All posts in 30 Days Fiction

Danarchy we called him – he told us to call him. He was missing the the top half of his left index finger. It made it so when he flashed the rock/devil/horns with that hand his pinky and index finger were exactly the same height. He considered this a perk. His finger had been chopped off just below the nail by some event known only to him. You could ask him what happened, and he’d be happy to tell you – problem is every time he’d tell the story it was completely different. A rat bit it off in his sleep one night, a shop instructor made an example out of him, a friend started a car while he was reaching into the engine to dislodge something, your girlfriend’s pussy was too tight and snapped it right off. Without ever meeting the guy you could just make something up and you’d have as good an idea as any of us who knew him for years. The finger was the most obvious, but now that I think about it pretty much the same thing applied to everything else about him too.

Marco Stevenson is responsible for pretty much every terrorist logo you’ve seen in the last 30 years. When it comes down to it, there’s just no one better at branding oppressive revolutions. The iconic crossed AKs? His idea. Solid black fields on flags? All him. Put it this way, if you want a fist of a pair of swords as part of your identity you’d be an amateur to consider talking to anyone else.  He’s the best, and he knows it so don’t expect anything but top shelf prices. But really, what else are you going to do? You can’t half ass the public face of a terrorist organization, and the logo is the thing everyone will be expected, if not forced, to rally around. If it looks like crap that’s going to be a hard(er) sell. And what message does that send? If you take the cheap road with your own branding, what does that say about your faith in your message? It doesn’t say a lot I’ll tell you that. If you want people to blow them selves up on your behalf they can’t have any question about your commitment, and the seed of that feeling should be planted the first time they see your logo. You know I’m right about this one. Talk to Marco, he’ll hook you up. But don’t forget to bring cash, unmarked, big bills. Trust me on this one.

“You can come in if you want, but don’t look anyone in the eye and if I say ‘go’ run for the door.”

We were on the way to school and Casey said he needed to pick something up – I’d assumed he meant at the store and didn’t think twice about it. When we pulled into that run down apartment complex off 43rd street I got more curious and asked what was up.

“I’ll tell you, but only if you can loan me a few bucks.”
“Um… OK? What do you need?”
“How much do you have? I need all of it.”
“I’m gonna need some more details here…”

“OK, I’m buying drugs. Specifically, some acid for Amy’s camping trip this weekend, I don’t know how many people are going so I’m buying whatever I can. I’ll pay you back next week I swear.”

I gave Casey the $40 I had and declined to go in with him. He was out of the car and back again in 5 minutes flat.

Since I helped pay for it I told him to let me see what it looked like. I’d never actually seen acid in person. “Sure, just don’t take it out of the baggie – if you touch it you’ll get dosed”

He handed me a small ziplock sandwich bag with a small sheet of paper in it with little perforations making tiny squares, and even littler stamps with the University of Florida logo on it. “Obviously those aren’t made by the university, but some chemistry students there make it” he said, I nodded but all I could think about was how easy this would be to fake.

My friend Susannah just finihed up a 30 day project challenging herself to write fiction every day. I followed this as she was doing it and the results she experienced are similar to ones I’ve gotten myself in previous “make sure to write something everyday” experiments. I’ve written before about my struggle to write fiction, non-fiction and philosophy I can spew all day, but fiction is much harder for me. Even though I’ve actually published that was kind of a joke, though a fun one for sure. The thing is, writing fiction is something I really want to do more of and it kind of drives me a little crazy that I have such a hard time with it.

 

Recently, when talking to my friend Clayton I mentioned that no matter what crazy impossible story I tell about growing up in Florida it’s instantly belivable because it happened in Florida, and that got me thinking about Susannah’s project and I thought maybe these things might go together nicely. So I think for January, and using “This happened in Florida” as a springboard, I’m going to try it out – one short piece of fiction every day. I’m not going to restrict myself to the Florida thing but I think it’ll be good inspiration to get the ball rolling. I need to think a little about the other restrictions – Susannah’s were 100 words in 15 minutes. I plan to post these as I go on my secret blog and if something manifests itself that I’m especially happy with perhaps I’ll post that elsewhere as well.