Gino’s Entry 3-22-2010
[Subtitle: Roy's Story- ED]
It was a daunting and melancholy task to read this year’s fiction contest submissions, the topic being what it was. Of the six hundred submissions however, only a handful were over eleven words long, and half of those were disqualified for plagiarism. Fortunately the judges all have degrees in literature, and the attempts to pass off War and Peace, Moby Dick, and Ulysses, were detected, though we were still impressed that someone took the time to write them out by hand. The winning story, as you will see, adds a bit of science fiction flare to the possibility of a world without the Yacht Club, as well as a poignant familiarity with the bar’s customer’s and staff. It’s almost as if it were written by someone who works there. . . .
The Day The Yacht Club Was Gone
[this is Scary -WitchDoctor-ED]
By Narcissus Hughes
The handsome, intelligent, well built bartender with the excellent sense of humor arrived at the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club at 9:30 am as he did every Saturday morning to make sure the bar was ready to open at noon; to put the boat in the water between regattas, or the car on the track between races as he liked to think. It took quite a beating on Friday nights and another on Saturdays, so it is only fair to add wisdom to his catalogue of virtues. He stood with his sensuous mouth half open, a mouth so many beautiful, nubile, wealthy women wanted to kiss. His right hand was raised a little higher than his waist and forward about ten inches holding a key which should have been about to enter a keyhole and unlock the door of the bar. But the keyhole wasn’t in the door. In fact there was no door. Nor was there a wall. The Euclid Avenue Yacht Club was gone.
Although he was famous throughout the city of Atlanta for his unshakable cool and grace under pressure, Xeno, the bartender, moved back from the non-door and let loose a stream of obscenities and curses directed mostly at poor old God (who may or may not have been blameless). Only five minutes away from his first cup of coffee after a long, hard Friday-night of drinking! Also it seemed pretty certain he was out of a job, not, oddly, due to any gross negligence on his part; it was just unlikely anyone would pay him to stand in a deserted alley. But the worst part of this already terrible, terrible moment was the realization he would have to call the owners and, if he figured out how, the police.
He took a deep breath and stepped backwards ten paces into the middle of Euclid Avenue, surveying the city block, but nothing looked out of place except that the Yacht Club was completely gone.
Xeno took his cell phone from his pocket, conjured the owner’s number, then closed the phone and returned to the sidewalk as a two-ton liquor-delivery truck hurtled past. When the dust settled he realized with a sudden clarity that time was not of the essence. It wasn’t as if a smash n’ grab had occured and every second the Yacht Club’s brand new flat -screen HD TVs or the (empty) cash register were getting farther and farther away. He rationalized thusly: The owners really loved the bar . . . there was nothing they could do about its disappearance . . . they would find out soon enough anyway . . . they deserved a couple more hours (at the most) to live in blissful unawareness on this exceptionally beautiful spring day. Nor did it really seem like a job especially suited for the Atlanta Police Department, despite their diverse areas of expertise and special training. Also, having had no coffee he was in no mood to be ridiculed.
For an eternal two minutes Xeno stood paralyzed, waffling between the two plans he had devised, one being do nothing, the second being gather as much help around himself as possible. Jack Bauer wasn’t in his cell phone directory so he decided to just go through it alphabetically, keenly aware that noone whose number he had was specifically trained for situations of this nature, but surely their combined brain power and talents were at least comparable to anything he would be able to scare up on the hated internet, the virtues and capabilities of which so many otherwise respectable and intelligent people droned on and on about ad nauseum. Anyway he started with Allen and Amanda. After hanging up with Jim McNamara, who was on his way, angry and armed to the teeth, a car drove up and skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. Randall Bailey jumped out, leaving the engine running and the door wide opened. As if this were a pre-arranged cue, Allen came running up, followed by Crazy Mike and Chicken Boy. Donald rode up on a bicycle with a case of cold Budweiser in the large basket between his handlebars. Jeffrey the Tiny Monkey arrived in his cruiser and started handing around Dixie Riddle Cups full of Tito’s vodka. New Zealand Lindsay Long and Celia “seal yer eyes” Rice, on their way to open up Rag-O-Rama, an outlet for feminine hygeine products down the street, did double takes when they saw the empty space where the Yacht Club used to be. Catching sight of Xeno, about whom they had both been plagued by sexual fantasies since their early teens, they drew up rein and joined the crowd. Within a half hour lawn chairs, blankets and beach umbrellas appeared along with pinic baskets laden with fish, loaves of bread and bottles of water and wine. Ross and Roy scribbled out physics equations on legal pads. Colleen elbowed adoring young women aside and presented herself before Xeno to ask, “Wasn’t it just last week we were watching that report on the Gamma Ray Burst?”
* * * * * * * * * * *
“Cool! I’ll turn it on!” Xeno said into the phone and then hung up. “Roy! That was Meredith. Turn on CNN! Do you still have the clicker?”
“I don’t know,” Roy said looking at the remote control in his hand.
“She said a Gamma Ray Burst was about to hit the moon!” Xeno yelled down the busy bar. “Handle it!”
“Gamma rays?” Roy asked, pointing and pushing tiny buttons.
“Holy shit! That’s right! I forgot,” Ross said, snatching the remote away from Roy. “Remember that Neutron Star going super about seven years ago?”
“Oh yeah,” Roy said.
“Well, It was eight light years away.”
“So, in a year we’ll be able to see it?” Jim McNamara asked.
“Maybe right now,” Ross said, looking up at a super-serious Wolf Blitzer reporting from the Situation Room. “Some idiot calculated that a Gamma Ray Burst could pass between the moon and Mars.”
“Gamma Ray Burst On Moon Imminent,” The closed captioning said. “Live Footage From International Space Station.”
“This is going to be just like that tsunami hitting Hawaii,” Roy groaned.
“Or not hitting it,” Xeno said. I wonder where that thing did hit. . . .”
“Dart of intense gamma radiation to hit moon at 4pm”.
“A dart!” Donald exclaimed. He had been making his way to the bar from the dart board trying to watch the tv at the same time and was amazed when Xeno put a beer into his hand without him asking. “If only I could play darts the way you tend bar,” Donald said.
“You’d be the best dart player in Atlanta,” Tommy and [Chantelle-ED-
WD] said in unison.
“Savage celestial shot targets Earth’s solar system.”
“Is that the thing that’s supposed to create a black hole?” Crazy Mike asked, gesturing for another gin and tonic.
“No,” Xeno said, serving it up. “The black hole thing is in Switzerland.”
“No!” Rich screamed, feeling no pain. “That’s the particle accelerator! I’m an engineer!”
“Choo choo!” Xeno said, placing a bottle of Pilsner Urquel in front of Rich.
“Xeno! Attend me!” Jim McNamara said, having finished his beer almost a nanosecond ago. “I’m also an engineer, Rich. And the only black hole around here is between your ears!”
“Choo choo!” Xeno reiterated, placing a can of Schlitz in front of Jim.
“Barfight!” Army Michael yelled, deflating the lethal situation.
“Quiet! Quiet!” Allen shouted. “I think the moon is breaking up.”
“I’m having deja vu,” Roy and Xeno said together.
“Gamma Ray Burst energy could exceed output of our own sun over its entire 10 billion year life.”
“That’s a booty of energy,” Randal said.
“Too bad we can’t harness it,” D&D Bill said.
“Tightly focused beam to come from Sagittarius constellation like deadly archer’s arrow.”
[we are all dead now - ED-WD]
“What would happen if that beam destroyed the moon?” Dr. “Diver Down” Chad asked as he finished putting a couple stitches in Mike Bogan’s foot.
“It would be even worse than if it destroyed the Yacht Club,” Bogan said.
“Shut up, Mike,” said Kim Novak.
“Aren’t you guys supposed to be in Iowa?” Chef Jon asked.
“There was too high . . . too high of a chance the Gamma Ray Burst could hit us there,” Bogan said.
“We came back for the end of the world . . . or the moon, or whatever,” Kim said.
“Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) strike on moon could affect earth”
“What’s everybody watching on the boob tube?” asked Marty the Plumber as he arrived with Chicken boy in tow.
“There’s a special news report on the effects of the Yacht Club getting hit by the Gamma Ray Burst,” Xeno said, setting out beers and shots.
“No there isn’t!” Roy said, his physicist sensibilities aghast at this untruth.
“Mankind would have to struggle to adapt and survive.”
“See?” Xeno said.
“I’d have to say Xeno’s right on this one,” Marty the Plumber said.
“The proof is in the pudding,” Xeno said.
“We would have to grapple with a radically altered environment.”
“My God! Xeno’s lie has become the truth!” Leonard said.
“Yikes.” Roy said amidst a chorus of dismay as several people raised their drinks to toast.
“Let me get another Guinness before the Yacht Club gets zapped,” Sioux Ellen said.
“Maybe you should all get another drink while you still can,” Xeno said, starting her Guinness.
“On the house?” Guatemala Mark suggested.
“Nope. And now that I know I have a finite supply of product I think it only fair that be tipped in advance.”
“That’s going too far,” One-eyed Bob said.
“Not to mention that it’s pure evil,” Leonard sighed. Grudgingly everyone checked their drink levels and ordered more, even several people who still had plenty. As Xeno busied himself filling orders, several more patrons entered the bar and each received an update on how the news was preparing the world for the possibility of the Yacht Club being Gamma Rayed. Even Roy joined in, adding an almost scary level of credibility to the explanations.
“Crabs would be disoriented.”
Everyone toasted.
“Sloths would find it increadingly difficult to mate.”
Xeno, swept up in the apocalyptic atmosphere, poured a shot of Coke into a Jagermeister cup for himself.
“Everything would be a mess.”
“Yay!” everyone cheered raising their drinks again.
“It would be like a giant roller derby.”
“Yay!”
“The world would be much more hoatile than it is.”
“Yay!”
“Boo!”
“Shorter life spans.”
“Boo!”
“Human beings could evolve into monsters like something straight out of a science fiction film”
“Boo!”
“It could conceivably be an extinction event.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
The police arrived about an hour after New Zealand and Seal yer eyes tried to rip Xeno’s pants off. They promptly cordoned off the alley where the Yacht Club had been the day before with yellow police tape while E.T. looking men in HAZMET suits meandered around picking up rocks with tongs like the kind Yacht Club bartenders used to place wedges of fruit on the rims of glasses. They also scooped various quantities of sand and dust into tiny zip-loc baggies, for which there is no bar-life analogy. The scientists and cops eventually crowded the regular customers out right about the time the Yacht Club would have opened for business. Across the street, Xeno fashioned a crude megaphone from a rolled-up Creative Loafing and addressed the crowd.
“Everybody! At the count of three close your eyes and pretend this didn’t happen!” Xeno, bless his heart, was overly fond of children’s fantasy movies such as Matilda and School of Rock in which this technique would have set the world right. “One . . . two . . . three!” Sadly, the Yacht Club was still gone when the crowd opened their eyes. “OK!” Xeno cried desperately through his Loaf, “Evidently someone peeked, so we have to try it again.” A massive groan went up from the crowd, and there was murmuring that this plan might not work.
“I want a Yacht Dog!” D&D Bill yelled.
“A Sizzlin’ Steak!” Randall screamed.
“My second Rumplemintz!” from McNamara.
“Galley Burger!”
“Hippy’s homemade pies!”
“I miss the bell!”
“The Window Table!”
“Curling!”
“My dear, dear friends,” Xeno pleaded.
“Chilimac!”
“We’ll have to watch horrible flat-screen TVs!”
“What about Halloween?”
“Where are we supposed to go?”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“Why, God, why?”
* * * * *
On a cold, windy, overcast winter day . . . January 11th, 2012 to be exact, three gray figures made their way through the ruined wreck of a slum, formerly a thriving, eclectic neighborhood known as Little Five Points. Where once a colorful assortment of urban campers bartered spontaneous poetry in exchange for a cheap meal . . . where wealthy, rebellious suburban teens had pilgrimaged to find sacred, rare parts for their custom skateboards . . . now only a handful of shadowy outcasts peered furtively from broken windows like feral cats waiting for unwary prey to cross their path.
The three figures stopped in front of the dark facade of buildings where the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club used to be. Appraising the faded tattered police tape which flapped ineffectually in the eddies of unnatural dust devils, the three stooped beneath it and made their way to the heart of the haunted vacancy. Tiny tornados darted hither and thither creating a distinctly vacuous and obscene atmosphere.
“According to my calculations,” Ross said, “it’s less than a millimeter in diameter.”
“Listen,” Roy said, gesturing with his hands as if he were trying to demonstrate how big a fish he’d just caught was. “It will still gobble up at least a thousand atoms in the first year . . . and then it will double every year! You have no idea how much it’s going to consume!”
“Two thousand atoms the second year?” Xeno offered. “Four thousand the third?”
“The difference between the Yacht Club and a tiny black hole really depends on perspective,” Ross said.
“We need an irony snob.”
“Maybe if we could divert enough energy from that transformer that powers the American Apparel sign we could create enough seismic torque to leverage the Yacht Club out of the tiny black hole,” Xeno said. The look of disgust he received from Roy was priceless.
“Wait,” Ross said, looking at the power lines and scribbling in his legal pad. That actually might work.”
“Really?” Xeno said.
“Of course not!” Ross said and smacked him in the head. “This isn’t Space 1999, its suck-ass real life and there’s no Yacht Club!.”
“This totally blows.”
That The Yacht Club had become a black hole was an irony not lost on its previous customers, many of whom still felt inexplicably drawn to that twilight alleyway. During sad times they came to forget, happy times to celebrate and share. And sometimes they would congrgegate in groups of three or four, sitting crosslegged in the dirt of that filthy alley and reflect on what a bitch it was to try and fill an empty place in your soul with a black hole.
THE ENDGino’Gino’s Entry 3-22-2010
It was a daunting and melancholy task to read this year’s fiction contest submissions, the topic being what it was. Of the six hundred submissions however, only a handful were over eleven words long, and half of those were disqualified for plagiarism. Fortunately the judges all have degrees in literature, and the attempts to pass off War and Peace, Moby Dick, and Ulysses, were detected, though we were still impressed that someone took the time to write them out by hand. The winning story, as you will see, adds a bit of science fiction flare to the possibility of a world without the Yacht Club, as well as a poignant familiarity with the bar’s customer’s and staff. It’s almost as if it were written by someone who works there. . . .
The Day The Yacht Club Was Gone
[this is Scary -WitchDoctor-ED]
By Narcissus Hughes
The handsome, intelligent, well built bartender with the excellent sense of humor arrived at the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club at 9:30 am as he did every Saturday morning to make sure the bar was ready to open at noon; to put the boat in the water between regattas, or the car on the track between races as he liked to think. It took quite a beating on Friday nights and another on Saturdays, so it is only fair to add wisdom to his catalogue of virtues. He stood with his sensuous mouth half open, a mouth so many beautiful, nubile, wealthy women wanted to kiss. His right hand was raised a little higher than his waist and forward about ten inches holding a key which should have been about to enter a keyhole and unlock the door of the bar. But the keyhole wasn’t in the door. In fact there was no door. Nor was there a wall. The Euclid Avenue Yacht Club was gone.
Although he was famous throughout the city of Atlanta for his unshakable cool and grace under pressure, Xeno, the bartender, moved back from the non-door and let loose a stream of obscenities and curses directed mostly at poor old God (who may or may not have been blameless). Only five minutes away from his first cup of coffee after a long, hard Friday-night of drinking! Also it seemed pretty certain he was out of a job, not, oddly, due to any gross negligence on his part; it was just unlikely anyone would pay him to stand in a deserted alley. But the worst part of this already terrible, terrible moment was the realization he would have to call the owners and, if he figured out how, the police.
He took a deep breath and stepped backwards ten paces into the middle of Euclid Avenue, surveying the city block, but nothing looked out of place except that the Yacht Club was completely gone.
Xeno took his cell phone from his pocket, conjured the owner’s number, then closed the phone and returned to the sidewalk as a two-ton liquor-delivery truck hurtled past. When the dust settled he realized with a sudden clarity that time was not of the essence. It wasn’t as if a smash n’ grab had occured and every second the Yacht Club’s brand new flat -screen HD TVs or the (empty) cash register were getting farther and farther away. He rationalized thusly: The owners really loved the bar . . . there was nothing they could do about its disappearance . . . they would find out soon enough anyway . . . they deserved a couple more hours (at the most) to live in blissful unawareness on this exceptionally beautiful spring day. Nor did it really seem like a job especially suited for the Atlanta Police Department, despite their diverse areas of expertise and special training. Also, having had no coffee he was in no mood to be ridiculed.
For an eternal two minutes Xeno stood paralyzed, waffling between the two plans he had devised, one being do nothing, the second being gather as much help around himself as possible. Jack Bauer wasn’t in his cell phone directory so he decided to just go through it alphabetically, keenly aware that noone whose number he had was specifically trained for situations of this nature, but surely their combined brain power and talents were at least comparable to anything he would be able to scare up on the hated internet, the virtues and capabilities of which so many otherwise respectable and intelligent people droned on and on about ad nauseum. Anyway he started with Allen and Amanda. After hanging up with Jim McNamara, who was on his way, angry and armed to the teeth, a car drove up and skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. Randall Bailey jumped out, leaving the engine running and the door wide opened. As if this were a pre-arranged cue, Allen came running up, followed by Crazy Mike and Chicken Boy. Donald rode up on a bicycle with a case of cold Budweiser in the large basket between his handlebars. Jeffrey the Tiny Monkey arrived in his cruiser and started handing around Dixie Riddle Cups full of Tito’s vodka. New Zealand Lindsay Long and Celia “seal yer eyes” Rice, on their way to open up Rag-O-Rama, an outlet for feminine hygeine products down the street, did double takes when they saw the empty space where the Yacht Club used to be. Catching sight of Xeno, about whom they had both been plagued by sexual fantasies since their early teens, they drew up rein and joined the crowd. Within a half hour lawn chairs, blankets and beach umbrellas appeared along with pinic baskets laden with fish, loaves of bread and bottles of water and wine. Ross and Roy scribbled out physics equations on legal pads. Colleen elbowed adoring young women aside and presented herself before Xeno to ask, “Wasn’t it just last week we were watching that report on the Gamma Ray Burst?”
* * * * * * * * * * *
“Cool! I’ll turn it on!” Xeno said into the phone and then hung up. “Roy! That was Meredith. Turn on CNN! Do you still have the clicker?”
“I don’t know,” Roy said looking at the remote control in his hand.
“She said a Gamma Ray Burst was about to hit the moon!” Xeno yelled down the busy bar. “Handle it!”
“Gamma rays?” Roy asked, pointing and pushing tiny buttons.
“Holy shit! That’s right! I forgot,” Ross said, snatching the remote away from Roy. “Remember that Neutron Star going super about seven years ago?”
“Oh yeah,” Roy said.
“Well, It was eight light years away.”
“So, in a year we’ll be able to see it?” Jim McNamara asked.
“Maybe right now,” Ross said, looking up at a super-serious Wolf Blitzer reporting from the Situation Room. “Some idiot calculated that a Gamma Ray Burst could pass between the moon and Mars.”
“Gamma Ray Burst On Moon Imminent,” The closed captioning said. “Live Footage From International Space Station.”
“This is going to be just like that tsunami hitting Hawaii,” Roy groaned.
“Or not hitting it,” Xeno said. I wonder where that thing did hit. . . .”
“Dart of intense gamma radiation to hit moon at 4pm”.
“A dart!” Donald exclaimed. He had been making his way to the bar from the dart board trying to watch the tv at the same time and was amazed when Xeno put a beer into his hand without him asking. “If only I could play darts the way you tend bar,” Donald said.
“You’d be the best dart player in Atlanta,” Tommy and [Chantelle-ED-
WD] said in unison.
“Savage celestial shot targets Earth’s solar system.”
“Is that the thing that’s supposed to create a black hole?” Crazy Mike asked, gesturing for another gin and tonic.
“No,” Xeno said, serving it up. “The black hole thing is in Switzerland.”
“No!” Rich screamed, feeling no pain. “That’s the particle accelerator! I’m an engineer!”
“Choo choo!” Xeno said, placing a bottle of Pilsner Urquel in front of Rich.
“Xeno! Attend me!” Jim McNamara said, having finished his beer almost a nanosecond ago. “I’m also an engineer, Rich. And the only black hole around here is between your ears!”
“Choo choo!” Xeno reiterated, placing a can of Schlitz in front of Jim.
“Barfight!” Army Michael yelled, deflating the lethal situation.
“Quiet! Quiet!” Allen shouted. “I think the moon is breaking up.”
“I’m having deja vu,” Roy and Xeno said together.
“Gamma Ray Burst energy could exceed output of our own sun over its entire 10 billion year life.”
“That’s a booty of energy,” Randal said.
“Too bad we can’t harness it,” D&D Bill said.
“Tightly focused beam to come from Sagittarius constellation like deadly archer’s arrow.”
[we are all dead now - ED-WD]
“What would happen if that beam destroyed the moon?” Dr. “Diver Down” Chad asked as he finished putting a couple stitches in Mike Bogan’s foot.
“It would be even worse than if it destroyed the Yacht Club,” Bogan said.
“Shut up, Mike,” said Kim Novak.
“Aren’t you guys supposed to be in Iowa?” Chef Jon asked.
“There was too high . . . too high of a chance the Gamma Ray Burst could hit us there,” Bogan said.
“We came back for the end of the world . . . or the moon, or whatever,” Kim said.
“Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) strike on moon could affect earth”
“What’s everybody watching on the boob tube?” asked Marty the Plumber as he arrived with Chicken boy in tow.
“There’s a special news report on the effects of the Yacht Club getting hit by the Gamma Ray Burst,” Xeno said, setting out beers and shots.
“No there isn’t!” Roy said, his physicist sensibilities aghast at this untruth.
“Mankind would have to struggle to adapt and survive.”
“See?” Xeno said.
“I’d have to say Xeno’s right on this one,” Marty the Plumber said.
“The proof is in the pudding,” Xeno said.
“We would have to grapple with a radically altered environment.”
“My God! Xeno’s lie has become the truth!” Leonard said.
“Yikes.” Roy said amidst a chorus of dismay as several people raised their drinks to toast.
“Let me get another Guinness before the Yacht Club gets zapped,” Sioux Ellen said.
“Maybe you should all get another drink while you still can,” Xeno said, starting her Guinness.
“On the house?” Guatemala Mark suggested.
“Nope. And now that I know I have a finite supply of product I think it only fair that be tipped in advance.”
“That’s going too far,” One-eyed Bob said.
“Not to mention that it’s pure evil,” Leonard sighed. Grudgingly everyone checked their drink levels and ordered more, even several people who still had plenty. As Xeno busied himself filling orders, several more patrons entered the bar and each received an update on how the news was preparing the world for the possibility of the Yacht Club being Gamma Rayed. Even Roy joined in, adding an almost scary level of credibility to the explanations.
“Crabs would be disoriented.”
Everyone toasted.
“Sloths would find it increadingly difficult to mate.”
Xeno, swept up in the apocalyptic atmosphere, poured a shot of Coke into a Jagermeister cup for himself.
“Everything would be a mess.”
“Yay!” everyone cheered raising their drinks again.
“It would be like a giant roller derby.”
“Yay!”
“The world would be much more hoatile than it is.”
“Yay!”
“Boo!”
“Shorter life spans.”
“Boo!”
“Human beings could evolve into monsters like something straight out of a science fiction film”
“Boo!”
“It could conceivably be an extinction event.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
The police arrived about an hour after New Zealand and Seal yer eyes tried to rip Xeno’s pants off. They promptly cordoned off the alley where the Yacht Club had been the day before with yellow police tape while E.T. looking men in HAZMET suits meandered around picking up rocks with tongs like the kind Yacht Club bartenders used to place wedges of fruit on the rims of glasses. They also scooped various quantities of sand and dust into tiny zip-loc baggies, for which there is no bar-life analogy. The scientists and cops eventually crowded the regular customers out right about the time the Yacht Club would have opened for business. Across the street, Xeno fashioned a crude megaphone from a rolled-up Creative Loafing and addressed the crowd.
“Everybody! At the count of three close your eyes and pretend this didn’t happen!” Xeno, bless his heart, was overly fond of children’s fantasy movies such as Matilda and School of Rock in which this technique would have set the world right. “One . . . two . . . three!” Sadly, the Yacht Club was still gone when the crowd opened their eyes. “OK!” Xeno cried desperately through his Loaf, “Evidently someone peeked, so we have to try it again.” A massive groan went up from the crowd, and there was murmuring that this plan might not work.
“I want a Yacht Dog!” D&D Bill yelled.
“A Sizzlin’ Steak!” Randall screamed.
“My second Rumplemintz!” from McNamara.
“Galley Burger!”
“Hippy’s homemade pies!”
“I miss the bell!”
“The Window Table!”
“Curling!”
“My dear, dear friends,” Xeno pleaded.
“Chilimac!”
“We’ll have to watch horrible flat-screen TVs!”
“What about Halloween?”
“Where are we supposed to go?”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“Why, God, why?”
* * * * *
On a cold, windy, overcast winter day . . . January 11th, 2012 to be exact, three gray figures made their way through the ruined wreck of a slum, formerly a thriving, eclectic neighborhood known as Little Five Points. Where once a colorful assortment of urban campers bartered spontaneous poetry in exchange for a cheap meal . . . where wealthy, rebellious suburban teens had pilgrimaged to find sacred, rare parts for their custom skateboards . . . now only a handful of shadowy outcasts peered furtively from broken windows like feral cats waiting for unwary prey to cross their path.
The three figures stopped in front of the dark facade of buildings where the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club used to be. Appraising the faded tattered police tape which flapped ineffectually in the eddies of unnatural dust devils, the three stooped beneath it and made their way to the heart of the haunted vacancy. Tiny tornados darted hither and thither creating a distinctly vacuous and obscene atmosphere.
“According to my calculations,” Ross said, “it’s less than a millimeter in diameter.”
“Listen,” Roy said, gesturing with his hands as if he were trying to demonstrate how big a fish he’d just caught was. “It will still gobble up at least a thousand atoms in the first year . . . and then it will double every year! You have no idea how much it’s going to consume!”
“Two thousand atoms the second year?” Xeno offered. “Four thousand the third?”
“The difference between the Yacht Club and a tiny black hole really depends on perspective,” Ross said.
“We need an irony snob.”
“Maybe if we could divert enough energy from that transformer that powers the American Apparel sign we could create enough seismic torque to leverage the Yacht Club out of the tiny black hole,” Xeno said. The look of disgust he received from Roy was priceless.
“Wait,” Ross said, looking at the power lines and scribbling in his legal pad. That actually might work.”
“Really?” Xeno said.
“Of course not!” Ross said and smacked him in the head. “This isn’t Space 1999, its suck-ass real life and there’s no Yacht Club!.”
“This totally blows.”
That The Yacht Club had become a black hole was an irony not lost on its previous customers, many of whom still felt inexplicably drawn to that twilight alleyway. During sad times they came to forget, happy times to celebrate and share. And sometimes they would congrgegate in groups of three or four, sitting crosslegged in the dirt of that filthy alley and reflect on what a bitch it was to try and fill an empty place in your soul with a black hole.
THE END