5 ways smiling is very much like sex

Yesterday, the memory of a chain email I received years ago came back to me for no apparent reason. The message was all about how awesome smiles are, and how the power of our zygotes would change the world while we rode on rainbow-colored sea lions.

Now that I can't open my Facebook timeline without reading about happiness and how wonderful life is, I feel compelled to let my inner lover tell you the real reason why smiling is awesome: because it's almost exactly like sex.

1) It's better when it's free.

(credits)

The same is also true for your daily pound of cocaine, but then again, it takes only four muscles to smile whereas driving to your  dealer still costs you a thirty minutes drive and a couple of spare septums.

The same way I've never really liked spending half a year of earning on that veteran *cough* escort *cough* from my local red light district, I find her post-transaction smile rather difficult to appreciate and totally not worth the 20% tip.

My grandmother, on the other hand, smiles all the time, just because she likes it. She genuinely makes me want to smile back, and I always do so provided herpes is not tearing my mouth apart.

Also yes, talking about paid sex, cocaine and my grandma in the same paragraph is disturbing.

2) There is no real alternative to it

(credits)

Sometimes, however you contort your face, your smile will not show:  You're wearing a full helmet, you're conversing via instant messenger or more realistically, Uncle Peter has once again fed you polymer glue instead of your morning cheerios…

Of course, in front of a screen, you have the choice of typing a whole range of nonsensical abbreviations… but what if you're part of a face-to-face conversation? Do you hop in circles while singing a happy song? Do you punch a clown in the face? Do you write "LOL" on your forehead?

One can think of many ways, but, just like with sex, nothing is as good as the real deal, not even an abnormal muscle growth on your left forearm.

3) It's a perfect way to test your oral hygiene

(credits)

Whether your pearly white dentition is the pride of your lineage, or tentacles wildly spread from your unflossed interstices, all it takes is 2 seconds to know if your mouth is a sanctuary of freshness or a Chtulhu Du Jour a la Garlic.
Notice that if reactions may vary depending on where you are at, getting waterboarded with mouthwash may happen anywhere.

4) It doesn't really help when someone forces it on you.

(credits)

One of the most traumatic events in my life involves a rather large regroupment of hippies and a bald, older man greeting me with the facial equivalent of an upside down shark attack dipped in valium. Greetings went as follow:

"So very nice to meet you my friend"
-"Let go of my hand. NOW!"

His way of smiling somehow managed to unite smugness, authentic care, total contempt and years of LSD abuse in one suave feat of labial coordination.

The feeling that ensued got me picturing the man pulling my mood by the neck, trying to french kiss it while gurgling a cheesy pick-up line about making me a woman soon.

Since I have this pet peeve about avoiding castration, physical or mental, I left the place as soon as I could, regretting to have given that bald freak a shake from the hand I usually masturbate with.

5) It's only valuable when triggered by a shared, hartfelt intent.

(credit)

When the mood's not there, the mood's not there. Forcing it will only result in an awkward moment at best, with at worst a chance of being kicked in the privates.

Just like sex, a smile is a choice and just like sex, it's a bilateral action enabled by a mutual agreement. Don't believe me? Try your brightest grin during funerals.

These motivational pictures with unreadable fonts over sunset backgrounds telling you to keep smiling even if an evil djinn is keeping open your dislocated jaw to stuff you with red hot nails and arsenic?

Yeah screw them. With a smile.

:)

This post is illustrated by the very talented illustrator Cecilia Hidayat. I am planning a unicorn barbecue next Friday and I will personally invite you if you visit her blog. 

More info, more cake and still no lemon at Without a Lemon's Facebook Page


5 ways smiling is very much like sex (text) by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.


5 ways smiling is very much like sex (images) by Cecilia Hidayat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

5 Seconds marvels and a water pump

Fig.1, The Truth (Interpretation)
(credit)

What can fit into 9m2 room? A small wardrobe, a mattress, an out-of-place table with no chair to sit at…
They don't fill that much space, though.
They can't.
Something else stands in the middle. Something pushing everything against the walls: The whirr of the building's water pump.

Wrrrrr…Clack…Wrrrr…Clack.

The buried metronome never stops, a continuous confirmation of renewed moisture for everyone in the boarding house.


When I first moved in, it turned into a constant pain, oscillating between my eardrums and my brain. A pink electric elephant smugly sitting on my nerves every time I tried not to think of it.

Wrrrrr…Clack…Wrrrr…Clack.
G sharp.

I don't even remember when I noticed it. Or when I started improvising melodies over it. I've whistled the Pumps Variations, The Art of Pumping, and Canon in Pump Major, inverting and tangling melodies until my lips gave up.

When my inspiration dried out, I realized that exercise had significantly increased my tolerance to the noise. I took on finding new ways to have fun out of it. I gave it a name. Wet Walter, the Water Wisdom Whisperer.

"Blessed are the hydrated" on Sundays, "Water is great" on Fridays, "Be water" on any day.
But who was Walter, really? Cringing every 5 seconds, dispensing its goodness to us, unwashed creatures? How could he be so repetitive yet so meaningful, putting himself to a task only fit for an hydrophilic Sisyphus?
Maybe the answer was in the rhythm: 5 seconds between each pulse. I thought it silly, not seeing how anything meaningful could happen in a such a short lapse of time. I got curious. I looked it up.

Wrrrrr…Clack… 20 babies see their first light.
Wrrrrr…Clack… 9 people see their last one.
Wrrrrr…Clack… 200 lightning strikes have found their way to the ground
Wrrrrr…Clack… 20.000 new stars are now shining
Wrrrrr…Clack… 150 new supernovas are bursting gamma rays all over the place.

Fact after fact, numbers kept adding up, in neat piles from my floor to my ceiling, occupying the space once monopolized by the whirr. The pink elephant was gone, replaced by a steady reminder of five seconds marvels.

I think too much, I was told.
I don't really mind. I have all the time to.
On tempo, to the beat of a nearby water pump, the shout out of Walter, town crier before the gods, who helped me find the heartbeat of the universe in a dumb electrical engine and its monotonous song in G sharp.

5 Seconds marvels and a water pump by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

More info, more cake and still no lemon at Without a Lemon's Facebook Page

Inspirational Black Pepper

(fig.1) This, is the best representation of an evening with friends I've ever seen. 

You want an inspirational story?

Well here's one. Read on.

There's this new couple where I'm working. Ryno and Cecil. They are the cutest item I've ever seen since witnessing that pair of semi-angora kitties having an intercourse in the missionary position (call me a liar, the cats won't care)(no that's not gross that's cute)(three sets of parentheses, hah!).

A couple of weeks ago, I was diligently working on my very own version of an elaborate prank, hiding in the shadows of the utility closet, hoping to take a running jump at some clueless airhead- beloved colleague of mine when my T-Rex eyes noticed movement.

I leaped on a terrorized Cecil.
Leaping on people prior to knowing their name is to ice breaking what nuclear fission is to pest control and frankly, you feel pretty awkward after leveling a couple of cities just to reduce the giant moth population.

When my black eye finally resorbed, we became friends.

As all friends always do to seal a budding relationship, I offered them the unique opportunity to learn French bread baking at my home without having them crowd-fund the workshop via kickstarter.

The three of us logically ended up in my kitchen, our hands white with flour and chins wet with expecting drool.
All was going well when a curtain of gloom suddenly fell on our happy party. O rage, O despair, thy storm bearing clouds, the bite of thy frozen gale of disappointment… I was out of yeast!

For those who don't know, not including yeast in your bread is perfectly fine if you intend to bake a freezbee. Else, you still can swallow your enthusiasm along with a handful of raw flour and call it a day.

I could have done just that, but I'm not the kind of person easily brought down by the whim of my usually merciless fate.

"Do you guys want to know how to turn instant hot chocolate into an unforgettable event?"

[Cheers from the crowd, the Dalai Lama drops from a hovering helicopter, snatches the mic out of my hands while doing a backflip and says "Who gives a fuck, really?"]

Alright, no chocolate for you, Dalai Lama. Rino and Cecil did say yes. We proceeded.

Later, remembering that we were all video game addicts in a way or another, we spent the rest of the evening enjoying vintage titles, ending the night with Puyo Puyo (advertised as a puzzle game but, in reality, the ultimate tool to put any friendship to the test).

Out of all that, came one of the most amazing infographics I've been tagged in so far. Made specially as a keepsake for such a nice evening (fig.1).

Why is this inspiring?

- The Dalai Lama doing a backflip HAS to inspire you, somehow.
- A succession of mistakes turned into a succession of good moments is pretty awesome.
- You learned you can eat raw flour (although you can also eat rocks, what happens later is your problem).
- You can turn every occasion into a chance to feed a newly wed couple a highly potent aphrodisiac beverage. You're welcome.

You now MUST visit Cecil's illustrations blog and Ryno's creative portfolio. I will personally whip your buttocks with an angry bobcat if you don't.



More info, more cake and still no lemon at Without a Lemon's Facebook Page


Inspirational Black Pepper by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.


Hot Chocolate Without A Lemon by Cecillia Hidayat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Bald Paradigm (Why I fucking hate comb-overs).

Baldness allows righteous
smugness, even to styrofoam.
(credits)

Yes, I am now 30 years old, and I have been bald for a year already. Not balding on the top, not thinning on the forehead. Ground zero bald, cue-bald, scalp-feels-like-a-new-handbag bald.

And, this is a good thing.

When I was 17, I was harboring a curly mane so rebounding and silk-smooth that Shirley Temple could have sued me over it, and won. Mind you, not poodle curly -which is good, since the only good way to dry up a poodle is in a microwave, and I don't really fit - not affro either, but springy curls reflecting lights in all shades from deep brown to dark copper.

I could push a pen inside of that head jungle of mine; it would stay there, warm and safe, for the next half hour I would spend untangling it. Now the only way to make anything stick there involves either a lot of alcohol, a lot of pain, or both.

My Teflon head is the result of a promise I made to myself -and kept: Thou shall not compromise with male pattern baldness.

Let me explain.
Have you ever seen someone with missing teeth brush the remaining ones aside so they fill the gaping holes in-between?
Now, put aside the disturbing mental image I have intentionally put in your head, and ask yourself: "If people don't do that with their teeth, why the coiting hell would they do it with their hair?"

Yes yes, people don't usually pull out their remaining teeth either, but that's because, contrarily to toupees, the majority of available dentures aren't made entirely of seaweed and hobbit butt-hairs (another interesting picture for our readers with a good visual imagination, you're welcome).

All of this to say: I fucking hate comb-overs.

Comb-overs, though, are Andre-Fulbert's best friend.

Andre-Fulbert is a French accountant. He works half time in the windowless basement of a round-the-clock sex shop. He often deliberately inputs numbers with typos in it to delete digits he imagines alive and screaming for mercy. On his way back home, he usually takes a 15 minute breaks at the terrace of a bistro where he withstands verbal abuse from a old prostitute while drinking rancid coffee. Back home, he gets mauled by his goldfish and ignored by his dog, a hemiplegic terrier born before the first republic. He goes to the bathroom hoping to soothe his bowels, corroded by years of 15 minutes coffee and old whore talks, and after his fruitless effort drowned in a storm of weapon grade gases, he washes the greasy sweat off his face while staring in the mirror.
What he sees is the pride of his crown, atop his round head and his double chin. The reported, brushed aside crown of low self esteem. He sees the compensation for years of frustrated routine and an overly shy set of genitals.

Had Andre-Fulbert taken the right decision, wearing his balls on his shiny head in the fashion of all real men, turning the disaster of aging into a silvery chance of looking like a confident, masculine alter ego, ready to kick Bruce Willis in the shins and gobble Sean Connery like a raw egg, he would have come home to the moans of Thalia, Calliope and Erato welcoming him in a rapture while his pet liger diligently deposed at his feet the bleeding body of Cernunnos. He would have ignored it all to go shave and perfect the patina of his cranium, and then have a steak, because that's what real men do.

Kneel before Cernunnos, the Celtic Deer Deity.
Also, don't let him find me again. I'm begging you.
(Source)

Alas, as proven by a fortnight spent running in fear, naked in the woods, and three fractured ribs, that bitch Cernunnos is still very well alive. Andre-Fulbert is long dead, though, choked by his own tears while crying himself to sleep.
Godspeed, Fulb', godspeed.

Bald on the forehead, bald between the ears, polka dot bald all around the world, take action and sandpaper, time has come for our testosterone filled pride to flood the world with sebum powered incandescence!

More info, more cake and still no lemon at Without a Lemon's Facebook Page


The Bald Paradigm (Why I fucking hate comb-overs) by Danny hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Fat Trial

(credits)

The trial was going toward its end. After years of administrative battle and weeks of in court, the defendant attorney was about to deliver his closing argument.

In the courtroom, one of the largest in the Northwest Democratic Republic, families, journalists an curious were massed in a dense, sour smelling crowd, shoving and stretching to get a glimpse of the action. Peace keeping squads had to be deployed outside in order to avoid clashes between supporters and detractors of the accused. Both groups, facing each other, seemed to be holding a slogan chanting contest.
"Free speech, free Billy Kay" was met with "Hate haters", while "Open your eyes, open your mouth" loudly clashed again "Feelings first".

Billy Kay, a short, rather skinny, young looking black man, was sitting almost motionless on his bench, enjoying the change of athmosphere from his stay in protective custody.

He had been placed under home arrest for a while, but after a small group of 'outraged citizens' had showered his house in molotov cocktails, he found himself moved to a more secure location. When the press asked him about his feelings concerning the loss of his roof, he sent another wave of resentment throughout the country. "Next time, why don't they bring a nice, tall wooden cross for a little burn-along? I'll provide the popcorn".

Big Mouth Billy, as the media had monickered him, had first stepped into trouble when selected for a live, prime-time trivia game show. Student in cognitive sciences with an impeccable record, knowledgeable of a wide range of topic and, as student go, perpetually penniless, he'd though of if as an occasion for quick monetary relief.

When, under the attentive eyes of millions of viewers, the presenter had asked him a ritual question, "What motivated you to enter this show, Billy?", not seeing any benefit dihonesty he simply answered "Well, I could say a lot of things, but I'm just hoping for a big fat heap of cash".
While his mouth was still split into a grin, the show's audience fell silent.
"You mean a huge amount of cash, right Billy?" the presenter looked on the verge of panic.
"Not at all, I do mean a massive, fa…"

Only then, he noticed the look in the eyes of the three other contestant. Two morbidly obese ladies and one morbidly obese man. Apparently, his choice of words hadn't been to the taste of everyone. One of the girls almost immediately broke into hysterical sobs, the crowd started booing, the show was interrupted.

Of course, the recording had made it around the Internet before Billy got home. The lawsuit came a week later. The contestants, backed by the TV network, accused him of infringing the hate speech and banned terms laws. To his knowledge, the word 'fat' wasn't appearing in the banned terms blacklist. Apparently, it had only taken a couple of days to send it there, among the colony of c-words, n-words and other letter-dash-words.
But then why not?
The video of his misstep had gone viral, the public opinion was shaken, hordes of overweight people went marching… the government had to do something.

At first, Billy had taken the news rather stoically. He didn't care about much, he wouldn't care much for that either.
When the molotovs when through his windows, he found himself caring at once and completely.

Usually described as a lively lad, prone to humor (although sometime defining himself as a bit of an ass), his only response was then to sit, immobile, mulling things over and not uttering a word.

As he was now, waiting for the defense attorney to start babbling about temporary insanity, stage fright and maybe a stay at the Federal Recalibration Institute instead of the expected 15 years of jail time. His lawyer, reluctant from the start, was doing no more than the necessary minimum. His refusal to talk hadn't helped his case either.

It wouldn't matter, he'd end up with an RFID implant like other 'hater' in any case. The prosecutor would burn him to crisp without effort; just pointing at the street, showing a couple of recordings from the 'big march' would impress the jury way beyond what was needed.

The hell with it all.

"Excuse me"

Billy had talked. Interrupting the defense's speech in the middle of a sentence having something to do with his skin color.
Hundreds of mouths went shut.

"Yeah, I wish to dismiss my attorney. Yes, you. I don't want you to talk on my behalf, I'm screwed coming and going and you're not helping. So shut up.
Now I'm gonna tell you how I see it. Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you in the corner with that huge camera, all of you.
First. Yeah. I said it, it's on video. I wasn't drunk, I wasn't crazy, I wasn't stressed or anything. I just said what was in my mind."
The judge's gavel had to rasp several times before anybody could calm down.
"Now hear me. I'm not polite, I swear a lot, I'm a bit of an ass, I'm far from perfect. I'm black, too.
Ah, and I don't give a fuck."
The following commotion was even louder than the first one.
"Would you all stop screaming every time you hear a word you don't like? What are you? 8 year old girls?
Yes your honor. I know your honor, I'm going to far. But hey, I'll get an implant soon. I'm just asking for five minutes.
You all want to see me convicted because, to your standards, I said the wrong thing a the wrong moment. I said something that made some people sad. Fat people."
The courtroom was on its way to another antic when he stood up and shouted "SHUT UP! Hear me! You've been marching, you've been screaming and I haven't said a word yet. My turn!" Somehow, his voice was commanding enough to turn the room silent again.
"See, that's your problem. You don't want so see what's here. You're so afraid of certain things that you don't even want to accept their existence. I'm black, I'm short, I've got a voice so low it could lay down on a railroad and be alright if a train passed… Call me shortie! For the love of all that's good, call me blacky! I don't give a damn! And you know why? Because I have absolutely no reason to be ashamed of what I am. Even if I wanted to. You think I don't want to be taller? You think I could? Of course I can't!
So I just get on with it. When I see what you call the 'big march', I can't help myself thinking… are all these people so sad to be themselves? Change what you can and live with what you can't change. Full stop!
I never hurt anybody, I don't get into people's ways, I study hard, I support our Unique Party and our Wise Leader, like all of you here. Now, you've been calling me a crazy person, an egoistic hater, a sociopath. You've been marching to put me in jail just because I said something that happened to somehow relate to someone who didn't like the sound of it.
Do you have any idea of what these words mean to me, of how I feel about what you guys said? Your words ruined my life, robbed my of my future. And I just sit down and shut up. How twisted is that?"

Some in the audience tried to start booing, but the heart wasn't there anymore. The truth was: Billy had had the guts to say aloud what was thought by many. His speech was the second recording of him going viral in less than an hour.

A week later, on his way to the Federal Recalibration Institute, in a police wagon, he listened to the muffled sound of the radio. The Minister of Morals was on air. "… yes, Big Mouth Billy has been proven guilty as charged, the decision is supported by overwhelming proofs and technically valid. We can not reasonably afford to overlook the law for the needs of an individual. But even then, we can not deny the strength of his message which, even if lacking in subtlety, has indeed underlined a serious problem in our way of apprehending our verbal communication. This is why, starting from today and in honor of the courage it took to stand up and speak, the words 'egoist', 'sociopath' and 'short' are now banned from any sort of speech whatsoever. Thank you, Billy Kay"

The wagon's driver jumped on his seat, startled. He'd seen all sorts of behaviors from his passengers, but a convict laughing his head off like that, that was a first.

Fin.


The Fat Trial by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

More info, more cake and still no lemon at Without a Lemon's Facebook Page

Request: Hostel - Another Vampire Story

(credits)

Every single day, she would try something new.
First, it'd been holy water. Flinging a cup of liquid at your host face was just preposterous. Then, she'd slipped half a dozen garlic cloves in their evening soup. Her drawing holy symbols on her bedroom's door had infuriated him. Permanent marker. On century old oak wook. There was no way to get rid of it.

"Look, Julie, for the very last time. None of this is working, and none of this will ever work. I am a vampire, yes. I am immortal, yes. Think of me as a soulless spawn of some demented evil if want, I don't care! But for the love of whatever you believe in, stop making my life a living hell and just stay put! These things you hear about holy water, sunlight and such are the stuff of myths. I, on the other hand, am real. You are my only guest, so please behave as a guest should!"
She was firmly standing on the other side of the room, her bed between them, arms crossed agains her chest, her eyebrows locked into a resentful frown. "I still think a stake to the heart would kill you".

His face turned from pale to paler. He flung his arms upward in a gesture of earnest desperation and slapped his cheeks with both his hands.
"A stake to the heart would kill anyone!"
- "I don't know that. I've never tried before. Maybe you should be my first" She went around the bed, reducing the distance between them to a mere couple of inches and poked his chest with her finger.
"I don't see any reason to grant you anything. You advertize your place as a guest house but you put me in a room with a leaking roof where the layer of dust on the bed is thicker than the blanket, then you tell me there is no phone coverage, then you tell me that I have to stay because you 'chose' me to be your 'helper'?"
- "Look, vampires have to drink blood, alright? Not much be we do.  Soup is not enough. I just need you here for a couple of month, let me take an ounce of your blood every two days, and I won't bother anyone for the next century. We don't kill anymore, you know." He gave her what looked to be an apologetic smile. Showing a set of pearly white teeth. Perfectly healthy. Perfectly normal.
- "And why should I? And what can you do? You can't even bite me!"
- "See it as a favor"
- "No. That's final. You're going too far. Now stop that or I'll…"

She hadn't finished her sentence when the blow landed, sligthly pushing her liver in. She folded in half then dropped to her knees, nauseated, unable to catch her breath. The count's composure had changed. He wasn't a frail middle aged man. His hardened gaze was penetrating, boding for unpleasant moments to come.
"I have had enough of you, lady. Akin to the others, you believe that your innocent looks and likable features are a fate shaping tool, but I see further than a mere envelope. You are denying the meager pittance I am so gently asking. You will be punished". Even his speech had changed.

Julie couln't help but stare. Pain was giving way to surprise.
She had come to almost like the old man.

A month earlier, looking for some quiet holidays, she'd found the manor on an Internet listing.
Past the first day of her stay, she hadn't felt completely comfortable in the Count's presence.
The huge house, though, was too remote to leave immediately. A shuttle bus would only come once a week; she had to wait several more days.

The Count was clumsy and comically ill tempered. She'd seen him as a quirky, armless loner in need for someone to talk to. His rambling about being a vampire had come to amuse her and, to kill time, she'd entered his game, hoping to entertain them both.
Her tricks and their disputes were supposed to be fake. Role plays.

And there she was, on all four, gasping for air.

The Count briskly took hold of her wrist and started pulling her out of the bedroom. Down the corridor leading to the dining room, they took an impromptu left down a spiralling stairwell to enter an underground tunnel, forking every now and then.
She wasn't figthing back. He found her stoicism rather practical. Resisting was no use anyway, the feeding room's heavy lock would bar any attempted escape. He was feeling thirsty.

After they reached the place, he unlocked the heavy, metal coated door and sent her sprawling on the floor. "I am coming back very soon. Then, we will enjoy a very special kind of drink, you and I." He locked the door shut. The room was brightly lit by a common lightbulb. She had expected a chandelier and a fireplace. What she hadn't expected, though, was the operating table and the surgical paraphernalia in a stainless still tray by its side. And the handsaw.

A pin board was hung on the wall in front of her, displaying locks of hair carefully tied in a ribbon-like manner, each one labeled from one to seventeen. A label marked eighteen was pinned alone in the lower right corner. She heard a key turn in the lock. Before she did anything, the Count was holding a damp, acrid smelling cloth to her mouth. She went limp. When she opened her eyes again she was on the table,  wrapped in heavy transparent plastic sheets from the neck down.

The count was leaning over her, looking satisfied and slightly extatic. "See, dear little thing, it would have been wiser to let me have some of your blood. I would have let you go back to your daily life, mind your irrelevant problems and work your irrelevant job… but no. Just like the others, you had to refuse. They all refuse. Nonetheless, I would like the express my gratitude, you will keep me well fed for quite a while."

His right hand, holding a razor sharp scalpel, steadily advanced toward her throat.
"Now now, stay still, it wont hurt much if you…"
He stopped mid-sentence.

Julie's left arm had darted from under the sheet, effortlessly piercing through them, grabbed his wrist and brought it to her mouth. The shock was so brutal it sent the scalpel bounce against a wall.
The Count could clearly feel her two canines puncturing his skin.

Still holding her bite, she sat on the edge of the table, completely unhindered by her bounds, before the nonplussed expression of her captor. Letting go of his wrist, she wiped her sleeve to her mouth, smearing a dark red drop of blood across her cheek.

"Oh my, I haven't drank in ages. Feels good, doesn't it? Just my luck, too. I've always liked eccentrics thinking themselves as vampires. Usually I just stick around for a couple of days and get out of their way. Most of the time they just like wearing ruffles and drink wine while pretending to be evil. Having said that, you're my first real psychopath.
So, you try to lure them into thinking you're just an crazy old man, and add them to your collection a la 'Dexter' as soon as they get tired of your nonsense… that's pretty sick."

The Count's eyes widened as he backed up in a corner.

"I must commend your knowledge, though. Garlic, sunlight… ", she scoffed, "Holy symbols! None of this works. It's no more than pop culture. But that scalpel, that was bad news, well played.
Still, there is one fact you got completely wrong. Do you know which one?"

He silently shook his head from side to side, still staring.

"We still kill, sometimes"
She rolled her eyes and added, to herself, "Mostly for fun".

She leapt.

The End.

This story is based upon a request from Julie (Keywords: Vampire, Funny... I just couldn't keep the funny part on this one, got pretty carried away. Julie is a badass though, and I'll hope she'll forgive me :p )

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Hostel - Another Vampire Story by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Request: Count on me

So, we meet again after a medium sized hourglass?
- "Sounds about right, then you'll explain me the job requirements  and we'll start ASAP".

Ignatius shook his future employer's hand and headed toward the parking lot. Once inside his car, he started the engine, clutched on gear A and drove down through the lower middle, upper-bases and base-base floor to finally exit in the city center. At the red light, he reached for his back pack on the passenger seat, pulling out his hourglass and upturning it against the back rest. He would meet his soon to be boss again, before the sand had filled the bottom half, which would leave him free until the next morning.

He hated the thing, an older model with a heavy aluminium base and thick plexiglass casing.The standard A-A caliber sand, most common in the nothern hemisphere, did nothing to diminish the weight. Luckier southerners would live on standard C-A African grain, much more compact and better flowing, allowing for smaller containers. Only, that very hourglass had been in the family since his great-grandfather, who had been alive during the Disappearance, when people could still use numbers.

Stories about numbers had always fascinated him. How they were used to define precise quantities, coordinate event, or even as memories and means to understand concepts defied his imagination. But just as magic, numbers were from another realm.

When his great-grandfather had still been a boy, people had slowly started to forget how to employ them. Complex operations were the first to go. Specialists in the field suddenly became inept. Several industries had threatened to collapse, although the use of number processors called computers, later relegated to museums, had avoided a massive catastrophe. Despite everyone's best efforts, numbers continued to vanish from humankind's collective intellect, untill even counting (whatever that was -apparently something very basic) had turned into a mistery.

Speculations were made about the phenomenon, successively blaming a new kind of virus, radiations, long term effect of specific food enhancers… without ever finding out a cure.

Realizing the hopelessness of the situation, scholars from all around the planet saw the importance of preventing existing technologies from fading out of existance. The Counsil For Knowledge was founded for that purpose, and issued scores of references and manuals to guide, step by step, the production of the most vital transportation, communication and medical tools.
Following the passing of the last Counting Elder, the Council refocused its aim toward organizing an increasingly chaotic society, renaming itself the Counsil of Measurements.
The post Disappearance era had begun.

Time standardization had been the first problem to be tackled.
If people could still refer to the day-night alternance, they would not be able to keep track of more than a single cycle. Hourglasses were introduced, comming in tiny, small, medium, large and huge sizes, keeping people synchronized as long as the sand would flow.

Distances were measured via hourglasses as well: A walk to the city was a small hourglass away on foot, and a tiny one by car. Quantities would range from single to 'many lots', speed from 'almost stopped' to 'as fast as can', and many more approximation were found to feel the gaps left by the total absence of anything mathematical.

The result was a slowed-down world, where things would only happen after many failed attempt and endless adjustments.

Ignatius arrived home.
He went for the kitchen, unwrapped a standard size pack of frozen french fries, then another, poured a large size pack of oil into his pan and proceeded to cook.

Food packaging was said to be one practical side of life without numbers. Everything would fit into boxes, standardized, off course, from very tiny to very large, and one would rarely resort to cutting and 'measuring' as shown in the archive from the old times.

Waiting for the fries to be ready, he sat near the stove and started handling a Rubik's cube.
His hobby was shared by many others. When counting had left human brains, logic had -quite fortunately- kept on standing its ground. If none of them could figure out how many facets composed the surface of a cube,  they were all aware of the steps needed to achieve the right block position. Twist left, again, again, up, back. Cube solved. Dinner ready.

After moving to the living room, he turned on his television. A filler program was on.
The insipid shows, meant to keep the audience waiting until the production had re-synchronized the hourglasses, always left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.

As he often did, he started talking to himself. "We had industries going on and growing, we had innovations, you can see it in the archives. Now nothing ever gets new, we don't travel anymore, we just keep our activities to a minimum compared to our great-grand's epoch.
We just read the manuals… even our barters are settled in those damned manuals. I want to create things and I want people to use them, but how can you trade things you don't know the value of? I'm tired of watching fillers because TV station are incapable of good synchro…"

His reflexion stretched until bedtime.

His next morning was spent sitting in wait for his future employer. The sun was well into its upper-low quadrant when the suit wearing, almost over-groomed man showed up. Government officials were always touchy about their appearance.

"I'm sorry, I must have kept you waiting. My cat knocked my hourglass sideways during the night."
"Standard excuse", he though. That man didn't look like a pet owner. He'd probably spent too long perfecting his tie knot and was too proud to admit it.

"Anyway, Ignatius, glad we could still sync. Hopefully you didn't wait for too long"
-"Well, I can't be exact about it, but it would be around two and a half small standards HG, sir."
His interlocutor paused, a smirk slowly forming on his face.
"Yes… yes, as I said yesterday, you're the perfect man for the job. Come, I'll brief you on the way. We have a lot of work to do… reforming the Counsel will take some time."
- "At least five years".
This time, they both smirked.

Fin

This story is based upon a request from Ignatius (Keywords: Numbers, Hourglass, French Fries)
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Count On Me by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.