Mr. and Mrs. Fashism ride the enormous circuit of the 89 towards the Patriot Bureau. En route they debark at the Olde Tyme Shop, leaving the box store some hours later with plastic bags of gold plated trinketry.
Category Archives: Fiction
Short stories by Wayne K. Spear.
The End of the World
They often ask me, How will it end? They, the people, the ones who think about such things; and it, the world, I presume, the earth but also everything upon it. They ask me because I know, because I have seen the future. I alone have seen it, not in a dream or a vision but in math. Dreams and visions may deceive, but math is pure. It does not lie. So they ask me, How will it end?
Mr. Crusher’s brand
The color of my brand is gold, tremendous 24k gold. You know when you see the gold of my brand that my brand is rich, so it is powerful, so it is number one and nothing and no one is above or even equal to my brand. My brand is the ultimate, the best, the winner. Whenever it is written, it is written in large letters, the largest letters, the large 24k gold of the winner who is above all else. No name shall be bigger. If there is another name, the name of my brand shall be the largest name, in fact it shall be the largest of all the words, of all the other words that are near. No other name shall surpass the name of my brand, ever.
The Tapping of Marco Lepsi
The orange menace knots his power tie. When finished he looks down to inspect the result. Its tip grazes a knee, sways and grazes the other knee, and so on back and forth between his knees, just as the tip of a perfectly deployed tie ought. He tapes the tie-tail, rendered too short to reach the keeper loop, firmly into place. Then he inspects himself in the full-length mirror. He likes what he sees. The orange menace grins, and a relief of orange putty, the shape of a walnut, forms on the pediment atop his scrofulous lappet.
Mr. Leftright
On a beautiful day such as today, when the sun cheers the bright winter sky, I will generally go outside. Today however I am staying inside. Whether to go out or stay in used to be a difficult decision, until I realized that the outside and the inside are the same, that whatever differences there may be, they are of no consequence. Perhaps tomorrow I will go out, or perhaps tomorrow I will stay in. I will regret my decision, either way, as I always regret my decision, whether I stay inside or I go outside.
The President’s Spokesperson Speaks
They call me Betty but that is not my name. It’s one of the things they call me. There are many things that they call me but these things are only words. Words do not have literal meaning. That is a mistake made by the media—taking our words literally. When we use words it is the spirit of the words that matter not the literal meaning of the words. Everyone has a spirit of the word in his own head and that is the meaning for that person, or a meaning that is true for that person, which makes it true, just as my name is not Betty but people call me that, although I don’t recognize it as my name. I deny that my name is Betty. Betty is a word and a word is a sound in the mind. I am not Betty.
Rasah Lapin
When I runned for Vice President gosh you know our Heavenly Father was there with me running beside me like you know in that inspirational poster with the footprints in the sand on the beach where sometimes there is only one pair of footprints and that is like you know God carrying you. Because golly you know sometimes he carried me on the beach and so like there was only you know one set of footprints in the sand. It was God’s will that I runned for Vice President in 2008 and jeez we went in a wrong direction there as a country for eight years but it was God’s will that Mr. Crusher won I saw it. Everything is God’s will you know like that I runned and it was His will that I won but I didn’t won but it was God’s will and it wasn’t God’s will you know the last eight years of a wrong direction but now it is God’s will done praise God.
The Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President
I make a nice cup of tea, which is what one does in the evening. I am sitting in my favourite chair, which is what one does when drinking a nice cup of tea in the evening. Mr Crusher does not drink tea, nor does he drink coffee. On many things we agree, but the taking of a nice cup of tea in the evening, sitting in one’s favourite chair, is not among them. I mention this for its narrative utility, human interest being the fuel of a story, but also because tea time is when I talk to the President-elect. My tea time, not his. He does something else when we talk in the evening, whatever it happens to be. I have never asked, and he has never told. I have my theories.
Kalashnikov is On the Case
My name is Kalashnikov, it is true. The details of my history are of no consequence. They matter not, I will not dwell on them, it is best for the both of us. Whether I live or die, I no longer care. There was a time I cared, long ago, but let us pass over this. Soon I will be in the ground, or I will be dust on the air, I don’t care which. Whatever it is, I expect it will be final. Yes, I will be dead and gone and there will be no one to speak of it and nothing to say. A void and a nothing—not even an emptiness, in which a nothing. A not nothing not empty nothingness. Who can say for certain? To speak of it is to not speak of it, it is beyond speaking. So I will not speak of it.
Peace Comes to the Middle East
He steps into the damp November air and descends to the tarmac of Ben-Gurion Airport. The Tel Aviv rainy season has begun. God has sketched a featureless sky of phosphorescent pencil. The earth receives its languid tears. But Charles-Edward Crusher, son of the President-elect, has arrived. The sun will soon emerge in Israel.
America: Open for Business
America’s rich diversity streams to the tower for an audience with the orange menace. President-elect Crusher receives the variegated entourage with evident pleasure. He is charmed by the oil billionaire. The Hollywood billionaire is amusing. The media billonaire cajoles. The hedge fund billionaire tells a funny story involving a scandalous politician and a Rockaway restaurant. The real estate billionaire performs an indecent but also competent impersonation of George Soros. The technology billionaire speaks mostly of golf.
– “We’ll have to get on the course,” says the orange menace.
– “Let’s,” says the technology billionaire.
The Spirit Works Through Him
The orange menace sleeps his usual seventeen minutes but does not sleep well. He wakes with the mist of a terrfying dream thick upon his brain.
Yes, Mr. President, Yes
Geld Times journalist, Barry Leed, has spent the day on a metal bench in the Crusher Tower lobby. The waiting’s been in vain, not just for him but for the pool of journalists that engulfs him. There has been no sign of the orange menace, nor of his chief strategist, Shive White. The few insiders who do arrive emerge from limousines and are hurried to the elevator, like a leaf floating on a current. A door opens and they appear, another opens and they are gone.
The Orange Menace Chooses His Cabinet
Each morning the orange menace rises at 4:20, refreshed by his standard seventeen minutes of sleep, and prepares for the day.
His eyes open to the copula and take in the ceiling fresco. Apollo is crossing the sky in his four-horse chariot. The gods are young and beautiful and shimmering white. They turn their gaze to him. The orange menace tosses in his sleep but each day he awakes to a heroic world. “Good morning,” says Apollo. “I have been waiting for you.” The orange menace lifts himself from the goose down pillow and sits on the edge of his bed, puts on slippers. He is on the move.
Introducing Mr. Leed
Geld Times journalist Barry Leed is an unacknowledged hero. Although he failed to anticipate the triumphal rise of the orange menace, he retrospectively writes of its inevitability. There’s nothing about this shocking election victory that Mr. Leed cannot explain. “It’s obvious to me what happened,” he says. “Hardly a surprise, given the clear and abundant facts.” As for what lies ahead, Mr. Leed can explain this, too. He is a restless watcher of President-elect Crusher, a restless fact-checker, and a restless defender of democracy.
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 