Caffeine Fueled Revelation Machines

Caffeine Fueled

Revelation Machines

short stories

By

R. Daniel Lester

Smashwords Edition

*

Published By:

R. Daniel Lester on Smashwords

Caffeine Fueled Revelation Machines

Copyright © 2012 by R. Daniel Lester

Cover Design By:

Dave Rogers Design

*

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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

We Played With Guns

The Butterfly Question

Decaying Orbits

Pets

Blue Sky

Emerald City Days/Nights

Lunch With Harriet

Hold, Please

Stanley

The Script Sucks but the Special Effects Are Killer

Caffeine-Fueled Revelation Machines

I Saw Santa Kissing a Windshield

Best Before…1985

New Earth

Excavating Jimmy

Reality Television is Dead

Also by R. Daniel Lester

WE PLAYED WITH GUNS

YOU KILLED ME ON A SUMMER AFTERNOON IN JULY. Your mom was a teacher at the annual summer arts camp too, so three weeks out of the year we were best friends (petty thieves). Sugar cubes mysteriously disappeared, as did quarters from the pay-by-donation cup on the dance faculty coffee table. We quietly snuck the liberated coins into the belly of the hallway vending machine and in return received icy bottles of Coca-Cola, which we escaped from the building with, creeping to avoid the telling squeak of sneaker soles against linoleum.

Once safe from enemy eyes (ensconced in a glade behind the tennis courts), we kicked the heads off dandelions, and lowered sticky sugar cubes down the necks of the pop bottles, taking long, purposeful swigs, our teeth clicking delicately against the glass. That day, the sky was so blue it went on forever. And so did our lives, the ones stretched out before us like an endless all-you-can-eat buffet.

And then you showed me the gun (your right hand).

Flesh and bone stripped down to the bare essentials.

Thumb cocked.

Index finger a loaded barrel.

The whisper trigger as you slayed monsters in the surrounding trees before turning the gun on me, smiling victorious through fingernail cross-hairs.

Call it innate.

Call it learned.

Call it advertising.

Whatever it was, you were shooting to kill.

Me, I was just beginning to understand how to die.

bang

bang

bang

And I felt the grass against the back of my legs (warm, itchy) as I crumpled dramatically to the ground (head shot), vengeful laughter of decapitated dandelion heads ringing in my ears.

THE BUTTERFLY QUESTION

A son shows a father a dead butterfly that he found in the backyard and asks why butterflies die.

It is a hot summer day, but all of a sudden, to the father, the temperature seems even higher, and the air is becoming dense and uncomfortable.

He is sweating. His collar is tight.

This is everything he’s been scared of/waiting for since the cutest little poop factory in the world learned to speak. He stares down at his little boy, his little man, and can’t help but wonder where the hell his wife is. He thinks about all the sons holding up dead butterflies right now. All the fathers saying just the right thing, conducting just the perfect life lesson.

And if only the question had been Why is the sky blue? because that one he actually researched. But the butterfly one is right out of left field and the father freezes up.

As, in his head, summer turns to fall turns to winter.

His vocal chords ice over.

His tongue goes numb.

His lips turn blue.

Glaciers form in the corners of his mind making it even harder to think.

But time moves on and winter begets spring.

The glaciers begin to thaw and he might have the beginning of a sentence in mind, so, in an attempt to regain his composure and do some serious thinking, the father sits cross-legged on the floor, putting his back to the kitchen cupboards for support.

The son places the dead butterfly on the father’s knee for decoration, for inspiration.

The father had hoped being on his son’s level would help him arrive at an answer, but it doesn’t. He imagines himself not moving for days, unable to summon the words, the energy.

Weeks go by as he sits on the kitchen floor.

Months pass and he grows a beard of dust.

His wife and son attempt to coax him from his mental prison with hugs and tears and chocolate cake, but after a while he just becomes the guy on the kitchen floor.

They step over him to get to the cereal bowls.

They drape wet dishtowels on him to dry.

But he doesn’t blame them. Indifference is inevitable.

Still, he doesn’t move because he doesn’t know yet what to tell his son.

And life moves on.

The son grows up. Goes on his first date. Graduates from high school. Enters university, studying to be an entomologist. The son couldn't get a good enough answer about the dead butterfly, so he had to seek outside assistance, substitute fathers. The son visits whenever he can (which isn’t very often) and brings more dead butterflies. He arranges them on the father’s knee like he did with the first one.

Eventually, all the butterflies turn to stone and so does the father.

And life moves on.

The house gets sold when his ex-wife moves to Palm Springs with her tennis pro boyfriend (who is very tanned and dyes his hair), and the new owners move the strange statue out to the garden. Their friends come over and set drinks on the father during backyard barbeques.

And life moves on.

Winter.

Spring.

Summer.

Fall.

Winter.

Spring.

Summer.

Fall.

Butterflies land on him, mocking him for losing everything.

Bugs run loose underneath him.

Moss collects in his crevices.

And time takes its toll.

His ears are the first to erode, then the nose. Seasons of west coast rain slowly turn him into an anonymous lump of garden rock.

In the kitchen, the son sits down beside his father.

Dad, you okay? asks the son.

Yes, I’m okay, says the father, snapping out of the daydream.

That’s good, says the son.

Where’s the butterfly? asks the father.

I threw it away because it was bothering you, says the son.

Oh, says the father.

Adults are pretty funny, says the son.

Why? asks the father.

They think so much, says the son.

We just want to say the right thing, says the father.

I think I figured out why butterflies die, says the son.

You did? asks the father.

Maybe it is because they are fragile like grandmas, says the son.

And the father can’t argue with this, no, not at all. He nods and pats his son on the knee. Then he gets up. He pours two big glasses of milk. He makes two peanut butter and jam sandwiches, one with the crusts removed. And then they eat the sandwiches and drink the milk, surrounded by life and death and everything in-between.

DECAYING ORBITS

SIPPING HIS BEER, getting third pint philosophical, he says, You know what?

Already third pint horny, she says, No, what?

I’ve never broken up with a chick.

Well, you shouldn’t be dating livestock, plain and simple.

Ha ha. You know what I mean.

I guess, she says, twirling her beer glass around around around, then lifting it to reveal a perfect circle of condensation. A beer moon orbiting a saltshaker planet in a bar table galaxy in an Irish pub universe. Never? she asks.

Nope, never, he says, shaking his head. Explaining he’s always been the one decided upon, ruled upon. A marionette with a heartstring and a good victim face.

Let’s see it, she says.

So he shows her.

And she has to admit it is a pretty darn good victim face.

Loading up a pile of ketchup with a French fry somewhere in there, he tells her that another thing that's never happened to him is that he's never been crapped on by a bird even though he walks around outside a lot. Like, a lot, he says, eating, squinting, eyes like neighbouring deep-water wells.

Wells she would gladly climb in for one minute running her fingers through his thick, wavy hair.

One suck of his moist tongue.

One—

About the bird thing.

Huh?

And he is smirking at her.

And on her cheeks is a solar flare of embarrassment that passes as quickly as it arrives.

Pray tell, space traveler, where did you go? he asks.

Nowhere, she says.

Sure?

Sure. So, what were you saying?

Getting shit on.

Oh, right.

It seems to me that I might be past due, he says, licking ketchup off an index finger, its ragged nail bitten down to the fleshy quick.

Really?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Honestly, I'm getting a bit concerned.

She considers this. And then, not sure if it’s more of a question or a statement, she says, Falling stuff really bothers you.

He seems to take it as neither as he tells her not to even get him started on space debris. As he says, Goddamn satellites, as if one had mistreated him personally.

And then he is continuing on, hands flapping, eyes blinking, telling her of stellar garbage dumps and covert shuttle launches. About how he’d never want to live on the moon but Mars could be fun, you know, if NASA would get their fingers out of their collective asses and admit it had been colonized and supporting human life since the early 1980s.

Or something like that.

Actually, she loses focus early on in the fourth pint rant because she’s too busy witnessing their possible future dying in the stifling heat of his sun.

She understands now.

They should/could/would never be together.

All she'd ever be is an inventory clerk for his neuroses.

Sponge for his spill.

Sobering slightly, she wipes a black hole palm through the beer moon.

She relocates the saltshaker planet into another galaxy.

She reminds herself there are a lot of other stars in the solar system.

Then she looks away from him, gazing up towards the ceiling, an amateur astrologist hoping to glean some cosmic truths from the vast cigarette smoke stain nebula.

Unfortunately, she discovers nothing of any note.

PETS

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a dust bunny under Benny’s bed that he couldn’t get rid