in a 1960s French film somewhere…

Huh?

humor of the dark

This Queer Life

  • The Horse’s Ass

    A fable Invasive species have been upsetting ecosystems all over the world [file under ‘duh’]. It’s the consternation of environmentalists & those whose livelihoods depend upon certain ecosystems sans invasion. Some of these species arrived by accident, some blithely brought by well-meaning humans.’ The road to hell…’ The Himalayan Blackberry was introduced to the Pacific… Read more

  • Observer Defect

    It was very thoughtful of those working in quantum mechanics to name some quarks after my primary mental states: up, down, & strange. Those wee particles within the nucleus of an atom hold no real fascination for me otherwise. I’m not a particle physicist. No matter how many times I’ve read about quarks, I remember… Read more

  • Midnight’s Wolven*

    You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight & sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead– your next stop, the Magical Realism Zone. She named herself Traveler because it was apt. Ironic, because she didn’t travel much… Read more

  • The Shadowpuppets

    [My apology to Stephen King, though he reimagined a jump-rope jingle based on miners folklore.] The classic horror movie trailer to the following story goes like this: COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU Little girls skipping rope, chanting: “Late last year & the year before Shadowpuppets Shadowpuppets tapping on my door Want to stay home,… Read more

  • Bonfire of the Profanities

    Well, fuck. Time once again to thin the herd. Though I don’t consider myself particularly foulmouthed in person, my journals are sprinkled liberally with salty language. As with anyone, some of my ideas have a stench about them. The good stuff has already been gleaned & polished. It’s the scat that’s left. I wish that… Read more

  • Peninsula Gothic

    Let me bore you with some ruins. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only surviving structure of the original 7 Wonders of the World, but it shares a common element with the lost 6. Then a new 7 Wonders list was made, including Petra, Machu Picchu, Great Wall of China, etc. (Angkor Wat was… Read more

  • Now You See It, Now You Don’t

    In a somewhat liminal space, dusty & dark, thick with spider silks & a paper wasp nest or two, there are remnants of a lost civilization. Or, so a 9yr old imagines. On the rafters of the garage lay haphazardly strewn sheets of plywood to contain boxes of the distant past. A pretend archaeologist’s dream.… Read more

  • 1,001 Sleights

    (Well, not really) If Scheherazade took a page from Melville, this mashup could be the result. Our narrator’s first tale is of a hermit residing in a shed in the forest. Not unlike Ted Kaczynski, though without the explosives. Most of the forests have been razed, for no other reason than an economy based on… Read more

  • Nobody Bothered to Write This

    [What follows is playing with words to intentionally skew meaning. This story is written in 3rd person omniscient. No disrespect to other nonbinaries intended, but my pronouns are anyone/everyone/nobody for the purposes of this narrative. A writer writes for anyone, or everyone, or sometimes nobody. That’s why I found these pronouns intriguing.] With the metal,… Read more

  • O Pointed Barb, Where Is Thy Sting?

    Sorry to repurpose 1 Corinthians 15:55, but I was raised in a revival tent [read cult], so the biblical reference makes sense. Revving engine? Check. Squealing tires? Check. Some inbred shouting? Check. Eye roll. I know who’s coming for me. Well, not personally– who’d want that? But FFS, I don’t have time for this. Who,… Read more