Cannibal Feast, vol.5

Alright, this has been a long break. I have no proper reasons, only excuses. Work, mostly, and a little bit of traveling. Draining. But that’s not the main excuse. The thing that stopped most of my “microwriting” was a rather daring idea that occurred to me in the end of October.

Long story short, I’ve cheated on my short stories with a long one.

In other words, I’ve started to write a novel, motivated by a competition that is quite likely way too ambitious for my present (i.e. zero) novel writing skills. It also had a very unreasonable deadline. Anyway, I enjoyed those fifty days of madness. But more about that later. This is not the post about what has brewed in my drawer. That will come after it will have brewed some more.

Now it’s about getting back to the short stories, and also to more regular blogging, hopefully. So what has happened other than a bout of “macrowriting?”

First, the autumn progressed, triggering more Lovecraftian inspirations.

Green cloud of needles
spewed by severed tentacles
forgotten rosehip.

And then I was off for a trip far away. You’ll soon see where, but first a chilly airport haiku.

Cubistic black skies
metal windpipes pour cold air
on your jetlagged head.

The first morning profoundly elsewhere was almost too beautiful to feel the mind-sag of a monstrous jet lag.

Flows of fiery tears
buried in ice and snow.
Bike has shifted gears
towers of concrete grow.

Any guesses as to where this could be? No? Maybe the following bit may help you then. A piece of flash fiction snatched off the toilet wall during a coffee break.

She cleansed her wand with sanitizing water. The next spell backfired into a little geyser right under her backside.

Dinners were also inspiring on that trip.

Spooning the innards
with a hearty appetite
frozen wooden waves.

By the way, I really used that spoon for innards. The large intestine of a cow, in particular, chopped up into fine pieces and served with spicy rice. Delicious, only a little rich.

In case you are still in doubt regarding the location of my November trip, this should be the ultimate hint.

When a major catastrophe (such as Godzilla-like vending machine) descends upon you, be sure to grab a free drink while you run for shelter!

No catastrophe hit during my visit, but just to be on the safe side, I went to check out the nearest place where people should gather during an earthquake. Unless the place is completely flooded like it was few weeks before I arrived.

Anyway, I was lucky to be neither shaken nor soaked and I had a nice walk there. See for yourself.

Upstart high-rise stubs
bear crowns
of metal bones.

Groping fingers
spawn white fires;
burn the clouds away!

Humble floodland skyline.

Not all days are nice though. There are also pretty bad days, such as those when you suffer from terrible hangover after a business “dinner,” thinking it can’t get much worse. But it can, it almost always can. Like it happened to a long unseen, yet still a friend of mine. He died on that day.

Footbag on a school yard, sips of cheap wine. Cyberpunk dreams. Life then, elsewhere. Only memories now, of a dead old friend.

I hope I’ll be able to write a separate post that would be a more proper good bye. Or maybe I won’t. Need to contemplate a bit first.

That’s it for now. More stuff will be coming in the next few days, I have a bit of a backlog offline. There will also be a new short story, kind of. Or more like an old story written anew, in a way that would perhaps be slightly more understandable to someone else than me, ahem. Stay tuned!