Pulp-Free Fiction

#1 12-13-2001, 03:33 PM

Just another detective in this silly cookie-cutter noir world. He's sitting in his black-and-white office, reading about the movies in an issue of Variety. There's a cigarette dangling from his mouth. There's a cigarette dangling from everybody's mouth. Even the children down in the street.

A woman walks into his office. She's got a Veronica Lake hairstyle, swept over half of the face, except it's swept over both halves of her face. She asks if this is the bus station. The detective says no. He undressed her with his eyes, and promptly lost a contact lens. The woman thanks him, and walks into his closet.

The calendar falls off the wall. It's next year's calendar, anyway, so it's no loss. He likes to plan ahead.

Next night. The detective is in his office again, but he's cleaning his gun this time. In the dishwasher.

There's a guy in the office. He's a little mousey fella with a few strands of black hair swept across his bald spot. The bald spot doesn't mind.

He's got casts on his legs, and he's sitting in a wheelchair. The Mob gave him a loan. He didn't pay. They broke his legs. Then they broke his family's legs. Then they broke the legs on all the chairs on his dinette set. He's worried that they'll discover his rare insect collection.

The detective takes his gun out of the dishwasher and shoots the guy dead.

Four centuries ago. An explorer arrives on the beach and plants a flag. He takes off his hat, outrageously large feather and all, and starts to weep.

Another explorer arrives and plants another flag. He has a slightly less outrageous hat. The first explorer tells the second explorer to go away, and plants his foot in his crotch.

The second explorer limps away and goes back to his ship.

The first explorer stands proud, gives a speech about God and country, and is torn limb-from-limb by the heathen natives.

The second explorer desperately seeks out the Fountain of Ice Packs.

The detective is at home. A car goes by. It has a runningboard. Every car has a runningboard. Two kids, a boy and a girl, play Keep Away with the dog. The dog runs back and forth between them, panting heavily. Eventually, the dog drops dead, cigarette still in his mouth.

The kids keep playing Keep Away, because they so rarely get to do it with a severed human head.

The detective watches them through his front window. He takes it with him everywhere, just for these moments. He wishes their mother could be here, but then, in a way, she is.

He wonders where the rest of the body is stashed.

The sound of sirens. The detective is taking pictures of a crime scene. He watches the police put up yellow tape. Reporters arrive, and more pictures are snapped, flash bulbs and all.

A cop asks the detective about a knife he's found. The detective nods his head. The cop hands the knife to a reporter. The reporter stabs another reporter, who falls neatly in the chalk outline.

"Ah," says the cop. "I knew we were forgetting something. A crime."

The detective nods his head. He points his finger at the sky and sings.

The diner. The detective orders eggs, and the waitress asks him to put out his cigarette.

He is stunned. He puts down his two-penny copy of the newspaper and stares at his coffee. No cigarette?

What is this world coming to?

Before the beginning of time. God taps his pocketwatch. He looks at it, squinting. He shakes it. He taps it again. He mumbles something. There's more light. He looks at the pocketwatch. He smiles, puts it back in his pocket, and wanders off.

Now. Here. You're reading something, either on paper or on a computer screen. Your eyes are set deep in their sockets, and there are more rings around them than Saturn.

You quickly inhale, and curse.

The detective is back in his office again. It has been a hard day, tracking down delinquent clients. Why don't they pay?

Perhaps he should hire himself out to a better class of criminal scum. "For another day," he mumbles, and he hangs up his gun belt and hat. He hangs up his coat. Then he hangs up his shirt, pants, and shoes. He sticks his ass out the window and croons. It's union rules.

"Any requests?" he shouts down to the alley.

"Quit the union!" shouts someone.

The detective doesn't know that one. He sighs and moves on to showtunes.

Gunshots. Many gunshots.

People running from a bank. Bad people.

They are bank robbers, unless the bank has staged another publicity stunt. The last one was a disaster... the actors they hired were good, yes, but it turned out they were real bank robbers in disguise. When the rehearsal was over, the actors never came back with the money.

It's only money. Money being stolen, though. There's a difference. This new gang runs to the sidewalk, unloads the bags, and there's the squeal of tires. Just tires, mind you. They can't afford a whole car yet. That's what they're robbing the bank for.

"We should have robbed a car dealership first," says Louie, slapping the rim of his tire and sweating like a pig.

"No!" says Ned, sweating like some other farm animal. "We needed to make the bank first." He hands Louie an eraser. "Now start unmarking the bills."

The cops quickly remove the tires from their squad cars and pick up the chase.

The Pope is in one corner of the library, thumbing through a collection of Latin works. A copier repairman is in the other, hunched over the cantankerous Mita 6000. They both look up and meet each other's gaze.

It is not a friendly look.

"Holy Father," shouts the repairman, "this machine has made its last copy." He wipes his brow with a foream and sighs.

"I must have copies," yells The Pope. "God demands that we have copies." He bangs his staff against the marble floor three times.

Priests rush in to clear the books off of the tables, and then they clear away the tables as well. Sunlight streams in through the stained-glass windows. A bell rings and the two men come out of their corners.

The copier repairman has the advantage of youth and size, but The Pope is a wily old fellow. The Pope genuflects and whallops the copier repairman with his staff. The copier repairman goes down with a smack and his eyes glaze over. The Pope rolls him over on his back and pins his shoulders. A priest signs one... two... three... and the match is over.

The Pope crosses himself and leaves the library, secure in the knowledge that the Holy See will have free copies for another year.

Nighttime in Los Angeles.

The night is made of street lamps and shadows. Under every lampshade is a pimp, hooker, or insurance salesman. When the camera turns away, there is a fight under every street lamp, because street lamp light is prime real estate in the noir genre. I've got a timeshare at the corner of Wilson and Fifth.

Unless you've got a detective's office, with a detective's glass door and a large picture window you where you can prop your feet on the windowsill. Now that's truly prime real estate on a noir world. Smoke, drink, and watch the city. Maybe there will be more strange lights in the sky? Tiny, twinkling lights like pinholes in the curtain of night. What did the scientists at the observatory call them... stars?

The observatory. The telescope is aimed at the sky, because aiming it at the drive-through requires hours of focusing and they can't pick up the sound from out here.

"Where are the points?" asks the detective.

"Points?" reply the scientists.

"Points," says the detective. "Stars have five points." He grabs their American flag and shows them the stars. "See."

The scientists are baffled. The put the flag at the other end of the telescope and observe it for hours on end.

Back in the detective's office.

There's nothing to do but watch and wait for the telephone to ring.

And, of course, stick your ass out the window.

The Civil War, Washington.

Abraham Lincoln is trying on hats. Stovepipe hats. Easter bonnets. Baseball caps. Even a rainbow wig. He holds up his hands, clenched together in victory. He removes the wig.

He had more hair before this war. Lots of thick, black hair. All over his body. He's lost a lot of hair since. This war must end. I don't want to lose all my hair. I must either end this war or get a very good hat.

He puts on his favorite stovepipe and struggles down to the dining room.

Mary Todd calls for the doctor. Abraham waves the doctor off. "How long are your legs today?" asks Mary Todd.

"Long enough to reach the ground," says Abraham Lincoln, looking away. "And I'd rather worry about my hair. Look at my hair!" He takes off his hat and bites his fist.

"Stop trying to change the subject," says Mary Todd, poking at Abraham's legs. "Come, let the doctor measure them."

"No!" shouts Abraham, sitting down in his chair and crossing his legs. His feet meet under the table with a thump.

"Abraham," says Mary Todd, "how long must this go on? You are a sick man. I watch you struggle with the stairs at night, your tiny feet kicking in the air, and it makes me cry. At least let me move our bedroom down to the ground floor." She waves the doctor off. "You'll be able to see the crippled troops through the window, picketing us."

"I am not a cripple!" yells Abraham, jamming his back on his head. His hat slips, and he pushes it back upright. Is my head growing smaller, too? he thinks.

"I didn't say you were a cripple," says Mary Todd. "I'm saying you're a freak. My freak. My beloved freak. Now let's eat."

They say grace, they eat, and the war continues.

It is the far distant future. Aliens are preparing to land.

"Are we there yet?" whines one of their number. Her name is something like Tina.

"No," says their leader. His name is something like the smell of frying bacon. "Now shut up and keep stuffing envelopes."

They land a few days later, and the leader sends them out. The aliens put the envelopes in the Post Office Drop Box and return to the ship.

"Think we're going to win?" says another of their number. His name is something completely incomprehensible and silly. So they call him Bud.

"We can't lose," says the leader, setting course for the next planet. "Did you get stamps like I asked?"

"Yes," says Tina. "I know how much you like them."

The leader licks sheet after sheet of stamps, and sticks them to his body. "Ahhhhhh..... reminds me of home."

The ship flies off into the starry night.

The detective is looking at a penny. Abraham Lincoln is on the penny. But this penny is valuable. Abraham Lincoln in on the back of the penny, and the Memorial is on the front.

A rare penny. It has saved his life many times. When he bent down to get it, his pants split - crosswise. The tailor went mad trying to stitch them up.

Then he tried to use it for his weight and fortune. The fortune slip said that he would die from a soup accident. Soup? Accident? He stayed in a hotel for a week, screaming for room service to take back the appetizers and just bring in the main course. He still looked out of the corner of his eye for soup, whether in a bowl or in a can. Fate cannot be stopped, only contained in a metal cylinder.

The penny came back, though. Stuck to his shoe on a wad of gum. His lucky gum, too. The ticking of the penny against the concrete alerted his landlord as he snuck across the hallway. Another month's rent wasted on rent, he thought, as he tore up the racing form.

Perhaps it is not so lucky a penny after all, he thinks, rubbing his finger across his most recent soup scar.

He sticks it back in the fuse box and closes the lid.

Poland is being invaded.

I can't be more specific. Poland is always being invaded. Everyone invades Poland. Poland is in the way, just like Holland and Austria. Perhaps they should move.

Invading Poland is a Rite of Passage for all would-be world conquerors and mad dictators bent on global domination, right up there with signing peace treaties and cross-dressing. The Polish people are used to being invaded. Their government uses wood screws and tent pegs instead of nails for easy disassembly. The monarchy uses a rented crown and Royal Treasures. The people, well, they're still the people. They've learned "We surrender" in many languages.

Even their allies invade them. The people don't mind. It's good for business, selling goods and services to the troops. And when the soldiers leave, there's always economic aid and food subsidies. But it's better during invasions. The Polish Underground works to keep the occupying troops in Poland, spreading assent. They are highly organized, and they spend less and less of their time underground as the sewers back up.

Their current invader is from somewhere in Africa. Dark as night in Los Angeles, without the street lamps. Poland doesn't mind. They are an equal-opportunity conquest.

The detective chases the streetcar vandal into a grocery store. Who knows what mathematical formula he's going to spray-paint in here?

The vandal slips, and knocks over an aisle display. It is a tower of soup cans. The detective freezes, watching the cans smother the vandal and roll into every corner of the store.

Those cans were meant for me, thinks the detective, looking away and sighing. Thank goodness I was chasing someone in here instead of just running amuck through the aisles like I normally do.

"The penny!" shouts the detective to himself. "The unlucky penny! Perhaps it isn't as unlucky as I thought it was, no matter what the Fire Marshall said."

Then the vandal gets up. He reaches for a gun, but there is no gun. He reaches for a knife, but they're two aisles down. He reaches for a can. Yes, there is a can. He grabs the can and grins. "Teach those fools at the firing range to mock my choice of weapons," he growls, gripping the can tighter.

The detective gasps. The camera zooms and dollies in closer. The detective tries to hide behind the camera, but the shot quickly changes.

"This soup has your name on it!" shouts the vandal, throwing the can.

The can connects with the detective's head and bounces off. The detective picks up the can. Golden Mushroom he reads.

"This is not my name," says the detective. "It's Asparagus, not Mushroom." He checks his driver's license, just to be sure. "Sam Asparagus."

The vandal digs through the pile of cans and picks up another. "Sorry!" he shouts, throwing the can.

The detective reads the label at it drives his nose into his brain. Cream of Asparagus. On sale, too. He briefly smells his brain. It smells terrible. "I should wash it more often," he mumbles, and collapses.

His name isn't Bugsy, despite what fellow tribesmen say.

He stands in the desert outside Las Vegas. He runs his hands over blueprints, spread across a card table. "This was our land," he says. "It will be our land again."

"Good," says George Running-Faucet. "Las Vegas, even. The tribe will be filthy rich." He wiped away a tear of joy. "You make me proud, Ed Who-Eats-Cockroach."

"We must appease the Western Wind Gods," says Ed, throwing his arms to the south and chanting.

George checks his compass and bites his lip. Is my leader going insane, he thinks. Did I leave the iron on?

"The city must go," says Ed, wiping sweat from his neck with a rag. "The city makes the spirits angry. My kachinas melt with disappointment. It is a sign, no?"

"Perhaps you shouldn't make them out of wax and leave them on the radiator," says George. "What if we got rid of the Las and just kept Vegas? Some of those showgirls are pretty hot. You can't deny it." He nudged Ed with an elbow.

"It all must go," says Ed. "The spirits have spoken. And the long-distance charges were outrageous." Ed rolled up the plans and headed back to the car. George did a quick jig and followed.

Heaven. The detective wakes up. He has a headache. He rubs his head and notices the robes.

He tries to remember. A soup can. A vandal throwing it at him. A flash of pain. Smelling his brain. Blacking out.

He laughs. Father O'Reilly was right... nice boys don't sniff their brains in public. And now he's paying the price for it.

All around is mist. Nothing but mist and more mist. And street lamps. And alleys. And streetcars. And diners, nickel newspapers, and the Andrews Sisters reading the stock quotes over the radio.

The detective shrugs and wanders through Noir Heaven.

The hospital. A man lies dead in the morgue, his face mashed-in with a soup can. A nurse approaches, checks him pulse, and moves on.

She is not really a nurse. She is a milkmaid, replete with dairy products and Midwest common-folk wisdom. She has nothing to offer the patients but cheese. She came out to the East Coast, looking for an opportunity. But she went the wrong way, and wound up here.

The next patient has a thermometer in her mouth. The milkmaid takes it out and sticks it up the patient's nose. Then she spoon-feeds the patient oats and barley, cooing a gentle farming song of her youth. When the food runs out, she takes out the thermometer and sticks it back in the patient's nose.

She walks over the elevator and pushes the "up" button. She wants to go up, and keep going up. Never coming down, no matter how many orderlies the hospital administrator send after her this time.

The woods of Virginia. A man is on the run, limping quickly through the trees. He has shot the President.

He assaulted him at a Washington theatre, firing his gun twice into the head under the stovepipe hat. As men approached from the doorway, he ran forward and jumped to the stage.

The crowd cheered. The play stopped. "Amazing!" they shouted. "Again! Encore!" The security men helped bring him back up the stairs, they propped up the dying president, and they ran through the shooting and jumping again.

"Simply amazing!" said the lead actor. "I don't know how you do it, but you're just simply amazing. You must tell me your secrets."

The crowd roared and threw flowers. The man bowed, hobbling on his broken leg. He threw kisses and waved as he stumbled to the stage exit. The play's director scribbled furiously, trying to add in the scene before their next show.

A desk. An author takes a break. He looks at his note cards. They say "detective sticking his ass out the window" and "aliens who like postage stamps" and "appeasing western wind gods" and "Abraham Lincoln" on them.

He tosses them to the floor and walks to the refrigerator. There is nothing but oregano and Jack Daniels there. He mixes the two in various combinations, but he spits out every one.

The author returns to the desk. He stacks the cards up like a tower, putting "explorers kicking each other in the crotch" on top. He smiles, and the tower begins to glow.

The hospital. Doctors are frowning.

"What do you mean there's no next of kin?" says a doctor. "Everyone has a next of kin."

"There's no next of kin," says the nurse. "I asked him twice." The nurse asked the body a third time, but there was still no answer.

"Then we must make a next of kin," says the doctor.

There is silence, and then the nurse shakes her head. "No, no... I don't think so. I don't care how handsome he is, even with the soup can in his face."

"Well, he can't be buried until we have a next of kin," says the doctor.

"Maybe he can adopt?" says another doctor. "Or someone can adopt him."

"No," says the first doctor, shaking his head. "I'm sure he has a legal next of kin. We'll have to hire a detective to find one."

A third doctor pointed at the body. "He's a detective. And I bet he's cheap, too."

The first doctor smiled, and wrote up a contract.

God takes his eye out of the telescope. He looks around for his watch. He can't find his watch. He puts on a hat and coat, and heads out into Heaven, looking for someone who can tell him the time.

The detective sits up, and everyone in the room shrieks. The can of soup embedded in his face falls to the floor with a clatter.

The doctors agree - pizza for lunch is out.

"My name's not Sam Asparagus," said the detective. He picked up the can and read the label. Cream of Weirdland. Hah - first mistake. His socks still didn't match. Hah - second mistake. "My name's Sam Weirdland," said the detective, ticking the last of his mistakes on his fingers. Wait - where did the rest of them go? Has someone been eating my fingers while I've been unconscious? "It's also Hafez Assan. It's also Mrs. Lois Kapowsky. I have many names."

His driver's license lists all the names, all ten thousand of them. It is a very large driver's license, capable of swatting a million flies at once.

"How do you fit that in your wallet?" asks a nurse, poking at the billboard-sized driver's license.

"With this," says the detective, pointing to a dump truck-sized wallet.

"Don't you have trouble fitting that in your pants?" asks a doctor.

"Not really," says the detective, putting on a tent-sized pair of pants. He put the driver's license back in his wallet, shoved the wallet in his back pocket, pulled on his pants, and walked off.

Did I forget to mention that the detective was 100 feet tall?

Sorry.

Spain. Feeling guilty, The King and Queen of Spain have cut off funding for Torquemada's Inquisition. Torquemada pleads for more funds. He showed the King and Queen his scale-model of his Inquisitionland theme park, but the answer is still no.

Torquemada returned to his dungeons, despondent.

"Aren't you going to make us confess?" asked a few prisoners.

"No," said Torquemada. "I don't really feel like doing much of anything. Besides, everything's broken except for the trampoline."

"What about this?" said an assistant, laying a cat-o-ninetails on Torquemada's desk.

"It's missing two tails," said Torquemada.

"What's the difference?" said the assistant.

"The balance is all wrong," said Torquemada. "It wouldn't feel right. I thought I taught all of you that. Who ever heard of a cat-o-seventails?" The assistant bowed in shame. "Let everyone go. We'll try again next week. Maybe we can get a loan from France."

The assistant offered a shoulder to Torquemada, and the bishop cried until dusk.

Church. On Thursday.

The detective breathes in. He breathes out. He breathes in. He breathes in again, and gets slightly larger.

He watches the woman in the next pew. The woman is holding a box, and she is sweating profusely. A green, webbed foot pokes out of the box, and the woman quickly snaps the lid back down on the box.

"Ribbit," says the box.

No time to lose! The detective springs into action. "Bullfrog!" he shouts, and he grabs for the box. The entire congregation heads for the exits, and the priest ducks behind the pulpit.

The sweating woman refuses to give up the box, but the detective gives one last yank and throws the box on the ground.

For the next five minutes, he stomps the box flat. When the police finally arrive, he dusts himself off and goes out for a cup of coffee.

They are in The White House, arguing. Abraham Lincoln bumps his head against the ceiling.

"I told you no doctors," growled the President at his wife. "Now look what they've done."

"Well," said Mary Todd. "At least they're long enough to reach the ground now."

"But this?" Abraham sighed. He teetered on his fifteen foot-long legs and his knees buckled painfully before he regained his balance. "You always wanted me taller, you bitch!"

Mary Todd shook her head and stomped her foot. "Dammit, Abe, be quiet! Can you please stop whining about your problems and scrape off all those butter pats that Tad keeps flicking at the ceiling?"

"Who is she married to?" asked the receptionist.

"His cousin," said the doctor. The receptionist drew three more lines. "And don't forget the twins."

"The twins?"

"Yeah," said the doctor. "Both of them."

The receptionist drew a few more lines. "Almost done. What happened to the grandfather?"

"His second cousin," said the doctor, "and then his own grandmother. Three times."

The receptionist drew four more lines, and turned the drawing tablet around.

"Told you it was a circle," said the doctor. "Damndest family tree I ever saw. Where's the keg?"

Will you have the courage to shake the hand of an armless man? Can you choose between paper and plastic bags at the grocery store without consulting your lawyer first? When the autopsy is released to the public, the report will say "Not strangled with jumprope" and it will be your turn to react, not your sister's!

With fear? With violent, uncontrolled outbursts? With too much salt?

Call for the detective, because it's cheaper than taking hostages.

God is bored.

He puts on a hat and begins to dance with an angel. They whirl without end, and the lights burn low. He dips her at the perfect moment and her eyelashes sparkle into infinity.

"What can I say," says God. "I'm a Dancing God, and I like to dance."

#2 12-14-2001, 09:43 PM

Author's notes... well, there are none. This doesn't explain itself, nor is there any way of explaining it. It's just madness and silliness all wrapped up into one long strange Spencer Tracy kind of droning rant.

Not sure what I will post next... been adding stuff back to my own site recently, and I've finally gotten a few more words down on paper with ideas of the return of the man in the viking helmet. We'll see, we'll see...

tipu · #3 12-27-2001, 10:19 PM

Please add a Sam Asparagus Front Window to my file13iana merchandise order!

How long ago did you last listen to Nick Danger, Your Eminence?

#4 12-27-2001, 10:32 PM

Never, I'm afraid. I keep meaning to get some Duck's Breath and Firesign for my MP3 collection of walking material.

All that's available right now from the catalog are some leftover action figures and a "Dr. Povo Bogus" white labcoat from Weirdland University.