Burst Culture Fiction

[moonmaster]

If you read Doktor Sleepless or keep up on Warren Ellis's ramblings, you've surely heard him talk about 'Burst Culture', the idea of getting information and entertainment in short, concise 'bursts'. I decided to give it a shot. Today I took two ideas that have been stewing in my head for a while and spewed them out as quickly as possible. I wrote both of these today during lunch/study hall in about an hour, which is ridiculous considering how long it usually takes me to get my ideas out. Enjoy.


Look-A-Like

I'm in the lobby having a smoke when a woman with short curly hair in a cat sweater walks up to me and nervously blurts out that her name is Norma Johanson and she's my biggest fan. I giver her a good long stare before I respond.

The truth is that I'm not Him and I never have been Him but I make a living pretending to be Him. Most people get "you look just like whoever-the ****", but no one ever tells me that. They ask for autographs and photos and I give it to them. This seems like a life that one would envy but what kind of ****ty lot is this to be cast? To be born into the body of another more talented, more rich, more famous person?

The truth is that I just met Him at the top floor of this hotel 45 minutes ago and he was the biggest dick I've had the sincere displeasure of crossing paths with. He's an obnoxious, self-centered little piece of **** and nobody even knows it and I've been making money and getting attention and special treatment and screwing girls way out of my league by trying to be him. Five minutes ago I decided to leave this all behind, to return begrudgingly to my normal, insignificant little life and my tiny apartment and my stupid cat and my boring friends. And now I'm going to tell this stupid old woman that the man she obsesses about and loves more than her detached, unhappy husband is a fraud and a bastard and that she was an idiot for thinking she could connect emotionally with some celebrity she's never even met.

But the truth is that when I stare into Norma Johanson's eyes, I see such sincerity that I realize that this is the greatest moment of her normal, insignificant little life. The truth is that I'm who she imagines when she sees His newest movie or reads about Him in Us Weekly. The truth is that I am more Him than He ever was.

I flash Norma Johanson a million dollar smile and say "Good evening, Norma. It's so nice to meet you."

Damn it's good to be a star.


Torturotica

Harold Clark spent the better of his Saturday morning watching innocent young peoople sexually assaulted, tortured, and killed beneath a small rural farmhouse. Women, mostly. That was what people generally wanted. Of course the boyfriends were always disposed of in some brutal fashion, and there was, in fact, a growing market for male victims. (Harold made sure to mark that down on his yellow notepad as the thought occurred to him.)

The stink of blood and **** down in the dungeon was far more pungent than he would've thought. Harold pulled a Subway sandwich out of a paper bag as he watched an old man in a leather apron hack a young woman to death with a machete after just having raped her. I should have brought chips, he thought, while taking a bite from his sandwich. The blood started to pool beneath his shoe and he jerked it away. He'd just bought them. Harold wondered what might happen if he went over there and tapped Sherriff Cross on the shoulder. They said he shouldn't interact with anyone under any circumstances but they also said that no one here could ever tell you were there.

Harold sat up from the dank, dark corner and stepped genteelly over the blood. He could hear the Sherriff gnashing his teeth and cackling. Harold extended one finger and touched his shoulder.

"Sherriff Cross?," he said, as if he were inquiring whether or not someone was home.

The Sherriff turned around and stared into Harold's eyes. The psychotic toothless grin and the wet gleam in his eyes that Harold had described a dozen times faded and what came across his face was something between total bewilderment and absolute revelation. He started to say something but Harold couldn't hear it.

All he could hear was the whir of metal. The stink disappeared, replaced by a sanitary, plastic smell. The room began to disappear, first the details and then the basic shapes. Harold felt a tug in his stomach and seemed to fall back into the reclining leather chair. Regaining awareness, he removed the apparatus from his head and the electrodes from beneath his clothes. He sat up from the chair and started walking out of the staging area.

"Damn, hell of a trip back, eh?," he said while glancing uneasily at the half-eaten sandwich beside the chair.

The technician rushed into the huge spherical chamber from the control room. "What the hell, Clark? What did we tell you about character interaction?"

"I couldn't help it. Who doesn't want to actually meet their own creations?"

"The technology isn't advanced to that point. We don't know what happens when someone from here meets someone from in there. And I don't know why you'd want to meet that guy. I can't even believe you write this torture porn stuff."

"Torturotica is the proper term and it's the fastest growing literary genre since 2026. If people want to hear in graphic, disgusting detail about teenagers getting raped and mutilated, I'm going to give it to them."

"None of this made you look at this **** any differently?"

"Quite the opposite, actually. I'm feeling more enthusiastic about my work than ever. I'm going to start on my next book the second I get home."

"Jesus...I've seen a lot of weirdos come in here and fictoport but let me tell you, you take the cake. You're one sick bastard."

"Oh, as long as there's more money to be made,I can always be sicker, Mr. Cooke. I can always be sicker."


Tell me what you think, I'll post these on the blog if they're well-received.

Feel free to post your own ultra-short fiction.

 

[Iceshadow]

I liked 'em, the second had a nice twist.

 

[ProjectX2]

These were neat. I wanna try.

 

[Ultimate Houde]

The first one was great.

The second one not so much, but that's because I'm not a fan of that type of story. I see the concepts you used, but you could have describe a much different scene.

 

[Fuzzy Birds]

The Names We Used To Know

And once again I find myself lying here. The hour is late, the music is soft and nostalgic. It brings tears to my eyes that can not be seen at this hour save for the dim glow of the streetlight behind the curtains. I look up, into the past and the future. Some conscious part of me tries to identify that chirping sound I can hear somewhere in the house, while my heart rends in two at some unknown catastrophe that only it is privy to. The music abruptly changes to something loud and vivid as a door slams somewhere nearby. A bead of sweat breaks free and clambers down my forehead.

A sensory shift, a change of priorities.

I knock an empty can over in the dark; there's a dull, metallic clank as it rolls across the floor. I glance idly at various shapes around the dark room, hoping something will enlighten me. Always looking for the answer where it cannot be found; I know everything I need is in my hands. I listen to the music pass, waiting for something quiet and with sufficient memories to come and pull at my heart strings and make me feel something, anything, that could possibly help me to see what it is I have to see.

Outside, the church bell strikes twice, a dead noise, sinking through the thick humid air towards me. I keep justifying the lack of action by thinking of the consequences, all the myriad ways it could backfire on me and land me in a worse situtation. I fool myself into thinking that this murky swamp of indecision is comfortable, and even preferable. The next song arrives, subtly weaving it's own tale of aching beauty and despair, of wanton passion and lust, of success and morality and corruption and sick, twisted love, deftly manipulating my senses and mood. I lay back and absorb it all, a dozen lives and thoughts and wants and fears.

Somewhere in this thick blanket of snow there lays a pure thought, an epic image, a truth. I follow it over plains and mountains, through fire and rain. It races through generations and civilizations, through colossal nebulas and imploding stars. It's there for the fall of the Roman Empire and the birth of the first galaxy, all at the same time. It is the tiniest atom and a Leviathan of myth. It is love and it is hate. It is us and it is them. It is an ambivalent smile, a suggestive glance, a hushed whisper, almost lost in the blizzard but still there, still there.

I reach out to it and never let go.

 

[Zombipanda]

So, "flash fiction" just sounds like free verse to me.

 

[Joe Kalicki]

I spent the better part of high school writing like that.

 

[moonmaster]

So, "flash fiction" just sounds like free verse to me.

"Free Prose".

 

[Zombipanda]

"Free Prose".

That's an absurd label. I refuse to recognize it.

 

[moonmaster]

That's an absurd label. I refuse to recognize it.

I refuse to recognize you!

Hey, who the hell are you and what are you doing here!

 

[Zombipanda]

I refuse to recognize you!

Hey, who the hell are you and what are you doing here!

I'm just not turned on by these assertions (not Warren Ellis, but more squarely, 365 Tomorrows) that flash fiction is somehow a new revolution of writing for a new generation, when it's really just hyper-short stories that exist to convey a single twist or revelation.

I can see a lot of potential in it being used as a new way to approach serial fiction (plans already in the works) but this fetishization of flash-fried caption-style information injection just kind of irritates and worries me.

 

[Planet-man]

I'm just not turned on by these assertions (not Warren Ellis, but more squarely, 365 Tomorrows) that flash fiction is somehow a new revolution of writing for a new generation, when it's really just hyper-short stories that exist to convey a single twist or revelation.

I can see a lot of potential in it being used as a new way to approach serial fiction (plans already in the works) but this fetishization of flash-fried caption-style information injection just kind of irritates and worries me.

I agree. This is a fine idea for getting your ideas out there FOR YOURSELF so you can then cultivate it into a proper short story, but in terms of them being finished stories I hope the concept doesn't take off. Ray Bradbury would be rolling around in his grave(possibly while writing some sort of gripping tale about a dead man who is aware of his body's surroundings and gets to use that to solve some mystery, learning a great deal about the existential wonders of the universe in the process before passing on to the afterlife in an incredible scene that would bring a man on his worst day to the ground, sobbing with joy and affirmation of goodness, all in about 10 pages or so).

 

[Joe Kalicki]

I agree with Zombipanda and Planet-man. Like I said, this is the kind of writing I was doing in high school, which I quit doing because it's nothing. It's not a story, it's not any kind of writing at all really.

 

[moonmaster]

It's not meant to supplant any other form of fiction, it's just a different way of writing.

And if it took ten pages to say anything worthwhile, then poetry wouldn't exist.

 

[Zombipanda]

It's not meant to supplant any other form of fiction, it's just a different way of writing.

And if it took ten pages to say anything worthwhile, then poetry wouldn't exist.

And that's one of the major things that differentiates poetry from prose. Poetry doesn't need to tell a story. Prose does. Flash fiction isn't a story. It's an idea that could potentially be turned into a story, if the writer decided to devote the time into crafting it, but that's all. Strip away the context, content, characterization, theme, and ambience of a story until all you have left is a shocking twist, and you've got flash fiction.

It's an exercise, not an art form. It's writers trying to sell the little procedural work they do in the process of writing real fiction.

 

[Joe Kalicki]

Poetry exists for the beauty of form, not for any storytelling reason.

These aren't really stories, they're more like parables, only without a point.

Now I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong about writing this way, but it's not some new exciting revelation, and there's a reason it's not considered a viable alternative to poetry or prose.

 

[Zombipanda]

Poetry exists for the beauty of form, not for any storytelling reason.

These aren't really stories, they're more like parables, only without a point.

Now I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong about writing this way, but it's not some new exciting revelation, and there's a reason it's not considered a viable alternative to poetry or prose.

I think "flash fiction" is the perfect term for it, though.

All flash, no substance.

 

[Joe Kalicki]

I think "flash fiction" is the perfect term for it, though.

All flash, no substance.

It's a fine term, I suppose.

There's just something a little condescending about it.

But I feel the same way with just about everything Warren Ellis says/does/believes.

 

[moonmaster]

Here's why I like doing this:

My first story, the one about the celebrity impersonator, was an idea I had a few weeks ago. I began thinking about how to turn it into a full-length story and I couldn't. It was a good idea - a professional celebrity impersonator meets the guy he's been impersonating and finds out that he's not what people think he is. But every time I started writing it, I felt like it was going to turn out boring and tedious. So I realized that I could simply start the story at the end and take all of the punch that the story would've had had it been several pages and take out everything that would've dragged it down.

That wouldn't work with every idea, but I think it worked there. Kurt Vonnegut's fifth rule to writing short stories is "Start as close to the end as possible".

That's what I did.

 

[Joe Kalicki]

Kurt Vonnegut also wrote a bunch of interesting stories as Kilgore Trout which he saved and incorporated into his novels, probably because they couldn't stand on their own.