About runningvein

Avatar of runningvein "My pieces comprise, entirely, works of fiction. Some pieces are shorts, others tend to get a little longer. Some are straightforward and may be read evenly, while others can tend to be amorphous. You see, sometimes the writer does his piece completely lucid, sitting straight up and staring intently into it as his fingers simply glide across the keys. Other times his eyes are opaque with tears from imaginary emotions. Sentences, nay, words, barely come out as he stabs at each letter with one trembling finger, like how your mom types. Then there are the times a piece of work is scrawled from a leaking pen on a notepad in a bar after several whiskeys, as the writer gleefully tries to get everything down before the bouncers come over to throw him out for laughing like a crazy person to himself all night. The writer cannot say what is good, or what is bad. He can only write. It does not do for one to rank a piece of his work above others, just as it does not do for one to deign to strive to be published. That must be left to others, to come and ask the writer if they may publish his work, and that all of the work would be copyright (c) him 2000-2009, if they were to do so. Some of the pieces may even seem far too real -- as though he's actually blogging about his real life, his personal thoughts. You know -- because it is a blog, some people may think that may be the case. Well it ain't, damn you, it ain't." The man in the tracksuit shrugged over the counter. "Thanks for the info, Hemingway," he said, "but I just wanted to know where the damn ATM is."
Website: http://trulyeffingoode.blogspot.com/
riverfr0zen has written 67 articles so far, you can find them below.

Pricks and Pones

When the judge called for the defendant to be brought in, a curtain of gasps and whispers from both sides of the aisle preceded him.

Detective Stoole turned to see what the all the commotion was about, and nearly spat his tongue out when he saw the defendant’s face. The man was black and blue all over his head, the left eyelid swollen and hanging over his cheek like the top of a soggy portobello mushroom. His jaw was veered to the right, and as he creaked his mouth open painfully with each step, the Detective could see he was even missing a few teeth. A prison guard had to hold the man steady as he walked up the courtroom to his attorney.

Stoole, mouth still wide open, spun to look at Warden Billingsley, who was standing just a few rows down from him. Billingsley raised his eyebrows and smiled widely back at him, and then conspiratorially rubbed his nose. Detective Stoole held his hands out, palms up, and mouthed something at him.

The Warden’s smile didn’t fade, but he mouthed back, “What?”

Detective Stoole walked down swiftly and stood next to the Warden. “What the hell have you done to him?” he asked, quickly but hushed.

The Warden couldn’t help but let out a quiet laugh from deep in his belly. “Ah, don’t worry, Detective, none of it will come bite us.”

The Detective looked at him still puzzled. “But–why? What did you have to beat him up like that for?”

At this, the smile on the Warden’s face turned into an annoyed frown. “Damn pervert, Stoole. He got what was comin’. Come, this isn’t the first time you’ve seen this. I mean–what if it was your child, huh? It’s a good thing you caught him, too. But you should know all that–you’re the one who charged him.”

Detective Stoole was utterly confused. What the hell was Billingsley talking about? “But it–it wasn’t that bad,” he whispered.

“Uh, I think,” snorted Billingsley, “I think I know what’s bad, and what’s just utterly sick, Mr. Detective,” he said, tapping a wad of paper that was folded in his pocket. It was a copy of the arresting charge that Stoole had filed.

Stoole snatched the document from the Warden’s pocket and unfolded it quickly. He scanned through the details, and then he grew very still. “Oh shit,” he said, “oh shit, oh shit”.

Warden Billingsley peered back at him. “What?”

Stoole looked back. “The charge. It was supposed to be ‘Downloaded porn illegally’,” he said, “not ‘Downloaded illegal porn’”.

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The Best Parts of the Lime Pickle

“I can’t imagine what the world would have looked like,” said the child wistfully, “if I had never been in it.”

“You can,” said runningvein, and a new dawn broke across what was previously a miserable state.

“I still can’t see it,” said the child, “I mean, what are you actually saying? That when I enter the room, the lights don’t automatically switch off?”

“What kind of crazy contraption is that?” said runningvein.

“And mist begins to occur, within this darkness.”

“Are there elves?” asked rune-ingvein, “and orcses,” he took a short moment to thumb through several longer passages, and then added, “and orcas?”

“No elves, or orcses,” said the waning star. “But orcas. I can do that. I can give you a pretty good orca.”

“Tomas,” said runningvein.

“What?”

“Tomas. You were a doubting Tomas. But that is how it works, with trains, planes and teleportation. Begin with a healthy bit of doubt.”

“So you’ve been carefully looking at my face all this time?”

“Studying,” said runningvein. “There is educational vtgtherent here.”

Cheapest (in a true sense) Halloween Costume Ever

Jake found himself standing at a corner yet again in the party.

An attractive woman, by media standards, happened to stumble by with a tray of drinks, and went “Ooh!” when she caught sight of Jake’s nose, which had been sticking out of the shadow of the corner.

“Oh shit…” said Jake, but it was too late. The drinks crashed to the floor, causing a small mess around his sneakers and the polished tips of her high-heels, but a larger general discrepancy in terms of the *sound* that was going on in the whole apartment.

People began to look at them, and he pulled her into the corner with him. “It’s better this way,” he said, “I promise.”

“Idiot!” she said, as quietly and irritatedly as she could. “You’ve ruined Halloween!”

He hadn’t expected that. “What?” he said. “I just accidentally tripped you over, miss, it was just a sort of small joke, shenanigan. If it’s that bad, I can go back there and refill your tray.”

She just laughed. “No point now,” she said. “See that guy there? That’s who I was bringing the tray to. He asked me to bring it, and I went, filled up the drinks, and was going to be perfectly on time. He times us, you know? We call him the ‘Time Lord’ at the office.” She shook her head. “Now I’ve ruined his Halloween.”

“You wot?”

“Guy with a sad life like that, the one thing he enjoys is Halloween,” she said. “Christmas party is too sedate for him. Halloween is the only time he gets to enjoy really seeing all the other people be totally crazy and different. And they all put the masks on, and they all have funny interactions with each other, and he watches and participates! And if he wants a bloody tray of drinks for him and his chums, bloody hell, he’s going to have it!”

He looked down at the smashed pieces of glass at their feet. “Wow,” was all he could say. “That is pretty creepy.” He tried to smile.

This was when she noticed him. “Hey!” she said. “Where’s your costume?”

“I’m wearing it,” he replied.

“You’re wearing a t-shirt and khakis.” She gazed at him distastefully. “I suppose you could be a mugger at the piers.”

“A mugger?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, “Some guy that hangs near the docks, ready to just jump out and mug a dating couple.”

“This coming from Chewbacca’s poontang,” he replied.

She took one step back from him, rubbing faux fur against her left shin. “Whatever. You suck. You come in here, no costume, and you ruin the flow of the music.”

This made him a little angry. “What the hell,” he said, loudly, “how do I ruin the music?”

She covered his face with her furry palms. “Shuttup, shuttup,” she said. Then she pointed out, her arm drawing an arc across the entire living room, “Don’t you see?” she said. “Don’t you see that everything is going according to a rhythm?

Do you not see the mermaid over there, gently supported by her hubby?”

“Lol, that pregnant woman is supposed to be a mermaid?”

“Shuttup,” she said. “She is carrying the illusion.”

“Illoo-oo-shion?” he said.

“And around them, there’s the spider?”, she pointed, “do you see that. See how that sea-spider guy is protecting the couple from anyone who may want to come in and break the mermaid’s bond between her and her Sea God?”

“You see over there,” he said, taking her hand and pointing it to the left, “how that Ice-Cream Cone is totally getting roofied by that CEO type fella with, for some reason, sheep pants?”

She let out a sharp laugh. “Oh you fool, that’s just Sam and Jason. They’re a couple too!”

“Sheesh,” he said, slinking even deeper into his corner. “You think they over-did it?”
She looked at him again. His t-shirt and pants. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’re supposed to come to parties like this wearing a costume. It’s part of the fun. You mix with people. You be somebody you would never be in real life.”

“But what if what you are…in real life…was spooky enough?” he said.

“Stupid,” she gasped. “Ok, look. Wearing a t-shirt and standing in a dark corner like some thug is not exactly a costume, ok?”

“I’m not coming as a thug,” he said, slowly stepping out.

“Oh yeah? Then what? Freaking Potsie from Happy Days? What’s your costume?”

“I’m coming as Paranormal Activity 5,” he said.

She burst out laughing, but just as she did, the music in the apartment stopped. Behind all the confusion and anger of the people, she heard this guy standing next to her sort of laugh, but very quietly, and walk closer to her.

Then suddenly all the lights in the apartment went out, and as she turned her head, the last thing she saw was what looked like the chandelier breaking from the ceiling and falling on the mermaid.

(From the people who came dressed as a molotov cocktail in ’04)

Premise for Murder Mystery

When they picked Little Jo up at the Sears department store, in the home appliances department, the main thing sergeant Vega wanted to establish was whether or not Little Jo was connected somehow to the crime scene at the ice-cream factory.

Back in the office, Little Jo had woken up a little, now showing signs that he was cognizant of his surroundings in fairly precise detail, i.e. he knew whose body it was that his consciousness was now inhabiting.

Sgt. Vega reviewed her (long) list of questions she had to ask Little Jo. “Hey there Little Jo. My name is Sergeant Vega, and I’m with the NYPD, ok? I’m gonna have to ask you a loada questions. Do you understand that?”

Little Jo nodded. “Yes,” he mumbled, “yes I got it.”

Ok. First question was “Do you have any ID?”

There was a pause, and then Little Jo shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t have any.”

“Do you know why is that?” said Sgt. Vega.

This is what always happens. For some reason, the suspects never have any ID. This one, Little Jo, acted all confused, like he had no idea why he didn’t have any ID. He just shrugged. “I–uh–I honestly don’t know.”

Sgt. Vega moved expertly onto the next question. “So you have no idea why a store clerk finds your ID just lying around in the home appliances section of a nearby Sears, the morning *after* an as yet unidentified corpse is found frozen in a shell of chocolate dip, an internal layer of vanilla ice-cream surrounding it, within an industrial freezing appliance at an ice-cream factory?”

It was too much exposition for Little Joe, and he just shook his head once, then stared blankly at the sergeant.

“And after finding your ID, police soon also find you sitting inside a display fridge unit nearby.”

No response.

“You’re shiverin’, except it’s just a display unit. The electricity was not even turned on, it was probably hotter in there rather than cold.” She put her notebook on the table, now in stride, and said “What we want to know is why in the world you were shivering, Little Jo?”

A look of realization slid onto Little Jo’s face. The identification, the refrigerator, the body in the freezer; all of this had to have something to do with a small taste he’d taken a few weeks ago from a strip of paper that had been left fluttering in wind near a local Taco Bell.

“Magic paper,” said Little Jo, suddenly.

Sgt. Vega took her notebook back, and pulled a pen from her breast pocket. This was going to be good.

“I was strolling,” began Little Jo.

“Strolling? You’re just strolling? Just randomly like that?”

“Yes,” continued Little Jo, “just very randomly strolling. Looking for avenues, and streets–traffic signals, that kinda thang. And I was on my cellphone.”

Sgt. Vega prepared her pen. “Who were you on the cellphone with, Little Jo? Who were you talking to?”

“Well–”

“But wait,” said the sergeant, expertly, “before you answer that, can you tell me if you remember if there was a name on your cellphone. Cos a lot of people put their names into the phone–that way they can remember their name, in case they forgot or something.”

“Yeah,” said Little Jo. It was all clearing up now, and he was getting more interested in the conversation. “I remember the name now. It was Sagat, Bison.”

Vega dropped her notepad and looked at the criminal. “Oh. Sagat Bison,” she said. “Kind of an unusual name, don’t you think? Weird arrangement. Sagat is not a very good first name.”

Little Jo smiled a fresh smile back at her. “It’s actually Bison Sagat. I just like to put the last name first, with a comma–it makes it sound more official.”

At least, she really, really wanted this guy to be the criminal. “Ha. Now you’re name-calling a homicide detective. You don’t think I’ve heard that before? Little kids who think they’re gods at Street Fighter making fun of my last name?”

“Okay, it was just a joke,” said Bison Sagat, “Don’t take it that seriously.”

“So who were you talking on the cellphone with, Bison?” asked Sgt. Vega.

“Two people,” said Sagat. “My momz, and my ex-girlfriend. Both at the same time.”

This was getting really weird. “Oh, so you’re on the phone at the same time with your mom and gf. Was it a conference call, Bison?”

“No,” said Sagat. “I was using the ‘hold call’ trick that they have, speaking to my mother in one moment, and then speaking to my ex-girlfriend the other. They both called me up out of the blue, trying to find out what I was up to at that particular moment.”

“Where are your mother and ex-girlfriend right now, Roger?” asked Sgt. Vega, then. “Can we give them a call, maybe? See how they’re doing? Maybe they’re feeling a little…left out in the cold, you know?”

Bison looked up. “Who’s Roger?” he asked.

“You’re Roger,” said Sgt. Vega. “Remember, we found your ID just a few feet away from the display refrigerator you were sitting inside.”

“Oh. But–”

“Yes?”

“How would you know that that is my real ID?”

Sometimes it pays to try the longshot. “Well,” said Sgt. Vega, “we know it’s yours because the barcode imprinted in it corresponds to the chip that was embedded in your neck when you were born.”

“Oh…” said Roger. “But they could have just transplanted the chip,” he said.

“Why would anyone do that?”

Roger looked down at the small desk. He kept looking for a good twenty-thirty seconds. Only when Sgt. Vega shook her head, ready to pursue a new tree of investigation, did he look up again. “Maybe…” he said, and he seemed very uncertain of this. “Well…they always sometimes dim the lights on me.”

“What?”

“Like sometimes, I’m fine as a feather,” said Roger, “and all of a sudden it’s like someone ‘dimmed’ the lights in the room for just one second or so.”

Sgt. Vega stabbed repeatedly at her notepad with her pen. “They just dim the lights?” she asked. “And what do they do after they dim the lights in the room?”

“I don’t…know,” said Roger. “It’s too fast. It only happens for, like, one second. And then it’s over.”

“Over? Just like that?”

“Yeah,” nodded Roger. “And even more, it happens even regardless of whether there is a room or not. Sometimes it even happens in the streets to me.”

“Streets?”

“Yeah, I’m just walking around, in the streets, all of a sudden I experience this feeling like…like as though my battery life just dipped for one moment. Except it’s not a battery for my phone, or if I’m driving, a battery for my car, but more like…more like my own battery. My own personal human battery.”

The Minitour

This is something that should be repeated every time upon waking from sleep. For treatment purposes.

Anyway, most employers are now already familiar with Tourette Syndrome, a rare inherited neuropsychiatric condition that causes sufferers to express ‘tics’ in seemingly random fashion. Continue reading →

I feel the need to explain poem 21396

Whenever someone from the Obama administration says ‘look’, I feel a sharp tingle burn up my spine. Doctors say this is a routine reaction, that this kind of behavior is normal for reactionary nerves such as myself.

I hate Megadeth, and Metallica. I just can’t stand the music. I’ll leave it open to you to finalize all the calculations, but there is a definite systemic algorithm of crap there.

So imagine my chagrin on a Sunday morning, after Tony from HR (not the guy who originally interviewed me) had called to let me down easy on Friday — can you imagine that? Ok, we’re doing okay. Thank the gods that people in 2010 have brains, and that writers now no longer have to construct elaborations to somehow ‘persuade’ readers’ minds that they’re in a certain place. You know, unlike back in the day where people like Shakespeare and shit had to make up a load of stuff convince everyone. So, just read on, will you?

Like I say, it was a Sunday, and I hate Megadeth. I had to walk up this staircase made of wood (wood staircases are extremely suspect — use concrete in the future) where the flaky paint was getting into my fingers, convincing me of a future with dire paint-poisoning. My mind, of course, would not articulate the exact type of poisoning these flakes (which liked to embed themselves, in shards, under my skin) incur, my mind being an extremely self-protective and devious mind. These flakes of paint, they shimmered — but not because they were intrinsically unique — they shimmered like that because of the shitty music coming from that apartment.

I finally reached the door, and I knocked. I wanted to tell him how bad my day had been, it being the Sunday after the Friday Tony from HR had called. It is not fair that, in life, some people are the winners, and some the losers. That’s just BS, in my opinion. The door was that cheap shade of gray exasperated architects who were fucked in the ass last night envision in their plans. “Look, I can’t decide on green or blue. Wait, you’re saying there is red?” Having to deal with all these colors (the combinations are different when you are doing it in light, as opposed to paints) added to my horror when there was no response after 20 or 30 knocks on this so-called ‘door’.

I waited for ten minutes before doing knock #31. There were birds to look at, in the area. Of course, there was also the shambling staircase with its horrid asbestos foundation flaking away into the morning sun light. And this annoying music coming from inside his apartment. It was so bad, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called my mom — and wept to her. She told me exactly what to do.

The legend is that he died listening to Megadeth, but true historians know that I took it upon myself to pick the lock, enter his abode, and change the music. I put on ‘Easy Muffin’ by Amon Tobin, and adjusted the volume to a respectable level for a corpse. Then I ran the hell outta there like my momma told me.

Exploring the Depths

 

Somebody twittered: “Bring fiancé to shop for wedding dress or leave him at home?”

My immediate response was “Bring to shop. Who knows, maybe he’ll find something that fits better”.

Of course, I should never have said that. Immediate responses such as these are the reason I, myself, will never have a fiancé (I won’t even pretend I can remember the key-combo to do the accent).

Continue reading →

I found out where my problem with commas stems. These days I do too much talking and less writing. Need to start writing more.

When, you, talk
it feels smooth as this.
Smooth as a wet scaly fish
with a tadpole friend

at, the end, of the pond.

Walk on over, rub the head.
Little bald cute as hell head,
then the valkyries sing.
And you know you’re dead.

Death, YES, YOU, TOO.
Since I drowned in that swimming pool,
you’ve been eyeing my soul.
Was worth it, though, wasn’t it?

To come back to your Mother,
wet and cold and shivering,
mud of lagoon heavy on shoulders,
and say: “I’m still alive!”

Looks on the faces
of people passing-by
so out of context and out of
rhyme,

yet priceless.

Man who is bad at Geography, and people’s names

Geography was probably my most hated class in school, likely trouncing P.E. and the one where you have to cut up wood and make objects anyone can buy in a store for ten bucks a pop. This was my excuse for hiring a car to get to the party (yes, I lied to the host that I came from the subway — I felt ashamed). I’m just bad at geography. I don’t know how to read maps.

I’m not shy about it either — coming out of the subway, for example, I will immediately harass people about which direction my target location resides. Sometimes it gets complicated because you get assholes that try to give you a ‘GPS’ perspective on things, trying to draw an entire map in your mind — which of course is useless if you hate Geography. I tell these people “Point motherfucker, point. That is all I require of you.” Sometimes you come away from these people feeling like you’re a damn Terminator or something.

I liked History. Now, given that I cannot recall anybody’s name from the party, the question could be posed as to how I could possibly like History. How could you traverse this subject without being able to record notable names, or incidents? How would you distinguish between wars? Would not, indeed, the paleolithic be no different than the neolithic in your grayed mind?

That question, I contend, comes straight from the Department of Geography. Probably composed by the Dean of that college. They’re trying to make history look like a map. These scoundrels will try anything to make a cartographer of one, as if Magellan (or Google Maps) wasn’t enough.

History is not a map. It is not really about the names, or places, or, I boldly contend, the events themselves. History is about the flow of things, and the way that things generally have happened so far. There is a story in history, a describing. You can easily get lost in a fold of history, and travel to different times from the past, with just your mind. You can sit down with Da Vinci and discuss with him his placement of figures in The Last Supper. History within histories.

How could any of this be of tactical benefit to the common human being embroiled in the daily warfare of comings and goings? Well, as has been established, History is not Geography. When you are a student of History, you don’t so much have to learn about the details as you have to learn how to interpret them. A lot of History comes from languages other than English, and there always has to be at least one interpreter that has enough intelligence to figure out what actually happened, from all the left-over scrolls and parchments. And vases or urns. Sometimes, the recorders didn’t even know how to make paper, and they expressed everything on the walls of a cave. A true student of History is actually a student of the art of interpreting these relics, and figuring out what actually happened. Objectivity is required, and the ability to interrogate even stones.

Clearly such skills, bestowed upon a normal human being walking the Earth, would mean almost God-like status.

—
As an epilogue, and a way of resolving the boundaries that have been created so heinously by the Dean of Geography, I propose a new way to learn Geography – the Historic way. This does not mean going to certain locations in your school books and taking notes about the particular architecture of the houses there (how long are those houses really going to last?)

I propose a way of walking through the streets in your city or town, and trying to get a sense of the ‘story’ of the place. One technique is to write a million stories about a place, and then filter from them. Remember, you can’t possibly write anything entirely new. Given that, it would be true that the more stories you concoct about a place, the more likely you will be to near true understanding of the area.

After all, what is a space, really?

This Is NOT An Autobiography of the E

One of the things I have to do to properly hone my art is use less ‘F’ words. Sure, it may be emotive, it may actually express the sentiment at the time, and fucking-ay it feels great — but there are larger issues at stake. Similarly I have to decrease my use of the word ‘nigga’, albeit its declaration from my being only ever having occurred as a way to convey camaraderie. I have to stop it ‘cos there’s a whole loada niggas running everywhere out there, taking the name in vain and destroying shit I never believed possible. Black niggas, white niggas, sand-fuckin’ niggas and even greenhouse goddamned niggas.

I have to stop calling ladies ‘cunts’, or ‘ladies’, for that matter. Even if her wit is so sharp as to, well, resemble a cunt, I cannot use that word.

I cannot, as best man at a wedding, decapitate the groom and fuck (sorry — engage in sexual relations with) the wife, even though all these actions are backed up by the best intentions.

I cannot cut a hole in Antarctica and pretend to fish for mice. It is unrealistic, unproductive, and overall, inefficient. The Republicons have a word for this … ‘biding your time’. Sure, they dress it up in all kinds of clothes and wigs, (doing little tea-parties to convince you), but tbh, these guys just don’t know what to do.

They don’t have what it takes.

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