THE 2 AM stillness shatters. A zipper rips. Stepping out of the tent, she fumbles with an old Coleman lantern. It hisses to life in a bright bubble of eerie light. A huge dark snake is illuminated casually sliding up the path to the campground bathhouse. She sprints to the pickup, drops the tailgate and assumes a lotus position in the bed. She meditates on how soon daylight will come and if she can hold it that long.

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THEY’RE TEARING down Santa Town. Benny goes back to just being the old cranky guy who never seems to do much. He has to keep the beard, hair and belly in good shape for next year. But after six weeks of holding the same jolly, benevolent facade through thousands of same posed pictures with kids and pets, Benny has had it. Sure the money’s good. He’ll be back next year. But until next fall, you just better watch out!

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NADENKA IS Willa’s husband’s crazy, Russian ex-wife. She is spotted entering the building by Mandy, who alerts Willa. A series of calls, e-mails, text messages and hallway shouts alerts everybody of Nadenka’s movements. People leave their offices, trying to catch a semi-inconspicuous glimpse of the insane woman. They say Nadenka is always gibbering about cars following her and police spies. I mean, she’s really nuts!

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DER HIPPIESCHNITZEL hit hard times. Our friendly, old A-frame is now a charred pile of debris. We stand in the snow steaming miasma from our mouths, remembering glory days forty years ago. We’d trudge the mile from the campus to our tiny, over crowded crash pad, welcomed by its’ drafty warmth and the divine comfort of our own funk. Even now, we seem caught up in a surreal spell. Ursula digs around the periphery, as if looking for something. She comes up with a rusty, blackened pair of hemostats, holds them aloft and says: “I wondered what happened to these!”

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AS A TRIBUTE to American composer John Cage, my 100 word story today is twenty-five words of explanation followed by seventy-five words of silence. Enjoy:





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WEAPONIZED ART Research (WAR) is a black budget, US military program aimed at disrupting terrorist operations through “aggressive visual assault.” According to pirated, top secret documents posted on hacker web sites, the government has determined “certain examples of surrealistic collage art can actually cause serious psychological or even physical injury.” Documents indicate posting this type of artwork on jihadist web sites might be an effective form of psych-ops warfare. While denying the existence of the program, government officials say it may be in the interest of national security to confiscate some materials to prevent them falling into the wrong hands.

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BE COOL. Hellboy would not be running the register at Best Buy. It sure does look like him though -- the sawed off horn stubs, the oversized masonry hand, a tail and the dude is definitely red and eight feet tall! But if it was Hellboy, everybody would be freakin’ out, right? No, maybe it is just a pimply kid in a blue golf shirt and khakis? Can’t be sure. “Hey dude! Did anybody ever tell you you look just like Hellboy?” Did I say that out loud? Now the security guys are comin’ over. Don’t freak, man. Be cool.

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MAXWELL KEPT the chrome lug wrench, an old single head style, in his room. They say he liked to pose in front of a mirror with it shouting: “I’m goin’ upside your head with a tire tool! Bam! Bam!” The coroner thinks maybe Max was swinging that tire tool around and accidentally delivered the death blow with the curved end. Or maybe, he smacked himself on purpose just to see how it felt. You never know with these kids.

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“FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON,” thinks Bob as the family takes off in the car. He vaults to the top of the chain link, crawls over and runs down the street after them. Sure, they are blocks away. Who knows why he does things? Certainly not Bob. Anyway, he is in the zone. He hits his stride with the wind whipping across his face, the clicktey rhythm of his toenails on the pavement and perfectly balanced coordination of his tail. The family keeps getting farther away. Bob stops. Throws up a little. Pants. Then he realizes: “Where the hell am I?”

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“IF DIRT CLODS were dollars, everybody in this agrarian ghetto would be flush.” It was the last thing he’d said to Zora as he drove away twenty four years ago. Even he didn’t know what it meant. Everything he’d grown up with seemed so worthless at the time. He’d missed the funeral and was surprised to find her grave overflowing with coarse, red clay projectiles. He picked up a hefty chunk, intending to toss it as far as he could. But, it would not fly. Instead, he grasped the hardened soil tightly until it crumbled to dust in his hand.

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BETTINA LEFT behind a bag of marijuana. It was year before Rafe discovered it secreted in an old Pyrex bowl back in the kitchen cabinets. He’d long since given up trying to grok why the hell she left . . . in such a hurry . . . taking everything of value that would fit in the U-Haul. But Bettina left little mysteries in the things she left behind: her old family photographs, disturbing sketches from sessions with her shrink, and now crusty old shards of weed. Why was she hiding it in the first place? The weird part continues.

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