BPD (flash fiction)

BPD

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Kenny A. Chaffin

            It started on the East Coast. Cases popped up from New York to Washington D.C. It spread like wildfire in ever increasing waves. The CDC had no explanation for the disease or its possible contamination vector. No explanation, no diagnosis and no method to fight it even though the symptoms were clear – the blue blood, the obsessive desire to speak in public, the need to take from the poor and give to the rich, and a strange fascination for guns and tea parties. The American Psychological Association rushed to update the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to include Borderline Patriotic Disorder.  

Sigmund Freud Psychoanalyzes Albert Einstein

Sigmund Freud Psychoanalyzes Albert Einstein

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Kenny A. Chaffin

So tell me when was it you started having these visions of riding a rainbow?

A light beam! A light beam! Are you even listening to what I’m saying?

Okay, okay a light beam. So tell me when did you first start having this delusion?

Oh Jesus and Mary, I’ve told you it’s not a delusion, it’s a thought experiment. I envision myself traveling at the speed of light – essentially riding a light beam – and look around and see what I see.

You mean like you think you are a light beam. Would you say that’s a little unusual. Most people dream of flying or being a sex star, not flying through the empty darkness of outer space.

Space is only part of it, time is the rest.

So you feel out of time as well.

No, no, no. Please listen to what I’m saying. I thought that was your job here, I thought that’s what you do. I suppose next you are going to ask me about my wandering uterus. Now listen, since I was a little boy I’ve imagined flying on a beam of light and trying to understand what the world, the universe would look like if I did.

So was this beam of light ‘penis-shaped.’

Oh Lord have mercy. No, just a beam of light, no rainbows, no penises, no Oedipus complex. Just physics. If I fly through the universe at the speed of light I will not grow old as fast as those I left behind, this is one result. It’s about the shrinkage.

Shrinkage?

Yes, shrinkage of space, dilation of the universe. Thrusting through and everything being relative.

Do you love your relatives as well? Do they fly with you?

No, how many times must I tell you, it’s just me on a light beam.

Ah, I see, self-pleasure. Hmmmm and look at that. My how time flies. I guess ours is up we’ll pick up there next week.

In Word and in Deed (flash fiction)

In Word and in Deed

(from Prosthetic Amalgams available at Amazon)

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Kenny A. Chaffin

They met on the commuter train. Their eyes met across the paired passengers on their way to mostly meaningless jobs. She was like a magnet to him, he couldn’t tear his eyes away, nor could she. When they got off at the same stop downtown, he asked for her number. Within weeks they were inseparable, making the rounds to the clubs, dancing, meeting for dinner. It turned out they lived in adjoining neighborhoods just outside the city. They spent all their spare time together and a few months later they knew they were right for one another. They would be married.

Friends and family joined them at her church for the ceremony. The priest focused on the groom, “Do you Anton take this woman, Ginger for your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.”

“Do you Ginger take this man, Anton for your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“Have you chosen your joining?”

“We have your holiness.”

“Please place your chosen hands in the bonding box.”

Anton placed his left hand on top of Ginger’s right hand in the box between them. The priest placed his hands on top. “You have each freely chosen to be bonded in holy matrimony. I ask now if there is anyone who has reason to believe this bonding should not happen in the eyes of the Lord let them speak or forever hold their words.” He paused for a moment looking out over the full pews. Hearing only silence he continued. “In my power as granted by divine providence and the laws of our state and country I now join you as man and wife.” A hum filled the air and the familiar blue glow emanated from the box as the couple stiffened and then fell to their knees. “The bonder opened to reveal their joined hands, their heads filled with each other’s thoughts, their hearts pumped the same blood.  “You are now one, joined in blood and flesh by God and man, forever, til death do you part.”

Schrodinger’s Cats

Schrodinger’s Cats

(from Prosthetic Amalgams)

They called them Schrodinger’s cats and they never failed to amaze me, even with all I've seen in my long life. The neocat lifeforms were fully designed amalgams of biology, physics and artificial intelligence. It was their behavior more than anything that intrigued me. They would warily approach an electrical outlet as if stalking it and then lap at it with their long blue tongues as if it were a bowl of milk -- the overhead lights flickering with each touch of those tongues.

Pilar (prose poem)

Pilar

(from Prosthetic Amalgams) 

I, an old man cast my line into the sea hoping for marlin, hoping for the best, but distracted even in this adventure by the presence beside me and those who came before. Those that died and those that wonder if death is hard. Those killed in the Spanish War and those who passed in the back of his ambulance. The bulls in the afternoon, the elephants of course and that poor, poor soul on Kilimanjaro. Death is pretty easy, but it all depends. I fight and fight until finally he helps me lash the small fish to the boat.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/30/2015

Cyano Love (prose poem)

Cyano Love

(from my collection Prosthetic Amalgams)

Cyano loved life, loved freedom. The world was his oyster. He was free to come and go and do as he pleased, float about consuming the abundant feast, free to grow, reproduce and enjoy his life in the sun. His freewheeling activities however changed all that, changed everything in fact, forcing him to seek shelter behind and even within others who had better adapted to the deadly environment he had spawned. He abhorred relying on others, but it was unavoidable and in time they came to enjoy one another’s company. It was love. He moved in. They became eukaryotic together.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 2/3/2015

We are all in this Together (prose poem)

We are all in this Together

(from Prosthetic Amalgams)

It looks and feels like batter, thick yellowish, slightly lumpy. We are thrashing about trying to stay afloat. It is not easy even with the thickness of the slightly sweet substance we are in. There is a downward pull, a sucking like quicksand, but we fight. A child in a red jumper on the horizon is bobbing along. A black-haired woman somewhere behind me struggles and keeps dipping and emerging, gasping for air. Two teenagers to my left are oblivious as they play kissy-face. And now from above a whirring like a helicopter as the blades of the beaters descend.

Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/23/2015