An Excerpt from an Untitled and Unfinished Novella
An Excerpt from an Untitled and Unfinished Novella
by joe cloyd
The days didn’t really change from one to the other, and it’s difficult to document such monotony.
The cats were having trouble with fleas (all nineteen of them!), and subsequently we were having trouble with fleas. And were they hungry! They would jump on you, and you wouldn’t know it until they bit you. But that’s when I’d get them between the thumb and pointer finger. They did their best to escape, and some of them did. But I’d say about 80 percent of the time, I got those suckers. Using the thumb of each hand, I’d release and re-pin that unlucky parasite between both thumbnails and squish! My thumbnails were a menace to their little flea society! What foolish fleas! The more religious fleas most likely blamed it on satanic flea music. I’m sure the little flea version of Focus on the Family got any questionable LPs off the little flea music store shelves. A futile gesture! Pray your little hearts out (if you have hearts), teach abstinence only education, get Darwin kicked out of science class, but you fleas shall not escape my wrath and my smiting, so sayeth me, thy Lord! For I am a cruel and malevolent god. And I’m a well read god too. Don’t you know that I read literature and philosophy, and am considered by many of my fellow gods as a serious intellectual? Stupid, ignorant fleas. I look forward to putting an end to your pathetic parasitic race!
Yet the fleas kept jumping and biting despite the numerous flea carcasses that littered the ground. As usual, the dead taught the living, and the hungry, nothing.
I recently wrote an article about “writing about the mundane” and this a good example. Taking something most people don’t notice and making it interesting. I like it.
hmm. Much to think about in this story–much food for thought. Funny how the ‘mundane’ can give us a perspective unto the larger picture–particularly of ‘playing god’ and dealing with POWER! Power is an awesome thing that can turn good hearts. Perhaps Hitler thought similarly when putting down Jews and Russians. hmm. But there maybe no ‘lesson’ or ‘point’ of this nature intended in the story–that’s just what i imagine in my head while reading.
On another level, we as humans are inundated with minutiae daily and i think one of our real common impulses is to squash all this detail like a flea!
I was blown away by the epiphany at the end: “Yet the fleas kept jumping and biting despite the numerous flea carcasses that littered the ground. As usual, the dead taught the living, and the hungry, nothing.”
Story was an entertaining and thought-provoking read! Good stuff sir!