Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.6, p.2

Precious Perforations Outgassing Like in Rome

            The two men explored each floor of the library, collecting all of the paper thrown into the recycling bins.  Ronald wore a trenchcoat much like the one his father had worn at Sheila’s arraignment.  Gabblegi, the other man, made do with a crude rawhide wrap.  He would glance at Ronald from time to time with envy.

            “We should have brought a big bag,” Ronald, his arms laden with unwanted copies of pages from other men’s works, reflected as he and his partner stepped into the elevator.

            “What’re you going to do with all that paper?” a young apricot asked from her corner.

            Gabblegi studied her shoes closely, weighing the status conferred relative to his own hesperatic sandals.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.6, p.1

Cologne Man Sneaks into the Old Warehouse

            Having discovered an old bottle of Hai Karate (he hesitated to say he had “found” it, because he was afraid his grandmother would snap, “Well, it wasn’t lost.”) Snickerum slathered all of it, every last long-expired drop, over himself.

            “It will help disguise my natural aroma, should there be guard animals.”

            The bottle had belonged to his father.  Snickerum put it away in a box for such mementos.  The label was still in good shape.  Robed hands poised to break boards or grip the steering wheel, leaving a stinky trap for the next person to use the car (but most often a truck).  Such distinctions were vital, he had found.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack, Chapter Six (title page)

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.26

Isn’t it True that the Blasphemers Attended a Party Celebrating the Decapitation of Thomas Dewey?

              Cheryl saw through Randolph’s disguise immediately. 

            “That moustache is so fake,” she declared, barely glancing up from the special crossword puzzle featuring Tom Selleck-related clues.

            “Um… I grew this moustache,” Randolph retorted.  He yanked on a few bristles to prove his point, but his mechanical hand hadn’t been properly calibrated yet, and he yanked them right out.  Right out, I say.  Just as I might say, “Cheeses to the left,” or “Dumpo de mothrag.”

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.25

Detective Work at the Arcade Resulted in Fat Boy’s Painting

            If you’re wondering exactly what the process was by which the detective work at the arcade resulted in Fat Boy’s painting, then I must confess that I’m a little confused myself.  Of all the theories I’ve heard, I think the one that makes the most sense comes from a paper presented to the Academy some time after Ned and Lars’ investigation into the matter had won the National Good Reporting Award.  Professor Jasper, while refuting much of the journalistic duo’s assertions, agreed that it was a simple matter of inspiration.  So there.  Take it as you will.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.24

My Daughter Strengthened Her Arm by Learning to Play the Piano

            In the illustration my daughter is not wearing her glasses, which is an advantage, since she will be interpreting a piece of music I wrote using highly symbolic language unrelated to regular notation.

            “John Coltrane was only forty when he died,” my daughter, whose name is Reed, observes.  I could have taken this as some sort of negative comment on the relatively widespread inability of rock musicians to read sheet music as opposed to all of those great Jazz guys who could, but I’m too busy dealing with the seahorses.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.23

The Unfortunate Magician Stares Fixedly at the Hamster Wheel

            Cheese merchants of the ninth and fourteenth centuries (out of sequence due to the unique juxtaposition of their relative situational districts, each being colored red on the map of the universe) formulate contractual scales of carbonation based on a nicely round interest.  As one or more bald champions of overtime have expressed it in the pages of their posthumously published memoirs, “There’s always somewhere to hide.”

            The head area is a place to rest one’s feet.  The shoes, however, must never enter one’s mind.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.22

Born Again Burn Victim Baby Portrays Tangram Monster in Film of the Same Beard

            After the expected (and prophesied) career as an evangelist didn’t work out (what else was she going to do?), it came as a shock to Melissa’s church family when she got a job in Hollywood.

            “Let’s all pray that the Lord helps her keep her virtue in the midst of that hotbed of hedonism,” Chuck suggested to the congregation.

            “Who is he kidding?” Chet whispered to his wife.  The latter, watching TV some two years later, came across one of Melissa’s movies.  Titled Emasculated Conception, it told the story of a girl from a small fishing village who wins first prize in the science fair with her exhibit of a pickled frog.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack, ch.5, p.21

Bradley Remained Comatose Long After the Enveloping Smirk Was Paused
Dr. Compunction, distinguished from his colleague Dr. Impetus by the pattern of dancing Mickey and Minnie Mice on his face mask, monitored the screen on the debiliscope closely.
“Well,” he sighed, putting his hands to his waist and stretching his aching lower back, “It seems only god can help him now.”
“Don’t use that tired cliché around me, Stanley,” Dr. Impetus snapped from his position near the patient’s left foot.  His eyes never left the subtly pulsing grambesi vein between the second and third metacostal rifts: this was now his only clue as to the patient’s political affiliations.
A blob-like character in an off-white robe dominated the comatose man’s dreams.  Could it be his wife’s chicken sandwich habit in symbolic disguise?
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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.20

Provide Me No More Moctuary Details of His Grapefruit-Inspired Comic Book

            “The main character is a grapefruit farmer in Florida who refuses to market his crop through the Citrus Growers’ Association,” Chris explained to his former geometry teacher.  “His farm’s mascot is a caricature of the farmer himself named King River Fruit who…” he stopped talking, noticing the interest Mr. Perpendicular was taking in the carefully arranged display of papier maché scorpion statues in the corner beneath the collection of photographs of Julio Cortázar.

            Mr. Perpendicular remembered his early days of teaching, a time when coffee had been his greatest nemesis.  Soon a flaming chariot drawn by flying horses would descend from the sky and bear him aloft, into eternal communion with the source of his existence.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.19

East of the Chocolate Deep Runs the Conversation Without an Audience

            Meanwhile, the painting went unfinished.

            “I just can’t seem to get into it without drugs,” Chance Frackle confessed.  There were those who advised that he pretend to be on drugs, but they were drowned out by the cheers for the arrival of the band (or the team or the caterers or whatever).  You could hear it across the marshes, indistinctly, a sound like a prelude to alligators.

            The old man sat on the stump.  You couldn’t say that he was waiting, because he no longer expected anything to happen.  You couldn’t say that he was patient or impatient, because he no longer cared.  You couldn’t even say that he actually believed alligators would come and eat him up, because he had seen the reports before leaving home and apparently there were no deaf alligator puppets scheduled for dispatch in this lifetime.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.18

The Debunking of Baloney’s Three-Wheeled Retaliation

            I find myself in a bad position, a bad situation, a dire situation, even.  Not that it is all that worse than my previous one, but the novelty of it makes me see and feel the reality of where I am as opposed to where I’d like to be so much more clearly than before.

            Where would I like to be, you ask?  There are several answers to that, the main one being living in an old warehouse in Germany doing nothing but painting and drawing all day, exactly like Wolfgang Petrick.  But for the purposes of this piece and to make it fit in with its title,  I’d like to be in a band with Aynsley Dunbar, aiming for a Heavy Metal version of the second Miles Davis Quintet.  I use to get Aynsley mixed up with Cozy Powell.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.17

Lord Cowmate Submits to Corncob Decoding

            Fleshy nodules covered the seat of the High Adviser’s chair.  These could be disguised with a simple relish of virtuals and farthrush, but anyone who had sat in the chair (and there were many besides the twelve current and previous holders of the office of High Adviser who had) knew their squirmy penetrations all too well to be fooled.  Dal Matian, the cashew’s son, tried throwing a cotton handkerchief (smeared with Vaseline) over the seat the neighboring arms of battered raccoon hide, but the resultant topography claimed the lives of many guerilla troops that attempted to hide out among its supposedly snow-covered hills.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.16

Professional Nightmares Swelling His Waistline

            Of course his only option was to overeat.  We’ve been over this before.  With more and more obligations crowding him in on all sides he felt that all of his avenues for pleasure were being taken away. 

            “The only thing left is to enjoy my food,” he told Miss Murphy.

            “Yes, yes,” the old spinster replied, wagging the blue mass of Vaseline and cotton at the end of her arm like a windsock in a booger storm.  “We’ve been over this before.”

            The sex movie was projected against the side of the chicken coop, exciting the hands.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.15

The Preacher Managed to Dispose of the 4,000 Misprinted Lanyards Profitably.

            “This money will enable the church to send three children to camp this summer,” Jordan Short, pastor of the Fun Springs Baptist Church, announced to his wife as he laid the roughly bundled bills on the kitchen table.

            Prissa, who had read Madame Bovary with nodding approval, disliked the local congregation so much that she actually played the organ at a church in another, larger, town every Sunday.  She carefully replaced the cork in the bottle of Riesling and turned to her husband with pursed lips.

            “What about the van idea?” she asked.  Her mood was evident by the world’s largest computer, looming in the window over the sink.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.14

Smubla

            Speaking of albums, the probiotic forces hidden within the plenitude of tracks to be found on the Secret Caresses’ Larger World of Confusion have no benefits that medical science can discover.  The band itself found this out for themselves after they were involuntarily transferred to a facility at the end of time.  One by one they succumbed to diseases of the mind.

            “I can’t believe fate has done me so dirty,” Pepys Willys, the lead guitarist and last to die, mumbled to himself as masked functionaries bundled him into his tomb.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.13

Mublas

            Now that the blood has been washed off the sidewalk the customers of Speedy Pizza won’t be unnecessarily reminded of the grizzly business, unless they see someone pointing up at the ninth story window from which the man jumped.  As the hand falls, however, they can hear,

            “But I couldn’t really pick a favorite album.  My top five candidates for favorite would be Revolver, Presence, Bitches Brew, Paranoid, and Hot Rats, I guess.”

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.12

Dealings in Chrome Be Scrupulous to the Late Fish

            Any respect shown to Yib-Yib’s wishes wasn’t just a matter of legal obligation: although technically “dead,” the uniformed fish was very much alive and capable of raining pellets of Tootsie Roll-flavored lip gloss down on those who displeased him.  The widow Cimino’s Camaro camisole had already acquired an interesting woman of the world’s appearance hardly as out-of-tune as such stream-of-consciences would that she kept it that way.

            “One more ‘n,’ little man,” she promised Hoagy Dogey, “And I won’t be able to come to bed without laughing revulsion and borderline violence.”

            The mason said nothing, a trace of triumph imprecisely visible on one side or the other.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.11

Pallid Jack in Elbow Town

            After a grueling week of manual labor Pallid Jack liked to go to Elbow Town, where he could eat food that regular people find disgusting and weird and shop for music and books that regular people would be nauseated by and frightened of.  As he wandered through the narrow, winding streets he reflected on the fact that these streets were more like hallways really.  No cars could ever get down in here.  Paintings of duck-billed priests and inspirational posters featuring Iggy Pop covered the walls.  The smell of fermented mung bean paste drew Pallid Jack further in until finally he heard the sounds of Master Saxophonist Japanese McGee and his One-Speed Combo announcing the death of all hope and the bitter fingers of fate jammed into a monochrome mouth.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.10

Contrasting Prehensile Rolls Engineer

            There he stand alone in his fortress of loneliness, an enduring symbol of what can happen when you mature too quickly, yet remain forever a teenager.  On the right just behind him stands his only companion, the Fopanooter B2000, a fairly expensive piece of hardware that can not only create and store intoxicating beverages, but provide relief from sexual tension while playing recordings of the voices of girls you knew in high school.

            One day in April the mop will stick to his hand and it won’t come loose.  He’ll go to a specialist who will recommend hypnotic psycho-therapy, warning our subject, however, that such procedures can result in profound changes to one’s outlook on life.

            “I’ll think about it,” our man responds as he leaves the office, rubbing the shaft of the mop with all the tenderness usually reserved for treasured organs.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.9

Sogdal Ramp on Small Adhesive Pads

            Little hats were distributed among the observers preparatory to the beginning of the demonstration.  Once everyone had smiled at each other and made sure of a good fit, all attention was turned to the tiny stage.  Jerry Bergonzi played along to the noise created by the machine as it warmed up.  Later he told an interesting story about a visit he had received from Henry Rollins and how afterwards he had saved a sizeable portion of the latter’s feces in a Mason jar, but he didn’t tell the story right and most of the humor was lost.  However, as soon as one of Dr. Kamanori’s assistants gave the four-eyed nod that everything was ready to go, the saxophonist quitted the stage and allowed the sogdal ramp to take the spotlight.  The little hats were either dark or light, forming a subtly shifting pattern the machine could read and interpret.  At first it merely scratched the polished wood of the stage with its teeth in response to this pattern, but later, as those gathered grew restless and began to mill about, it removed the roof and flooded the old factory with rain.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.8

The Patience of the Parental Pastrami

            “As much as I appreciate the offer, I’m going to have to decline,” Folsom told his father with as much good humor as he could muster.

            His father, however, seemed terribly disappointed.  His face fell and he looked at the kitchen floor (real linoleum; you could cut pictures into it and print your own subversive publication!).

            “What are you going to do then?” he demanded as he looked back up.

            “Well, I’m not going to clean out portable toilets.”  Folsom tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice.  How could he tell his father that he really wanted to be a rock star?  It was so foolish.  Even he realized that.

            “Folsom, this is a sound business opportunity.  It’s a business we could own together.”

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.7

Innocuous Breastbone Challenger

            The original Gordon, now at least partially animated by Mercurial Aspiratoes, shrugged off his feelings of unease about what was happening to his innards, set aside his anxiety over whether the paperwork had been correctly filed, and lumbered onto the path of sleep.  Some have suggested that there was a connection between his obscurity and the continual failure of the arts community to take any notice of him, but our researchers found no evidence for such a connection in the archives of Schloß Schlafenberg.  In fact, once returned from their long commute, Stinky and Clumphower could not even remember what they had been looking for.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.6

Dictation at the Sawmill

            Although the Gibbetson Family owned the mill, none of its members had had anything to do with its daily operations in years.  The grandchildren of old Adolf Gibbetson were more interested in pursuing their “music careers” through clouds of marijuana smoke than in watching men feed logs into a machine.  The man who actually ran the mill, Virgil Simonson, had been working there since he was a teenager.  He could remember the sawdust hanging in old Adolf’s beard.  It was to him directly that Lucky Orfestuc applied for a job once he returned to the USA from Europe, his now useless guitar dragging behind him like someone else’s inheritance.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.5

Climactic Airspeed Prone Ellipse

            When John Glashan died it was to Jules Feiffer that the family turned for comfort and advice.

            “You were so kind to John in the seventies,” Fanta Claus whimpered over the transatlantic cable.  “The foreword you wrote to his first collection of drawings was responsible more than anything else for the great success the book had in North America.”

            “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Feiffer demurred.  He shifted his pipe to the other side of his mouth and added a curlicue to the image of a little girl he was working on.  “I really feel, and felt at the time as well, that John’s work speaks for itself.  My words—“  He was interrupted by a noise from the next room.

            Excusing himself, the great old cartoonist and co-creator, along with Keith Hefner, of the vertical harmonica, put the phone down and rose from his drawing table.  Cautiously he peeped into the adjacent soccer stadium, where bats in pseudo-Biblical attire flung their mushroom-hipped Latina carousel attendants into John Lydon’s waiting bin.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.4

Dressing the Authority in Viking Blue and Ottoman Black

            “He’s not actually the authority,” Melinda griped.

            “He is an authority,” Belinda retorted.

            “What is he an authority on?” Carstairs, recently returned from the eastern front, asked an adjacent visitor to the punchbowl.

            The other man, still in possession of his wits (and wit) despite his relatively deep intoxication, suggested that the answer was punch itself.  He dipped his cup into the bowl yet again with a smile.

            Carstairs, however, who was listening to the girls’ conversation with his tinnitus-warped ears, was reminded of Hemingway for some reason and began to wonder if it was at all possible to inject a mythical meeting between the great old writer and the Beatles into the narrative.

            “He smashed his way into the harem headfirst,” Ringo recalled, “Breaking a horn in the process.”

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.3

The Crackle of Manure Between His Plump Little Legs

     “Would you like an adult diaper?” Hans inquired gently.  He was a master of the physical gesture, placing his reassuringly paternal hand on Guy Foxranger’s shoulder with smooth, even pressure in a moment when none of the other partygoers were about.

     Darby sniffed down her breadstick and automated a gluestrip; her arch nose and edible lorgnette combination elevated the condescending frowny-smile she bestowed on the scene into a classic patrician vacuum of approval.

     “You can smell the shit from here,” she said. 

     Now that machines eat our excess food and accompany us to such functions we know the distinction of true companionship.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.2

Whirk is No Longer a Four-Letter Word

That’s me (more or less) on the left.  I’m writing this while watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, so it’s a little hard to concentrate on what I’m writing.  In the past I listened to Jazz while writing because anything with vocals in it distracted me from my own words.  But now I just don’t care.  I’m the boss and I declare how things are done.   The machine my crooked-toothed redneck accuser is riding is an infantosnake.  Cameras record the encounter.  Don’t pick your nose.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.5, p.1

A Collection of Jam-Fisted Hams

Of course he’s not going to give up.  He’s going to doodle aimlessly in a notebook for a few days until his stomach settles and his mind clears and then he’s going to put on his Lou Reed outfit (all in black) and try again.  He’s been listening to No Wave music lately (or music from that same milieu); it’s yet one more thing to give him hope, enthusiasm, expectation, fantasy, and confidence.  Ah, New York.  If only he had friends or some sort of entry into some sort of society.

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Nine Figs in the Flapjack, chapter five (title page)

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.25 (end of chapter)

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.24

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.23

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.22

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p. 21

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.20

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.19

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.18

Nine Figs in the Flapjack ch.4, p.17