AcmeShorts

The day began pleasantly enough. I exited my rooms and emerged into the sparkling noontime sunshine. My suit was freshly pressed, my collar crisply starched, brilliantine gleamed in the tar-black of my mustaches (facial- and nether-). A hundred heads turned to watch as I gusted through the midday throng. I purchased a Gazette and a packet of Christophe cigarettes, and ambled along the Quay. Far away cries: children at play, Jews hawking wares. I took a demitasse at a cafe overlooking a shady square, and read the news. War raged in the Crimea. I ordered a sherry. A bird swooped out of the treetops and fluttered to rest in the courthouse frieze. Sun and shadow vied for a place on the cobblestones. Hours passed. I wandered into a seedy immigrant quarter and buggered a Bedouin boy in a pension. I had a hookah, and recorded my musings in a diary. Late afternoon: again, into the heaving crowds. Confidence tricksters prowled the boulevards. How I hungered for a rarebit! I took a step off of the curb and, at once, a horseless carriage was upon me, screaming, clattering, oh, the blackness and blood-spattered gabardine...and then everything went dark as night.

And so, here I lie, in traction, both legs hoisted skyward. I've no longer a nose. Children scrawl unspeakable oaths on my casts. The food is an abomination, my novel lies crushed beneath the wheel of the demon vehicle, all is pain, humiliation and the howling void, the Z-100 Morning Zoo will be over in ten minutes time, and then what? No more fucking for the P-Man, that's for sure! Super.