toner store. Something's spoiled, or just about to go bad in there, and they don't even sell food.
Paper insulation - my gym.
Tacos - the sushi restaurant down by the Apple store in Old Town. Yeah, tacos... weird.
Butterscotch pudding - the Target on Colorado between Hudson and Oak Knoll, but not in the grocery section, which might make sense. Up in men's clothes.
Scotch tape - the stairs leading up from the street to the Trader Joe's at Lake and Hudson. Like somebody wrapped a thousand presents right there.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't
I'm concerned that octopuses are up to something.*
It's well-accepted that certain animals are far more intelligent than we human beings give them credit for. Whales, obviously, some kinds of apes, and dogs for certain, all display character and personality and interests that place them out of the same 'dumb animal' class as, say, armadillos or chipmunks. (Or Kardashians. ZING!!)
Some researchers say cephalopods are the smartest things in the ocean, more so than whales or dolphins. Or maybe even us. Which is the kind of notion that keeps me awake at night. I can recognize a kindred spirit in a dog or a gorilla or a beluga whale, we're all mammals and that's a bonding experience. So it doesn't bother me to think that they're thinking, know what I mean? But an octopus... eight arms, a beak, those creepy, evil eyes like some sort of Nazi geneticist just waiting for the chance to tamper with God's intention... it just ain't right. I imagine going deep-sea diving and getting captured by some octopus Gestapo, tied to an examining table while they flash different colors as they carve bits of me away. Ewww.
The only saving grace is that octopuses have no skeleton, so we got 'em there. They minute they leave the sea they're nothing but a floppy mass of gristle. If they wanted to invade dry land they'd have to come up with some sort of exoskeleton to support their weight, like a giant octopus robot with a seawater-filled clear round dome for their head and two giant mechanical legs and six snakelike slithery arms and a raspy electronic voice whispering hideous evil things...
Oh, great, now I have something new to worry about.
* I know the proper plural is 'octopi,' I used to teach Latin. But octopuses sounds funnier.
It's well-accepted that certain animals are far more intelligent than we human beings give them credit for. Whales, obviously, some kinds of apes, and dogs for certain, all display character and personality and interests that place them out of the same 'dumb animal' class as, say, armadillos or chipmunks. (Or Kardashians. ZING!!)
Some researchers say cephalopods are the smartest things in the ocean, more so than whales or dolphins. Or maybe even us. Which is the kind of notion that keeps me awake at night. I can recognize a kindred spirit in a dog or a gorilla or a beluga whale, we're all mammals and that's a bonding experience. So it doesn't bother me to think that they're thinking, know what I mean? But an octopus... eight arms, a beak, those creepy, evil eyes like some sort of Nazi geneticist just waiting for the chance to tamper with God's intention... it just ain't right. I imagine going deep-sea diving and getting captured by some octopus Gestapo, tied to an examining table while they flash different colors as they carve bits of me away. Ewww.
The only saving grace is that octopuses have no skeleton, so we got 'em there. They minute they leave the sea they're nothing but a floppy mass of gristle. If they wanted to invade dry land they'd have to come up with some sort of exoskeleton to support their weight, like a giant octopus robot with a seawater-filled clear round dome for their head and two giant mechanical legs and six snakelike slithery arms and a raspy electronic voice whispering hideous evil things...
Oh, great, now I have something new to worry about.
* I know the proper plural is 'octopi,' I used to teach Latin. But octopuses sounds funnier.
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