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_________________________________________Foundations . . .
Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink was formed in 2008 as a publishing conduit for creators of fantastic literature and
graphic books. Some of our artists and authors, often employing exploratory concepts and innovative
techniques similar to those founded by the modern art movements of Existentialism, Expressionism, and
Surrealism, as well as giving specific attention to irrealism or metaphysics, and experimentalism (among many
other things), would be more suitably categorized under the umbrella of Postmodernism rather than with any
other common classification or genre.
_____Those books with less experimental attributes may better fit within the mass designation of Speculative
Literature although still possessing radically inventive storylines and extremely poignant subtexts. With such
books the general ruling of “What if...?” is used more so as a supposition and rarely provides obvious resolve.
_____Others still (and to a great degree all of our creators regardless of the above statements) are so
stylistically unique that no genre or artistic affiliation should be assumed and stand testament to the fact that
true artistry and raw imagination still exists so therefore can only be understood and appreciated by perusing
the work.
_____There are also those few which we are delighted to have along if for no comprehensible reason other
than that they thrill our escapist pleasure centers and will likely do the same for you.
Three simple definitions from our FAQ:
_____1 Irrealism, in contrast to other “nonrealistic” principles such as those used in hard science fiction
(scientific fact and/or theory) or high fantasy (myth and magic), offers no sensible rationalizations for its
unpredictable characters, physics, or realities.
_____2 Metaphysics, as applied to literature and art, is inspired by the yet unperceivable scientific nature of our
being, reality and/or the universe.
_____3 Experimental literature, although having respect for the academic rules of traditional prose and poetry,
gives emphasis to innovations in form, language, narrative, structure, style, technique, etc.
Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink was formed in 2008 as a publishing conduit for creators of fantastic literature and
graphic books. Some of our artists and authors, often employing exploratory concepts and innovative
techniques similar to those founded by the modern art movements of Existentialism, Expressionism, and
Surrealism, as well as giving specific attention to irrealism or metaphysics, and experimentalism (among many
other things), would be more suitably categorized under the umbrella of Postmodernism rather than with any
other common classification or genre.
_____Those books with less experimental attributes may better fit within the mass designation of Speculative
Literature although still possessing radically inventive storylines and extremely poignant subtexts. With such
books the general ruling of “What if...?” is used more so as a supposition and rarely provides obvious resolve.
_____Others still (and to a great degree all of our creators regardless of the above statements) are so
stylistically unique that no genre or artistic affiliation should be assumed and stand testament to the fact that
true artistry and raw imagination still exists so therefore can only be understood and appreciated by perusing
the work.
_____There are also those few which we are delighted to have along if for no comprehensible reason other
than that they thrill our escapist pleasure centers and will likely do the same for you.
Three simple definitions from our FAQ:
_____1 Irrealism, in contrast to other “nonrealistic” principles such as those used in hard science fiction
(scientific fact and/or theory) or high fantasy (myth and magic), offers no sensible rationalizations for its
unpredictable characters, physics, or realities.
_____2 Metaphysics, as applied to literature and art, is inspired by the yet unperceivable scientific nature of our
being, reality and/or the universe.
_____3 Experimental literature, although having respect for the academic rules of traditional prose and poetry,
gives emphasis to innovations in form, language, narrative, structure, style, technique, etc.
 |
| STORMING by ANDERSEN PRUNTY (Featured in Arcane Distortions One coming late 2009) |
___The storm calls on Wednesday. I answer on the phone downstairs. The storm sounds
angry and hateful, rumbly and static-filled. I hang up the phone and my right foot begins
vibrating. I’ve been chosen. I suppose I should let the boarder know. I knock on his
door. It’s right next to the phone. The boarder is a circus strongman. I don’t know his
name. I call him Mr. Strongman. He signed the lease with an “X”. No help there.
___His door swings open. He’s a classic circus strongman, standing there in his crimson
singlet. His black hair is greased and parted down the middle. An ostentatious handlebar
mustache, waxed to perfection, reaches out from either side of his face. Years ago,
training for the Olympics, Mr. Strongman strained his mouth and has been unable to
speak through it since. Instead, he has trained his left deltoid to speak. He turns around
and his deltoid says, “Hello.” I always want to touch it but I resist the urge. He would
probably break me in half.
___“My foot’s vibrating,” I blurt out, gesturing down to it. Even with a shoe on, you can
tell it’s moving, twittering rapidly back and forth like something’s trying to get out.
___Mr. Strongman is looking at me over his shoulder. Surprise and a certain amount of
horror fill his eyes.
___“You know what this means,” I say.
___“I certainly do,” his deltoid says.
___“I think you’d probably better go.”
___“I’d rather not.”
___“If you stay here, it’s quite likely you’ll die.”
___“I’ll take that chance.”
___“I would rather you didn’t. I don’t want to be responsible for another person.”
___“I’d rather not move all these weights.” Mr. Strongman gestures into his room. It’s
filled from floor to ceiling with globular iron weights in varying diameters. He has a point.
I wouldn’t want to move all that stuff either.
___“Surely you have some strongman friends who can help you?” I’m nearly pleading
with him.
___“They’ve all passed on.”
___“Suit yourself then.”
___“Do you know when?”
___“I’m afraid I don’t. Soon, I imagine. With the way my foot’s vibrating.”
___“I’ll be prepared.”
___“You can only prepare so much for something like this.”
___“You’ll have to go see the doctor next.”
___“Yes. I know.”
___“Would you like me to go with you?”
___I think about it. Maybe it would be nice to have company. And I do not have a car.
___“If you’re willing.”
___“Let me get my keys.”
___He disappears back into the room and I hear the clattering of iron weights. I don’t
know what that has to do with keys. When he comes back to the door, his muscles are
ripped and he’s sweating profusely. “I had to do a few reps.”
___We head out to his tiny two-seater parked on the curb. The car is rusted and leans to
the driver side. Probably because Mr. Strongman weighs so much.
___“Wanna drive?” he asks. We both know this might be my last time to do this.
___“Sure.”
___He tosses the keys at me. His throw is slightly off. I miss the keys. They hit me on the
side of the face and clatter down to the sidewalk. Bending down to pick them up, I can
hear my foot vibrating. I look up at the sky and do not see a single cloud but I know this
will change. The storm will come. The storm will rage through and change everything.
How could I have let life become so stagnant?
___We get into the car and I drive us to the doctor’s. It’s a small single-story shack on
the outskirts of town. It doesn’t take very long. The town is not very large. I get out of
the car.
___“I’ll wait in here, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Strongman says.
___“No, not at all. I’ll be right back.”
___I walk through the parking lot, taking tentative steps around the vibrating foot. I pull
the door to the doctor’s open. He has one of those bells that jangle over the door. He’s
asleep in the middle of the floor. I approach him and nudge him with my foot. He lets
out a final honking snore and pries his bloodshot eyes open.
___“My foot’s vibrating.”
___He’s in the perfect position to observe this. He rolls over onto his side, facing my foot.
He puts his hand around it and squeezes. He puts his ear to the shoe.
___“So it is. Can you help me up? We’ll get this taken care of.”
___I hold out my hand and he clasps it.
___“Come on back here with me.”
___I follow him through a tattered wooden door. It creaks open and bangs shut. There is
an old cot in the middle of the dimly lit room.
___“Sit.” He points to the cot.
___I sit down. He grabs a giant pair of what look like hedge clippers and pulls a chair
over beside the cot.
___“Upsy daisy,” he says and pats his thigh.
___I put my vibrating foot on his knee. He grabs the handles of the clippers and angles
the business end around the top of my foot, just below the ankle.
___“Here goes,” he says, and takes a mighty clip.
___My foot is now off. There isn’t any blood or anything.
___“That went well,” he says. “Now for your surrogate.”
___He goes to a large box in the back corner of the room and rummages around. He
comes back carrying a very large yellowish eagle talon.
___“I’m afraid this’ll have to do.”
___He sits back down on the chair and lines the talon up with the bottom of my leg. He
grabs the clippers and does the same thing he did to remove the foot, the blades slicing
through the empty space. When he’s finished, the talon is affixed securely to the leg.
___“There we go,” he says.
___“Thanks,” I say.
___“We’ll get this sent off for you.” He holds my foot up in the air.
___“That’d be great.”
___Mr. Strongman has pulled the car around to the front of the building. That’s very
considerate of him. I slide into the passenger seat.
___“When we get home,” I say. “We’ll have to begin dismantling the house.”
He grunts and guides the car away from the doctor’s.
___The tiny car squeals to a stop in front of the house. I place my new right foot, my
talon, out onto the sidewalk. An old lady walking by looks at it and says, through her
bent and twisted face, “So it’s true.” She gives me the evil eye and continues on her way.
I want to shout something after her but she has every right to be angry.
___The phone is ringing from the house. Mr. Strongman, aware of my condition, races to
answer it. I’m walking up to the house when he appears in the doorway, his back to me,
his deltoid saying, “It’s for you.”
___Walking on this talon is tricky. After a couple minutes I reach the phone. It’s the
storm again. It sounds closer. Even angrier. I imagine it gathering steam somewhere
over the plains of Kansas. Taking in deep breaths and roiling around itself. Ready to spew
out its vitriolic guts on me and my house. I could argue with it but it wouldn’t do any
good.
___The next two days, Mr. Strongman and I dismantle the house. I pull the siding off the
lower parts. He’s good with the ladder. He’s able to get the second floor. We strip off the
siding and place it in the back yard. He places his weights over the various piles. The
walls are huge and very heavy, giant chunks of drywall. I supervise as he pulls them from
the support beams. He stacks these in the back yard as well.
___“You want me to do the roof?” he asks.
___I squint up at the roof. “Nah, it needs replaced anyway.”
___“It’s too bad this has to happen to you.”
___“There’s no other way. I want to let you know this house is yours after the storm, for
all your hard work.”
___“Aw, thanks. That’s not necessary.”
___“I insist.”
___“Very well.”
___“Now I think I’m going to go wait for it.”
___“Need any help.”
___“I’ll get it. You should probably hide in the basement... when the time comes.”
___“I’ll stay out here with you. I can’t let you do something like this alone.”
___“It was meant to be done alone.”
___“It could have been me who answered the phone.”
___“That’s not the way it works. You know that.”
___He lowers his head as if he is already in mourning.
___I grab my green lawn chair I bought just for this occasion and enter the house
through the missing wall. We left the stairs because both of us decided we didn’t know
how they would go back together. It wouldn’t matter to me anyway. I climb the stairs to
the second floor.
___From downstairs, the phone rings.
___No one answers it.
___The day is sunny.
___I study the horizon.
___And then I see it over the house across the street. Black and perilous. Moving quickly.
I clutch the arms of the lawn chair, set my jaw and wait for it.
Downstairs, Mr. Strongman is supporting himself in a doorway that is lacking a door.
___The giant cloud reaches my house and stops. There is a loud boom of thunder.
Lightning shoots out. Rain pounds down. I notice there is a crowd of people gathered on
the sidewalk. They ooh and aah as the storm delivers its beating. A funnel cloud extends
down, beginning at the edge of the lawn and working its way toward the house. I release
the lawn chair and push myself to the edge of the floor, where the wall used to be. I raise
my arms to the storm and, like a hateful father, it scoops me up and lifts me into its black
fold. Below, I see Mr. Strongman squinting up at me, at the storm carrying me away. I
wonder if he was the one who had called the storm or if it was really just my time.
___The inside of the storm is cold and loud. It races across the mountains, toward the
coast. We reach the ocean in a matter of hours and it coughs me out. I plunge down into
the salty water. Somewhere, a sea gull is laughing at me. I pull the water into my lungs.
It is cold. I put my head down and swim toward the shore, eager to start over toward the
shore, eager to start over.
angry and hateful, rumbly and static-filled. I hang up the phone and my right foot begins
vibrating. I’ve been chosen. I suppose I should let the boarder know. I knock on his
door. It’s right next to the phone. The boarder is a circus strongman. I don’t know his
name. I call him Mr. Strongman. He signed the lease with an “X”. No help there.
___His door swings open. He’s a classic circus strongman, standing there in his crimson
singlet. His black hair is greased and parted down the middle. An ostentatious handlebar
mustache, waxed to perfection, reaches out from either side of his face. Years ago,
training for the Olympics, Mr. Strongman strained his mouth and has been unable to
speak through it since. Instead, he has trained his left deltoid to speak. He turns around
and his deltoid says, “Hello.” I always want to touch it but I resist the urge. He would
probably break me in half.
___“My foot’s vibrating,” I blurt out, gesturing down to it. Even with a shoe on, you can
tell it’s moving, twittering rapidly back and forth like something’s trying to get out.
___Mr. Strongman is looking at me over his shoulder. Surprise and a certain amount of
horror fill his eyes.
___“You know what this means,” I say.
___“I certainly do,” his deltoid says.
___“I think you’d probably better go.”
___“I’d rather not.”
___“If you stay here, it’s quite likely you’ll die.”
___“I’ll take that chance.”
___“I would rather you didn’t. I don’t want to be responsible for another person.”
___“I’d rather not move all these weights.” Mr. Strongman gestures into his room. It’s
filled from floor to ceiling with globular iron weights in varying diameters. He has a point.
I wouldn’t want to move all that stuff either.
___“Surely you have some strongman friends who can help you?” I’m nearly pleading
with him.
___“They’ve all passed on.”
___“Suit yourself then.”
___“Do you know when?”
___“I’m afraid I don’t. Soon, I imagine. With the way my foot’s vibrating.”
___“I’ll be prepared.”
___“You can only prepare so much for something like this.”
___“You’ll have to go see the doctor next.”
___“Yes. I know.”
___“Would you like me to go with you?”
___I think about it. Maybe it would be nice to have company. And I do not have a car.
___“If you’re willing.”
___“Let me get my keys.”
___He disappears back into the room and I hear the clattering of iron weights. I don’t
know what that has to do with keys. When he comes back to the door, his muscles are
ripped and he’s sweating profusely. “I had to do a few reps.”
___We head out to his tiny two-seater parked on the curb. The car is rusted and leans to
the driver side. Probably because Mr. Strongman weighs so much.
___“Wanna drive?” he asks. We both know this might be my last time to do this.
___“Sure.”
___He tosses the keys at me. His throw is slightly off. I miss the keys. They hit me on the
side of the face and clatter down to the sidewalk. Bending down to pick them up, I can
hear my foot vibrating. I look up at the sky and do not see a single cloud but I know this
will change. The storm will come. The storm will rage through and change everything.
How could I have let life become so stagnant?
___We get into the car and I drive us to the doctor’s. It’s a small single-story shack on
the outskirts of town. It doesn’t take very long. The town is not very large. I get out of
the car.
___“I’ll wait in here, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Strongman says.
___“No, not at all. I’ll be right back.”
___I walk through the parking lot, taking tentative steps around the vibrating foot. I pull
the door to the doctor’s open. He has one of those bells that jangle over the door. He’s
asleep in the middle of the floor. I approach him and nudge him with my foot. He lets
out a final honking snore and pries his bloodshot eyes open.
___“My foot’s vibrating.”
___He’s in the perfect position to observe this. He rolls over onto his side, facing my foot.
He puts his hand around it and squeezes. He puts his ear to the shoe.
___“So it is. Can you help me up? We’ll get this taken care of.”
___I hold out my hand and he clasps it.
___“Come on back here with me.”
___I follow him through a tattered wooden door. It creaks open and bangs shut. There is
an old cot in the middle of the dimly lit room.
___“Sit.” He points to the cot.
___I sit down. He grabs a giant pair of what look like hedge clippers and pulls a chair
over beside the cot.
___“Upsy daisy,” he says and pats his thigh.
___I put my vibrating foot on his knee. He grabs the handles of the clippers and angles
the business end around the top of my foot, just below the ankle.
___“Here goes,” he says, and takes a mighty clip.
___My foot is now off. There isn’t any blood or anything.
___“That went well,” he says. “Now for your surrogate.”
___He goes to a large box in the back corner of the room and rummages around. He
comes back carrying a very large yellowish eagle talon.
___“I’m afraid this’ll have to do.”
___He sits back down on the chair and lines the talon up with the bottom of my leg. He
grabs the clippers and does the same thing he did to remove the foot, the blades slicing
through the empty space. When he’s finished, the talon is affixed securely to the leg.
___“There we go,” he says.
___“Thanks,” I say.
___“We’ll get this sent off for you.” He holds my foot up in the air.
___“That’d be great.”
___Mr. Strongman has pulled the car around to the front of the building. That’s very
considerate of him. I slide into the passenger seat.
___“When we get home,” I say. “We’ll have to begin dismantling the house.”
He grunts and guides the car away from the doctor’s.
___The tiny car squeals to a stop in front of the house. I place my new right foot, my
talon, out onto the sidewalk. An old lady walking by looks at it and says, through her
bent and twisted face, “So it’s true.” She gives me the evil eye and continues on her way.
I want to shout something after her but she has every right to be angry.
___The phone is ringing from the house. Mr. Strongman, aware of my condition, races to
answer it. I’m walking up to the house when he appears in the doorway, his back to me,
his deltoid saying, “It’s for you.”
___Walking on this talon is tricky. After a couple minutes I reach the phone. It’s the
storm again. It sounds closer. Even angrier. I imagine it gathering steam somewhere
over the plains of Kansas. Taking in deep breaths and roiling around itself. Ready to spew
out its vitriolic guts on me and my house. I could argue with it but it wouldn’t do any
good.
___The next two days, Mr. Strongman and I dismantle the house. I pull the siding off the
lower parts. He’s good with the ladder. He’s able to get the second floor. We strip off the
siding and place it in the back yard. He places his weights over the various piles. The
walls are huge and very heavy, giant chunks of drywall. I supervise as he pulls them from
the support beams. He stacks these in the back yard as well.
___“You want me to do the roof?” he asks.
___I squint up at the roof. “Nah, it needs replaced anyway.”
___“It’s too bad this has to happen to you.”
___“There’s no other way. I want to let you know this house is yours after the storm, for
all your hard work.”
___“Aw, thanks. That’s not necessary.”
___“I insist.”
___“Very well.”
___“Now I think I’m going to go wait for it.”
___“Need any help.”
___“I’ll get it. You should probably hide in the basement... when the time comes.”
___“I’ll stay out here with you. I can’t let you do something like this alone.”
___“It was meant to be done alone.”
___“It could have been me who answered the phone.”
___“That’s not the way it works. You know that.”
___He lowers his head as if he is already in mourning.
___I grab my green lawn chair I bought just for this occasion and enter the house
through the missing wall. We left the stairs because both of us decided we didn’t know
how they would go back together. It wouldn’t matter to me anyway. I climb the stairs to
the second floor.
___From downstairs, the phone rings.
___No one answers it.
___The day is sunny.
___I study the horizon.
___And then I see it over the house across the street. Black and perilous. Moving quickly.
I clutch the arms of the lawn chair, set my jaw and wait for it.
Downstairs, Mr. Strongman is supporting himself in a doorway that is lacking a door.
___The giant cloud reaches my house and stops. There is a loud boom of thunder.
Lightning shoots out. Rain pounds down. I notice there is a crowd of people gathered on
the sidewalk. They ooh and aah as the storm delivers its beating. A funnel cloud extends
down, beginning at the edge of the lawn and working its way toward the house. I release
the lawn chair and push myself to the edge of the floor, where the wall used to be. I raise
my arms to the storm and, like a hateful father, it scoops me up and lifts me into its black
fold. Below, I see Mr. Strongman squinting up at me, at the storm carrying me away. I
wonder if he was the one who had called the storm or if it was really just my time.
___The inside of the storm is cold and loud. It races across the mountains, toward the
coast. We reach the ocean in a matter of hours and it coughs me out. I plunge down into
the salty water. Somewhere, a sea gull is laughing at me. I pull the water into my lungs.
It is cold. I put my head down and swim toward the shore, eager to start over toward the
shore, eager to start over.
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