Author Archives: J.R.D.
CNN Asks: Revenge of the Revenge: The Reboot
It’s been a while, but, as some of you may recall, CNN occasionally gets confused in its torrent of instant news. On those occasions I step in to provide the organization some clarity.
All of these queries are screenshots taken from the CNN.com front page.
There’s something to the structure of this question that leaves me feeling like perhaps it’s a vocal warm up instead of a serious consideration – you know, “Cleveland Browns new logo is different how? How now brown cow? The planes in Spain fall mainly in the rain.”
The answer, by the way, is that #F46523 is now #FF3D00. Quite a noticeable change.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not much for sports news, but I knew this was a serious question when CNN opted to employ a rhetorical device I usually only hear from my twelve-year-old daughter.
So, as such: Really, and even though you may not like it, you’re going to get out there and work hard and hustle to get the job done. Because that room isn’t going to clean itself, or, uh, that football isn’t going to.. hut? itself.
Well, some theories postulate that the planet is on a strangely uneven orbit, bringing about an extremely harsh winter every 20 or so cycles. It doesn’t help that most of the information we’re presented is medieval-equivalent astronomy muddled with a healthy dose of mysticism.
Still, I’m sure George R. R. Martin will clear it all up by the last book.
Hazily, as if it was all perhaps a dream, or our memories were influenced by high-powered narcotics.
Filed under CNN Asks
FP415 – Coffin: Moving, Part 3 of 3
Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and fifteen.
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp415.mp3]Download MP3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
(RSS / iTunes)
This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Earth Station One podcast
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his increasingly sober apprentice, eat pancakes and aid a man haunted by his past.
Coffin: Moving, Part 3 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
The Denny’s stood at the low tide between breakfasting retirees and office workers on a panickedly short lunch break. Only three other booths were occupied, beyond the trio of customers clustered in the corner, and one of those appeared to be the store’s manager entertaining himself with online trivia instead of instructing the waiter in heavy eyeliner to clear the last of the Grand Slamwich wreckage.
Bunny gave the kid a nod, and the kid nodded back.
“Napkins?” he asked.
“Nah, I’ll take some of the s##t water you folks call coffee, and maybe a two buck pancake stack?”
“We’re only supposed to sell the cheap plates as a side.”
Bunny raised a her brow and shrugged. Coffin waved off the topping-up of his mug, and their interviewee, one Douglas Holloway, continued to gently weep into the collar of his polo shirt.
When they were once again alone, the crying man worked at clearing his throat, then asked, “how did you find me?”
“How badly do you want to be free of -” began Coffin, but Bunny overrode the statement.
“His ex put us in touch with yours,” she said to Holloway, “but don’t worry about that. We’ll get to the haggling and details, just give us the rundown on your wife and girlfriend.”
To Bunny there was something familiar in Holloway’s stunned yet exhausted face that left her with the impression that he’d simply been waiting for this particular dam to break.
“Arlene died five years ago,” replied the widower. “It was eighteen months after we were married, and we were infatuated with each other till the end. We’d known she had a fight in front of her when we went down the aisle – her chemo meant all of her wedding photos were hairless – but she was the sort of person who was strong enough not to wear a wig.
“We were the classic goofballs-in-love couple, content just to be close to each other; to hold each other. She seemed magical, and I always assumed somehow that that would win us the war.
“It didn’t.
“She died at home. I did my damndest to make it as comfortable and peaceful as possible, but by the end there was a miniature hospital set up in our living room. It was like a pocket universe in there, an eternity of listening to her ragged breathing over constant Law & Order reruns. I still change the channel as soon as I hear that damned theme. When she let go I was at the bed’s edge, holding her hand, and she was surrounded by her sisters. I thought it was the hardest moment I’d ever have to survive through, but that I’d done the right thing.
“My first notion was to move away from the memories, but two years later I was in the same bungalow, alone with our mortgage and our corgi, Sycamore. Every time I stepped onto the living room carpet I could feel the anxiety of those last days creep in, but I hadn’t finished paying the bills for high powered narcotics and medical staff.
“Even if I couldn’t escape, things changed around me. I spent a lot of hours at the kitchen table with work I’d taken home, just to avoid the rest of the house. If I wasn’t working, Sycamore and I patrolled the block. Despite my evasions, or more likely because of it, I got promoted. I made new acquaintances around the neighbourhood.
“The second January after Arlene’s death I met Selena. I wasn’t looking to. I’d spent so long focused on the next set of reports, and the next patch of sidewalk ahead of me, I hadn’t realized how far I’d gone with my head down.
“I was re-tying a shoelace outside the local Starbucks when she exited with a white chocolate mocha. One of the tallest ladies I’d ever seen, and with a smile as friendly as a children’s television show host.
“She said ‘excuse me,’ because she walked near me while I was hogging the sidewalk and she’s the sort of person who’d rather be polite than annoyed.
“As she’s adjusting course though, she reaches into her pocket and retrieves a dog treat shaped like a bone. Sycamore sits, which is a trick that I’d forgotten Arlene had taught him, and she tosses him the mini-femur.
“That dog was all the family I’d had for two years, and I loved it like a child, but for whatever reason it’d never struck me to carry treats with me. It sounds kind of stupid, but it was just different than anything I’d known until then. Somehow that brought my chin up.”
The tale paused as the narrator was distracted by his audience straightening in their seats. Before he could turn to identify what had roused them, however, the waiter strolled by at a near trot, a plate tucked tight to his side, out of sight of his trivia master manager.
With a twist of his wrist the low mountain of pancakes slid across the largely empty table, stopping just short of Bunny’s coffee.
There was no opportunity for a thank you before he was beyond hearing range.
“Don’t stop now, Dougie,” said Bunny, while twirling her syrupy fork encouragingly, “we haven’t even gotten to the spooky s##t.”
“We dated for six months,” answered Holloway. “A lot of movie theaters, diner dinners, and dog parks with Sycamore. When we started spending the night together it was always at her apartment. Eventually I moved the dog dishes and I almost sort of forgot that I had another home.
“Then I got a funny letter: I’d accidentally paid off my mortgage while I wasn’t paying attention.
“Now, it’s not like I’d ever forgotten Arlene, but I’d had some time away. Selena loves renovation shows, and we kind of jointly arrived at the idea that we should do some repair work before putting the shack on the market and maybe looking for a fresh place together. Thing is, the more effort we sunk into projects, the more it began to feel like a new house – our house.
“One night we were both exhausted from a day of basement drywalling, and we decided to just sleep in my, uh, our, uh, the old bed – the bed that was there – instead of heading back to Selena’s.
“I woke around three in the morning thinking I heard someone talking in the dark. I pulled on pants and went down the hall to the living room, and for a second I thought I saw Arlene’s face.
“Now, I should be clear, it wasn’t a huge ‘Arlene, is that you!?’ moment, it was more like thinking you see a person standing in a corner, then realizing it’s actually that robe you draped over a chair with the shadow of a lamp behind it that looks like a head.
“The only thing out of place was that Sycamore was sitting perfectly upright in the middle of the carpet, but I was so tired I assumed that I’d heard him growling at dreams and went back to bed.
“With the seal off, so to speak, we spent more and more nights there. We were already investing the majority of our evenings tag teaming plumbing, or hoisting hammers, so why leave?
“When we first, uh, made love in the old house, I later awoke thinking I heard Selena crying. I actually prodded her until she responded with a clearly still sleeping “no.”
“It happened again the next night, then everything went smoothly for about a week.”
“The calm before the s##t storm,” said Bunny, through a mouthful of fluffy batter.
“Yeah, then the screaming started. I couldn’t see where it was coming from, it just chased me from the sheets, then around the house. I kind of stopped when I was rampaging along the hallway for a second loop, because – well, it’s incredibly terrifying, but after a bit you lose steam when you can’t see the source of your panic.
“Selena, wearing only my stained work t-shirt, comes running, and suddenly she’s slapped across the face, hard. It kept going, like someone clapping to count time, and then gained momentum into a hail storm.
“I’d never seen her cry before.
“I followed her through the door, but she was in her car and on the street before I could catch up. Her place was close enough to walk, but it was cold, so I decided to risk going back inside to pull something on. Besides, I needed to get Sycamore.
“Everything was silent when I re-entered. I whistled for the dog, but he didn’t come. I found him in the living room again, sitting at attention.
“The call came before I was done packing. Everything had changed for me in the moment I’d seen Selena with that dog treat, and everything had changed for her in the moment she’d been chased from the house by an invisible hurricane. She was clearly having difficulty making sense of what had happened, but it seemed to her that it was my fault.
“While I was sitting there at the edge of the bed, crying, I heard laughter. I knew that giggle. Without even realizing I’d fully accepted all of the implications, I started a screaming match with a ghost.
“‘How could you do this?’
“‘How could you? I’m dead!’ she shrieks back.
“‘You had it easy, I was the one who had to keep living” – and on and on.
“At some point the door slammed shut, and I somehow fury’d myself to sleep.
“The alarm clock woke me for work, and I went in on automatic. Tried texting Selena, but she ignored it. I ignored the ignoring by staring at reports. I went home.
“While I was watching Sycamore sniff around the backyard I heard Arlene say, ‘I’m sorry.’
“That was – I dunno, three months ago? Since then it’s just been crying, every night. Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s her. I’d like to try and reach out to Selena again. I miss her – but at the same time, the woman I loved, whatever is left of her, is somewhere in that house. I swear, some nights the bed shifts with her weight.
“I want to move on. I want her to move on. I just feel so guilty.”
Washing away the pancake crumbs with a deep pull of coffee, Bunny said, “in a situation like this, it’s really nobody’s fault. You can’t blame Selena for running off after getting in a one-sided slap fight with Sue Richards, and you can’t blame Arlene for being pissed she’s been trapped in your empty living room until you started f##king another lady in her bed – but you also can’t blame yourself. You didn’t know she was lingering around until she was furious enough to get all Amityville about s##t.
“We think your ex-wife needs to date and we know just the fellow. He’s also into Law & Order and cuddling. He currently has a thing for a lady named Laila, but all you sentimental motherf##kers have the same problem: You need to learn to move on.
“Actually, Laila’ll probably be looking for a new place soon, you should meet her. You might make a nice couple.”
In unveiling her solution, Bunny did not delve into the complicated game of telephone that was communication between the dead. Adding to Dougie’s sense of guilt would not get him any closer to moving, which was clearly the opening step.
In the end, Holloway agreed acting as dating coach to his dead wife was worth at least a nicely pawnable ratchet set, and Coffin had to nod in agreement.
Matchmaking was not his usual sort of work, but rent was due.
Flash Pulp is presented by https://www.skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.
Freesound.org credits:
Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.
– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.
Filed under Coffin, Flash Pulp
The Endless Chew
This cropped screenshot is, of course, from Buzzfeed.
How will the ancients of six years ago ever relate to modern youth? Back then America was fighting in the Middle East and Taylor Swift was big with the teenyboppers. The McConaissance hadn’t even begun!
Actually, never mind: We’re done here folks, shut down the internet and go home.
Filed under Extra Extra
FP414 – Coffin: Moving, Part 2 of 3
Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and fourteen.
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp414.mp3]Download MP3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
(RSS / iTunes)
This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Earth Station One podcast
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his vodka-dependent apprentice, encounter the strange tale of Laila Hamilton, wife and secret nuzzler.
Coffin: Moving, Part 2 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
It was chill as Coffin stepped onto his balcony, and the leaf husks of the philodendron that Bunny had attempted to grow, a month earlier, rattled in the wind.
Had he been neglectful in not making more appearances? No, he told himself, he’d simply been busy – but, then, Sandy had also been busy once.
His dead wife, on the pavement eighteen floors below, grunted.
Rolling his shoulders, Will asked, “how’s the afterlife?”
There was a long pause before Sandy’s shattered jaw murmured, “you always were terrible at small talk,” into the unyielding cement.
“Must be going well if you’re not even trying to murder me,” he replied.
Silence, then, “you’re not worth the effort,”
“Huh,” said Will, but he couldn’t help but crack a smile. There were many reasons to fear Sandy’s apparition, but her skill at delivering the cold shoulder was not one of them.
Coffin leaned over the railing. She could have heard him whisper, even at that height, and the slab walls and platform of the balcony echoed with her every crush-lunged breath. Nonetheless, he squinted through the bitter wind to make out her twisted form.
He counted a dozen skipping inhalations, and a dozen moist and whistling exhalations, before she gave up her hush.
“Any news?”
At another time he probably would have just invented something. The matters he conveyed were trivial at best: He could easily fake calls on the two birthdays he’d missed and stitch those falsehoods with the same old arguments Sandy’s family were constantly re-chewing – but he didn’t.
Things were changing. She’d always been so sure when she’d worn the jacket and held the chain, and he envied it.
He knew, however, that her certainty had also been her downfall.
“I’ve been too busy to call around. I’m sorry,” he said. It was a vague sort of statement, and intentionally so.
With the dragging effort of a winded marathoner, Sandy’s left arm, the bones at her wrist projecting through her torn skin, rose, and her palm set its heel firmly on the pavement. She began to drag her motionless legs towards the apartment block’s foundation.
“Too occupied with your new sidekick?” she asked.
“The ogre’s amok out west, the city seems to be overrun with Kar’Wickians, and someone’s dispatching ghosts without my assistance.”
“Which one am I supposed to be able to help with?” she asked, as the fingernails of her right hand came loose on a particularly jagged ridge of mason work. Yet still she climbed.
“None,” he answered, and, as she scaled the second through fifth floor, he recapped his encounter with Laila Hamilton.
When he’d completed his recitation, she asked, “didn’t you say there were Kar’Wickians in the city?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t you say the ogre was up and the dead were going missing?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you working this thing then?”
It was his turn to fall quiet.
At the twelfth floor he changed the subject.
“You understand what I need then?”
“Yeah,” replied Sandy, not stopping in her attempt to scale the building and murder her former husband.
“Sandy, I’m sorry,” he said.
“So you’ve said,” she replied.
“It was for your own good,” he said.
“So you’ve said,” she repeated.
With a gap where her front teeth should have been, she bit her lip, then continued. “Don’t get weak kneed now, you put that jacket on yourself. If you were going to start second guessing I would’ve appreciated if it happened before I landed.
“Will, if you can’t handle this business pass it on and join me at the bottom.”
There was a pause then, and suddenly her ascent stopped. Her decades-old plunge played itself back at triple speed, and she once again returned to her place of rest.
“Go buy some belated birthday cards and I’ll ask around,” she concluded.
He turned, eagerly pawing at the sliding screen with chilled fingers.
Flash Pulp is presented by https://www.skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.
Freesound.org credits:
Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.
– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.
Filed under Coffin, Flash Pulp
FP413 – Coffin: Moving, Part 1 of 3
Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and thirteen.
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp413.mp3]Download MP3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
(RSS / iTunes)
This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Earth Station One podcast
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his vodka-dependent apprentice, encounter the strange tale of Laila Hamilton, wife and secret nuzzler.
Coffin: Moving, Part 1 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Laila Hamilton was maybe thirty. Black hair clipped down to a stout Afro, but otherwise left to its own means. She was nearly in tears, but she kept her chin tight and the tension mostly in her hands.
It wasn’t the sort of job Will Coffin would normally take on, but rent was due even if the mystical seams of the city seemed to be coming undone around him.
Bunny, his currently sober roommate and apprentice, had also insisted.
“I’d hate-ta ####in’ see you have to offer up the tight jeans treatment to the guy at the front office,” she’d explained while offering no financial support of her own.
The bored looking kid in too-much eyeliner poured their coffees and pulled a notepad from his Denny’s apron.
“Can I get you something to eat?” he asked.
“More ####ing napkins,” answered Bunny, her eyes on the wrung and torn serviette the client was working over with both clenched hands.
Snapping his pad shut in a way that conveyed as much obscenity as anything that drifted out of Bunny’s mouth, the waiter departed.
“What do you want to know? Can’t you just go over and fix it?” the woman asked the shredded tissue before her.
“There’s a process,” said Coffin. “For example, what exactly do you plan on using to pay for -”
Bunny cleared her throat, blotting out the statement, and replaced it with, “start barfing from the beginning and tell us everything that happened.”
Nodding, Laila took a breath, held it, exhaled. “I like to watch old Law and Order episodes as I’m falling asleep. They’re constantly running on one of the deep cable channels, and there’s something homey to them. I know they were old even then, but my Dad always had them on when I was a kid dozing on the couch.
“Anyhow, my husband, Orlando, he’s not such a fan. He’s not much of a fan of anything these days, really. I keep it way down, and I set a timer so the TV isn’t blathering uselessly into the dark, but Orlando still moved the set over to my side of the bed so I could turn it down a couple more notches.
“It’s a queen-sized mattress, but he only uses the lip of the distant edge.
“If I thought he’d bother coming closer if I kept the thing off I’d go to bed in silence, but he was sleeping way over there well before I started allowing myself a little murder in the evenings.”
Will was surprised to see the server return with a stack of fresh napkins, and the trio paused as he laid them on the table.
He did not hover, he simply laid the stack at Laila’s fingertips and said, “let me know if you need me.”
To Coffin’s eye it appeared this small act of kindness pushed Laila as much towards tears as anything she’d related so far in her story.
The tale continued.
“There have been a few nights in the last couple years when Orlando drifts across the bed. I get my hopes up that it’s the sparking of something new, but usually he’s just looking for a bit of pokin’ and proddin’, then he’s back to snoring on the opposite end of the continent.
“Maybe a month ago, the Law is done and the Order has arrived. They’re trying to figure how they can bust a murderous grandmother despite having their best evidence thrown out, and I’m fighting to stay awake for the conclusion. You know how it is: You’re so tired you don’t even realize you should simply give in and be unconscious. I’ve got half my face buried in the pillow and I’m spending more time focused on keeping my eyelids cracked than the jury’s reactions to closing arguments.
“I was sort of drifting in and out of it, missing snippets and then catching myself dozing, and I remember thinking it was really nice that Orlando had come to hold me. When we were kids that’s how we curled-up, his arm on my belly and his leg over mine.
“That’s when I realized there was no one there: I could feel the weight on my stomach and thigh over the blanket, but I could hear Orlando wheezing at his usual distance.
“You’re dreaming, I told myself, then I fell asleep.”
There was a pause as a fresh napkin began to suffer.
“It happened again maybe a week and a half later, but – well, I’d been thinking about it a bit, but I couldn’t make up my mind as to if I’d been imagining the whole thing.
“That second time, I kept my eyes closed, but I let my palm drift over the blanket to where I could feel the heft – and there was something there. Not a hand, only a chill spot. I lay like that for maybe a half hour, no longer near sleep but not sure what to do next. Then the weight disappeared, and the cold too.
“It happened again the next night, and the next. If I snuggled into the feeling, it would shift against me, but moving my arm would leave me with nothing more than frosty goosebumps. Every now and then I’d brush up against something though – my guest seemed to get more solid as the visits went on.
“A week later I awoke holding no one, and it was nice.”
“Slow workin’ Casanova of a #### monster?” asked Bunny.
The question was aimed at Coffin, but it was Laila who replied.
“I – I Googled some things before Martin gave me your names. If it’s a sexy demon type it’s not really showing it. I couldn’t find any good cuddle beasts, online, that matched the profile though.
“That’s why I’m here.”
Coffin nodded. It wasn’t the sort of job he’d normally take on, but rent was due.
Flash Pulp is presented by https://www.skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.
Freesound.org credits:
Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.
– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.
Filed under Coffin, Flash Pulp
