#stephen ist

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Happy Holidays to everyone except this unholy piece of shit and all of his worshipers!

[stephenist]

“The Meaning of Life” by Stephen Ist


‘What is the meaning of life?’ The young woman posed the question to her father. He gazed at her in contemplation and then motioned for her to follow. He led her deep within the catacombs to a chamber she had never seen before. The floor had been hollowed out into a massive pit which extended into the darkness. The chamber resounded with a constant hum—a shrill cry that suggested some poor creature’s death was being perpetuated indefinitely. The darkness within the pit writhed. It lapped against the interior walls like an inundated shoreline. Her father lit the lantern.


At first glance, the pit appeared to contain one immense amorphous creature. As her eyes adjusted she began to discern distinctions… individuals. The pit was filled with people—living, dying, human beings. Flesh, digits, even entire limbs were missing or precariously attached. Sunbursts of dried blood encircled many of the vacant eye sockets. The pigmentation of what skin remained was forever stained by immersion in the sanguine pool. 


The walls of the pit were littered with jagged edges, spattered metal and shattered glass. Pipes along each wall poured unknown foul liquids. The mass inside struggled against itself. With passion and determination they clawed at, over, and through one another—murmuring and muttering, shouting and screaming unintelligibly. The pleas for release and those purely out of pain were indistinguishable. 


A concerted effort might free them from torment, she thought, but there were no longer eyes to see, ears to hear, nor sanity with which to comprehend their predicament. All that was left was mindless groping in the darkness. She stumbled back through the entranceway. Her father closed and locked the door behind them. They never discussed the subject again. 


© 2003, 2021 Stephen Oblivion/Stephen Ist


Note: Originally published (in earlier form) at a previous iteration of The New Absurdist dot cc under the pseudonym Stephen Oblivion. 


Image by Stevan Aleksić

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[istesque]

The New Gadsden Flag

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As the last of the blue fell across the last of the gray, strangling his enemy to death while choking on his own bloody last breath, the ghostly commission appeared among the refuse of the battlefield.

“Why, blue?” “Why, gray?” Slights against grandfather’s grandfathers were invoked. “Why, blue’s grandfather’s grandfather?” “Why, gray’s grandfather’s grandfather?” More past horrors and recriminations.

And on it stretched for centuries. With each assured he was in the line of the right and the just. Until at last, in antiquity, they came to the original offense.

Do you know what that was? Do you know what started it all? I ask because the ghosts won’t speak of it for fear—terror actually—of embarrassment.

-Ist