Flash Fiction: The Séance

  "Only the once," the Count replied wryly, "and I've been very deaf ever since. As I'm sure you already knew."
  "I apologize, Count, if that may be true," replied Don Foi, motioning for the Count to join his hands into the circle, "though I suspect this time you may find your ability to hear..." he arched an eyebrow, "...improved."
  The light from the film projector against Foi's face trailed along it, showing the deceased, in an early role. She was beautiful, her sad eyes that were later to become her trademark projected askew along the planes of Don Foi's forehead, at the outer tops of his eyes and onto the flat wall behind him, as he sat to join the circle.

Fiction: Y.P.C.C. 0235

  A bunch of the kids outside the fence shake at it, kick it, break bottles against it.
  Inside the fence is a red brick building. Inside the building you can't see it, but you can hear some shit going on from the open line of bigger-than-garage-style doors. Lots of rowdy kids. Cursing. Music.
  One of the kids outside the fence with a buddy starts hitting a girl with what looks like the barrel of a pistol. Can't tell if it's the real thing, a pellet gun, or just a painted toy. It hits her in the face, a couple times, as she's fending it off, walking away.
  The boys are laughing as they pursue. It swipes periodically, missing, hitting her in the hand, and etc.
  By one of the bigger-than-garage-style doors, Bionic inhales on what could be a piece of tire iron or rebar, encased in what might be cement (only it's not), in his mouth, like a toke. Music comes out of the building. "Come Clean."
  "Hey," he hollers, over his shoulder, without looking at anyone, "somebody's homegirl is getting pistol-whipped out here."
  A bunch of kids, if they can be called that, run out, Ruffnecks, and Others, dirty white boys, like Bionic, (but not). The kids that come out might have just been fighting, hanging, clowning around. You can't tell cuz they drop whatever and all run out to see what's going on.
  "What the fuck? What's happening? Who's getting hit on?" one of the kids says. His eyes are all big, insides of the eyebrows down, lips pursed.
  The girl that was getting hit is now through an opening of the fence and she says to a muscular "kid" with a moustache, "Nothing happened. They were just playing around."
  The muscular guy with the moustache is the kind of kid you-don't-want-to-fuck-with. His expression is maybe anger, or figuring shit out in his head. "Who did it?" he says.
  "I dunno. Some fifteen-year-old looking motherfuckas," Bionic says, staring ahead, at no one.
  In his peri-feral he can see the kids that did it. They're back on the other side of the fence, the outside, with cars (some of which aren't half wrecked or under dirt, some of which might run more than radios) and other shit out there, acting like everyone else there, throwing glances sideways, hanging out or laughing, forcefully.
  "Shut the fuck up, Bionic, no one cares what you say," the girl says and walks up towards him, "Stupid Mother Fucker," and she shoves his head with her hand. Bionic sees a dark purple-red mark on it (her hand) for a second when she does.
  The other kids and the guy in the moustache, move in a little, circling around them.
  "Stupid ass," the girl says, shoving his head, as hard as she can now. She's kinda cute, probably one of the cutest girls around this whole place. "Dumb fucker!" she says, shoving.
  A big cloud of haze rolls across the yard, slowly, though it's a bright, sunny day.
  The other kids, the moustached one, too, are moving in slowly.
  Bionic makes a break for it, lightly wiping her hand away. It smells nice and he glances at her eyes to see them look really pissed off, or surprised, to be touched by him.
  As he runs away, for around twenty steps to the fence, the rest of the kids chase him. Some from the building, (the ones allowed out of it right now), and some from by the cars.
  As he trots that stretch, he thinks, Yeah, he is dumb. He shouldn't have got involved. He's a pretty dumb, fat white kid, with freckles, and rotted carrot yellow hair.
  He slows down outside, and the other kids trotting after him do too.
  The "kid" with the moustache is in front of the girl now.
  For a while they follow after Bionic, switching to a quick walk when he does, running for ten yards or so when he does. Slowing down again. Like that for awhile, getting closer. Some of them break off chase and go back. 'Til the moustached guy and his girl and just ten or so other kids are walking briskly after him.
  Bionic stops. They all stop.
  He can feel all their eyes on him.
  "Stupid Bionic," some of them say, and mutter swears.
  Some of them walk a couple more steps toward his sides, and back, so they surround him, and so he can't see them all at the same time.
  Nothing else exists.
  He puts the weird cement (but not)-encased rebar/tire-iron thing in his mouth, gritted in his teeth. It's heavy.
  He lifts up his chin, looking at the closest kid, and grins. He imagines it must look pretty cool or funny. Hot breath comes out of his grin. He can see the steam clouds.
  "You zoning up?" the moustached kid hollers, though they're all close enough now, fists tight, chests puffing.
  Bionic feels his eyebrows move down for a second while he thinks and looks at the moustached "kid," but doesn't want to look angry so he makes his expression blank. "Yeah. I'm just gonna go over there," and he nods down a paved road, overgrown.
  "Well go then!" the moustached guy says.
  They all walk, everyone still following him, a little slower, but not as slow like normal everyday walking. Bionic is walking backwards, watching them.
  The moustached kid stops, then the rest pretty much do too.
  One of the kids, about 18 or so, a white kid like Bionic, lean and stubble and craters all over his face, smiles at the others when they've stopped. He waves at the others, says loudly, "OK you guys, I gotta go," and turns and runs straight at Bionic.
  Bionic jabs the tire-iron, pipe, rebar thing into the kid's eye.
  The kid drops, hurt.
  Bionic walks away. When he's a little further he looks over his shoulder and sees 3 or 4 of the kids standing around the hurt kid, just standing there, looking down at the hurt kid on the ground.
  When Bionic has the chance to turn a corner, he does it.
  When he's out of eyeshot he runs quietly to the other side of an old industrial building, and crouches in a faded purple cement alcove, where some scrub and weeds have taken over. They're taller than him crouching there. The dry straw-colored brush will hide him and his hair and the bright faggot-colored shirt he has to wear.

  Some of the kids walk down the road he came a little while later.
  Some look around, but not that hard.
  Their expressions look blank, and ready, until Bionic can't see them.

  They're a few blocks away when they're slowing down, by a real high fence and a big gravelly pit.
  The pit is fenced off but there's no machinery in it.
  The Dam is miles away, but the kids see some big birds through the fence. Grey and white.
  They look almost like parrots. Pelicans go by the dam, way this far out here. Pelicans look like Terradactyls.
  These birds aren't pelicans, but they're kinda big like them, stepping by large pools in the gravel, preening their feathers.

The CameraPeople: Watchin' Future TV

CCTVs from some of the world's most dangerous and accident-prone stretches of road were programmed, unmanned, to be able to predict crashes, so that the TV show or channel would tune in to crashes from all over the world, right as they were about to happen. In the spirit of bigger is better, the show would therefore keep having more exotic, fast, or confusing stretches of road, and bigger pile-ups. Irony or humour would sometimes be an undertone of short voice-overs, though everything was delivered under the tone of safety and prevention.

After one mountain retreat rush-hour speedy pile-up in which the icing on the cake was a confused cop car, the voice-over came on saying that camera crews were on the way to the house of the person who caused the crash.

Outside the house, you couldn't tell if it was night or day, because all the camera people from different or the same (?) TV stations had their spotlights lighting up the whole outside of the house (yellow) and the entrance-way inside. Some of them eventually made their way in through the storm door.

"Are you worried about your father?" said a cameraman with a British accent.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" was the reply of a scruffy middle-aged man, clad in trucker hat and white undershirt, blue jeans. (His tone was saying, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?")

"What's his status?" the cameraman said.

"He's been released.": the undershirted man again, hostile look in eyes, a grin.

"Where is he?" a North American-accented cameraman asked. (You were kind of given the impression from the TV that the man in question might be out drinking somewhere.)

You could see on TV that this house was way messy and occupied by a huge family that would stereotypically be called "trash." The camerapeople kept looking around for safety issues to bring up and show to the viewers at home, while the family kept trying to tell them to leave already.

One cameraman asked about the overflowing deep freezer in the basement which could be seen through one part of the sagging floor, "Aren't you scared you're fumigating yourselves?"

A teenage-ish boy-child in yellow short-sleeve button-up shirt tucked into purple underwear shook a half-finished 2L of soda at him., "LEAVE!" he yelled with his head shaking/jittering more rapidly as he spoke more angrily.

The camera crews kept looking around, remarking or asking idle questions about the hospitalized man not present, or about safety as they tried to set up or take better shots, but wouldn't leave because they saw that the family was going to keep doing all this wacky shit. The family would go between yelling at them to leave, ignoring them, or the children trying to get the camerapeople or TV audience - you couldn't tell - to come play with them.

"And dammit the tools are all out!" a freckled blonde ten-year old-ish boy in a dirty white dress shirt said, picking up a drill from a cluttered large glass dining/kitchen table then throwing it down.

A bleach-mulleted haired woman walking by had been trying to tell camera people to leave, but seeing this immediately turned around and yelled, "Why won't you stop wringing my damn neck?" and grabbed the boy around the neck, her head shaking more rapidly as she got angrier. This head shaking jerkily tick was a trait the family had when angry, you could see, maybe was being seen as comic relief.

She let go of the boy angrily, and he fell backwards over the glass table and started to fall down the basement stairs.

Halfway down, due to clutter and loss of momentum he stopped sliding down. He adjusted himself to sitting, chin on hands, and harrumphed, then picked up a doll close to him and activated it so that it started winking to the camera and singing, "Party over he-ere, party over he-ere," the child making it dance and wanting you to come play. The doll started playing Spanish Flea and doing an automated dance routine as the child behind it stared directly in the camera, it zooming in and out, and refocusing.

At this point V woke me up asking, "What's so funny?.. What are you dreaming about?" When I told her all the above, she was quiet then said, "That's not funny at all. That's really really terrible."