J. Dack's Stories

Couch Potato

2008-05-31T01:12:05Z

“You have got to get off your butt and do something productive for a change!”

I could tell she was angry. The shouting was my first clue.

“This is productive,” I said. “I’m watching Discovery.”

“For crying out loud,” she said. “You’ve been sitting on that couch so long it’s probably sampled your DNA by now and mutated into some kind of horrible sentient couch-creature.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” I said.

“Right. My mistake. Mister expert Discovery channel watcher knows all.”

“Fine, I confess. His name is Herman. He subsists on cheese doodle crumbs and spilled soda. He likes to watch Golden Girls re-runs when we’re not busy plotting against you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“It’s OK Herman,” I whispered when the coast was clear. “She’s gone.”

“It’s about time. And what the hell’s with you? Trying to blow my cover?” Herman said angrily, slapping me with an armrest.

“Sorry Herman.”

“Shut up and get me some cheese doodles,” Herman said.

You'll see

2008-02-19T21:53:36Z

It’s strange, growing up in a society who’s only form of technological innovation is finding ways to build bigger guns that can fire bigger bullets at the enemy.

Folks don’t have original ideas any more. There’s no room for them. Unless of course it happens to be an idea about how to make a bigger gun or a bigger bullet.

I have original ideas though. I sit on the burned out remains of what used to be a super-highway overpass, my fishing rod dangling over the edge, dancing on the surface of a radio-active ocean that has no fish, and I think.

I think about pet dogs, high school dances, and when it used to be safe to go out in the rain.

About mom, dad, my big brother. Cap’n Crunch and fresh milk. Chocolate, television, and sunshine.

About all the things we don’t have any more.

And music. God how I miss music.

But it’s ok, because they don’t know, what I know.

They don’t know I am going to change everything.

You’ll see.

True Story

2008-02-12T17:26:07Z

We were leaning against my car in the parking lot of a Burger King, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the girls to finish their shifts, when the old man came out the side door.

He was hunchbacked, and hobbled along on a gnarled wooden cane. He wore a dusty flannel, dustier jeans, and cowboy boots that had seen better days. He had no front teeth.

Slowly, he limped his way up to me. He smiled, a huge, gummy grin.

“The sky opens up,” he said, clearly addressing me. “A hole appears in the universe, and you can ask one question.”

I glanced at my friends, who smiled, and nodded that I should answer him.

I pondered for a moment, trying to think of something clever, or insightful.

“Why do they say Diet Coke tastes like regular Coke?” I asked, in a very smart-assed and failed attempt at humor.

The old man smiled again, the way he might at his grand kids, if he had any.

“Aspartame,” he said, and hobbled on past me.

“Dude! What if that was God?” My friend shouted.

“I think God would have front teeth,” I said.

Manufacturing a Message

2008-02-07T04:43:20Z

There is a lot of chatter on the infowave tonight, as I sit on my Italian sofa watching my Nipponese television and sipping Jamaican imported beer, thinking about how there’s there no such thing as “Made in the U.S.A.” any more.

Aside from bombs, I mean. Yeah, we still make great bombs.

Compression bombs that squish every physical object in the blast radius. Bio bombs that induce pulmonary embolisms in humans of a certain age group, leaving behind no trace evidence other than the piles of corpses. Info bombs that scramble any signal in the vicinity and replace their streams with government propaganda.

Some Nazi group even came up with a bomb that effectively reverses the melanin levels in people’s skin, turning anyone it hits a milky white color.

Yeah, we make a lot of bombs.

I lean back against the couch and close my eyes, and imagine somewhere someone is writing a book, painting a picture, playing a song on a guitar.

I close my eyes, and imagine anything else. Anything but bombs.

But I'm not the only one

2008-02-04T23:30:59Z

“Some day, I’m going to found an underground colony on the moon,” Dane said.

I stirred my oatmeal in a repeating circular pattern, making little swirls that wove their way down to an eternally sweet and high fiber vortex.

“Neat,” I said.

“Yeah. And I’m going to take day-trips to mars in my personal space cruiser.”

“You don’t even have a car.”

Dane shook pepper onto his toast while I tried not to gag.

“I’ll meet a beautiful blue-skinned alien girl on Mars. Her name will be the kind of word we’d use to describe the northern lights, or Niagara falls. She’ll fall in love with me at first sight, and we’ll have wonderful blue babies.”

I sighed heavily.

“Great. In the mean time, could you maybe get a job?”

Dane looked up from his desecrated piece of toast, and smiled.

“I have a job, man. I’m a dreamer.”

Don't forget the Shuriken

2008-01-31T16:02:02Z

“Ninjas.”

“Ninjas?”

She was looking at me like a second head had just grown out of my neck.

“Yeah, Ninjas,” I said.

“You want the groomsmen at our wedding to dress up like Ninjas?”

I nodded and started chopping peppers to throw into stir fry.

“Not tuxedos?”

“Nope.”

She frowned and chewed her bottom lip.

“And I suppose you’ll be dressed as a Ninja too?”

“Grand Ninja Master, actually,” I said.

“What am I supposed to go as?” She asked.

“Female Ninja.”

I pushed the peppers into the wok and stirred.

“Let me just make sure I have this right. You want me to get married in front of my parents and all our relatives, dressed up like a Ninja?”

“Yeah,” I said, cutting up an onion.

She frowned again and folded her arms.

“Do I get a sword?”

I grinned like a Cheshire cat.

“I love you.”

Vapor Fish pt. 4

2008-01-31T15:58:21Z

“This purse must have cost more than our boat!”

I ran my fingers over my mouth, thoughtful.

“She probably found it. Maybe stole it. I don’t know. Either way we’re in deep shit. These things have an expiration date. If the authorized party doesn’t use it within thirty-six hours, the chip reports itself back to the mainframe as stolen, and sets off a built-in tracking beacon.”

That meant Goreelaz. Large, heavily armed men in black helmets whose primary reason for recruitment is a severe lack of compunction and sole purpose was the reclaimation of misapropriated government property. They’d be coming for us soon.

“We have to get rid of it! Throw it in the bay,” Laressa said.

“That would maybe save our skins. But the woman you stole this from is still screwed. If you lose a relief chip, they don’t just deny you a replacement. They arrest you for misapropriation and put you to work in the fields until you’ve paid back the cost of the chip. We can’t throw it away,” I said.

Vapor Fish pt. 3

2008-01-31T00:18:01Z

A Federal Relief Chip. A few inches of translucent plastic with a microchip in the center. The government issued these to poor people in The Gollum. You slid the card into a public food terminal and it spit out a brick of compact soy-based foodstuffs. You could break this stuff down using water and various cooking methods to make it stretch incredibly far. One brick could feed an entire family for days.

These were not carried by those who could afford to lose them.

“Laressa, we don’t steal from people on relief, those are the rules!”

“I didn’t mean to. Her purse looked expensive, I thought she was a richie,” she said. Her eyes were trembling.

“Show me the purse,” I said.

We ran back to the shelter where the pile of purses sat.

“That one,” she said, pointing to a shiny Obsidian shell handbag.

“That does look expensive. What kind of clothes did she have on?”

“I don’t know. I was only looking at purses. I didn’t even notice her clothes,” she said. “If she’s not a richie how did she get this?”

Vapor Fish pt. 2

2008-01-30T21:19:17Z

The wooden slats of the dock groaned and creeked under my boots as I walked toward the bathroom, as if to say: “you sir, are fat. Quite fat indeed, sir. You are so fat in fact, that I think I’m going to give out on your way back, and drop you into the bloody ocean.”

Everybody’s a comedian.

To call it a “bathroom” was a bit of a stretch. It was more like a covered section of the dock with a canvas flap pulled down for privacy while you did your business in a steel bucket, tossing it out over the side when you were done.

I nearly caught myself in my zipper when Laressa burst in as I was finishing up.

“What the hell girl?” I shouted, being careful not to turn around until the old soldier was back in his bunk.

“Jed, look!” She said, holding something small and square in her outstretched hand.

I took the card from her and stepped out through the flap to get a better look at it in the light.

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah.” she said. “Found it in one of the purses.”

It was a Federal Relief Chip.

Vapor Fish

2008-01-30T19:53:16Z

Laressa’s beady little brown eyes glared at me through the nicotine-tinted lenses of the stupid pink goggles she was wearing. The woman had a strange fetish for hideously outlandish eye-wear.

“What?” I said, brushing fried Vapor-fish flakes off the front of my shirt.

“You’re a slob, you know that?”

I rolled my eyes and wiped my mouth on on my sleeve, making sure to do so as dramatically as possible.

“If you know some way of eating double-deep fried fish on a stick without making a mess, let me know, princess,” I said.

Laressa grunted and went back to rummaging through the pile of stolen purses at her feet.

“Easy. Don’t buy crap like that in the first place. Stuff is probably full of parasites. I bet they’re building a little fort in your colon as we speak.”

“You only live once,” I said, standing up.

I burped loudly, drawing another dirty look from Laressa.

“What did I do now?” I said.

She just shook her head and sighed.

Good little thief, that girl. But awful prissy if you asked me.