The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Confabulation

  • Not Actually Very Funny At All

    Terry is a Joke. And a bad one, too. But Terry is bringing home a new roll of Certs from the Kwik Shop because he is going to help Amanda find a new job. His breath must smell better than normal so that she won’t send him away when he opens his mouth.

    On his way back to his apartment building, Terry passes some real people on the street. Compulsory chuckles escape this man and that woman. Real people never find him humorous, but it strikes them as impolite not to laugh at the young man’s existence.

    Oh well, Terry thinks as he dips his head to accept their recognition. (more…)

  • Laying Down The Law

    “Come on Grandma, we’re going to be late!” Alexandra Underwood called up the stairs to Jean.

    “Oh quit your fussing, there’s still an hour before the concert starts,” Jean’s disembodied voice floated down.

    “Yeah an hour for you! I have to get there and get set up. This bad boy doesn’t tune itself.” She tapped on the cello case.

    “Perhaps you should consider meditating to prepare?”

    “Grandma, seriously!”

    The phone chose this inopportune time to begin ringing.

    “Of for-”

    “Language!” Jean interrupted the curse as she appeared at the top of the stairs.

    “Don’t answer it!” Alex grabbed the phone from the little decorative table whose only purpose seemed to be to hold Jean’s two phones and keys. (more…)

  • Awkward Silences

    ‘I am so tired of disappointing you.”

    “Why do you think that?”

    “The way you look at me, I can tell.” He jingled the change in his hand. Nervous habit.

    She looked at him and laughed, a forced kind of laugh. “I didn’t know you were such an expert in body language.” Then she gave him the kind of look he feared.

    He debated commenting on it, but he knew the results of such chatter never turned out in his favor so he focused instead on the nickels and dimes in his hand.

    A long silence followed, made awkward by the worldly silence around them. The change became an uncomfortable distraction and he slipped the coins into his pocket. He wished he would have flipped on the television before he started this chat yet again.

    “Awkward.” He tried to smirk when he said it. He failed. (more…)

  • Collections Hell

    To: mathew.logan@soulnet.org
    From: collections@hellnet.org

    Dear Matthew Logan,

    I am writing to inform you that your grace period of 15 years, as previously agreed upon by both parties, is coming to a close. On September 30, 2016 your fee of the energy from one human soul, hereafter known as your immortal soul, will be due. On or before this date, your immortal soul will be ripped from your body and transferred to the underworld for eternal storage. Please make whatever arrangements you feel are appropriate and schedule a visit with one of our many repossesion agents at your earliest convenience.

    Appointments for immortal soul collection do fill up fast during this time of year, due to the many contracts signed during the early autumn months. In order to ensure a convenient time to surrender your immortal soul, we do recommend that you make an appointment as soon as possible. The process is fast and we try our best to make it as painless as possible.

    If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your case-demon directly at: ralachi.collections@hellnet.org

    Ralachi
    Fifth Level of Hell
    Collections Department

    #

    To: collections@hellnet.org
    From: mathew.logan@soulnet.org

    How on Earth did you get this email? I did not and never have signed any kind of contract for my immortal soul. If this is some kind of joke, it’s not funny.

    Mathew Logan (more…)

  • Soul Bracelet

    Alexandra felt certain that the heat was literally melting her flesh from her bones as she sat in front of the wheezing fan. This summer had been particularly brutal and the weatherwoman predicted no break in the heat on the horizon.

    “Seriously, Grandma Jean, can we turn the freaking AC on?” The fan distorted Alexandra’s voice making it all the more pitiful.

    “Language, young lady.”

    “Freaking isn’t a curse,” she muttered under her breath.

    “It’s the intent. And that’s all the more important given our abilities.”

    “Yeah, yeah. Like I’m going to start a fire by saying freaking.” She’d heard the speech far too many times in the last year living with her grandmother. “About the AC?”

    “I’ve managed to survive living here without air conditioning for a decade, I think you’ll be able to survive your next few years.” (more…)

  • Jericho’s Note

    “What is life?” She asked the question then threw her hands up in the air. She hated dumb. Stupid. Idiocy. Needy. All of it.

    “What now?” Cameryn peered over the top of her phone and stared. “Jericho? What?”

    But Jericho was lost again, spinning her hands around and had no idea she was doing it.

    Its not that she was evil. Well, not totally. She felt great guilt if a heart was broken and it was her fault. Mark Stinson. Now she dumped him in a shameful manner – text message. Two years ago and she still felt very embarrassed about it. Cody Reese. She told him she loved him, then later that night found herself saying the same thing to another boy, the name slipping her mind right now and that is why she felt such shame. She did the right thing, and told Cody she was not ready for the commitment and that she was terrified of her own words. No, she did not mention the cheating aspect, but details are not needed when guilt is genuine.

    But the others, now they were not her fault. (more…)

  • Factory Fur Nightmares

    The dew of the early morning soaked the chenille corpse beside her. Polyester stuffing drifted down the alley in the wind. Izzie squatted and considered the remnants. It was a clean kill. She’d cut the belly open from stem to neck and severed the head from the teddy bear, just to be sure. She didn’t want the poor bastard waking up still alive. She wasn’t that kind of monster.

    Moonset wouldn’t come along for another ten minutes. She was patient. She could wait.

    She ran her knife along the plastic charms on her bracelet, making them swing. It was a cheap thing she’d bought on a whim from one of those kitschy places made for teens in the mall. She was way too old to be in there without a child accompanying her, but she couldn’t pass it up. Three little teddy bears dangled from it: two brown and one pink. Three down. She hunted a fourth now. (more…)

  • The Muse of Suicide

    They are pretty, aren’t they? This bracelet is my very favorite thing. It has taken a long time to collect these charms. Each one is a very special memory of someone very dear to me. Everyone deserves to be remembered, don’t they? Especially beloved friends.

    Do you see these baby shoes? They’re not for a baby. But she loved babies. Any time a friend had a baby she would be there, holding the wee thing, playing with it, entreating its smiles. She and her husband fixed up their nursery as soon as they were married, and then they waited. It was only a matter of time, she thought, until they filled that nursery with babies of their own.

    When the doctors finally told her, she was devastated. Her husband found her in the rocking chair, a receiving blanket in her lap.

    This Christmas star. He had everything a man like him could possibly want. The important job, the lovely wife, the kids so accomplished at school and in sports. They lived the picture perfect life. (more…)

  • Three Favors

    Outside the door, Ashley paused with her hand on the cold steel of the knob. She knew the lonely, dark silence that waited for her inside the house. The modest looking brick two story was once a home, but now it was just an empty space. It was going to swallow her whole.

    The city of Chicago was covered in a frosty November drizzle that had soaked her during the long walk form the cemetery. Ashley regretted not starting a fire before she left and would now have to wait for the house to warm up. At least she had enough money for the coal today.

    A sound from the kitchen caught her attention. Someone was in there, but she should have been alone. With her heart beating wildly, Ashley crept into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. A woman she never met sat at the small kitchen table in the corner but a woman she knew well was at the sink washing dishes. Her sister, Miranda was wearing the same dress she wore when Ashley buried her a few hours earlier, but had the sleeves rolled up past her elbows.

    “Come, warm yourself.” Said the woman at the table. “The fire from the stove feels so much better from here.” (more…)

  • Mantis Memory Beads

    For every life I take, I add a bead to the bracelet. I select his bead while he doses in the sheets beside me. Sweet man. All of them were sweet—the beads on my bracelet. Elsewise our children would grow to be monsters.

    “What are you doing?” he asks from the shadows. (more…)