Edited by Tara Campbell and Chris Gonzalez
Our funkiest issue everl
Read MorePapermoon Diner, photo by Tara Campbell
Funky Flash
Dear Reader, by Tara Campbell and Christopher Gonzalez
Papermoon Diner, photo by Tara Campbell
Dear Reader:
When we posted a call for “Funky Flash” submissions, we threw out some loose guidelines—and our eager, open palms—and waited for your wonderful surprises. “Give us your unique,” we said, “your unusual, your hard-to-place flash stories yearning to be read.” We were interested in hermit-crab style pieces, we wanted to see experimentation in form, and we wanted voices that were strong and confident, if not completely absurd.
And did we ever get it.
Over one weekend, we received 542 submissions in response to our call, nearly all of them including two flashes. This certainly made the job of picking just ten for publication a difficult one, but it’s a challenge we were delighted to meet.
We present to you our Funky Flash online issue of 2020. May these stories excite you as much as they did us with all their funky glory!
Keep it weird,
Tara Campbell and Chris Gonzalez
Barrelhouse Fiction Editors and Wonder Twins
The Manual for a Boy's First Grill, by Derek Andersen
IMPORTANT
Read this manual carefully before assembling. Or don’t—your funeral. If you have any questions about assembly, operation, or repair, call 1-800-835-6765.
*Propane cylinder not included
I. Grill Features
When you awoke this morning, you were a boy. But tonight you’ll retire to your racecar bed a grown-ass man with hair on his chest. Assuming you don’t singe it off first ha ha.
For just as Prometheus passed fire down to man, so do the Granger fathers pass Coleman grills to their sons. Ours is a proud tradition—a rich, red bloodline with an insatiable hunger for cured meats.
Kiddo, I’ll tell you the same thing my father told me and his father told him, and so on and so on, all through the generations: “Fetch me a beer—we’ve got work to do.”
II. Safety Warnings
DANGER
Grill is hot when in use. No shit. Hey, what the hell is this? A “Truly”? I told you to get me beer.
Do not store in the vicinity of flammable liquids and vapors, yadda yadda
Do not leave grill unattended while in use. Ha, my pops could’ve learned a thing or two from this. Most nights, he was a six-pack deep when he finally got the ol’ Coleman fired up. Then he’d throw on a few dogs and pass out in his deck chair. The man snored like a damn cartoon character. I, the curious little shit that I was, would creep over and lift the lid. I’d watch, hypnotized as the flesh of the dogs blackened and bubbled. I can’t explain it, but there was something beautiful about the blueness of the flames. They beckoned to me like, uh, one of those Greek chicks on the islands. The ones that sang to sailors? Yeah, a Siren—that’s it. Somehow, even at that age, I knew they would take everything from me.
III. Start-Up Checklist
Regularly check the burner venturi tube for blockage from insect nests.
Check that the burner tube [A] is set over the regulator outlet [B] correctly. The orifice [C] must be inside the venturi.
Ensure that your son [D] has a cold beer [E] in his left hand [F].
What can I get you? Bud, Miller, Stella? Come on, I won’t tell your mother. I don’t think you understand—a Granger man cannot physically grill without a beer in his hand. It’s science.
Whoa, where’d a sweet boy like you learn such an ugly word? There are no “alcoholics” in this family. Only beer drinkers. Here, have a sip.
IV. Attaching the Propane Cylinder
All gas cylinders used with this appliance shall be constructed in accordance with the specifications of the U.S. Department of blah blah blah…
Enough foreplay. You got the propane tank? Good. Do you see [A] anywhere? Now, just pop it in there. No, you gotta twist—
Like I’m twisting the definition of “alcoholism”? Fine, let’s fire up WebMD and settle this:
Individual uses alcohol in higher amounts or for a longer time than originally intended. Pfft, comical. A Granger drinks exactly as much as he means to. No more, no less.
Individual uses alcohol in physically dangerous situations, such as driving or operating heavy machinery. Sorry to break it to you, kiddo, but this bitch-ass camping grill doesn’t make the cut.
Individual is unable to fulfill major obligations at home, work, or school because of alcohol use. I may have been a little buzzed at a parent-teacher conference or two. But I didn’t miss ’em. Showing up is half the battle, as they say.
Individual continues to abuse alcohol despite interpersonal or social problems that are likely due to alcohol use. Alright, I admit it: I had a Mike’s Hard too many at that Cub Scout retreat. But you gotta understand, kiddo—it was just an innocent remark. I didn’t know it was gonna cause a chain reaction. And I sure as shit didn’t know that chain reaction would end with what’s-his-name poking his eye out with a marshmallow skewer.
V. Igniting the Flame
Open regulator valve and push repeatedly until burner lights.
2. Adjust the flame with regulator valve. See, you want the flames to look like this. Mostly blue, just a touch of yellow at the tips. Same color as the flames that swallowed your grandpop.
He used to work over at Magnolia and Augusta. In those days, it was a warehouse. Or a tinderbox, depending on who you asked. They stocked lumber, big pallets of matchbooks, and—you guessed it—propane tanks. Your grandpa was a forklift operator, and, on that fateful Thursday evening, he fucked up.
Drunk on the job? Hell no. That wouldn’t have been an issue. Problem was, he was sober.
See, every six months or so he’d have some kind of scare—his eyes would turn yellow, he’d nick himself with a butcher knife, or he’d wake up ass-naked on a golf course somewhere. Then he’d dump all his liquor down the kitchen sink. But while he was “drying out,” he’d get horrible tremors. I can still see those hands—those bony knuckles, those long blue veins—struggling with the laces of his work boots.
On the night of the accident, I watched from our back deck, mesmerized as the blue flames crested the tree line. It looked like, uh, whatchamacall it? Aurora Borealis. But the midwestern version. As a cold wind cut through me, I closed my eyes and wished for one more whiskey belch, one more noogie, one more too-charred kielbasa.
Derek Andersen is an Illinois Wesleyan alum working as a copywriter in Chicago. His stories and poems have appeared in Columbia Journal, The Emerson Review, WinningWriters.com, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter @DerekJAnd.
Jenny Watches the Exorcist, by Emma Stough
in her sleepless room with the shades drawn and a bowlful of neon peach rings. Blue TV light is radioactive, but after years of exposure, Jenny’s skin has grown a thick, radio-proof layer. It is gummy to the touch.
Jenny remembers sleep like a matchstick remembers flame: quick and devastating.
The archeological dig at the beginning of The Exorcist is the scariest part of the movie because every single cast member was buried alive. Well—wrong film.
The archeological dig at the beginning of The Exorcist is the scariest part of the movie because of that stone creature and how it seems, at first glance, to be more or less the height of a real man. It even has the eyes of a real man. And the priest—future exorcist—sweaty, covered in sand and dirt, squares up to face the stone devil, foolishly, briefly, looking right into the dead stone eyes.
And in the background: Big red ball sun. Is this about to be an all-American baseball movie?
Jenny likes creature features. As a kid she made a miniature cardboard town and collected ants from the sidewalk for population; they stomped through cardboard streets, monsters of her own making.
Jenny puts the peach rings on like real rings and she is engaged ten times over. The TV light bleeds out from its square confines in squiggly blue waves. Pulsing against her gummy skin.
Conceivably, every actor in The Exorcist is a real actor, and so the mom, playing an actress within the film, is doing a double-excellent acting job. That’s twice the acting.
Jenny tried to make movies with her ants, but their unions were resistant, their demands too many. She spent hours—unending, dreamless—planted on her stomach, watching their brazen descent from cardboard to carpet to wall to the tips of her fingers, up her arm. Who is your God? she asked as they disappeared beneath her shirtsleeve. Have you no devil to fear?
Jenny’s observations:
Little girls born in America are well-mannered (prior to possession).
The American medical system is full of guys who are totally willing to do a bunch of complicated procedures on a child who says “cunt” to them repeatedly.
Is this film about parenting, the devil, or both?
Everyone has all the same diseases: Insomnia, possession, indoctrination, childhood.
Possession is a bureaucratic process in the Catholic church.
Exorcism, like sleep, is scary, cold, and unfamiliar.
Jenny is out of peach rings and there lies the priest at the bottom of the stairs, concrete blooded beneath him.
A picture of Jenny’s childhood home: two-story blue-sided. Three steps leading to front porch, three flowerpots on the right, three flowerpots on the left. Easy and familiar shapes. Inside, the shadows of things, the quick black dart of whatever unfelt memory, the slow march of ants from her bedroom out into the house.
Jenny thinks the picture of the house is a prison in which her good sleep is jailed. She thinks if she walked up the steps, crossed the threshold, creeped up the stairs, pried open the bedroom door: she would find herself asleep, unbothered, blue with rest.
At the end of the film, Regan, good as new, waltzes out of the house in matching hat and coat, and her mother is telling the only not-dead priest that her daughter doesn’t remember anything, anything at all.
Jenny thinks forgetting is more complicated than that. What out-of-body experience—especially one so biblical—doesn’t leave a stain?
Jenny is also run-out-of-her-body: Where there might be rest, a chasm (where there might be a soul, the devil). Some girls are happiest in shade-drawn bedrooms, made up of their own undoing.
What Jenny thinks the epilogue looks like:
Regan returns to California and gets a horse just like her mom promised and the sun yo-yos up and down in its regular yellow and orange and pink and it seems like things are going just like they should, just like childhood, but somewhere between the school dances and family vacations and quiet moments reading next to a window, Regan feels something inexplicable rapping down deep inside, pinching at the shape of her inner-self, the cluster of organs keeping her alive; and though she doesn’t remember peeing unselfconsciously on the floor in front of party guests, doesn’t remember scurrying down the stairs backwards, spider-like, doesn’t remember her head rotating impossibly in full 360s, she still feels sometimes, if only briefly, a sluice of the old voiceless pain, something like being rinsed over—silently, brutally, constantly—in a thin coat of blue paint.
Emma Stough is a Midwestern writer with work out or forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Third Coast, Pidgeonholes, and Foglifter.
The Day When Nothing Happened, by Leigh Raper
August 3 is most well known in the United States as The Day When Nothing Happened. In the United Kingdom and the European Union and parts of Eastern Europe, it is also known as Nothing Day. The Day has never been recognized for unique remembrance in Canada, as it has never been determined to be remarkable.
Contents
1. Origin
1.1 Events of the Day
1.2 Discovery
2. Related Research
3. Celebrations & Expansion
4. References
Origin
The Day When Nothing Happened was first experienced by Alexandra Newcombe of Northvale, New Jersey. At the time, Ms. Newcombe was a county clerk in Bergen County Clerk’s Office located in Hackensack, New Jersey.
On the morning of the first The Day When Nothing Happened, Ms. Newcombe arrived at her office without encountering any traffic, construction, or auto accidents during her commute. She parked in her assigned spot and rode an empty elevator to the fifth floor. Ms. Newcombe began her workday as usual, expecting to receive multiple requests, via email and phone, from co-workers in the Clerk’s office, other county employees, and residents of Bergen County. By lunchtime, Ms. Newcombe noticed that she was receiving no requests at all. Also, significantly for County Clerks in New Jersey, she was not receiving any complaints. While Ms. Newcombe’s job primarily involved the processing and recording of marriage licenses for Bergen County, she also handled a significant number of constituent complaints related to not just marriage licenses but also real estate transactions and permits for parties.1 The day before she had resolved two expedited service requests for marriage licenses and processed an appeal for the denial of a permit for a food truck rodeo in Hackensack. On August 3rd, there were no complaints to process and no appeals to review. Her email inbox was empty. She sent a message to the County Information
Technology coordinator, D’Wayne Anderson. Anderson replied an hour later: “All good. Working fine.” Newcombe hit refresh multiple times and still no email appeared. She decided to check in with her colleagues in the Clerk’s office. Finding only empty desks, she remembered that the other clerk was at a training session in Trenton and that their boss, the County Clerk himself, was on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland. This meant that on that day, August 3rd, Alexandra Newcombe was the only clerk on duty, the only clerk at all, in Bergen County, New Jersey.
Lunchtime on The Day That Nothing Happened saw Ms. Newcombe alone in the breakroom with the tuna salad sandwich she had brought from home. She had a zip-loc of red grapes and another with baby carrots. She emptied a package of Pink Lemonade Crystal Lite into her New York Giants water bottle.2
During her forty-five minute break, she read three chapters of a thriller novel and flipped through an old copy of People Magazine.
After lunch, Ms. Newcombe continued to monitor her email and inbox, having a brief interruption when Vinny Ragazzi rolled through the office with his mail cart. Mr. Ragazzi tossed a bundle held together with a rubber band onto her desk. The smaller than usual stack revealed no official Bergen County business, just a mass mailer advertising solar panel installation, and an office supply catalogue from Staples.
At 5:30 PM, Ms. Newcombe turned off her task lamp, retrieved her lunch bag from the refrigerator in the break room, and unlocked the empty drawer in her desk where she stowed her purse during the day.
She left her office, rode alone in the elevator to the ground floor, and stepped into the late afternoon sun.
Ms. Newcombe’s car was warm, but not hot. She opened the windows and enjoyed a pleasant breeze. On the ride home, she listened to a true crime podcast. At home she let the dog out and made dinner. She and Rusty ate together in an amiable silence before settling on the couch to watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Her home phone rang once with an automated message about a tropical storm that would be arriving between 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM. At 10:00 PM Ms. Newcombe went to bed.
Discovery
The person credited with the discovery of The Day When Nothing Happened is Cynthia Ramos, an anthropology grad student who was interning at the Bergen County Clerk’s office. Cynthia wasn’t working on The Day but when she arrived at the office the following day, she asked Ms. Newcombe how it had been the day before. Ms. Ramos was shocked and intrigued by Ms. Newcombe’s recounting of August 3rd, taking copious notes. Those notes were incorporated and expanded and became the foundation for her groundbreaking thesis “The Quickening of the Ultimate Bureaucracy and Societal Authority Norms: The Day When Nothing Happened.” 3 Ms. Ramos posited that The Day occurred because Bergen County, New Jersey had reached the apex of administrative government functions when the society and its people were so conditioned to require permits and approvals that, in an irony she wasn’t entirely able to explain4, no permits or approvals were actually required.
Related Research
Since Ms. Ramos’ seminal work, other scholars have developed various theories5 to explain The Day based on workload, lack of proper supervision, or a late postal delivery. None have been conclusively proven.
Celebrations & Expansion
The first known ‘celebration’ of The Day came the following year, when Ramos and her housemates threw a Nothing Happened party. Footage from the party went viral online and within two years day-long celebrations, similar to the Burning Man festival, became commonplace.6 Now, in countries where The
Day is recognized outdoor bar-b-ques and street parties are the norm. Traditionally, hosts will serve tuna, carrots, and Pink Lemonade. For those who do have to go to work, many treat their routine tasks as optional in remembrance of Ms. Newcombe, who retired from the Bergen County Clerk’s Office in 2019 and is currently working on her memoir.
References
Role of the County Clerk: https://www.naco.org/sites/default/files/documents/Role-of-the-County-Clerk.pdf
Citation needed.
Ramos, Cynthia, “The Quickening of the Ultimate Bureaucracy and Societal Norms: The Day When Nothing Happened.”
Ibid.
McDonald, Evan, The Day When Nothing Happened For Dummies, Everyday Press 6 @SindyCation, Off The Hook Nothing Day Houseboat Rave!!! Retrieved via vine.com.
Leigh Raper writes both fiction and essays often focused on pop culture, television, or amusement parks. Her work has appeared at Atlas Obscura, mental_floss, Refinery 29, and Palm Springs Life.