Date: May 1, 1999

Constraint:
A story with a mixed metaphor in each sentence.

Mark:

It ain't over, as they say, until the fat man walks alone, and Gutbucket wasn't going anywhere. Yet he was as calm as the quiet that kicks up a storm. "Don't put all your eggs in the basket before they hatch," the lumpish man drawled-- every word rolled around in his mouth like an golden egg (and which came first, the chicken in every pot, or egg in your beer?) Let's say I wasn't scared out the brevity of my wit. "Sorry, Gutbucket, there's no time like the present that heals all wounds," I growled. "Sink or swim like a fish." In the twinkling apple of an eye, I squeezed the trigger.

Next thing I knew I was in a room so small there wasn't enough space to swing a cat on hot tin roof. A white elephant never forgets, as they say, but my memory was as empty as bathwater, and there wasn't a baby in sight. A door swung open, and a tall thin woman stooped inside, chuckling, "Your face, Fish! I can read you like a book you can't judge by the cover. But the answer is as easy as American pie: you see, Gutbucket wasn't just a low-life cheating the mob -- he was a real scientist, crazy as a fox in a hen house. We're not sure how he did it, but the Gutbucket Device (as we call it) slice-and-dices reality like a floppy slab of liver into pate -- smooth as silk from a sow's ear. That means you can't kill two birds with one heart of stone: every time Gutbucket absorbs a bullet, the dog-eat-dog world shifts one oyster over. You catch my drift, Fish?"

"Like no tomorrow is another day," I growled. "But what's the point in talking until you're blue in a face that only a mother could love? We've got to stop this guy before he turns the universe upside down, and inside out."

"You're my kind of a good man that's to find, Fish," said the woman, with a long thin smile. "I'm tickled we see mind's eye to mind's eye. Here's the plan: if we catch Gutbucket by the seat of his pants down, we might have a Chinaman's chance. Lure him into our frazzle ray" -- the wall nearest me lit up: a map in which she pointed out a network of glowing areas -- "and he's dead in the water over the dam."

There was no time to waste not, want not -- I set out to find the fat man as soon as I could. Long I wandered the straight and narrow road to nowhere, and some adventures I had would curl the hairs on your head. But then, one morning, as I stepped around the corner: speak of the devil between the deep blue sea, there he was, stuffing a bar of candy into his greedy maw. "A fine kettle of plenty of Fish in the sea!" he chortled, and quick as flash in the pan, whipped an ugly-looking blunderbuss from under his coat. "Reach for the sky's limit, Fish."

This was a bad turn of the other cheek, but reviewing the map in my head, I noticed he was only a skip away from a frazzle zone right on the corner, by a dilapidated Citibank -- I had only to get him there, and pop him. Slowly, I let my fingers touch blue, and confessed, "I guess that's the way the smart cookie crumbles...how'd you do it, Guts?" The hulk only wiped his lips free of candy crumbs and emitted a jiggly giggle, happy-go-lucky as a clam. "Simple as pudding for a genius like me -- as easy, ho ho!, as shooting fish in a barrel of laughs."

"But a bad apple spoils the barrel," I said, and plucking my S&W .38 from my sleeve like a bolt of greased lightning, there rang a sound as clear as a bell. Gutbucket dropped like a ton worth its weight in gold, and all was still -- for in his superior gloats, he had stepped back to lean against the automatic teller machine. He had the last laugh, all right, all the way to the bank.

Emily:

The Inner Finn

Inasmuch as at any given time he could fathom what was before him unfolding (days seemed to him an ongoing dead-end dialogue heard through two-way glass) Finn never was clear on what he was feeling. Which is to say the unspeakable lightening swooned. Which is to say the rain sobbed myopically. Which is to say his heart buzzed with a tick of obsoletion.

Finn was not really his name; he perfumed himself with aliases like raincoats (aka nicknames aka noms de _____). Which brings us back to the weather: the wind digressed, the trees protested, the evening aired itself mercilessly. Finn (we’ll call him Finn) was reminded of--What Finn was reminded of retreated from his concern with the balletic dismissal of wind strewing newsprint. "Dammit", muttered Finn with shot-put contention, it was Friday and he was on the way to the disco.

This emotional truancy of Finn’s called particular attention to itself--the single clapper in his head’s small audience--whenever he asked a girl to dance. See, choreography he could do: the fixed constellations of loafer prints on paper; not the ambiguity of Rorschach but the precision of morse code; all that was fine. But the loosy-goosiness of impromptu floor dance, like eating soup with chopsticks, a sort of emotive chess, led him to panic. He flailed: he shimmied like an overripe pear in October moonlight, helplessly, employing the steps of The Octopus when he meant to do The Octagon and The Tarragon when he meant to do The Octopus. The tell tale steps were a sort of synecdoche of the interior gymnastics of his inner conflictedness. Or something.
[see Figures A-C]

His friend Lucy suggested that Tango lessons might solve everything, a quick solution casting a crescendo of luminous portents like subway light. Yes, Tango lessons. The tremendous comfort he could derive from the pin cushion tidiness of motion combined with the inherent ambivalence of the dance’s torn structure, a swan song of narrative specificity, captured, he believed, the inner Finn finely.

Two years later when he was 3 time North American Grand Tango Master Champion he sighed, "The music sounds empty as rice." He lacked, like a fire-extinguished honeydew, a purpose.

Enter Lola. "Dance with me Lola", Finn said certain as cellophane for the first time in his young history. "Maybe yes, maybe no", said Lola. "Flip a coin, will it rain in Berlin on May Day?" she whispered, mysterious like the desert ostrich who crows by lamplight in another country while you are trying to sleep. Finn sighed, just then a breeze snapped the fan of his calendar pages, followed by a downpour and a crack of lightning which ticked in the heart of Germany.

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