Castle Paradox

[Pepsi Ranger]

Here are three flash fiction stories from my latest book called Seven-Sided Dice: The Collection of Junk Volume 3. Although this doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the different types of subject matter this book covers, it does capsulize the subjects that I think the people of this community would appreciate. Having said that, take a read of these samples:

"The Fountain of Truth"

The Kingdom Affair restaurant in the upper section of town was world renown for its ritzy atmosphere, its genteel clientele and its popularity among holidays. Established from the skeleton of an old ballroom at the base of a glamorous hotel, the restaurant developed a style of high-class living that rivaled the aristocracy, wealth and social gatherings of the posh sort. It was the perfect locale to usher in the Rolls Royce of façades when the name of saving face was in order.

For this wealthy establishment, Christmas Eve was regarded as the busiest night of the year. On this eve of holidays, families and cohorts of the upper class persuasion dined to their hearts’ content, laughing and chatting over things that bore little significance to their lives. Dominating conversational topics ranged from pools, to spas, to Mercedes automobiles—all delivered through smiles that masked what people truly thought of the world. It was colorful bliss of the richest kind.

But on this particular Christmas Eve, something remarkable happened. All across the restaurant, from one wall to the other, from the big room to the private one, the façade somehow fell. Families and friends abandoned their discussions of plastic surgery and million-dollar homes to speak of life in its true color. Those who were sobered were stunned. “How dare they speak their mind?” they thought, as sincerity erupted from out of nowhere.

The first sign of this Christmas miracle began with a table of eight—four men, four women—all wearing thousand-dollar outfits and million-dollar smiles. They had just taken their seats, the drinks had already arrived and the hors d’oeuvres were on its way when the first break in conversation occurred.

“And the Jaguar drives like a dream,” laughed the first man, a frail gray-haired chap of about seventy. “I haven’t been so happy since I got my latest Botox injection.”

He took a sip of his soft drink, which he ordered to keep from mixing his medication with alcohol.

“But then, what’s a Botox injection,” he continued, “but to mask my decrepit state and inability to compete with the young men of today?”

The rest of the table gasped with astonishment. Where did this insult to the miracle of plastics come from? The old man next to him “tsked” his tongue.

“What kind of question is that?” he said. “Botox gave me new life.”

He took a sip of his own soft drink.

“A new life,” he continued, “to show me how discouraged I was with my old life…a life spent with a woman I never loved, who grew old on me ten years into marriage and was no longer the trophy I was proud of.”

The woman next to him gasped with angry surprise.

“Trophy wife?” she said. “Is that what I’ve been to you for forty years? A trophy wife? I loved you with all my heart and this is how you repay me?”

She took a sip of her own soft drink to clear her rapidly drying throat.

“I mean, I lied to you night and day so you wouldn’t divorce me and kick me out of your will. Do you realize how much I endured to pretend my love was real so I could have all your money? I put up with your bad breath and your smelly feet for forty years, because I wanted to be rich, and now you have the nerve to call me a trophy wife? How dare you?”

And that wasn’t the only place this miracle unfolded. On the other side of the restaurant, in a broader space, a family of three shared a table, awaiting the arrival of their prime steak dinners. The father, a young strapping man in his mid-thirties, the mother, a young beautiful woman made of diamonds and pearls, and the ten-year-old boy made of oatmeal and cookie dough, all sat around with soft drinks in hand, discussing the wonderful day they were about to have.

“You’re gonna love all your toys,” said the father to the son, with such glorious pride that his smile flashed halfway across the room. “I don’t want to tell you everything I bought, but I promise it will be grander than last year’s big one hundred.”

The father took a sip of his soft drink.

“Because,” he continued, “I don’t want to show you just how inadequate of a father I am, so I have to do my part to buy your love, which I know I can’t do, because I’m shaping you into a young spoiled brat, but I don’t want to take the time away from my business to be with you, so I figure that buying all these toys will hide my guilt, and that your mother will think I’m a good father and in turn respect me, which I know deep down she doesn’t, because I hear her muttering unsavory things at night in her sleep, but that’s okay, because I know I can buy her love, too, as long as I keep the fine jewelry coming.”

And again, the table gasped, but this time the young impressionable heart and the soft, yet jewelry covered woman both sobbed at the revelation that things weren’t what they seemed and that façades had taken control.

Eventually, the young mother, after taking several sips of her own soft drink, finally said, “Maybe we need help.”

Restaurant staff members—always keen observers of the way high society operated within those walls—were astonished at all the truth unfolding before them. Table after table swept up in rages, while others floated off in a stream of tears. Meals were sent back as steaks and pork chops went uneaten from lost appetites or had just gotten cold from being unattended for so long. Drinks continued to arrive, because throats kept running dry from all the shouting, but the truths didn‘t stop and the hearts kept exploding. When the head chef finally asked if anything environmental had changed to cause this outburst of reality, one server by the name of Valiant spoke up with bright eyes and steady demeanor.

“I thought the greatest gift I could give these people,” he said, “was the gift of truth. So I injected the soft drink syrup with a vial of serum I bought from the mall, and now every guest has consumed it unknowingly. Even though I’ve ruined Christmas for most of them, I delivered them from their phony existence, and now they can live truthfully again.”

As the head chef looked at him with astonishment, Valiant took another sip of his favorite soft drink, which he had forgotten that he tampered with just ten minutes earlier.

Copyright © 2005 by Jeremy Bursey


"The Evil Clone of Michael Keaton"

The penetrating glow refused to stop. The news report left him frozen. With darkness shrouding the furniture around him, Inglewood had no distraction from the television’s entrancing power. Each progressive advertisement lured him with the sex appeal of beer and the aroma of pepperoni, while threatening his control should he choose to touch that dial. As much as he wanted to throw himself from the grip of his sofa, the allure of the flashing lights overloaded his free will.

“Call now for your toenail converter, a sixty-dollar value yours for only $19.95 through this special TV offer, and receive the Hachma Head Shaving Kit free.”

The blue screen with the 1-800 number held for a blink of an eye before the computer animation of a movie theatre floated into view.

“And now we return to the midnight movie: Batman, starring Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton and songs by Prince.”

Inglewood placed his hands behind his back as the floating movie theatre transformed into a gothic scene involving a Batmobile shooting the crap out of a chemical factory entrance. The hour was late and he needed to sleep, but the hypnosis of flash fire paralyzed him.

* * *

The room shrank as he coiled into the fetal position. The shrieking drone of the “end of programming” color strips forced the lyrics of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” from his throat. While his body quivered against the polyester cushions, he heard the footsteps drawing closer to his apartment door. Hoping the ingratiating buzz would drive the intruder away, he kept his thumb fixated on the volume control.

* * *

An hour before Batman aired, the local news reported a disturbing event. Apparently, an elusive geneticist started cloning famous actors to promote the production of movie sequels without accepting the annoyance of continuity errors. In this case, the geneticist duplicated the hair of Michael Keaton to create a picture perfect clone worthy of starring in a Batman Forever remake. According to the local news, the clone was scheduled to begin the digital-mapping sequence that would allow it to overwrite Val Kilmer’s performance in the movie the following day, mimicking every detail down to the bad dialogue and gratuitous butt shots.

But as brilliant as the plan seemed to Hollywood, the execution turned out dangerous to society. Based on insider reports, the geneticist had an ulterior motive to this agenda. Even though the clone was designed to instill Michael Keaton’s likeness into the overbearing sequels, the geneticist had no intention of following through with the production. Thanks to an unscrupulous combination of adrenaline and lightning-charged gasoline (used to fuel its mental energy—a near impossibility if not for the scientist’s genius), the clone obeyed the order to wreak a path of destruction. The geneticist implanted the reason that without the taste of blood on its fingers, it could not stand firm within its purpose.

And that was all the information the news gathered about the project. According to the newscast, the evil clone of Michael Keaton was last seen a mile from Inglewood’s neighborhood.

* * *

When the footsteps finally stopped at his door, Inglewood promptly buried himself under his pillows. Even though he spent a good portion of his adult life—all ten years of them—living with an inflated sense of bravery, he decided it was better to stay hidden if the evil clone of Michael Keaton were to break through. Bravery, he thought, never ensured protection from death for anyone.

His heart raced when the pounding started. Boom, boom, came the hardwood door, overpowering the strength of the “end of programming” drone. The pillows flew off the sofa when he sprung into a flattened shape. The whole bravery thing was actually a fabrication. He could admit that now.

“Open the door,” yelled a sneering voice. “I have a message for you.”

Inglewood wanted to tell the intruder to go away, but he elected to keep his location a mystery.

“I know you’re in there,” continued the voice. “I can hear your television buzzing. Open up before I break it down.”

The intruder pounded on the door again, this time in conjunction with jiggling the knob. It was clear the being would stop at nothing to get in. With the darkness covering all possible escape routes, Inglewood clutched his cushions against his chest, as his seconds of safety drew to an end.

“This is your final warning. Open the door.”

Without the stomach to comply, Inglewood held his breath as he awaited the next move. The colored bars on TV disappeared, as the meandering drone died away. Everything turned to black, except for the dim light beneath the door and the two dark objects dividing it into three. With one quick snap to reality, he realized his finger was pressing the “off” button. When he looked back to the door, the dark objects severing the crack were gone.

The disappearance brought him momentary relief. With everything quiet, he sat up to assess the situation. In short, he would be…okay.

And then, the door crashed open. The living image of Michael Keaton stood between the hallway and the doorframe with battering ram in hand. Inglewood screamed as he leapt from the sofa in horror.

“The news lied to you,” shouted the Michael Keaton clone, as it threw the battering ram to the ground. “My clone has not been unleashed. There is no danger this evening.”

Unable to catch his breath, Inglewood dashed into the darkness.

“The neighborhood is safe,” said the clone.

“I don’t believe you,” shouted Inglewood, as he tripped over a beanbag chair. “The news would never lie.”

“It would if it didn’t present all the facts.”

Inglewood tried to stand again, but he kept falling over the beanbag chair.

“Why would the news report a false story?”

“The ‘clone’ they thought was terrorizing the neighborhood was really me—the real deal.”

Inglewood finally regained his composure and backed further away from the light.

“So the real Michael Keaton is terrorizing my neighborhood?”

“The real Michael Keaton isn’t terrorizing anyone. I’m trying to warn the populace that the clone isn’t real. Not yet.”

“How do I know that you’re real?”

“Would the clone stop short of your door like this?”

Inglewood reached the corner of his living room just before the bedroom hallway. The real Michael Keaton had a point.

“Okay, prove it,” he said, uncertain that his test would prove anything. “How many people saw Herbie: Full Throttle?”

“Twenty-five.”

So far the real Michael Keaton appeared to be who he said he was.

“All right, next question: who was the inspiration for Beetlejuice?”

“Not ‘who.’ ‘What.’ ”

“Okay, what was the inspiration for Beetlejuice?”

“A designer hallucinogen that was only popular in the ‘80s.”

Inglewood didn’t know the real answer, but he didn’t think a clone would come up with something quite so creative, so he accepted it.

“Okay, last question: what was the age of Jack Nicholson’s oldest date during the filming of Batman?”

“The same age as my first answer.”

“Really?”

“There was a girl in her thirties who almost got a dinner out of him, but her crow’s feet canceled the deal.”

“Wow, who knew the Joker would be so picky?”

The real Michael Keaton stepped one foot through the doorway.

“So do you believe me now?”

In an act of trust, Inglewood started forward, but only at a pace of few inches per second.

“I might.”

The actor pawed at the wall next to the door panel. A second later, the living room came alive with brilliance. His hand retracted from the light switch.

“Good, then I need you to come with me to warn the others. If enough people find their courage, we can turn the geneticist’s eminent schemes against him.”

“So there is a threat?”

“There will be if we don’t act now.”

* * *

Dawn approached suddenly as Inglewood found himself in the passenger seat of an ice cream truck speeding down the highway with the real Michael Keaton driving. The blurred road put him in a steady trance, which he didn’t mind, considering he hadn’t slept all night. When the hypnosis started lacking power, however, he transferred his focus to the speedometer. It recorded over 85 m.p.h.

“Why must we go so fast?” asked Inglewood, as he gripped his armrest. “And why have we left the neighborhood?”

“I want you to see the situation firsthand before you start warning the public.”

“What situation? I can see that the streets are quiet.”

“The news got everything wrong. It’s not just the geneticist we have to worry about.”

* * *

A half-hour later, the real Michael Keaton stopped the ice cream truck in the middle of the desert. Before them, two intersecting highways leading nowhere respectively stretched for miles across the desolate dunes. A series of SWAT vans also covered the exits, except for the one they came from. The real Michael Keaton cut off the engine.

“Get out of the truck and follow me,” he said, as he reached for a pistol from underneath his seat. “It’s time to discover the truth.”

The real Michael Keaton stepped out of the truck and proceeded toward the roadblock. Terrified of both the presupposed clone and the real thing, Inglewood resolved to stay where he was. The last thing he wanted was to be the victim of a rampaging movie star.

The real Michael Keaton approached the black van at the head of the blockade with his gun drawn. Cautiously, he stepped up to the back door as he aimed at the windows. Once he secured his position, he violently rapped on the metallic door; then immediately clutched his pistol with both hands. A moment later, the doors swung open.

Inglewood rolled down his window to hear the scene. All was silent but for the sound of an old voice screaming from inside the van.

“Alas, you found me, Michael Keaton, but I fear it’s the last thing you will ever do.”

The real Michael Keaton backed up as his face took on a new look of horror—one that didn’t seem to fit his facial vocabulary. Without a second’s warning, he began firing into the opened van. The weapon’s chamber emptied after six shots.

“Turn on the engine,” he yelled, as he hightailed it from the vehicle. “We have to get out of here. Now!”

Inglewood turned the key that the real Michael Keaton had left in the ignition. The actor, meanwhile, made it to the truck just in time for the object of his terror to step out from the hull.

Inglewood expected to see the worst, but the worst wasn’t anything like what he actually saw. In fact, the scene before him shattered reality as he knew it. The real Michael Keaton was right—the news lied to him. The geneticist didn’t make an evil Michael Keaton clone as it had claimed. Even if one were coming, it wasn’t what stepped out of the van. Whoever came up with that information was clearly trying to cover up the truth—a truth that was far more awful than the fabrication they developed.

The ice cream truck backed away from the roadblock with a fury to rival a volcano. Within moments the two men put the intersection miles behind them.

“What do we do now?” Inglewood said, as he tapped the dashboard. “Who can protect the public from this?”

“I don’t know,” said the real Michael Keaton. “The truth I expected to show you was different than the truth we saw. I thought he was still in the planning stages.”

Inglewood stared at the waves of sagebrush as they all shot past his window.

“I’m scared,” he said.

“I am, too. The Hollywood machine has gotten too big, even for me. With a Val Kilmer clone on the loose now, I’m afraid the populace and all the Batman movies are in mortal danger.”

He thumbed the steering wheel, as his mysterious thoughts left him staring into a void.

“Hollywood strikes again,” he said.

Inglewood nodded as the Los Angeles skyline came into view. The future was indeed bleak.

Copyright © 2006 by Jeremy Bursey


"Blue-Haired Anime Fighter"

Midnight in the downtown district, three hundred feet in the air, two figures plummet to the asphalt earth. With buildings stretching nearly a quarter-mile to the sky, random lights in scattered windows race by like streaks of laser beams. Someone—one of them—will reign victorious tonight, no matter how much wind intensifies their hair.

Hair—blue hair—befits the leftward warrior. With a name sounding more Japanese than Tokyo, his voice roars against the updraft in a guttural cry. “Hazuka!” he shouts, shattering the glass around him. “Hazuka teri yo saki!” amplifies from the busted windows, which inappropriately translated into English means, “I am the thunder snake!” With his mouth growing from the size of a ping pong ball to the size of a bowling ball, the blue-haired warrior screams his battle cry a third time—a word that speaks the thunder, but by itself means nothing. Lightning sizzles in his hands.

The opponent, an androgynous fighter with long silver hair and a woman’s face, slaps his forearms together to cover his body. With another hundred feet slipped through the air, the man-person braces for two impacts. “Ashkani Ishtaro!” he yells, as the incoming sparks engulf him. In roughly translated English, that means, “Shield me with the cloak of Warren Beatty, oh great desert king!” Another fifty feet and the white fireball passes, leaving his skin charred black and his eyes burning with anger—literally.

The blue-haired anime fighter, a man named Yoshi, assumes the lotus position. Pissed off that people confuse him with the little green dinosaur from Super Mario Brothers, he prepares for the shock to his butt cheeks. His anger from the ridicule fuels enough energy to survive any great impact—a feat that would elude him if his name were Mr. Myagi.

And then, the meteor strike comes: the two fighters punch a twenty-foot crater into the street below.

Traffic flies in multiple directions as the two punk rock martial artists face off. At the bottom of the pit, they stare each other down—the blue-haired anime fighter standing to his feet, the androgynous silver warrior brushing off his grease stains.

“Tonight you die,” sneers the reject from Sailor Moon.

“Over my dead body,” growls the living pencil troll.

“Maktaro yo Sashi!” the silver guy shouts, lunging forward with diamonds in hand. No one knows what that means in English.

“Bashuko el Paso!” returns Yoshi, turning his body into a giant repelling magnet, apparently unaware that he tossed a bit of Spanish in there.

The sky cracks with thunder, as the two men fly across the crater basin like shooting stars. The surrounding populace, meanwhile, freezes in place to prevent accidental focal detraction from the fighters.

When the warriors clash and pass, they turn to see the other still standing. Determined to finish Yoshi off, the androgynous fighter pulls a sword impossibly too large for his body from his back and gleams it under the moonlight. The blue-haired warrior smirks.

“So you think you can defeat me with the Sword of Nokia, do you?” he says. “I am the destroyer of satellites—do not mock me!”

The androgynous warrior polishes his weapon as he stands daintily like a light post.

“I did not travel through burning villages and hundreds of years to mock my opponent,” he says. “I came this far to win the prize—the prize that I slain thousands to reach. Do not think I came here simply to mock.”

“But I have slain thousands more to prove I am not to be mocked. The prize will be mine.”

The androgynous warrior moves his feet as the blue-haired anime fighter hunches his shoulders and clenches his fists like a bull. This time the tournament will end—after twenty-six grueling half-hour battles, it will finally end.

Springing up like a rabbit, the androgynous challenger races toward the blue-haired defender with sword angled from his hip, ready to slice him to ribbons. Mounting the ground like a boulder, as it spins away from level earth to a speeding forty-five degree angle, the blue-haired warrior electrifies his body as he waits for his opponent to strike. Within seconds, the two men clash for a second time—the androgynous man sizzling from the electric blast, Yoshi stealing the sword from his opponent’s hand.

At the speed of a snake, Yoshi spins at the waist and brings the stolen weapon down through the center of his challenger’s body. When he pulls the sword away, his challenger laughs.

“You really thought my own sword would harm me?” he muses. “How weak-minded you must be!”

And just as the blue-haired warrior stands in full upright position, a glowing light streaks down the middle of the challenger from head-to-crotch, and the next thing he knows…

Through the eyes of Tokyo—its original eyewitness—his body splits into a wild bloody mess. But through the eyes of the American ten-year-old, the androgynous warrior merely screams something incomprehensible in both languages and the blue-haired fighter looks on with satisfaction.

“Alas, the prize is mine,” he says, jamming the sword into the earth. “I am undefeated.”

As he turns away to head for the lip of the crater, his victory quickly diminishes. The entire earth shakes.

“Not so fast,” roars a thunderous voice, from underground. “No one gets the prize without first defeating me!”

Pieces of asphalt explode into nearby skyscrapers as the street ahead blows apart. From the depths of the hole, a huge green creature made of dragon parts and cattle horns rises above the city. Its eyes are like amber rocks, glowing with the contempt of humanity. Its teeth drip malice with the ooze of the subterranean sewers below. And its legs straddle the remains of a subway train, crushing it with devastating thighs.

“No one defeats me!” the creature adds. “I am the undefeated!”

The blue-haired warrior smirks as he steals his opponent’s sword back from the earth.

“We’ll see about that,” he says, with a vicious grin.

Unfortunately, the world goes dark in that moment, because the English translators decide they don’t have the time to finish the story. Another translation project involving a purple-haired anime fighter falls into their laps, promising five hundred dollars for each unique battle cry, so they put the next season on the shelf for an unknown length of time.

Copyright © 2006 by Jeremy Bursey
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Progress Report:

The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition

Currently Updating: General sweep of the game world and dialogue boxes. Adding extended maps.

Tightfloss Maiden

Currently Updating: Chapter 2