Microscenes 2: The Family Home

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The Great Purging

One day the sewers in all the cities will cease to work. Then the people will pour into the streets and they will look at each other with wide open eyes, which reflect two questions: «Who is responsible for this cock-up?» And: «What shall we do now?»– Because very soon the people in the cities will wade through their own garbage. The few remaining philosophers will say: we always said this would happen! The athletes and the movie directors will yawn:what do we care! The politicians will attempt to turn the disaster into an opportunity, tweeting images of themselves covered in poop. The Paris fashion industry will create a new perfume line for the rich. The country folks on the other hand will shrug: they’re used to living among feces. They have learnt to extract the promise of fertility from it. The family home will once again become a place where animals and men relieve themselves freely wherever they like. The family will be concerned about survival again and grow stronger. Over time, when nothing changes, everybody will slowly get used to the smell and the new colors of everything covered with clutter. The areas befallen worst by the transformation will experience a linguistic renaissance, while generally tension will ease and catharsis set in, so that soon many will say with conviction: It could have been way worse!

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Marcus Speh lives in Berlin, Germany. His collection of short fiction, “Thank You For Your Sperm” is forthcoming from MadHat Press. He blogs at marcusspeh.com.

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Family Homes

1. Dalgety Bay The first house I remember,  aged two perhaps. I’d peer through the windows  waiting for dad. The other houses  looked very far away - The world was big, then. A neighbour, Anne-Marie -  my first friend? First crush? We played with her dolls once & It felt transgressive - even aged ~3, a socialised boy. My brother arrived & I’d help to “look after the baby”.   2. Long Croft Was I four? The countryside, suddenly. A night storm watching Mickey Mouse  in my pyjamas. A power cut! Mum fumbled for candles. I’d never know the end of the story, so I cried. We went to see the lambs next door - their pink licking tongues  came toward me at head height, and I fled.   3. The Glen The old school house,  on a country estate - sounds grand, but but the large key came cheap. We rescued hedgehogs from cattle grids, & picked baskets of  brambles &  bunches of bluebells, sledged down deep into  the snowy glen out front.   4. Settling Stones An old miners’ terrace. We grew peas & beetroot. Had swordfights,  karate lessons, bunkbeds & Christmases. Late night walks looking for foxes. So many firsts. Grandma had a stroke - My first time with death.   5. Beauchief From ten to teens. A village! Bikes rides,  a sweet shop, a paper round, new friends & enemies. Posters of Madonna - soft porn, really. School & Nintendo, Nirvana & Spliffs, Then away to uni - Mum cried in the car on my parents’ way home.

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John Rogers is a 6’4” male human being from London, UK. There is more of his autobiographical writing here, via a 2012 blog project called “100 Things”. Catch up with him and follow his work on Tumblr, Twitter andFacebook.

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My Home

My parents searched plenty of homes. They went with the one on the hill. Cute sweet with chubby cheeks it was too cute. Though small it offered comfortable space. After many previous tenants all single this would be the home’s first family my family.

My parents were excited to raise a family. They wanted to love each other. They wanted new little creations. While I grew and while my siblings grew the home became loved. Little footsteps, loud footsteps, random shouts and cries of joy made the home feel loved. While we grew as a family the home grew too gaining new rooms to handle new people.

That is all the home ever wanted. Land brought it close to the neighbors. Built long ago two neighbors bought the land between the two homes. They were best friends. They didn’t want anybody separating them. They wanted to be together.

With my parents now my family the home had more than a neighbor, more than an exoskeleton. Our family gave the home many hearts, each one located in its own special room called a bedroom. My family enjoyed the home and appreciated it.

In the summer the home cooled my family. But the home’s greatest happiness came in the wintertime. Over the winter the home’s radiators would sing; a choir of angels singing the praises of my family, happy to offer shelter and happy to witness the transformation from baby to child to adult for the first time.

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Beach Sloth is a sloth at one with the internet. Beach sloth blogs at an unnaturally prolific rate for a sloth, making him probably one of the most prolific sloth bloggers of the entire world wide web.

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Hideaway Camp

“We can’t afford to go on vacation and your bed sheets have been dirty for months. Why don’t you sleep on top the pine needles in the backyard for a few nights. I watched the weather channel for five hours today and it consistently stated that it will be 65 degrees all week. Put extra pine needles  under your head. Fashion a bed between tree stumps. They will be your bed posts, headboard and footboard, wooden like the ones in your room. We can’t afford  to send you to camp but our backyard isn’t going anywhere. Learn to hunt squirrels while I collect change for the laundromat, for your sheets. Here is a box of matches. Light your footboard on fire to cook the squirrels. Pink isn’t good in small animals. When you start to feel weak,  remember  I loved you, when you start to get cold, remember your dirty sheets, when your friends come home from camp, don’t tell them we couldn't spare the money for you to play in the woods, then show them  your tree stumps, show them your bed.”

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Sarah Jean Alexander is a Baltimore based writer and founder/editor of PARLOR.

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The Whole Family

“How are you?” Kate said to a confused-looking elderly woman who might have been related to her.

“She doesn't speak English,” her uncle said slowly. “She can’t understand you.”

“Oh,” Kate said, and looked away. She picked up a piece of celery lying on a tray on the table and chewed it slowly. The television was playing “A Christmas Story” for the third time. 

“Is it snowing outside,” someone said.

“It’s a wintry mix,” someone else said, “but it might turn to snow later.”

“Oh,” the first person said.

The confused-looking elderly woman walked into another room. Kate’s uncle picked up a piece of celery lying on a tray on the table and chewed it slowly.

“It’s nice to have the whole family here for once,” someone said.

“Yes,” someone else said, “it’s nice to have the whole family here.”

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Devon Branin has been published in Metazen and Staccato Fiction, and recently released an ebook. You can also follow him over at his twitter, @amusedbycats .

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Family Haikus

1. your dad is happy

seeing you smile with all of

your white teeth showing

2. a room full of warm,

the dark warm we’ve heard only

in our story books

3. your brother shows you

where your mom hide the presents;

smiling, giggling 

4. the driveways full of

cars you only see once a 

year, but you’re happy

5. the hugs are short lived;

the smiles all fade away but

next year will hurry

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Chase Kersey is a charming lad from the internet, he does poetry on tumblr.

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Nightmare Diet

My sister was in a bad mood because her nightmare diet wasn’t working out. “How many fucking calories can there be in one bad dream?” “I don’t know,” I replied, scooping the last of the dreamcatchers off the floor. She hopped off her step stool and put the hedge trimmers in the closet. “Well, after you empty them dreamcatchers, make sure you run them through the wash.” I really couldn’t understand why she wasn’t losing weight, considering I don’t know how to empty dreamcatchers and she’d been eating nothing for weeks, but I would never accuse her of cheating. She’s really good with those hedge trimmers.

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Sean Gannon is an American police officer, and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter. He gained notoriety on the Internet due to a widely distributed video of Gannon defeating Kimbo Slice in an unsanctioned bare-knuckle street fight. Shaun Gannon is a writer whose work can be found here and elsewhere on the web.

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NME Articles Fund Terrorism

Like a jaguar a young girl crouches in the rain forest. Beady, darting eyes salt and pepper a blemished mango. There’s a foul smell in this thicket; she doesn’t mind. There’s a layer of dirt on her feet, cut and hardened, but she doesn’t notice. She’s a princess. Surrounded by rats, a trace of concentrated urine in the air, she’s a princess. Her rib cage clearly visible through her ripped clothing, she’s  - not a model, not an actress - she’s a princess.

She stands up tall and looks out over the multitude. She’s running; she’s jumping. She looks past her father, past his companions, past the thicket, past the village. She dances, she seduces, she ditches, she seduces again, she gives birth. She looks out over the field, over the crowd, over the shining lights and camera flashes. She looks into the lens, she peers into the abyss, she addresses the world with a trifle of a gesture. 

Her two companions fade into obscurity as she’s hit with a violent truth. For a second she stops dancing; the ground almost disappearing beneath her feet. For a second she can hardly bear the weight of it all. She looks beyond the abyss to the other side. She’s finally here. On her own terms, she’s finally here. She’s been missing this place her whole life, but she’s finally made it. She’s finally home. 

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Guilherme Joshua fantini Blake is a Brazilian writer, semi professional footballer, and amateur body piercer. He currently resides peacefully in the sleepy town of Belo Horizonte.

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Alone

cut the dang cord, i said

but they wouldn’t so i took a pair of scissors and cut it myself, bleeding from my abdomen all over the floor let me leave the dang nest, i said but they wouldn’t so i peered over the edge and jumped from the branch, breaking both of my legs home is where the heart refuses to bleed and i have nothing left in me to bleed so i wait for something to revitalize itself in me, wait to have blood i think i’ll need until i am something to behold or at least something to write home about 

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Cean Gamalinda sucks the marrow from the bones of his enemies.

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In Strict Accordance With Our Differing Temperaments

A wooden kitchenette. All the crockery behind glass doors. The cutlery in the drawers. A thin leather belt on top of the kitchenette. My father sitting drinking gallons of instant coffee. Toast crumbs on his stubble. Menace. Fear in the milk pot. He was the most extraordinary man I had ever met, much like his brother. When I was a kid my father used to write letters to me, only now, a glance flutter in my direction for a moment. The extraordinary thing was what he said.  What became of him? Oh, I don’t know. I brought one or two engineering works with me. In my hand, my eyes stared at me. A pot of dirt on the hard-boiled beach, lightning by the dynamo. That thin leather belt called the strap. Do you wanna get the strap? Welt marks on my thighs. Bloody blisters. All the rest of my family were still ashore, up westward was the deep fury of the ocean. I was leaning against the street lamp, tense and silent stares given off. Did I stare? I asked. A convenience store man of pleasure, inarticulate mistakes made by myself. Gradually I gave my father a gilt chair. I smoothed down the part of his conversation that could guide round to the subject that we were all talking about:America. Our occasional lippy mouths misled us, talking in a strange technical jargon. Nobody ever slept outside our childhood home; they just broke the windows and stole cash.

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‘Shane Jesse Christmass is a Perth born, Melbourne-based writer.’ This is the first line of text from ~30% of the articles on the first page of Google when searching ‘Shane Jesse Christmass.’

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Scrimscape

The emo girl turned to her father. I think the world is over now, she said. They were standing on a precipice overlooking a city. The clay evoked the fire and fire provoked them. Jumbled bones in the ardor. Her daddy was a wire-covered bovine of a man. He turned and hocked and spit and popped open a can of lukewarm Four Loko. Seems to be that way, he replied.She scoffed and blinked her eye. The other one had been torn out by a piece of shrapnel. Only a thick tortoise shell scar carved in her small white head remained. She was wearing a zombie Hello Kitty t-shirt spored by chickenshit. His round stomach dribbled at the edges of his waistline. He sipped Four Loko. In his free hand the daddy held  a scorched piece of wood, a giant matchstick. He was not responsible for the crackling. He could not pretend that he had hurt a thing. Had they not been hiding in the forest, eating deer cancered by the fumes, they would not have survived. Now no home could be distinguished. But they both felt strongly about this one.

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Blank White seeks to make a script from glowing ham-colored lightbulbs.