Kiefer Sutherland, Keanu Reeves, Kanye West, and a fleshlight
It's time to call the acid police.
On our Fellow Travellers posts we always start by saying that “Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything.” But the title of Travis Jeppesen’s new collection, For Those Who Hate a Little Bit of Everything, might be closer to the nut of it. These three microfictions from the book explain more…
Casting Couch
Kiefer put the fleshlight down upon his prong. “What is this supposed to be, anyway? I don’t even feel anything.” The director told him to look in the mirror and feign excitement. “I don’t think I belong in this country,” said Kiefer. “Yes,” replied the director. “That’s exactly what I’m going for.”
Keanu put the fleshlight down upon his prong. He knew he was rich and suddenly felt as though he would never be let into heaven. “Am I a good person?” he implored the director. But the director wasn’t inclined to give him any kind of answer. Any answer at all.
Kanye put the fleshlight down upon his prong. “Gosh, I can’t wait for life to start, you guys!” But life just wouldn’t get started. It had evaded him for so long, and now he had a fleshlight upon his prong. He was playing the lead role in a Shakespearean tragedy he didn’t even know the name of. The leading lady was played by a beetle. The senators were all on their way to slay him. And here’s the director, asking him to do it all over again.
Help! I’m Gay and I Accidentally Got into Heaven!
I just ran into the sky’s sidewalk. A big fat person sitting up there. It’s odd, how the world once moved me. Then I found out I’m allergic to stars. How will I ever manage this transition?
The Acid Police
So that afternoon we all said fuck it in unison and took to the streets. We weren’t sure what we were protesting exactly, only that it felt necessary at the time. It wasn’t long before we were surrounded by a crew of baton-wielding ballerinas wearing wingtipped slippers. The batons crunched down upon our skulls. Weirdly no one lost consciousness. We all knew it was the police in disguise.
We eventually managed to escape the ballerinas and found a nice cozy dumpster to hide in. Suddenly life felt so wholesome. Tony suggested rat poison.
—Don’t listen to this defector, Blair erupted. If we cease inventing visions to chase after, what’s left? Utter randomness? How fulfilling is that? I elect we make Tony himself ingest the rat poison—then if he lives, he has to carry all this garbage with us into the next vestibule. A new stratum. There has to be something we haven’t experienced yet. Let’s go out there and find out what it is – or at the very least invent it before it finds us!
—I second that emotion, shouted the one with the beard.
And so it was decided. A life on the run, with all the curls that come with it. As a collective, we would have to learn how to invisibilize ourselves.
We climbed into the van, sped off or rather moved slowly through all the requisite checkpoints, past the dancing bear and into the mini-mart parking lot.
—I’ll take a bottle of suicide water, I ordered. No gas.
I had an ominous feeling about the forthcoming roadblock, and since it was now me behind the wheel, I had to decide what to do about it and fast. Before I had a chance to make up what was left of my mind, an angel descended. He wore a transparent satin dress that showed off his tufted genitalia and a halo made out of firecrackers that wouldn’t stop exploding. Thankfully, God had also thought to adorn him with one of those headset microphones so we could hear his words through the crackling explosions hovering above him.
—I’m just here to answer any questions you might have about the afterlife.
We looked amongst ourselves, but couldn’t find any discarded question marks. The angel must have sensed this accretion through our silence, because he soon proffered a desultory moan, as though that would provide some recompense for our perpetually stalled insights.
A sheet of lightning was hurled from the skies to make the cops up ahead disappear. I knew I’d soon be dead, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. So much stimulation fatigues me, until I feel I can go no further. An imaginary line is drawn. It becomes a unit for measuring the despairing of my trust in others; particularly the ones I willingly surround myself with. At the end of the line lies our mutual goal, a picture that becomes more blurred each time one of us, as an individual, looks in that direction. At the end of the day, it is best to ignore it altogether. We’ve managed that. If only what we were left with, the question of our collective self, could be so simple.
I really wish that angel had had more to do. But it is not God’s role to give out presents. That is the role of someone else—someone who, like God, is no longer here.
TRAVIS JEPPESEN is an American writer based in Berlin, Germany. His recent books include *Settlers Landing*, a novel, and *For Those Who Hate a Little Bit of Everything*, stories. Buy Settlers Landing
Buy For Those Who Hate a Little Bit of Everything
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Fellow Travellers “Eyes” banner adapted from Opal Louis Nations’ “An Eyeball Alphabet” (1980).
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