coming Monday (a teaser)

Starting this coming Monday on my Substack, I’m doing a literary sprint: 5 Stories in 5 Days. Every weekday next week, there’ll be a new short (often very short) story. This sprint will be free and open to the public, but the following sprints will be nestled in my Creative Stuff section, which is part of my paid Substack (only $5/month or $50/year!). So be on the lookout. Here are some quick sample passages to give you something to expect.

Monday—"When Mr. Fusion Finally Arrived":

But people soon began to realize that you didn’t have to throw just garbage and filth into these drives. True to their original name, Pantophagos, the drives ate everything. If a neighbor didn’t like another neighbor’s dog, that dog might quietly disappear down the gullet of a larger drive. And gangs soon realized that, if a neighbor didn’t like another neighbor, that neighbor could also disappear. And the drives, with their perfectly efficient matter-energy conversion, left no evidence of anything. People with massive amounts of incriminating paperwork or electronic data could simply dump their evidence-containing hardware into the drives, supply the greater community with energy, then feign wide-eyed innocence when authorities came looking for evidence. Construction teams began to recognize that they didn’t need to worry about scraps and debris anymore. Everything got vacuumed up and eliminated.

Tuesday—"A Tale of Ass":

Minho, a sullen and scrawny boy, had been sent to the nearby mountain temple weeks ago because no one in the village knew what else to do with him. Minho had no family, no purpose. He hung around the village and made people nervous. Whenever someone tried to talk with him, he always acted angry and insulting. At the temple, the shiftless ten-year-old had met the scowling old abbot, the juji-sunim, known by his dharma name of Dae-gak, or Great Enlightenment. The boy secretly called the abbot, who was surly and stern and intolerant of laziness, Dae-ak, or Great Evil. The abbot always made Minho work in the modest plot where the temple grew some of its vegetables. It was a small temple in the woods; a stream ran around the front portion of the temple while Ggachisan, or Magpie Mountain, rose up behind. The boy wasn’t sure, but he thought the temple’s name was Horimsa—Tiger Forest Temple. There was likely a sign somewhere to confirm this. Wait: were there really tigers around here? Minho couldn’t imagine there would be, but he could wish and hope.

Wednesday—"Telekinetically Yours" (diacriticals added to avoid censors):

And it wasn’t just the street-crossing thing. In dense crowds, people in front of Marv would stop for no reason, forcing him to stop. More thwarting by the capricious, malicious gods. Or there were people ahead who would do a sudden 180 for no reason, which was just as obnoxious. Then there were the bastards who ignored the signs everywhere, the signs telling people to WALK RIGHT. Marv would be walking along on the right side of a path, minding his own business, then some rude, ignorant shit would appear directly in front of him, walking toward him on a collision course. And the fucker wouldn’t budge, either, when he got up to Marv, and Marv would feel obliged to be the one to move while this idiot, walking on what was his left side, would continue cluelessly on, utterly ignoring basic courtesy, probably because he was thinking Everybody does it or some retarded shit like that. Or maybe the idiot was so stupid that he was unaware he’d done anything wrong. In Marv’s experience, most people were like that.

What might Thursday and Friday bring?

See you at my place on Monday. Oh, and think about buying my new book.