Robert T. Jeschonek, Fiction Writer

Beware the Claus!
November 27, 2007

He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake.

Think about that. Think about the terrifying implications of that statement for just a minute. What does it suggest? That someone is watching you at all times. Watching everything you do, awake or asleep. Everything.

Imagine those twinkling eyes fixed upon you in an unearthly stare. Watching, unblinking...from where? The “North Pole?” A secret lab? An alternate reality? The intelligence behind those eyes; can it even be called human?

And how exactly does it watch every one of us in all our billions? Does The Claus employ some form of hyper-advanced technology? A passive telepresence, enabled by some unimaginably complex computer system? Or something more supernatural...more sorcerous...more frightening? Does The Claus rely on a more mystical, ethereal system...one that replicates and projects his consciousness through dimensional windows, effectively placing him in the same time/space proximity as you? What if he is there now, hovering over you, invisible but ever-present, watching as you read these words? Watching me as I write them.

He knows if you’ve been bad or good. So be good, for goodness sake.

Can you think of a more horrifying possibility? That a magical entity, omnipresent and nigh omnipowerful, watches your most intimate moments and renders judgment upon you? Considers your deeds, weighing them against his own personal code of “good” and “bad,” and documents his findings? Then rewards the “good” by giving them what they ask for and metes out his own personally-designed punishments upon the “bad?” Is he not functioning as a glorified vigilante, a self-appointed judge and jury combined into one? Forget about privacy issues; forget even about issues of justice and legality. This is the infliction of terror, plain and simple. And though it’s directed at all of us, of all ages and (presumably) socio-economic strata, are not the youngest among us especially targeted?

Who—or what—is The Claus, anyway? How did his reign of terror begin? And can he or it be stopped, or can we only continue to sing his praises in hopes of mitigating the damage he can do to our civilization?

He’s making a list. Checking it twice.

Here’s a scary thought. A being of great power watches your every move, monitoring your comings and goings and communications at all times...judges your goodness or badness according to his own personal code of conduct...and administers justice upon you, unfettered by any form of legal authority.

Think he’s a jolly old soul with your best interests at heart? Think again.

You better watch out. You better not pout.

Tell me about it.

Dead Air

Just knowing that someone was out there made Leigh feel good, even though that someone never said a word. She found herself tuning to the quiet station more often, for every occasion and feeling, because the programming suited them all. She loved that station and everything about it like she might love a long-lost sister or the right man coming to take her away from the wrong man.

Twenty-four seven, the station broadcast nothing but silence. Hosts sat at the microphone but never said a word, though Leigh could hear their breathing. There was no music of any kind, no commercials, no public service announcements, no tests of the emergency broadcast system.

Just
Silence.

It had all started a year ago, when loudmouth on-air host Mack Sass went to dead air for a full twenty minutes as the result of a drug overdose. That’s like twenty months in radio time, and the station management went berserk…but after an engineer fire-axed his way into the booth, spun Mack out of his chair, and took over, listener response was overwhelming. Literally thousands of callers bombarded the station lines over the following days, begging for more nothing, more silence. The station owners, recognizing a good thing, went to an all-quiet format the very next week, supported by listener donations that poured in spontaneously.

Leigh just couldn’t get enough of it. She had grown up in a home in which her mother and father had constantly fought and screamed at each other. She worked in a nursing home forever filled by the shouts and wails of the delusional. She lived in a city of never-ending chaos and commotion, where every waking moment played out against a background of traffic, animal, and neighbor noise.

So whenever she could, she tuned to the quiet station and turned it all the way up. She let the silence permeate her muscles like a deep massage,

Like
Bathwater,

And she smiled and let her mind roam. As long as she could tune to her station, she could make it through the day.

That was what she thought until silence became a fad, and everybody went quiet. From that point on, Leigh blasted music and honked her car horn and sang and whistled like nobody’s business.

August 25, 2005

Tonguelashing

Who among us does not fondly remember sitting in front of the wireless every Saturday night listening to the weekly edition of THE VAGABOND POMMADE HOUR STARRING SLAPDASH AND SQUEAMISH? (Every week, Squeamish got a big, fat pie in the face…except February 8, 1943, when his real-life wife substituted a frying pan after learning of his affair with cigarette songbird Kay Thrumming.) And who among us has not spent endless hours wondering whatever happened to the show’s announcer, Calvert Tonguelash? His voice and Tourrette’s Syndrome-fueled outbursts will echo in our minds forever, though the man himself has been consigned to parts unknown since that cold November night in 1951.

Now, after all these years, a woman claiming to be the daughter of Tonguelash has exploded on the national scene. As host of the new reality series, Water Closet Camera, beautiful and foul-mouthed Chug Tendril has stolen the hearts of millions of Americans and stands poised to conquer the world. Her profanity-laced commentary has made Water Closet Camera the television hit of the century and won Chug’s Team Blue a fortune in endorsement contracts on the competitive cursing circuit.

So it seems that Calvert’s legacy is in good hands...if, that is, Chug can fend off claims by puritanical clean-language pundit Alice Wiffle that he and not Chug is Calvert’s child. In the court of popular opinion, it’s no contest: Chug is America ’s trash-talking favorite. Alice , however, is gaining ground; his new creation, Sweet-talk, a system of generating insults with inoffensive language that is the opposite of its true meaning, is sweeping the nation.

In the words of Alice at last night’s premiere of Chug’s new movie, 3-2-1 RAUNCH, “I love you, Chug, you chaste, wholesome, beautiful flower of indisputable purity and angelic perfection.” (Translation: “Chug, you #$%&*-ing *+&%-ing #@!-headed &*%!-ing @%$&*-er!)

August 4, 2005

Angry Baby 1: Ca-tot-strophe in Red

In the beginning, Mother Livery thought that Angry Baby’s problem was due to pesticides on the skunk cabbage she’d eaten during the pregnancy. Later, Mother gave up caring what had created the little monster. All that mattered was digging deep for the last bits of sanity that she could cobble together and finding the money to settle all the lawsuits.

Nothing made Angry Baby happy, ever. She slept mere minutes out of each day, and when she wasn’t sleeping, she was screaming. Anything that came within reach was thrown far and hard, inevitably smashing up something else. Anyone who came close to Angry Baby’s playpen or crib was snapped at or punched or kicked or whomped with clods of doody. The baby’s room became a kind of hell on Earth, for no one could stay in there long enough to mop or fumigate without getting attacked in one way or another.

That didn’t stop crazy Cousin Uncle from trying to intervene and put a stop to this debacle. Cousin Uncle strolled into the rancid room like he was strolling into the county fair, whistling a happy tune and strumming his suspenders over the top of his red long john underwear.

He forgot one thing…one thing that he would repeat over and over again for the rest of his short life in the West Thermostat hospital for the Criminally Moronic. One thing that would forever haunt Mother Livery and her other children, each of them perfect except for the feathers and slime.

Like a bull, Angry Baby was drawn to attack the color red with terrifying ferocity. By the time Grandaddy Beerfart got up the gumption to squeak open the door and drag out Cousin Uncle, there was very little left of Uncle’s mind…and Angry Baby was chewing a hole in the concrete floor.

July 11, 2005

On Changes to the Supreme Court

Wedding anniversary three days away,
Years like fireflies
Bright and beautiful and e-
lu-
sive,
Dream fireflies,
Brightest most perfect of all
or are we the dreams of
fireflies
flashing with heat
in time with the
beat of
our hearts,
Visible only to their sight
their perfect firefly sight
lighting up the infrared
spectrum?

July 6, 2005

Why MTV Went to Commercial in the Middle of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" During Live 8

Expressionless
the blonde follows my car from two
inches
behind while the withered
insane creeps along the walk,
looking up briefly from the
murk
and I know that she has several
several
doctorates, what went wrong?
And the blonde two inches
behind
has no sense and is not only free
to come and go
but free to drive a car and
I see the shambling man wind his way
into Red's Bar for his first of the day
at eight-oh-five in the morning.

June 27, 2005

Attack of the 20s

In the process of moving into a new house this weekend, I found something I’d been hunting for ages. For the longest time, I’d wondered where my 20s had gone…and there they were, wedged in a corner of the basement under a microwave oven box at the bottom of a pile of junk. As faded and musty as they were, they were still recognizable as my 20s. The beadwork and cross-stitch were intact. I even recognized a splotch of grease on one side. When I unzipped my 20s, I caught a whiff of beer and buffalo wings. I had the unmistakable sense of time slowing down and stretching out…a complete absence of guilt if I chose to waste days and nights watching old TV shows or if I decided to waste money. I touched my 20s lovingly, relishing the bumpy texture and inhaling the sweet perfume of recklessness. I wondered if there might be some way that I could patch up my 20s and put them back in circulation instead of packing them away in a cardboard carton.

At which point, my 20s jumped from my grasp and bit me in the ass. They didn’t break the skin, but the teeth mark bruises remain. Howling in pain, I knocked them across the basement with a swat of my hand. They glowered in a corner, growling and baring their rusty fangs…and then they snickered like Muttley, the 1970s green cartoon dog, and vanished before my eyes with a spinning flourish, leaving behind a steaming pile of crap that was actually bigger than the 20s themselves had been. In a daze, I stumbled upstairs, resolving to keep better track of my 30s when I’m done with them later this year.

June 17, 2005

What I Learned Today

"Pince Nez" is derived from the term "bandersnatch," which in turn is derived from "akhnethonalite," the name for an extinct intestinal parasite from the ancient Babylonian dialect "Futon."

June 10, 2005

Hello, Dustman!

Liwi the haberdasher is convinced that his shop isn’t dusty enough. He calls Bindle, the dustman, who always has plenty to go around and can’t wait to share it. The only problem is, the dust is really the ashes of Bindle’s victims…but what Liwi doesn’t know won’t hurt him, at least according to Bindle.

And it’s true. Liwi sighs with relief as the new layer of dust covers the overpriced antiquities on his shelves. Finally, all is as it should be. Customers, seeing the dust, will be more easily convinced of the advanced age and heightened value of the myriad objects. More importantly, Liwi can feel comfortable again, knowing that everything is in its place. His surroundings are drab and dusty as they should be, and all is right with the world.

On his way out the porthole, Bindle dumps a bonus pile on the floor. A tip of the hat, a jaunty “Good day, sir!” and he is on his way to either kill another person or dust up another shop or home. Ecstatically, Liwi jams a black bowler hat on his head and rolls around and around in his free bonus pile of dust, unaware that it once belonged to the beloved beggar who daily brought smiles to his face with his crazy nuggets of shouted street wisdom.

June 6, 2005

Crutching at Straws

Crutches can bring out the best and worst in people. This has really been brought home to me lately, as I’ve been crutch-bound for the past two weeks due to a sprained ankle. (Please don’t ask how I sprained it…)

Some people, when they see me approaching on crutches in a store aisle, will step aside or move their shopping carts. Others will actually refuse to give up the right-of-way and will force me to go around them. At a local home improvement store, a pair of women actually made me get out of their way several times as they looked at different bathroom fixtures…plus which, they stole my salesperson!

In parking lots, also, some people will patiently allow me to cross in front of them, giving me a friendly wave as I pass. Others will charge and swerve around me as if I’m a traffic cone.

And don’t get me started on so-called “handicapped accessible” buildings. It makes me wonder how people with more permanent or severe disabilities manage to get by in this country.

I know: congratulations on the big revelation, Mr. Perceptive. Still, it’s funny how your perspective changes when you’re the one gumming up the works. As a rule, I think I’m a polite person, but I also know I’m always running late…and I wonder how many times, without thinking about it, I might have been less than patient or kind to someone with a disability.

May 16, 2005

No Notes in the Post Office

Why isn't there any music in my local Post Office? I just realized this afternoon, while waiting in line behind the young couple with two boxes full of unstamped wedding invitations and the hippie conducting some incomprehensible and time-devouring business involving mail sacks, ID tags, and thick catalogues, that there's no music playing in my Post Office...not even Musak! I wonder if the situation is the same in all U.S. Post Offices, or most of them, or just some of them. When I asked the clerk about it, she said that they had not had music for as long as she had been working there; a fellow customer remembered watching some kind of quiz on a TV monitor which is still mounted above the service counter. I say bring on the tunes! Some nice classical or jazz might soothe the waiting line-standers as Joe Ebay hands over his twenty custom-built car mufflers and Jane Seems-Like-She's-Never-Been-in-a-Post-Office-Before takes a half-hour with the clerk trying to figure out how to buy a stamp. I think some music in the Post Office lobby would help dispositions all around. Either that, or customers could take matters into their own hands and stage impromptu singalongs. Today, while the minutes crawled away, all I could think of doing was leading the long line behind me in a rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." I had the whole thing envisioned vividly in my mind, like a scene from a movie. Then, I turned around and got a good look at the bored, cranky, ready-to-blow faces lined up behind me...and I kind of had second thoughts about the whole Post Office singalong deal.

May 13, 2005

Goodbye STAR TREK

It’s hard to believe that after tonight, we’ll have no new TV episodes of STAR TREK to look forward to in the near future. Come Fall 2006, the airwaves will be free of new TREK for the first time in many years. I think, if I were writing this at the same time last year, and the word had come down that ENTERPRISE would be cancelled after its third season, I would not be so depressed. In my opinion, ENTERPRISE season 1 was promising, season 2 was a drag, and season 3 was strangely lifeless in spite of the potentially exciting 24-in-space season-long Xindi plotline. But losing the show now, after the fabulous season 4, is hard to take. Fellow fans, let’s give Manny Coto and the whole team a round of applause for season 4’s 22 gifts to Trekkers around the world…a season that included everything from Augments to Orions to the Mirror Universe to the answer to the “Klingon question.” This season, ENTERPRISE finally came alive and turned into the kind of show that it should have been from the beginning. Let’s do our part to support the franchise and encourage its rebirth in the not-too-distant future…and let’s hope that when TREK returns, it will be better and fresher than ever.

May 9, 2005

Glitterbone’s Comeback

“Hogwild!” screeched Glitterbone, hopping up and down on the concert stage in front of 20,000 crazed fans. “Gelatin sugarscoop pallid contrary DISTURBING!”

The crowd went absolutely wild. The funny thing was, not one of the words that Glitterbone sang was part of the actual lyrics of his megahit song “Quagmire USA (Bring on the Lovin’).” In fact, since his mini-stroke thirty seconds ago, Glitterbone had been singing a nonsensical sequence of unconnected words…and in some cases, incoherent vocalizations that had no resemblance to words at all.

“Tfft! Berry swignal chaba hook!” howled Glitterbone, and everyone went crazier than ever. The audience response outrageously surpassed any that he had ever gotten in his entire twenty-odd year career. Even at the height of his teen idol days, when he had gone by his birthname Tag Sighing, Glitterbone had never received this kind of sheer, pandemonious acclaim.

Little did he know that he was on the verge of launching a new trend that would sweep the entire world. From that day forward, vocalists around the globe would take up the challenge of singing disconnected, flyaway syllables instead of lyrics that spoke to the hearts and minds of fans. Musicians followed suit, playing dissonant disarrangements of notes that had no relationship to chords or keys or harmonies.

“Chog! Roll freckle ugh patch nackey!”

And what of Glitterbone himself? Though he never said another word in his life that made any kind of sense, he was lauded as a prophet and an elder statesman of squawk ‘n’ roll, a visionary talent unmatched by anyone before or since.

He even changed his name, henceforth referring to himself only as, “Owglebog.”

May 6, 2005

From the Desk of the Grandiloquent Washer Hiramagico:

I have never understood the need for secrecy among the Valves. Our organization, esoteric and fragmented as it is, has only one single purpose, and that a beneficial and benevolent one: to release the steam of the world by wreaking havoc. If only our leaders and advisors could let loose some of our closely held tenets and do-goodings, perhaps we could usher in a new era of amazing understanding and badwill. In this way, the release of even greater pressures would bring with it a concomitant wave of progress and good-feeling which would bring all the Earth to the peak of a new ultra-Camelot. Besides which, we Valves have the most unique, and if you ask me, startlingly vibrant costumery that I have ever seen. A spigot…mind you, A SPIGOT…rests upon the right and left epaulets of our uniforms, and at the turn of the handle of either, a SHOWER OF GLITTER trickles down, simulating a flow of water! Don’t get me started about our magnificent and not-that-heavy-at-all-once-you-get-used-to-it HEADGEAR!!!

April 29, 2005

The Quackenbush Papers

Episode One: Back in Quack

The five-ton gargantuan who called himself the Carpathian swung a fist like a wrecking ball at my head. I, Quackenbush, dove nimbly to one side, dodging the blow with my fleet-footedness and springing into range for my signature move: the bombastic butt-plow. I’ll bet they heard him screaming all the way into next week as my iron-clad rump slammed into the back of his head like an anvil. The Carpathian hit the floor like an asteroid, blocking my only route to the Amish Diamond…the fabulous, worth-a-fortune, yet ultimately very simple treasure of the Plain Folk. It was then, as I crawled over the Carpathian’s pungent, sweat-soaked, flab-filled hulk, that I thought back to simpler days, when baseball cards and sunshine were more important to me than a ridiculously overvalued gemstone could ever be. It took me a full hour to climb up one side and down the other of the rancid Carpathian, and by the time I reached the Amish Diamond, I had decided I didn’t want it anymore. Master thief, rake, and raconteur Quid Quackenbush had been born again, latching onto a second childhood like a tick on a hound. It would all be different from now on. No matter who called me to steal a treasure or solve a mystery or avenge an offense, I would be too busy skipping stones and catching bullfrogs and watching cloud dragons to answer the call. Just then, my cell phone rang, and I made the mistake of looking at the caller I.D. on the screen. This call was from the president of the underworld…

April 25, 2005

Two Items Over

The latest rainbow fall of
Boxes bags cartons cans jars
Counts fourteen
Fourteen
Fourteen
Items in my twelve item lane
And I will tell you as you
Pass
Whisper more like hiss with all
The fury of the howling storm
A curse
How dare you
A curse on you and all your
How dare you!
A curse on you and all your descendants
Throughout all eternity for
Those two items
So arrogant
So sharp.

April 22, 2005

Thinskin and Wetshoe Saturday Matinee Episode One: Personas Non Grata

After three weeks as god-kings of Shangri-La, our courageous heroes decide that they have had enough. The Shangri-Lalans may be eager to please and living in the ideal society in a hidden Himalayan paradise, but they are ugly as all get-out and smell like rotten eggs. Our heroes ponder several escape plans but ultimately resort to the strategy that has never been known to fail them: they act like themselves, whining and getting in the way until the Shangri-Lalan society verges on complete collapse. Eager to get rid of these irritants—a man with skin so thin it’s see-through, a woman with fantastically sweaty feet—the tiny, rancid Shangri-Lalans hurl the both of them into an incredible capsule atop an engine sled powered by a slip of paper with the words “inexhaustible fuel supply” written on it in an ancient and ornate language. Two days after the launch, Thinskin and Wetshoe find themselves on a new world a universe away…a world where water thinks and acts with malevolence, and tiny beings like sneezing, scurrying turnips mount a fearless resistance to liquid tyranny! STAY TUNED FOR EPISODE TWO: THAT SINKING FEELING.