Alec Mayflower and the indivisible period
Syntax Error. Variable “swelling” is not an integer. String divide by 0.
“Fuck.” Alec couldn't understand programming. It didn't make any sense. He was constantly berated by the central processing unit for errors in syntax. This isn't supposed to happen. He graduated at the top of his class with concentration on proper syntax.
Alec Mayflower slammed his forehead into the keyboard, unleashing an impressive response from the computer in regards to it's ability to decipher the split-second differences in time as it's characters were firmly pressed into their inputing positions rather than their standard embossed locations. The computer, satisfied with the order in which it read the pressed keys, revealed the input on the screen in beautifully spaced black courier font.
Awh4uif
A suffocated groan escaped the keyboard as spit and hot air filled its innards in ways it had never before experienced. This may be the moment which cheesy science fiction would jump in and the overly intelligent motherboard would soak up and merge with the deoxyribonucleic acid in the spit and the next wave of philosophical supercomputers would begin their tyrannic rule over their human rivals as masters of the earth, if only to be destroyed by the one thing they neglected: the importance love plays in everyday pseudo-life, and would wind up initiating a self-destruct sequence destroying all technology and allowing the human species to once again rise up from the depths of society to recreate it all again.
You killed it.
You bastards.
Damn you all to hell.
Alec Mayflower brought his head back to its proper above-the-shoulders alignment with little red squares indenting his forehead and leaving funny little marks. The computer did not absorb any DNA for its own malicious purposes, instead the moisture now locked in the keyboard had plans of its own. This moisture was the kind of moisture that's sole purpose in existence, now that it had left its brethren inside the mouth of 'the great salivator' , was to annoy and depress anything to come into contact with it. It was already working its magic of making the “G” key sticky. Even so, throughout all of this, it didn't make any sense. Alec, master of grammar, punctuation, and syntax, was here being beaten by the simplest of all programs. He decided it was time to give up. He threw in the towel after his first attempt at becoming computer savvy.
Damnit. This looked so much easier in The Social Network.
Alec referred of course to the critically acclaimed film in which Jesse Eisenberg portrayed boy-genius Mark Zuckerberg and his rise to billionairism with (what Alec credited everything to) a little 'wget magic'.
Alec looked at his whiteboard. It was pristine. The perfect example of what organization is capable of. Different coloured strokes marked different things, and the legend in the bottom right hand corner explained these colour choices with ease. He nodded at the perfect vocabulary choice, and his use of a semi colon. He took a moment to pause and mull over his proficiency when it came to knowledge of when and where to use 'whom'. The whiteboard was unimpressed with his condescending train of though, and decided to it keep to itself rather than warning him of a certain knowledge privy only to itself. It knew that Alec's obsession would soon become a tragic device used by the author in order to savagely destroy Alec Mayflower from the inside out. The whiteboard continued on pretending to be oblivious to all, and simply displayed the dry-erase marvel listed underneath “Get Rich Quick Schemes”.
It was obvious that Alec wanted to get rich, but had no intention of dying whilst trying. Unfortunately for him it was already made clear that this was an inevitable fact that could only be procrastinated by the overbearing power of tangent narrative and the smooth work of interesting punctuation and ironic errors within it. Alec snapped out if it by realizing something once again. It still didn't make sense. He was aggravated by the fact that he didn't understand, and as a result slammed his now back-to-pale forehead into his whiteboard with ferocity determined by plotting the graph y=xa where x equal to the force output his head was capable of dishing out, found by multiplying the mass of his skull, flesh, and muscle combination by the acceleration which which it all travelled, which in turn was discovered by dividing the velocity it moved (approximately one point three metres) by the speed at which it travelled (his skull). Regrettably as his cranium made contact with the whiteboard many brain cells short-circuited and his ability to solve this equation was lost in colourful spots dancing around his eyes.
His daze completed its cycle and he leaned back, this time with green and blue accompanying red lines from temple to temple. Greatly distraught by his now smudged perfection that was a to-do-list whiteboard, he sulked over to the washroom to clean himself off. The mirror reflected and seemed to scream back at him, “EDITOR”, which had been the only thing which transferred legibly onto his skin. Ah yes, his dream job: telling other people the correct fashion in which they should have jotted down their brilliance. He returned to the computer and attempted to check his email, being slightly irked by the fact that his G took a moment or two to return to its upward position after he filled the input box with “godofgrammer@gmail.com”. There was already a story waiting for him to edit in the inbox. Not a moment ago he decided to become an editor and somehow word had already spread. Of course it had. No one in the right mind would pass up a chance to have their story edited by THE Alec Mayflower. He opened the message, sent by “worldvsrichard@gmail.com” and began reading. It didn't make sense. Why didn't anything make sense? He continued on, a sneaking suspicion crept up his spine and gave him goosebumps. He was reading his own story, and it didn't make sense. All of his life he battled against all that which made no sense, and here it was, the story of his own being, and it didn't make sense. He slammed his head against the keyboard again, this time his body finally gave into his self-destructive nature, a loud popping sound was heard, and Alec didn't get back up. Divide by 0, input string on command: “semi colon.”
Showing posts with label works. Show all posts
Showing posts with label works. Show all posts
Alec Mayflower Short Story
Posted By World vs Richard on/at 2:37 AM
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The intricacies in the mind of Andrew the Bartender
Posted By World vs Richard on/at 9:12 AM
The intricacies in the mind of Andrew the Bartender
Andrew stood behind the bar thinking about his weight issues. These of course were all in his head, but he couldn’t help shake the feeling that ‘beer’ (the word, not necessarily the liquid version) was the main reason for his faulty thoughts. His shoes were on too tight, forcing him and him alone to believe that even his feet were getting fat. He could not understand why he was getting so fat, his water intake had increased by an average of two litres a day since his mental diet had started nearly three weeks ago. He began the diet on the recommendation of a coworker of his, a server named Ashley who had enough troubles of her own being filled with thoughts of nails stuck into her back three ribs at all times. Andrew placed a lemon in a nicely iced water and watched it float around for a bit and wondered about things such as how argyle socks would work as filters. The canopy outside the bar was already being sat by the clueless hostess, who at the time believed that A. there was a table out there, and B. that there was someone working that section. She was hired on the assumption she was decent at customer service, regardless of her having no prior pub experience. The rest of the workers in the bar all knew it was because she had brought a peanut buster parfait in for her interview which she had prepared to give to the manager she was surely to be interviewed by. He was a blank-staring type guy, who both through his obsession with sweater-vests and man-thongs, also wore sandals to work in order to claim his position of power above his polished black leathered employee base. The author of the ongoing story of the pubs life took a break to sip at his tall glass of an overly hoppy brew, and continued on with thoughts of how the girl sitting next to him’s leg was very slightly nudging his left knee. The author was contemplating offering this girl a bottle of Canadian* beer to repay her for the kind nudging, she however was oblivious that any of this was happening, and very unaware of how slight a touch could turn on a simple small town boy such as this author in such a way that he may feel the need to play superman and buy this woman a drink, accompanied by a sly wink and easy smile.
A man coughed in the background and another rushed to the bathroom surely to throw up his overly battered fish and chips (the tartar sauce was off) and would surely ruin the freshly placed urinal cakes in the gentleman’s station. Andrews eyes floated upwards to watch a very depressingly atrocious game of darts being played by two eighteen year olds who each had no idea how to play the real game, but were simply playing ‘for drinks’ and getting much to inebriated in the process. He hated his life. Andrew felt as though this is all he knew and all he would know. The dreams of running some sort of sex hut that he conjured up in junior high were all but gone, there was no way he was ever going to get laid, whether he owned a sex hut or not. It was his hairy fat toes, he knew it. Damn it. If only he had more confidence, it was this realization of a lack of confidence that actually shattered what little confidence he actually had. There was no way he was ever going to amount to anything or go anywhere exciting or even be honourably mentioned within a semi-exciting speech from an overly-excited prom queen. He was trying to pinpoint the exact moment in his life when it all went to shit. It didn’t take long, maybe three minutes of ignoring customers. It was the time he decided to eat that moldy hot dog on a bet, forcing the losing party to go to the premiere of twilight’s new moon with his best friend Sam’s little sister. He had won the bet, in a very Julius Caeser kind of way, and as the ‘et tu, Brutus’ forced the bet-man to go to the movie covered in sparkles with flour fluffed onto his face. Ah yes, his one moment of success. He thought he could revel in it for at least fifteen years, but it turns out that three was all he could muster up, because once again, he was depressed.
Normal people take normal things with a grain of salt, but no, not Andrew. He was the type of guy who would take everything with a pinch of salt, and as a result his whole life was overly saturated with salty grins and overcooked asparagus.
“This is ridiculous!” he finally screamed out in a sort of horror-fear-adrenaline combination.
“Ridiculously good?” The man at the far left side of the bar asked, motioning to his white Russian, which was in fact the most delicious one ever created in the history of mankind, but was ignored by a raging Andrew and resulted in being the most consumed white Russian of all time, and was lost for all time, inside the stomach of the man on the far left side of the bar. This man was the kind of man who looked his best when running in a trench-coat through a dimly lit street. This man was the kind of guy who could do anything he wanted at anytime, much like a movie star. This man was, David Duchovny. This fact however was also overlooked by Andrew’s raging depression and Andrew himself would have been sad to note that he had missed a chance to talk to the one and only David Duchovny, and if he had noticed this fact, he would have, quid pro quo, been even more depressed.
He bent his knees and leaned against a cooler, for exactly three point two seconds he wished he could have it easy. It of course being life. And easy of course being the kind of life similar to that of roadkill. He stood back up to get another extra hoppy beer for one of his patrons, only to spill it onto his pants, sigh heavily, and pour another. He hopped up and down and flung his hands obsoletely at his pants, hoping it would help dry them and keep them from getting that odd sticky yet coarse feeling of dried beer on non-denim pants, but instead only managed in appearing like a clown to his customers, which resulted in the throwing of many citrus wedges, such as lemons and limes in his general direction.
Andrew did the only thing he could do in this situation. In order to not anger all of his guests and lose all possible tips from them, rather than yell and do copious amounts of random stomping around, he popped a few pieces of bubblicious and began chewing uncontrollably, he had that feeling where his ears were hot, he could hardly believe that this job could get him this angry, he had only been this angry once before, he felt like turning green and smashing all the glasses in the pub, he wanted to rip the building out of its place and hurl it towards the sun. His ears only got hot when his face was beyond red, when it was chilli pepper hot, when it was (to be politically incorrect), ‘indian’. His eyes fell upon one last yet new member to the pub, it was his replacement.
“Don’t panic,” The man said, “Your shift’s over.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope you made it this far down the page, I know reading that may have been difficult. it was a writing exercise done between me and Andrew the bartender. I was sitting at the bar, and every time he walked by he would say a random word, and i would have to incorporate it in some way. sometimes I would have two to work with at a time and it was very hard to make anything happen with so this is how it turned out.
Richard.
Word list(that i can remember) in order :
Beer
fat
water
ashley
argyle socks
canopy
pub
peanut buster parfait
man-thongs
superman
urinal cakes
darts
sex hut
moldy hot dog
Sam's little sister
Ridiculously good
David Duchovny
cooler
roadkill
clown
copious
bubblicious
don't panic
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The Almost Adventures of Danica Brister (Prologue)
Posted By World vs Richard on/at 2:45 AM
Along with approximately ninety percent of her depressing Death Valley high school classmates and about the same percentage of emotional American teenagers across the country, Danica spent most of her time thinking about death and new ways of being antisocial. This particular morning as she pulled up her left knee high black-and-white striped sock and reached for her black converse high tops she was thinking about the only two living beings she actually socialized with face to face: an old mutt she had named Rip which she had received as a hopeless Christmas present from her parents in an attempt to get her out of this ‘goth’ phase and a cute (though she would never admit it was) squirrel which sat perched upon a tombstone she had bought off the internet with her name inscribed on it every morning to listen to her grumble “good morning” to it, before scurrying off to tend to regular squirrel business, such as running into traffic. Her walk to school included passing by such stores as “Death Valley Coffee Co.”, “Death Valley Florist Shoppe”, and one of many Death Valley graveyards. All this death constantly surrounding her, yet she had the unfortunate luck of never getting to experience any of it. She shrugged her Eek! The cat backpack up further over her shoulder and thought about making a blog to post her poetry on. The thought tickled her in such a way that people may be able to see her ‘pink’ pigments shine through her angel-food makeup and she quickly whipped out a small mirror and cover-up to ensure her pasty white skin remained that way. Hardly holding in the excitement to stroke her ego a little, she pulled what used to be a tinkerbell notebook (she had torn the cover off just after the seventh grade) out of her backpack to read her favourite:
Death.
As I enter
The forsaken world,
All around me lies
Lies.
Take me away, River
Of souls
Take me away,
To a place no one knows
She was especially proud of the rhyme in the closing line and thought about the blog some more, which resulted in another flick of the wrist to reopen her mirror.
She stopped two steps short of the door to the school, sighed heavily allowing her slouch to achieve the new perfect posture, and put on the gloomiest expression she could muster up. She reached for the door as it was kicked open from the other side by Josh, a tenth grade jock with too much energy for eight fifty am. She fell back but managed to keep her footing and just stared at the door that seemed to be on a teeter totter. Josh exploded with an extremely heart-felt “oh shit, I’m sorry dude.” And continued on his merry way, talking to his ‘bro’ about a field goal made last night by Death Valley’s own Ryan McAllen of the Denver Broncos. Danica patted her eyebrow with her two most prominent fingers as blood began to drip from her nose, the eyebrow was cut, although not severely. She leaned backward to achieve a few drops of blood to spatter onto her white uniform and smiled at her cleverness when it came to non-conformity. After she decided she looked just disgusting enough she reached into her backpack to retrieve the tissue paper her mom always packed ‘just in case’ she ever needed to blow her nose in public. Yeah right, As if she would ever let anyone see her do such an embarrassing thing. She tore a piece off and stuck it to her eyebrow, and rolled the rest of it into her nostril to assist in stopping the bleed, that’s when the pain sank in. It is only at these moments that this sort of teenager ever contemplates not dying, for fear of any pain associated with it whatsoever (also probably the leading reason why pills are so hot right now for teen suicide). She winced and grimaced and wished it all to go away, but there was no quick fix. As any over-reacting teenage girl would, she firmly believed her nose had been broken and she would be disfigured for life. She contemplated whether or not it would be worth it to just skip school and hang out in her garage with the door half open and the car on for half an hour as a statement. But, deciding that walking back was too big a hassle she decided to enter the building, go to the washroom, turn on all the taps, and head to class. Yeah, that ought to show ‘em. Her homeroom erupted with even more silence than usual as she entered the room, everyone avoiding eye contact, but sitting close enough to each other to symbolize who was cool in their books. Four goth kids that she never bothered learning the names of sat in the back corner clearly saving an unconformist chair for her, next to them sat two emo-cases who were sharing an iPod’s white earbuds and clearly listening to some ‘retro’ band that really ‘meant something’ such as Yellowcard, and next to them was three girls texting on their phones; Ashley, Mallory, and Still-thinks-pig-tails-are-cool girl. Danica and Ashley went way back, but it was the same sad case as every ‘way back’ relationship goes when high school hits. Danica wasn’t fretting it though, she figured they could totally have a ‘getting back together by getting shitfaced together in freshman year’ night when they were done high school. In front of all of these crews sat a bunch of sparkling ‘vampires’ in single horizontal file, they all were acting as if they could smell into the blood of the person sitting in front of them, who each were people Danica had no interest in whatsoever. The rest of the class Danica even cared less about so didn’t even acknowledge their presence. She slumped down on her saved seat and waited for the roll call to be over, oh GOD did she hate having to say ‘here’ when Danica Brister was called out, seriously they were all 16 year-old kids, (practically adults) why on earth do they still have to be treated like children and raise their hands to let their teacher know that yes, they had shown up to school like a big girl. Oh well, she had one thing to look forward to today, they were doing the cliché dissection of a frog in biology, yes, a real dead animal; needless to say she was pumped. She quickly checked the mirror to see if it had shown.
School was a bust, due to some loser’s overly-politically-correct mom, they didn’t get to dissect anything, but instead watch a video of the half-life of some disgusting amoeba under some random scientist’s microscope, not to mention no one seemed to acknowledge the dried blood stains on her white button-up, not even the nosey vampires. She felt like she was living a half-life herself and felt like yelling at homeless people. She was really getting good at this whole being an awful person thing. She decided to stop at the Death Valley Coffee Shop and grab a medium roast. She scoffed at having to stand behind two people in line, who she eavesdropped on and learned that someone had gotten hit by a train today, yet unfortunately for Danica, miraculously survived. She got her coffee, and knowing that everyone sitting in the shop was staring at her, took it black (for effect) and went to sit in the most dimly lit corner. She removed a Kurt Vonnegut novel from her backpack which she overheard someone say had a lot of needless killing in it and placed it upside and opened as if she was half done reading it. She then took out her sketch/poetry book and being thinking about things that rhymed nicely with intestines. She took a sip of her coffee and closed her eyes tightly as the bitterness hit her, she hated the taste but felt like she couldn’t sweeten it without ruining her image and everyone would think she was a poser. She wasn’t. She was the real deal. Danica Brister: the crazed loner depressed individualist.
As I crawl into bed
And hope never to awaken
All that comes is tears
And a black sheep
Close eyes
Darkness fades.
She took the final revolting sip of her coffee and exited the shop to head home, only another two blocks. Danica wondered if things were ever going to go her way, and had a semi-growing-up moment where she almost realized that things just don’t fall in your lap if you sit in your room and grope all day and night. She almost decided to go out, meet someone, or try something new, but then settled on ‘fuck that’ and returned home to youtube political riots from times past.
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