ohlookasquirrel

"I always believe in twelve impossible things before breakfast"

There was absolutely nothing unusual about the skyline that day. Nor was there anything unusual about the weather that day, the cosmic magnetism that day, or the happenings that day.

At 4:53 AM, a little boy in Manhattan cut off his dog's ear in the middle of the night just to see what would happen.

At 4:59 AM, the CEO of a budding company found out that his wife had been sleeping with his elderly father.

At 5:05 AM, a fifteen year old girl decided that she was in the throes of angst, and she would kill herself if the sun didn't rise in exactly 30 minutes.

It didn't.

She decided her death might be more dramatic in a couple days and got dressed.

And none of that matters, because at 5:13 AM, John P. Shale woke up and decided to make scrambled eggs. At 5:20 he cracked an egg and cut his finger. At 5:22 he found out he didn't have any salt in his home. At 5:24, he decided to go out for breakfast.

As he was walking down the street he lived on, trying to find somewhere that was serving decent tepid coffee and two day old donuts at this ungodly hour, he tripped on something rather small that appeared to have just fallen out of the high rise above him. It was furry and matted with blood.

It was an ear.

He picked it up and put it in his pocket, noting that the time was 5:33 AM. You never know when things like that will come in handy. Shale had once used a lighter he had found on the street to build a fire to keep himself warm, after his girlfriend locked him out of their apartment all night. He reasoned that severed animal ears were certainly more rare than lighters, and thus this token would no doubt prove much more useful.

Oddly enough, it did. At 5:41 AM, a man in a rumpled business suit stormed out onto the increasingly peopled sidewalk with a steak knife and brandished it at Shale. Mildly amused, Shale stepped out of the way as a young woman burst after him, pleading "It isn't what you think; he loves me, and his age doesn't matter!"

Shale became somewhat alarmed as the man with the steak knife sidestepped closer to him. In a split second, he reached into his pocket and threw its contents at the man. The ear landed on the shoulder pad of his suit. The man dropped the steak knife and dissolved into tears. The woman took him back inside. It was 5:48 AM.

Shale kept walking.

At the next intersection, he found himself beside a fairly pretty - if clearly self absorbedly depressed - teenage girl. Her face was blotchy and tearstained, and she clutched a copy of Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" to her chest. She turned to him and asked him what time he thought the sun would rise tomorrow.

He smiled and said they'd better check. It was already 5:50 AM, after all. She gladly came back to his apartment with him. He talked Plath with her for over an hour, indulging her whims and listening to her imagined plight.

At 7:03 AM, she asked him to make love to her.

Two minutes later they were naked and fucking on the floor. In eight and a half months she would have a baby boy with an obscenely large head. But for now, she was perfectly content.

After what had seemed like an eternity to her and was really more like half an hour, she was dressed and writing her number on his arm. To Shale's dismay, it wouldn't wash off for three days.

Seven minutes after she left, he decided that having found a disembodied ear, averted a crisis, and impregnated an underage girl, it was high time to get his breakfast.

And so he did.

Neil

I really enjoyed this and it made me laugh. It's very well thought out and has a good feel to it.

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LiberalDem

The style was simply amazing...I liked the texture of the story and the sound of your words. Great job!

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"I am a work in progress dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding offering me intricate patterns of questions rhythms that never come clean and strengths that you still haven't seen." Ani DiFranco (The Slant)

Czerez

Ok its was kinda funny. More of a cute funny. It flowed well.

Then....whoa man. just whoa.

Its a little scary. But in a good and different way. As a story goes it doesn't seem to have a plot, or a point. Maybe you should find one. Or make it more visible. Teach a lesson kinda thing. But its up to you.
Good luck.

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Wrong screw...take a shot, board the wrong way...take a shot, put the wheels on the wrong way...take a shot. swear...take a shot.
oh yeah...lets get wasted and build!

NoWorries

Great style and the beginning is great...

It all comes together too neatly for my tastes...

I just got done reading, "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" and he picks up a hacksaw blade around 10:00 am and forgets about it, by 6:30ish it almost fucks his whole life over because he forgets it's in his pocket...as with the dogs ear, it's all a little too convenient, I wanted it to come in handy in the least likely of spots, not interacting immediately with a plot we already knew.

I agree with Czerez, the background is there, now we just need to be taught a lesson, or he needs to change his life somehow...maybe the last line could be, "Suddenly, he didn't feel like breakfast." Then at least he'd be a different person than at the beginning, right now he's just skated through the entire story, while we were routing for him to do something.

Very entertaining beginning, now bring the end up to that same level.

ohlookasquirrel

Thanks everyone.

John P. Shale is actually a recurring protagonist throughout many of my pieces, and the stories about him string together to create a patchy view of his life through time, so when I first wrote this story (the first one I wrote about him, actually), I didn't intend for him to learn something or change quite yet.

I do like the alternate ending though, I'll play around with that.

Jan_Itor

I liked the simplicity. It didn't make you think too hard but it was still a little rewarding to read the last sentence. It had a bizarre sort of closure, if you will.

I think these kind of things, good or bad, should be left alone after they're completed. They tend to show more of what you're "truth" is. Look back and read it in a few weeks or even a few years. You'll see what I mean.

swing_it_away

That made me laugh.

The beginning was perfect. I almost wished you had included some more random facts throughout the story, just because the first three were so good.

The rest of it was still very good, I don't really have any suggestions or complaints (well, you might want to take out the work 'fucking', it just sort of takes away from the peice, but that's just me, and it's really, really, minor/irrelevant) for you. Good job.

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farmer

"Seven minutes after she left, he decided that having found a disembodied ear, averted a crisis, and impregnated an underage girl, it was high time to get his breakfast. "

How did he know he impregnated her?
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