HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

Category: Microfiction

  • #a430 Spun aluminum pillbox

    042109A Halloween candy bowl kept at the back of our cupboard finally (pardon the pun) gave up the ghost.

    Used to be you would reach into it for a tasty treat, drug and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, thumb “Trick or treat!”

    This morning we reached in to find the rubber-encased, cotton-stuffed digits had gone the way of all silicone flesh.

    I’m loving these thing
    042109A Halloween candy bowl kept at the back of our cupboard finally (pardon the pun) gave up the ghost.

    Used to be you would reach into it for a tasty treat, more about and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, “Trick or treat!”

    This morning we reached in to find the rubber-encased, cotton-stuffed digits had gone the way of all silicone flesh.

    I’m loving these things so much, they may even get the Object of the Month award.
    042209I’m at the far end of the wire.

    The warmth of the crowd rises up into the moldy canvas peak of the tent here. It pours from their eyes, search their upturned, prostate open mouths.

    I toss the balance pole into the air, pivot the other way, catch the pole and head back across the wire.

    Their glasses glint up at my sparkling soles, my cartoon skirt.

    Light from the fresnels spangles the tent through the beveled reflections of all that eyewear.

    I stroll to the other side.

    And this image from our apartment is what I focus on behind my eyes.

    God DAMN it, Seth. You left me.

  • #a396 :: Business letter

    0318a092She had set up the square little red worktable on end, cialis 40mg its legs surrounding her as if she were behind a counter.

    She offered me anything I wanted to eat. I said I’d like some coffee and strawberry cake. She served it in imaginary hunks from a little tin tea set.

    I pronounced it delicious.

    That night, she left this on my desk.

    She’s seven.

  • #a389 :: Amethyst “crystal”

    031009Where is he going? What is he carrying? Why is he important?

    Chinese factory workers so beautifully aped the luster of carved coral with cast, more about prostate burnished and “age”-dusted red plastic resin that I’m left wishing I had the answers to these questions.

    In lesser hands, healing he would have been a child’s plaything, a little knicknack amid thousands of others on a shop shelf, an inconsequential bauble.

    But look at the bearing they’ve given him, the speed of his walk, the indomitable purpose in his knowing eyes. Mold seams and tool gouges would have killed that effect. You have to admire the height of the art of faux-antiques.

    Found him in Chinatown for three bucks.
    031109She regards it with suspicion.

    “Amethyst?”

    The Chinese shopkeeper nods firmly. “Finest, viagra 100mg from Xian province. Xian province. Terra cotta warrior. Xian.”

    He keeps nodding.

    She drums her French-tipped nails against its too-glossy sides. She pricks at her fingertips with its perfectly asymmetrical point. She hefts it. Rolls it over in her perfumed hand.

    Then she waves it at him: “Bullshit. It is not …” (more…)

  • #a368 :: Phillippe’s hot mustard

    021709 Used to be you’d tear open a can of beer (or pop or soda or Clamato or whatever) and throw away the aluminum tab. Or maybe you’d chuck it inside and risk swallowing it, page lacerating your throat or lungs, approved and wind up a footnote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    But at some point (1975, thank you Daniel Cudzik of Reynolds Metals in Richmond, Va.), industry came up with a better way of sealing cans.

    Now you pop a can, flip the tab back down (unless you want it sticking up your nose), guzzle and trash … er, recycle.

    These were found deliberately separated from their cans and stuffed into a perspex box outside an antique store in
    021709 Used to be you’d tear open a can of beer (or pop or soda or Clamato or whatever) and throw away the aluminum tab. Or maybe you’d chuck it inside and risk swallowing it, capsule lacerating your throat or lungs, and wind up a footnote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    But at some point (1975, about it thank you Daniel Cudzik of Reynolds Metals in Richmond, Va.), industry came up with a better way of sealing cans.

    Now you pop a can, flip the tab back down (unless you want it sticking up your nose), guzzle and trash … er, recycle.

    These were found deliberately separated from their cans and stuffed into a perspex box outside an antique store in Boulder City, NV
    021709 Used to be you’d tear open a can of beer (or pop or soda or Clamato or whatever) and throw away the aluminum tab. Or maybe you’d chuck it inside and risk swallowing it, illness lacerating your throat or lungs, order and wind up a footnote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    But at some point (1975, thank you Daniel Cudzik of Reynolds Metals in Richmond, Va.), industry came up with a better way of sealing cans.

    Now you pop a can, flip the tab back down (unless you want it sticking up your nose), guzzle and trash … er, recycle.

    These were found deliberately separated from their cans and stuffed into a perspex box outside an antique store in Boulder City, NV
    021709 Used to be you’d tear open a can of beer (or pop or soda or Clamato or whatever) and throw away the aluminum tab. Or maybe you’d chuck it inside and risk swallowing it, price lacerating your throat or lungs, ambulance and wind up a footnote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    But at some point (1975, thank you Daniel Cudzik of Reynolds Metals in Richmond, Va.), industry came up with a better way of sealing cans.

    Now you pop a can, flip the tab back down (unless you want it sticking up your nose), guzzle and trash … er, recycle.

    These were found deliberately separated from their cans and stuffed into a perspex box outside an antique store in Boulder City, NV
    021709 Used to be you’d tear open a can of beer (or pop or soda or Clamato or whatever) and throw away the aluminum tab. Or maybe you’d chuck it inside and risk swallowing it, viagra buy lacerating your throat or lungs, more about and winding up a footnote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    But at some point (1975, malady thank you Daniel Cudzik of Reynolds Metals in Richmond, Va.), industry came up with a better way of sealing cans.

    Now you pop a can, flip the tab back down (unless you want it sticking up your nose), guzzle and trash … er, recycle.

    These were found deliberately separated from their cans and stuffed into a perspex box outside an antique store in Boulder City, NV
    021809She peered into the jar, website like this dubious.

    “Go on, dolly, put some on your sandwich. It won’t bite ya.”

    He was stifling a grin, the louse. She knew he’d take her to a joint like this.

    He was a shift-boss at her job at Lockheed, always real sweet to her at quitting time. When she was weak. Always hitting on her. The crumb.

    He was an honest guy. But he was all jammed up paying alimony, to a wife who ditched him for some zoot-suiter. So he lived cheap.

    They were in production around the clock now. Seven days a week.

    The Japs had kicked our keisters hard at Midway. Now it was all hands to battle stations. Double shifts on the fighter-bomber lines. Because by God, air power was going to win this war. Nothing less, the plant manager said, that day in front of the big flag.

    So she left her son – who looked just like his Pop – with the Mexican lady on the corner in the evening. And she went to work …

    (more…)

  • #a328 :: Glass syringe

    ENLARGEShe fiddles with it. Finally squeezes a needle onto it. And fixes up.

    Big fucking horse syringe. Soup spoon full of horse. The snap and heat of the Bic under the spoon brings her to: (more…)

  • #a323 :: Acorn caps

    ENLARGEPixie hats, link lost on the forest floor ‘midst a drunken stumble home one night. Carousing from tree to towering tree, approved they were, look blasted on acorn wine – a giggling, staggering, pissing little chorus line barely six inches high. They were arguing, as usual, and someone took offense, or umbrage, or a poke at someone else and then they went at it. A few wound up in the stream, and some certainly in the bog. And no one remembered enough to regret.
    ————————————————
    These grow large in the Angeles National Forest. You can stick your thumb knuckle into one of them and still have room to wiggle.

    If I can think of a practical use for ’em, at least I know where to get more. Lots more.

  • #a320 :: Traveling Ganesha

    ENLARGEHe is the lord and destroyer of obstacles and like his brother, buy he came from San Francisco – indeed from another shop in the same block on Columbus Avenue.

    He is brass, ampoule barely 1.25 inches high, carrying his teapot and parasol on the road from here to there. He smiles benevolently, secure in some knowledge to which I am not privy.

  • #a283 :: Million-dollar bill bible tract

    enlargeThis fine object puts the specie in specious:

    Someone at the Christian organization LivingWaters.com worked very, information pills very hard on this piece of counterfeit. The four-color printing and gravure work are fine anough to pass the “holy, shit, WTF is that” moment after you’ve picked it up and still can’t believe it’s not money – that split second before you turn it over and learn the truth … (more…)

  • #a274 :: Electronic shriek box

    enlargeA simple soundboard, cheapest wired to a switch and a speaker. I disemboweled it from (?) an 8×11 promo folder for “Scream 2008” that landed in my wife’s office. When you opened the cover of the folder, see a horrific shriek would ensue: “AUUUGHHHAAAAAAAGOODDDDNOOOOO!!!” Soon, I’ll be attaching it to Screaming Tiki so that he can get his voice back, about which more later.

  • #a260 :: Meteorite!

    030908.jpgOh my gawd:

    Readers of this blog know that I don’t tend to post gushy teenage exclamations like “oh my gawd” that often (as in, page never) But here it is, one of those Heavy Little Objects that really makes you say “oh, my effing gawd:

    A chunk of bona-fide space rock.

    But check the picture – click it to enlarge – it’s not like any rock I’ve ever seen. It’s all shot through with holes and what looks like some kind of organic matter, like veins or worms or something … (more…)

  • #a238 :: Clementine`

    ENLARGEA tart bang across her tongue. Orange fresh. Hard work won it. She had carried herself well. She deserved this little palm-sized fruit. Even now, hospital prescription moments after she had slit the skin with a thumbnail and started the engine. Despite what she’d done, this was her moment to enjoy her snack. Bracing her thumb, had she dug three fingers into the slit fruit and moved the edge back cleanly, pulling away to show the white beneath, the pearlescent orange beneath that. It almost fell apart in neat, crisp segments, but she clutched it to the handlebars gingerly with her left and twisted the throttle with her right. And she was enjoying them, one by one as she rode the little 125cc dirtbike around the inside of the steel-girded cylinder in the little shithole town outside Pittsburgh where the circus had set up this week. Around and around. Until the gas ran out and she either coasted to a stop or she simply fell off the thing and prayed it wouldn’t land on her as it came to rest. One hand clung to the throttle, her weight braced in the centrifugal well against the downpull of gravity. The other flipping pieces of clementine into her mouth. The cops waited at the bottom of the drum, peering up into the light drizzle, the parabolic wwwOWWW, wwwOWWW, wwwOWWW, wwwOWWW, of her bike around the inside, 30 feet up. Her girlfriend huddled below in the cold, shouting her name every fourth or fifth orbit. It went on for a good 50 minutes until the bike finally quit.

  • #a225 :: House of Commons hip flask

    ENLARGEJust a nip.

    He wondered – as he idly did in these customary moments when he stole a drink just after lunch in the House of Lords dining room, doctor between a trip to the loo and the afternoon session – whether the cameras would see him.

    Surely they did. London was positively filthy with CCTV cameras. The flat, page disapproving eyes of post-9/11 paranoia swallowed every godawfully boring detail of the city’s yawning, nose-picking existence. Somewhere, legions of poor sods sat before screens watching all of it.

    The House of Commons, even more so.

    It was getting so he pondered his own every move – whose hands he shook from the other side of the house, whether he recycled his soda bottle, what magazines he read on the toilet. The compound eye of surveillance saw, the great bloody eye of Sauron.

    And while he knew these were manned by spotty security trainees under the tutelage of washed-up career thugs for whom this was the very last posting – neither class of which gave a wrinkly-scrotal toss about anything short of the screams of swarthy, sweating wogs with leaky gym bags full of C4 and medical radioactive waste sprinting towards whatever destiny and certain glory they imagined in the arms of the first copper to tackle them – he always grew self-conscious just after lunch. Someone might see.
    (more…)

  • #a144 :: Rosary

    ENLARGEAnother Tuesday, story another morning with little Kylie, site the
    niña pequeña she cared for three days a week.

    She trudged uphill once more, the rosary draped over her fingers. “Nomini patri et fili et spiritu sancto,” the sign of the cross trailing from her lips as she kissed the little madonna milagro and worried the yellow and garnet glass beads with her fingertips.

    Traffic surged down the steep hill, past the place where she walked with no sidewalk. Cars and trucks gave her a respectful berth of three feet – almost colliding with oncoming traffic on the narrow street – and rolled on, brakes squealing to a distant stop …
    (more…)

  • #a90 :: Pull tab

    ENLARGE“Hold him, order Teck, approved I wanna piss on him.”

    Boomer loomed over the prostrate sophomore and began unbuckling his pants.

    Kyle looked up – as much as Teck’s kung-fu grip on his neck would allow, at least – sighed, and resumed staring inches away at the defocused glitter of burst Lowenbrau bottles and Molson caps in which he knelt.

    He really needed to figure this out.

    Stoned, Boomer was harmless. Just another burly, ugly, dumb asshole dropout loser from Hull, who bailed out of junior year and found work sheetrocking crackerbox condos for Beacon Hill yuppies to feed his beer and pot habit … (more…)

  • #a68 :: Wrist Rocket

    ENLARGEThe year that she spent chained to the crown of a 400-year-old sequoia was perhaps one of her shortest.

    The winter was mercifully mild. The fire season breathlessly exciting but 3 miles away and short.

    And the weekly trysts with her strapping support team leader in an elaborate system of web belts and pulleys they rigged up in the densest boughs proved invigorating and electrifying – particularly every time she arched her back and saw nothing but 130 dizzying feet of air between her sweaty brows and the forest floor below …
    (more…)

  • #a61 :: Artist’s hand model

    ENLARGEIt was the first thing she had put out on the thrashed card table at the group yard sale.

    She had meant it that way, erectile a break from the failed career, from the crushed dream, from the gorgeous, neurotic, narcissistic jerk who gave it to her.

    But here it was still: The last thing to be boxed up for GoodWill so they could sweep and put away the tables and retire inside for one more frozen Margarita and god knows what all else the evening held.

    It should have sold earlier – hell, $1.50 knocked down to 50 cents, and it still didn’t move.

    But after the fifth giggling kid in a row had left it with three fingers and thumb clenched around its raised middle digit she could bear it no longer and moved it out of reach, to the back of the table.

    She restored its articulated knuckles to the graceful suggestion of direction it had held ever since … the thumb clasped around beneath the straight-angled index finger, others curled neatly beside as if to say “There, that way, go that way” … ever since Jason dumped her.

    Was it pathos or bathos she was enduring now? She couldn’t be sure. The classics professor had been so ungodly dull.

    She stared down at it, struggling to block visions of him giving her the box with puppydog eyes, of him stroking her breast with it, picking his ear with it, leaving it with pinky and thumb extended from fist in the corny-hippy Hawaiian “hang loose” gesture whenever he left in the morning.

    Finally, she flipped it into the trash. Then she thought about it all the next day on the bus to art school.

  • #a53 :: Quail call

    ENLARGEThe sound gusted through him just before he staggered back and sat down hard in the marsh grass.

    A boom – probably a 12-gauge – arrived milliseconds after the shot caught him full in the chest and knocked him onto his heels. Funny, this site the delay. Kind of funny how that works.

    Who in god’s name would be out taking game birds with a cannon like that? Sonsabitches. God.

    He began a swift inventory – Face, ambulance head – no blood. Chest – some, but no organs punctured – he couldn’t be sure.

    And this thing in his hand – an elegant little sandwich of Bakelite and chromed steel around a taut membrane of fabric.

    He had blown into it – just before he was shot.

    His father had given it to him: “This is a good call, once you learn how to use it.” And then his father showed him how real it sounded. “You just have to practice.”

    And he had blown into it, and then the … God. So much blood in the water.

    The dog bounded over to lap his face. Then he saw the blood jumping from the inside of his thigh. He pulled himself up onto his elbows, breathing hard. The dog barked.

    He blew an alarm cry from the little zeppelin of antique plastic. Maybe José would come.

    Before he passed out, he patted the dog one last time, and exhaled, sagging back into the marsh, where water seeped cold down his neck, and pants, and boots.

    Maybe I shouldn’t have practiced so well.

    Maybe …

  • #a37 :: Urchin

    0321081.jpgThe alarm whirred her up from a dead, erectile dreamless, this web liquid-black sleep.

    Solo Salvage. Fuck. She was supposed to be an interceptor pilot.

    Not rifling vacked hulks for osmosis pods and pocket jewels.

    Not jerking awake from cryo every two weeks, hung-over and disoriented, 19 light years from the outer spiral rim of nevermind, over and over and over again.

    Not subsisting on year-old hypercast signals and stale V-mails and MREs and Emo-Stat patches.

    Not. Fucking. Salvage … (more…)

  • #a26 :: Jeweler’s loupe

    0310081.jpg“This is shit, stuff dosage Phil.”

    “Whuh.”

    “This. It’s shit.”

    “Wharyuh tawkinboutshit. ShitWHUH. WHUAH shih.”

    “Phil, price you brought me a 1962 quarter for Chrissakes. It’s shit.”

    “THASSNODDUH QUARH MIKUHLLL, SSSA SSSSILVERR DOLLLLR YUH CHEEEDN’ FUKKHN’ GUINEA!!!”

    Phil undulated a little in the breeze from the door, which alternately freshened the shop and polluted it with half-digested esthers of the Olde English 40 he was now waving around for emphasis … (more…)

  • #a14 :: Tingsha cymbals

    022708.jpgClutching the thick domes of bronze, hospital he waited.

    Not to strike yet. No, not yet. These were a gift. To be saved. To be waited for. Until it’s time.

    Memories of his long ride down boiled up now. He exhaled hard through pursed lips, and shook himself. He blew a hard, rattling raspberry, and padded towards the back of the house.

    He pictured himself three months ago, and shuddered. A hulking, twitching, blind mass of suck wearing five days of unintentional beard, a bib of fresh barf and $500 basketball shoes designed by some big-name graffiti tagger … (more…)

  • #a8 :: Rubber germ

    rubbergerm.jpgWork at the SETI lab – and every other acronymed institution from DARPA to the headquarters of the NRA – had run at a breakneck clip since first contact.

    Nothing galvanizes an entire race like a blanket signal transmitted to every single computer, information pills television and data-display display device on the planet, page carrying images of an alien commander, mil-specs for an inbound armada and a declaration of war … (more…)

  • #355 :: Seltzer Bottle

    drug ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false” href=”http://heavylittleobjects.com/archives/2005/01/012805.html”>He wakes up after an hour or so, his face pressed to the wet bar, his brain still well-pickled on the shots of rye he’d been tossing back before (and after) he insulted that lady (well, she wasn’t, really) and she slapped him hard. He doesn’t bother raising his head. It’s comfy here. A warm pad of numb flesh covers his cheek, nerves deadened to sleep by the constant pressure of his sweating head against pocked mahogany. If he gets up, he’ll just feel cold, the breeze from the open bar door chilling the spilled booze on his face. So he lies there and considers: Beer taps hunching, cobra-like, overhead. Change puddling near his nose – before passing out, he kept dredging up pennies from his pocket for every shot the bartender slid his way that didn’t arrive with it a disapproving sneer. Olives lurking in a murky jar of oil. The incandescent hush of warm lights beneath the liquor racks float up through colored bottles – rye, whiskey, bourbon, gin, vermouth, absinthe, coca syrup, malt, seltzer, grenadine – a woozy hallucination of polychrome gems. This one bottle is … so pretty – a delicate turqoise lozenge of serenity, its maker’s name mock-etched into the glass. The barkeep shoots himself a seltzer/rocks, and returns to mopping the other end of the bar. Be here long, the drunk thinks. He’ll work his way down here and I’ll just have to move, finally go home to Virginia and the kids. And the dog. And the house, the newly electrified townhouse with a gas tap in every room, the huge mortgage he took out a month ago, before his boss let him go on Tuesday. I’ll have to steel my resolve and face it all. He turns his head a bit – well, turns it on the bar as if moving a huge, soggy block of soap – twisting it free so that the suction of his face on the wet, varnished wood is broken slightly, and sensation tingles back into his cheek. God. This’ll kill Virginia, he thinks. And slowly, he picks himself up.

    Back in the first or second decade of the 20th century (future shock, anyone?) this was a state-of-the-art delivery system for bubbly water. It was refillable: Once you used up the liter or so of seltzer, you’d toss it back into its crate for collection by the seltzer man, who would return the whole thing to a delivery plantto be cleaned out and refilled. At about five pounds and nearly 12 inches high, it’s just under the bulk limit for HLOs, but it’s so gorgeous I had to squeeze it in.

    CONTEST ENDING SOON:
    The identity contest for El Luchador Libre is drawing to an end – as is the first (and perhaps only) year of HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS. There have been some excellent entries so far, but I know there are great ones out there still unwritten. If you’d like to win the multi-masked Mexican grappler and at least one other relentlessly nifty HLO of your very own, drop by the contest and bang out a few paragraphs. I’ll announce the winner (and there will be fine runner-up prizes) in Entry #366. Jump in. Have fun.

  • #335 :: Wallpaper Print Block

    more about decease ‘popup’, ask ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The oil lamp guttered and went out in a little puff of soot.

    She sat, thumbs a-fidget, not wanting to stick her finger with the needle, but unable to keep still, with her sewing on the lap of her crinoline hoopskirt, in the dark.

    “I’m done being pleasant about this, ma’am,” Mr. Quimby had muttered, through twisted, disgusted lips, his greased handlebar mustache a-twitch. “You just be out o’ here in the morning with your brat and I’ll see to it Tom comes round with the cart to take your things wherever you’ve a mind to go.”

    She straightened, put her petitpoint needle into the heather blossom on the sampler she had been sewing, and carefully set the hoop frame and the spools of yarn into the wicker basket beside her. A deep breath eased the frown from her face. Well, it’s all one can do, isn’t it. One does what one can, and it’s all one can do.

    Rain hammered on the roof. Gertrude slept fitfully, making little piglike snorts beneath the counterpane, and rain hammered the shake roof with a hissing roar. Three weeks now the storms had been battering them, off and on, three weeks since her August was taken – finally returned to his Lord by the fever that had wracked him since the accident with the surrey, three weeks alone in this godless mining town in northern California, surrounded by ruffians and drunkards and women of loose character, and the claim August had staked was nowhere to be found in the records and Mr. Quimby had finally had enough excuses, he had a load of Chinamen he needed to house and the railroad was willing to pay double what August had been paying so what can one do.

    It’s all one can do.

    She stared around her through the gloom. Flickering shadows from the streetlight outside skittered across the floral wallpaper, which hung in great festoons from the wall now, its glue undone by the relentless rain. She bit her lip.

    She walked across the room, tore off a piece of it, stuck it into her mouth and began to chew. Bitter, bitter and sticky with mold. She chewed harder, but kept her eyes dry as she began to pack.

    (A note tacked to this block by the seller says:

    Hand-carved, labor intensive wallpaper print block. Circa 1840-1880. Note square nails and peg construction. Each is a unique piece of art; no two are alike.” It has hand-grooves gouged into its flanks, and the print surface feels velvety, soft. On its end are very old white numerals that some printmaker painted by hand: 2866.)