Prison Cell

“What’s your cel number?” she asked me.

This is a memory. This is a memory of the night of my downfall. I remember going to the bar with six of my friends. We all had a few bottles of beer before we went. I remember wanting to go home early because I had to work the next day but I was young. So young. I knew I’d be able to do it. And the guys that were with me wouldn’t let me leave without making fun of me.

“What’s your cel number?” she asked me.

She was just over five feet tall, dark skin, big eyes, and broad, swimmer’s shoulders. She was an athletic girl by the looks of it, possibly a gymnast. I was tall, she was short. As Avril Lavigne would say, can I make it any more obvious?

We talked for an hour, danced a few songs, and left the guys back in the club. I drove. I was drunk. We crashed. She died. Her name was Angela.

I went to jail.

That was fourteen years ago. I sustained head injuries in the crash that scrambled my memories. I only remember things by accident now, never on purpose. It’s all stream-of-consciousness with one memory sparking off another by association and almost never in a linear way.

I remember the night I killed her every time I get lost in this prison and have to ask a guard how to get back to my wing.

“What’s your cell number?” they ask me.





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The Life of the Party

I was a busy guy. I went from party to party and popped my head in the door for minutes or hours at a time before having to go somewhere else. What can I say? I was popular. I had catch-phrases and witty retorts that people came to respect, look forward to, and admire. Lines like:

“That was my nickname in high school”

and

“That’s what SHE said!”

And the ever-popular:

“Your MOM!”

People generally acknowledged that the party hadn’t started until I arrived and that the party began a downhill slide after my departure.

Now, being the life of a party stretched a person pretty thin. I was needed at several social functions every night. I felt selfish, only giving a little bit of myself to most parties and none of myself to the parties who didn’t have the foresight to book me at least a week in advance. I knew that short of cloning, I was in a fix. I didn’t want people to hate me.

The stroke of genius smacked me in the face while walking through a video store. I was browsing through titles when, in my peripheral vision, I noticed a person standing beside me. I turned to him to ask him a question. It was a cardboard cutout of Bruce Willis from the latest Die Hard movie. Startled and embarrassed, I looked around to see if anyone had seen me. No one had.

There was a button in the center of his chest that had ‘press me’ written around it. I pressed it.

“Yippee Ki-Yay” said Bruce Willis. I pressed it again. “Welcome to the party, pal!” said Bruce Willis. Someone was waiting behind me to press the button. There were people watching and tittering.

A light bulb went on above my head. My problems were solved!

I called in some favours. I went to a recording studio. I went to a photographer. I went to a sign shop. Soon, I had six laminated cardboard Duncans with buttons in the center of their chests that one could press to get one of my three hilarious copyrighted taglines.

No one needed to go without a Duncan again! No longer would I only inject an hour or less of fun into a party. Now, the party could go as long as the host wanted if they had one of my cutouts. Initially, people were confused but soon they got into it.

Demand rose.

I opened up a toll free number and a website. I became a small-business success story. With a valid credit card number, the cardboard Duncans could be couriered to anywhere on the west coast within hours.

I became the life of every party. People would say something, stumble over to my cardboard double, and press the chest button to hear me say “Your MOM!” and everyone would laugh uproariously.

A lot. I was more popular ‘on paper’ than I was in real life.

Soon, my list of invites started to dwindle. My VIP passes shrank in number. Disturbingly, I was noticing a rise in my duplicate’s popularity but a decrease in my own personal popularity. It was flattering and alarming all at the same time.

Some of my duplicates were going to places I had never been. One even attended a party at Hugh Heffner’s mansion and showed up in Us weekly the following weekend.

Last week, I had a night where I had nothing to do.

It was the first time that had happened in over three years.

In a barely disguised panic, I went onto my database and looked up the address of one of my cardboard Duncan shipping recipients. It looked like a fun party. An end-of-the-year modeling school graduation party that had previously used my doppelganger for their Halloween and Christmas functions. I got dressed the same as my duplicate and went to the party in my new Porsche after canceling the delivery of the cardboard me.

I arrived. I stepped up the steps. I rang the doorbell and adjusted my tie. I was sweating. My face didn’t feel real.

A beautiful woman answered the door. Her smile faltered when she saw me. She even looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was behind me.

“Oh.” She said. Then a fake smile lit up her face. “Well, this is a surprise! Come on in! The real Duncan! Everyone will be thrilled!”

I entered.

“The Duncan’s here everyone!” she yelled. There was a rush of expensive shoes on marble to the foyer where I was standing.

It was the worst moment of my life.

I got to see a hundred well-dressed, beautiful faces rush forward with wide smiles, look at me with a confused expression as their smiles became quizzical, and then saw their eyes glaze and their smiles falter before fake smiles snapped into place.

They were dealing with the fact that their party was going to be just another party.

I was in hell.

People started looking for their keys and making lame apologies to the host ten minutes after I showed up.

All night, I tried to be funny. At the buffet table, someone mentioned that the éclairs had a ‘hint of nougat’. Beside them, I said “That was my nickname in high school!”

They didn’t laugh. I heard the woman whisper to her boyfriend, “It’s better when the other Duncan does it.”

I started drinking. I remember crying at one point. I remember a few people laughed at that.

My last memory of the night is ending up on the front steps, waiting for a taxi, while a drunk runner-up for Miss America kept pressing the center of my chest and looking confused.

I withdrew from the public eye. I put on weight.

I own the Duncan Empire now. My cutouts are all over the country. No socially active house is complete without one. They now have over sixty-five ‘zingers’ in eight languages and a wardrobe of over fifty outfits. I’m looking at expanding into international markets.

I am rich. I haven’t laughed in months. I am not myself lately.



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The 2x project

It wasn’t until I opened my eyes that I knew what had happened.

Lisa Sagan and Andrea Hawking were helping Petra Turing make sure my vitals were stabilizing. It was Henrietta Einstein that was chairing the ‘wake. I could see my dear Shelagh Netwon looking down from the observation booth with tears of joy in her eyes.

I’d been caught and killed. They’d had to wake up another copy of me.

I needed to know how much memory I was missing and if the Two-X project was still functioning.

We’d wrested control from the governments. We were the smartest minds on the planet. We’d taken over from the war-mongering males and turned the entire continent into a matriarchy that was feared and respected.

It wasn’t enough.

We need the world to be with us if we were to conquer space.

“Don’t try to move” said Carla Marconi. I bristled at the sound of my old enemy’s voice but remained still. Soon, I would leave this hospital bed and be debriefed and rebriefed. The project was safe. I could see that much from here.

The black ceramic hummed above us in the nuclear cooling tower. Miles long, it crackled with barely restrained power. It wouldn’t be long before the world would fear us and have no choice but to obey. It was regrettable but the quickest solution.

The weapon is of my design.

My name is Tamara Tesla. A glorious future awaits.



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It's Got a Beat and I Can Dance To It.

The virus was in the music.

First contact had happened four months ago. Music from another planet. It was digitized and put out over every radio on the planet. It was immensely popular. Alien but catchy. A few notes we didn’t have but an accessible beat and in some places, an almost plaintive sense of purpose.

It wasn’t something that we noticed right away. I mean, people all over the world hate their jobs, right? But soon, people started saying home in droves. Calling in sick or just not showing up. They walked around the streets with smiles on their faces in the sunlight.

The music caused a fanatical sense of peace.

It affected everyone who heard it. Within a year, industry collapsed and communication networks hummed with only the music.

It was a lullaby that put us all to sleep. It was the opposite of an SOS.

It was like a planet-wide dose of prozac had caused everyone to sit down where they were and just appreciate the beauty around them.

The pointed ships showed up in the sky two days ago. They’re collecting us.

We don’t mind.



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I got your brains right here

Vancouver Zombie Walk, bitches! That's how we roll! Brains were eaten, fun was had, rain was endured, and we freaked a few people out. If you have pictures, please upload them here. I'm posting my set but if you go to the group page, you'll see thousands of honest-to-goodness brain-eating shenanigans. A true success. Mad props. Brains. Click on the picture.






Peace out. Brains.