THE MACHINE by Jon konrath

We watched the room melt into slag, the furniture crystallizing into nothingness, the sound waves of the ambient noise converting to raw electrons and neutrons of particle energy, flowing through our cells and cutting everything apart like x-rays slicing through flesh to bounce off a broken bone. The world outside sped up, slowed down, the structure of the false machines falling apart and disintegrating.

“I think it works,” he said. Ricky ran outside, into the street, picked up an abandoned taxi cab and threw it into low earth orbit, shuttling past communications satellites and passing space stations. I took a Polaroid picture for possible inclusion in a future JC Penny holiday catalog, but don’t keep your fingers crossed. 

“Everything is blue,” he said. “Everything is blue in this world.” I borrowed a french fry machine from a Burger Chef, a mobile fry daddy on a set of roller skate wheels, with a trailer hitch attachment. You could plug it into your cigarette lighter of your rental car and make a set of onion rings while you cruised at 65 on the open highway. Excuse me officer, but I have to flip these chicken tenders before they burn. I’m certain that aliens from another dimension taught Ray Kroc the secrets of fryer oil technology, in exchange for fattening up civilization for the apocalypse. When we hit eight million people, expect killer drones to fall from the sky and take out the most succulent cuts of human butchery for their own drive-through meal deals. I’ll have a #2 meal with a huge fat bastard with fries and a Coke, no pickles.

His lawyers later filed some trumped-up charges that he didn’t know the staple gun actually used staples, that the abortion clinic was for simulated use only. We took a long recess and went to Marilyn Manson’s house, because he’d recently married Carny Wilson and went on this Beach Boys rampage, mistakenly buying a billion dollars of Brian Wilson memorabilia on eBay and then finding out it was all stuff for the San Francisco Giants closing pitcher, stick-on beards and orange t-shirts. That’s why Manson looks like Fidel Castro on his new album. Smile!