Fiction: February 2008 Archives

John woke up to the sound of music, which confused him. He had gone to sleep listening to a CD, hadn’t he? Maybe when he was fumbling around for the power button in the night, he hit radio instead, but if that were the case, why would he have the radio tuned to a station playing crappy hard rock? Clearly this situation merited being looked into, preferably with his eyes open.

John rolled over and looked at his alarm clock. It was 9:12, which didn’t distress him because it was Saturday and he was allowed to sleep in on Saturdays. Next he looked at his bedside boombox, which he had succeeded in turning off the night before, so where was the music coming from? And furthermore, why did it have to be so terrible?

Editor's Note: Earlier this week, Unloosen contributor Craig J. Clark approached fellow writer Joe Blevins about the possibility of collaborating on a story, round robin-style, for the site. Blevins readily agreed and they immediately set to work. Here are the fruits of their joint creation:

(How's this for an opening paragraph:)

Steve held his breath. This was not his first time doing so. Periodically, ever since he was a kid, he would try holding it until he passed out, but his body always rebelled against him and forced him to breathe in. Someday, he vowed, his will would prevail. Someday...

Time passed. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Half a minute, and still no ill effects or signs of fatigue! How much longer could he go, Steve wondered? Could this be a new world's record? He tried to think of Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure. This got him to thinking about that Poseidon remake which he'd meant to see but never did. It must be on DVD by now, maybe even basic cable. He wondered who played the Shelley Winters role in the remake. Kurt Russell? That seemed unlikely.

“Cold enough for you?”

Those were the words he was greeted with as he walked in the door. They were spoken by one of the girls in the office, but he couldn’t have told you what her name was to save his life. She was short and wore glasses, so he always called her Shortsighted. As he removed his heavy winter coat and gloves and hung them on the rack, he pondered her question. Was it cold enough for him?

Well, he had awoken to a blanket of white covering the ground and his car in an inch of snow. And furthermore, underneath the snow was a thin layer of ice that he had to attack fairly vigorously with a scraper and had threatened to creep back over his windshield during the drive into work. Was that cold enough for him?

It was while he was unpacking his paperbacks that Richard realized that he owned the Fotonovel for the 1979 George Hamilton-Susan St. James film Love at First Bite. He was unsure how this had escaped his attention while he was packing his books in the first place, but there it was in his hands, an incontrovertible fact.

He wondered how it had come into his possession. Sure, when he was a kid he had always enjoyed the movie when it came on TV, but how had that translated to him acquiring a book based on it? He consoled himself with the notion that it couldn’t have cost more than a couple bucks.

Setting the book aside while he continued his unpacking, Richard resolved to try to sell it to a used bookstore. At best, he hoped to get some store credit. At worst, he would just dispose of it. One less Love at First Bite Fotonovel in the world would not be a tragedy.