Tales from the Good Ship KafkaBury

TALES FROM THE GOOD SHIP KAFKABURY

by

BRUCE TAYLOR

Produced by ReAnimus Press

Other books by Bruce Taylor:

Kafka's Uncle and Other Strange Tales

Kafka's Uncle: The Unfortunate Sequel

Kafka's Uncle: The Ghastly Prequel

Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity

Alleymanderous and Other Magical Realities

Magic of Wild Places

Mountains of the Night

© 2017 by Bruce Taylor. All rights reserved.

http://ReAnimus.com/store?author=brucetaylor

Cover image, Goddess Voyage, Carl & Lida Sloan

Cover design, Bruce Taylor, Dick Swift

Cover graphics, Dick Swift

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~

To Mary Choo

Fine writer, wonderful friend, and so supportive of my work through the years.

You bet this one is dedicated to you! And from the bottom of my heart—thank you!

~~~

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Author's Preface

Deposition

Irritations

One Morning In the Bozoleum

Blue Zombies on Hospital Stationery

The Legend of the Slugosaurus

A Little Chat with Bufo

Damaged Butterflies

Trudi

Watermelonmania

Cold

Dream 473.2

Infinite Dancers

The Dialogue

The Fix

Not by Fire

The Venusian Road Rage Blues

Mmmmmmm

In So Deep

Time Travelers All

Ghosts and Good-bye

Three Stories/Three Choices

Return

Who Knows Where

Moon Gift

Dining With Sophocles at This Late Hour

Of Sandships and Bradbury

About the Author

Acknowledgements

In early versions of my work, including some stories here, much of the editing, computer work and formatting fell to the fine and capable hands of Pippin Sardo and Nancy Lou Polk. It was a lot of work but the results were well worth it and deeply appreciated.

Thank you to my partner Roberta Gregory, fine artist and writer, for going through these manuscripts and doing a superb job not only in catching goofs but fine line editing as well. Very fine work indeed and greatly appreciated. Thank you!

And of course, thanks to the past and present members of my wonderful critique group who have seen these stories over many a year and whose feedback have always made them better: Joel Davis, Brian Herbert, Phyllis Hiefield, Faith Szafranski (and in memoriam, Marie Landis Edwards, Cal Clawson) and to the present members, Linda Shepherd, Sarah Blum, Art Gomez, Jim Bartlett and Roberta Gregory.

The artwork that graces this book is by Carl Sloan and his (now late) wife, Lida. For their support of my writing, I am deeply grateful and to have their artwork (much of what they do sure looks suspiciously like magic realism) for the cover of this book, wonderful!

Thanks to former agent and now fine friend, Ben Bova, for his representation and his unwavering support of my writing. I can’t even begin to tell you what that means to me! I am deeply honored and I thank you!

Many, many thanks to my editor/publisher Andrew Burt of ReAnimus Press who, with infinite patience at my chronic tribulations and angst with computers, must be the Buddha in disguise!

Author’s Preface

What can you say about Franz Kafka and Ray Bradbury except—what wonderful examples of the most precious freedom we have: the freedom of—imagination—of dreaming, of not being afraid to put pen to paper, or keys to keyboard to declare, This is where my imagination takes me, this is what I dream of, this is who I am! And by so doing, giving us permission to own our imaginations and know it’s okay to speculate, conjecture beyond this moment, it’s okay to wonder, to plumb the depths of our souls or to aspire to wander about for a while in the stars and go elsewhere and else when, returning with an understanding of the world that maybe we hadn’t seen before, and with that knowledge, we are better for it.

To have exposure to writers such as Kafka and Bradbury is a tour de force of possibilities wrapped up in superb expression and word play, as if the words vanish and you are in that other reality, grand or frightening as it may be. To have had access to these writers, even meeting Bradbury in person, what can you say except—wonderful? And now to say to them, to their memories, Because of you and the writers that you are and the people—that you were—and still are in your writing, you provided me and others with a simple truth: to imagine is to explore all the possibilities of life and to be vitally alive in the world. To share these imaginings with others, as you did, you gave us—freedom—freedom to have imagination, freedom to own it. Freedom to act upon it to create a life so filled with promise and possibilities, and if we’re lucky enough, to have some of it come true.

Am I grateful? Of course I am. Because I am a better person for it.

And I hope my stories in the following pages will be a fitting way of saying, Thank you!

—Bruce Taylor

August 13, 2017

Deposition

You arrive on time. Your lawyer is there. Hello, he says. He’s dressed in a shiny gray suit—if you look closely you can see little rainbows in the fabric. His hair is slicked back, his cheekbones high and prominent. His eyes are slate gray and you see no rainbows there at all. For some strange reason, he reminds you of Kafka during his leaner years. He is a lawyer, the gray is because of all the black and white he has smooshed together—whatever color was there has been bled and bleached out by books of laws that are so dry, ancient and arid, they make the Sahara look like a tropical paradise. He looks at you for a long time. You are ready for the deposition.

I— You’ve never had a deposition before. You say what you know to be true. I don’t know.

The Deposition Waitress comes in. She brings you a sexy bib to wear with images of black and white guillotines with blue embroidery on the outside edge. She sets a knife and fork before you and tucks the bib under your chin.

You understand what you have to do, your lawyer says. They are going to ask you lots of questions.

You look to him, to the platter. You don’t know what to think.

The opposing lawyer then comes in. The person you are suing sits across from you. You look around and to the window; from which the view looking out on ExWhy City—you watch as whole sides of buildings fall away. To the east, tornadoes dance and the sky is black and the clouds lower. Abrupt and lingering lightning blasts burst forth and leave you dazed.

The opposing lawyer sits. Good morning, she says. She doesn’t look at you—but stares at an open, blood-stained file. We are here today to simply look at facts. Here to ask you questions that you can’t answer which will help us get to know your weaknesses better and hopefully ruin you.

At that point, the Deposition Waitress comes over and puts before you a huge, cooked cockroach. It smells ghastly—it’s sautéed in mushrooms, garlic and Hobo Spider Oil and there’s a little bottle of Tabasco sauce to your right.

Now, says the lawyer, we understand you’ve been a male prostitute.

Your lawyer points to the cockroach.

What? you say.

Every time they make a statement like that, you eat part of the cockroach.

But— you say.

But, says your lawyer, I spent good money on this case, and, he whispers to you, "wait till you see the shit she has to eat when I grill her."

He winks at you and you get it, what she’ll end up eating, but for right now, you have to eat the cockroach. You take a stab at it; the sauce, permeating the cockroach, has the consistency of hot snot as it squirts in your face. You close your eyes knowing that if you look, you’ll gag—

We also read your files and we understand that you had sex with a goat, is that correct?

Your lawyer points. Eat.

You try to take another bite, you pick a leg and it’s maybe a little better.

Your lawyer says, Hearsay evidence. Whether or not my client had sex with a goat is not relevant.

You cannot fathom where the opposing sides got this information on you.

Would your client like to tell us about your previous life? The one where you were sentenced to hang as an ax murderer?

Your lawyer points. You eat the antenna but it tastes horrid. You spit it out—

No, no, he says. Gotta swallow it.

You try, but gag.

You wipe tears away from your eyes. You watch distant mountains burst in volcanic fury, you watch the freeway shudder from the subsequent earthquake—you can’t believe that trying to get someone to take responsibility for torching your house in front of 700 people, 500 of whom videotaped it and said they’d witness for you—could be so hard.

And it goes on. After six hours of horror designed to make you look like an insect, the day is over. Then your lawyer says, OK, the preliminaries are over. Now they’ll really begin tomorrow. You are horror struck. What will you have to endure tomorrow? Your lawyer notices your pain. Don’t forget, you get to watch what the defendant has to eat on Wednesday— and he grins. And all the Tabasco sauce in the world can’t make it better. He laughs. Consider yourself fortunate.

You truly hope he’s right. But just to be on the safe side, you make a note to yourself: Sneak in early Wednesday, steal Tabasco sauce.

Irritations*

v~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~v

*(With a smile, wink and a nod to Major Aranda’s Hand by Alfonso Reyes)

^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^

It was going well for Edward until his left arm fell off. Happily, he noted, he was drinking his SkcubRats coffee out of his right hand. Would have been a shame to waste a $3.50 double shot latte grande. He got up, picking up his arm. Had this drink not been on special, it would have been $4.25. Count your blessings, he thought.

Taking his left arm in hand, as they say, he went to the local BardTells Drugstore and seeing a clerk, sought help.

S’cuse me, he said to the tall Afro American. He wore a name badge; under the red painted letters on the top of the border of the name badge, (Hello, I’m Here to help you—my name is) there was written in black ink, Stanford and below that in bright red letters, the lower part of the badge read, Since 1899, Serving The Greater CeeAtull area.

The fellow, barrel chested, wearing a bright green sweater that looked just a tad too small, had keen blue eyes.

Edward, standing there clutching arm in hand, had the sense that he was under a microscope; he abruptly remembered a line from a T.S. Eliot poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase—

The clerk frowned. You’re dissociating on me, he said. I don’t like customers who dissociate on me.

Oh, sorry, said Edward. He lifted his left arm as if an explanation. Is that what it is?

Yes, he said. Now, can I help you find something or not? You’re talking to a guy with a full bladder here.

How soft the voice, thought Edward. Didn’t expect that.

Yes, Edward said and thought for a moment. Anything else I need? Cat litter for Cat-Thulu, his tuxedo cat with the strange intense eyes that gave him the creeps. He started to remember how he found Cat-Thulu outside in the parking lot at the local horror convention, KingCon but decided that he was probably dissociating again, and voluntarily returned to the here and now, to keep things simple.

He smiled at the clerk, looking at him expectantly. I think I need arm glue.

The clerk glanced to his watch as if this whole thing was really crowding in on his bathroom and/or lunch break. Might want to check in the toy section for model airplane glue. Might have something there. If not, Pharmacy might be of help to you. Stanford began to discreetly back away. Anything else you need? We have specials on dried peaches and organic dried apricots. Road Kill brand bananas.

No, said Edward, suddenly curious as to what an organically dried apricot might look like. Thanks. Have a good day.

He went to the model section, but the