Lance Olsen: Sewing Shut My Eyes

Rex Rory, behind the wheel of one of the cars (though which is unclear), perspiration sparkling on his face, fury in his eyes, hatred at mouth corners, sticks his oily blue revolver out the window and squeezes off two shots.

The glowing green delta over the city wobbles.

Cut to the two children at the control panels, faces raided with terror, clutching each other and screaming.

The ship ignites.

A tremendous explosion follows: orange and black and umber and saffron fireball.

All across the city people duck and cover, thinking they are saved from the terrible invaders, but are wrong, because a single germ from planet Zerp will survive this nuclear blaze and drift down to earth where it will land on a fifty-dollar bill extended in the hand of one Mary Christmas to pay Dick Smoker for the crack cocaine she desperately needs to feed her recent addiction following her dad’s recent bizarre demise (fetish encasement; lack of breathing tubes).

The germ will be passed via that bill across the country and then across the Atlantic to Berlin in the hands of a tourist named Gaye Powwers, where it will be exchanged for deutsche marks, during which process the germ will fall on the floor, where it will wait for six more months, till a little snot-nosed girl whose name isn’t important will deliberately drop a wad of Bazooka bubble-gum on it, which a Pekingese named Fopson will later that day eat, passing the germ through his system unscathed while on a train bound for Prague, in which city he will deposit said germ by means of a well-formed pile of feces on his master’s nice white rug at three a.m. for no particular reason, where his master’s son, Fritz, distant ancestor of Franz Kafka’s bastard child, at that stage where he has to taste everything, will pick it up and actually take a bite first thing next morning, bringing the germ to consciousness as it hits those special stomach acids that spell H-U-M-A-N, at which point said germ will begin to multiply, releasing a plague that will cause people to see what happened to them four seconds ago, instead of what’s happening to them right now, which will within the course of six years kill off the entire population of the planet by means of various ghastly accidents (car crashes, elevator mishaps, defenestration), paving the way for the next species to dominate the earth… not the cockroach, as it turns out, as many people believed, but the feathery-antennaed moth which, to this moment, had just been minding its own business, evolutionarily speaking.

777. BURNING MAN: THE SERIES

70. NATURE IS NOT NICE

Wile E. Coyote rises with great dignity, wipes the drop of whitish foam from his bottom with a handkerchief he gingerly produces… from where, exactly?… and hobbles toward the sunset as the Roadrunner, lounging by a boulder, smirk on his beak, rests his left heel on his right knee, lights a cigarette, and begins to dream of Paul McCartney in lace bra and panties.

1. THE DISCOVERY: CHANNEL

You wait one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three, trying to believe this can’t be happening.

He plummets like a starfish.

There is no white bouquet of chute, no slowing of momentum, no sound save the whipping of wind far above the tiny red, white, and blue dot.

You watch him flap his arms and kick his legs.

You watch him speeding down, faster and faster… shooting down… humming down… hurtling straight for the jagged rocks and shallow river threading below.

The strong current.

The icy water.

The twisted bodies of those who tried and failed before him.

Seventy feet to go… forty… twenty… ten… six… a-and then: whoosh !

A-and then: ahhhhh !

A-and then and then and then: he pulls the backup cord and a beautiful orange and black and umber and saffron hang-glider unfolds from his parachute pouch like wings.

He skims the whitewater, zips over the jagged rocks, ascends above the pine trees in a miraculous arc, higher and higher, fair angel.

As he swoops up toward you, you see his face… his familiar face… his very familiar face. Beneath the lightning bolts on his helmet you make out Ker’s features, those flawless teeth in his grin.

He zooms closer, raises two fingers to his forehead in a flip salute to posterity, and when you blink again he’s…

Gone.

33. HOPE FLOATS