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What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years?


                            
In Which a Circle Both Represents Narrative Structure and Is a Metaphor for Human Progress and Its Inextricable Demise
by Jimmy Chen

A caveman kills his wife, gets into a Bronco, and drives very fast. A helicopter flies over the Bronco and a caveman holding a camera shoots the Bronco with its vision. The caveman is rich and famous and pays a rich and famous caveman lawyer. The caveman is found not guilty even though he is. One the other side of town, five orange police cavemen beat with their sticks one purple caveman. A stranger in his home shoots this with his camera's vision. The five orange cavemen are found not guilty even though they are. A bunch of purple cavemen get really angry about not only this beating, but all the suffering that preceded the beatings which was brought upon by the orange cavemen for generations, and destroy their own neighborhood with rocks and flames. Some purple cavemen beat and crack the skull of an orange caveman with a mullet. A mullet is a dead animal that can still dream of parties. This is all shot by cavemen holding cameras so everybody knows what is happening, including all the cavemen with paint on their faces. The cavemen with paint on their faces talk into cameras about their thoughts on everything. They have contests to see who can talk the best. The winner gets to be right. They argue about all kinds of things, including what color things are: orange cavemen and purple cavemen, silver states and curry states. This can be all seen on a box. Every single caveman has their own box and watches it every single night because they are lonely. The caveman who is most often on this box has a father who was a leader, and somehow this caveman also becomes the leader of all the silver and curry states. Because this caveman doesn't know how to think, he ends up killing the wives of other cavemen, kills those cavemen, and some of their parents and children. Only it's not called killing, it's called it Fibgrit. There is a plane that is made just for him. When the plane lands, he waves to cavemen holding cameras and pets his dinosaur dog. He is friends with other cavemen who also believe in Fibgrit. There's a huge fight over Fibgrit which takes place really far away, a place where there is a lot of sand. That place is like a beach without an ocean, so much sand. The cavemen who live at this sandy place believe in Gritfib, which is sort of like Fibgrit, minus some details. There are two thick books about Fibgrit and Gritfib which don't match up so they argue with words until the words become tired and useless and cannot get the point across. So the Gritfibs get in some planes and fly the planes into two large buildings containing mostly Fibgrits. The Fibgrits become really sad and hurt and scared and confused, so they get in some other planes, but instead of flying those planes into buildings, they drop things on the sandy places to make explosions and fire yeah fire! The smoke from the fire yeah fire! rises into a black cloud into the sky. The sky is always being filled with stuff, gets filled with so much stuff that the heat from this big ball of gas really really really far away gets stuck inside the stuff in the sky, causing the sky to get hotter hotter hotter until the ice melts and first only white bear shaped furry dinosaurs die, which is okay, but then the water rises, which floods the land, which drowns the cavemen and their dinosaur pets, which kills everything except for little tiny fish which swim over the flooded land for years year years until a genetic mutation causes one fish to grow little feet and climb out of the water and onto the land, whereupon it finds another creature that happened to grow little feet also. They grow hands and lungs and lips that can speak to other fish that just grew hands and lungs and lips, and they speak to each other with words words words which help them invent the circle, which help them invent the wheel, which help them invent the ball. Not all balls are circles though, for example, there's a game using this funny shaped ball where one fish with hands and lungs and little feet takes the funny shaped ball and runs from one part of the grass to the other part of the grass, and they give this fish a lot of fish food because this fish is fast, but there is something either wrong with the fish's brain or the fish's will, which other fish argue about, but it doesn't really matter because one day the fast fish with the funny shaped ball, after sitting around with not much to do except golf, kills his fish wife, gets into a fish Bronco, and swims very fast.



About the author:
Jimmy Chen's writing has recently appeared in Thieves Jargon, Why Vandalism?, Yankee Pot Roast, Pequin, and Juked. His website, The Embassy of Misguided Zen, can be found at www.jimmychenchen.com



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