Stories

Adam and Eve in the Garden

/ Doug Jacquier / 4 Comments

This piece has just been published by Flash Frontier in New Zealand.

Adam lived in a weatherboard cottage, surrounded by his apple orchard.

Sales of his annual apple crop were declining due to the perfect storm of the market’s demand for certified organic versus the demands of their Japanese customers for unblemished perfection. As Adam’s hitherto simple life began to unravel, his nights became increasingly apocalyptic.

His nightmares always began with a tympanic pelting storm besieging his eardrums akin to being duct-taped to AC-DC’s concert amps, punctuated by thunderclaps of Biblical proportions and the sound effects of Cyclone Gabrielle.

The overflowing water flooding into his brain began to short out his synapses and sizzling spark-fests criss-crossed his lobes in a chain lightning reaction.

The ventricles of his heart began to sport stalactites, transported via the ice in his veins, and driven by the Antarctic blizzard invading his gasping mouth.

He loved God but now saw him as a sadist.

Then, miraculously, a new day dawned in his head and the Sun came out, heralding the arrival of Eve, carrying a backpack, and asking if he had any work available. Adam was immediately smitten and invented a job on the spot, with no idea how he was going to pay her.

He needn’t have worried because Eve immediately took stock of the situation and re-positioned the business as ‘Hissy Fit Cider – The Asp-irational Drink’ and she appeared on the label, picking apples, naked.

Now Adam welcomed the cyclone of orders that kept him up all night.

Scene from the latest Hollywood blockbuster ‘Not-so-close encounters’

/ Doug Jacquier / 3 Comments

This piece has just been published in Syncopation Volume 2 Issue 2

Mervyn Martian and Edgar Earthling discuss music

MERVYN: Edgar, what are you doing?
EDGAR: I’m writing a song.
MERVYN: What is a ‘song’?
EDGAR: A collection of words set to music.
MERVYN: What is ‘music’?
EDGAR: It’s an arrangement of sounds that is pleasant to the ear.
MERVYN: How is that done?
EDGAR: Usually they’re produced by instruments.
MERVYN: What, like a microscope or an odometer? They don’t make sounds.
EDGAR: No, a different type of instrument. They’re built from wood and metal and are made to
be strummed, struck, or blown to make sounds. Unless of course they are electronic instruments
that can be programmed to imitate other instruments.
MERVYN: You have already invented a machine to replace all the others, but you still
manipulate the old ones?
EDGAR: Yes. Most people prefer that form of music.
MERVYN: You prefer a primitive, imprecise form of noise-making? Why have your people
never evolved?
EDGAR: We’re working on it. In the meantime, I’m writing a song.
MERVYN: With sounds that are pleasant to everyone’s ears.
EDGAR: Not everyone. Some people like sounds that other people hate. Musical sounds go by
various names, like classical, rock, folk, blues, country and so on. There’s even a form called
jazz, although there’s still a debate about whether that counts as music.
MERVYN: So where do you get the words for these songs that some people will find musically
unpleasant?
EDGAR: Some people write about love, some tell stories, some just make up nonsense words.
The possibilities are endless.
MERVYN: So, these words are not always about anything real?
EDGAR: Correct.
MERVYN: Meaning most of them are lies.
EDGAR: Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
MERVYN: And what do you do with these songs when they’re finished?
EDGAR: We record them, so anyone can listen to them. Or we perform them live.
MERVYN: And do all these recordings get listened to?
EDGAR: Some a lot, most hardly ever.
MERVYN: What will your song be about?
EDGAR: About a man who has conversations with a Martian.
MERVYN: But that’s not a lie, it’s true.
EDGAR: Only if I write a song about it, Mervyn.