Photo 86

It was photo 86.
A man and woman from the Ministry showed up at the door last Monday. Both were dressed in black, they’d walked. Cars only prevented evasion of danger. If anyone understood that, they did.
At the ministry building, I was instructed to sit in a metal chair at a wooden table.
The man left and returned with a worn leather book that he half-dropped, half-placed on the table. He took more care as he slid it in front of me. I opened it as he took up post at the single, barred window.
The book had another life at some point. Now each page held three photographs with circled numbers, scrawled in thick black marker, beside each one.
Placid faces filled the first several pages; peace finally attained through death.
Those without identifiable faces were pictured as fully as possible in a macabre gallery of decay and dismemberment. In one grotesque display of frugality, four severed arms were photographed together in hope that a loved one might be able to identify the attached jewelry.
When they ask why anyone would detonate a bomb in a busy marketplace, tell them it was photo 86.

CopyFight

Cory Doctorow doesn’t worry about people with free copies of his books; he worries about the ones who don’t know he’s written them at all.
“As a writer, my problem isn’t piracy. It’s obscurity,” said Doctorow during a lecture at Portland State University late last year.
In that regard, Doctorow is fighting a system that is more regressive than progressive.
Rather than creating more portals into commercial creativity, large corporations are either trying to close off existing ones or constrict the openings, he said.

Bad Angels

His eyes had sunken so severely he barely recognized himself.
Christ, he thought. I look like a zombie.   
He pulled at the skin around his cheeks where he expected elasticity he found none. Looking into the fractured mirror he remembered a story his father had told him.
The department crew had been summoned to the home of a man who was having an “episode.”  The man, Jim, lunged at his father with a hammer as he entered.  He had been whacking bad angels under the guidance of God. 
There was a 10-foot hole in the man’s family room wall. Jim had caught one, but others were pouring through the opening.
As a teenager, it had been easy to dismiss the guy as a crackpot, but he thought about Jim and his episode more often the older he got.
He could have handled the rejection letters from the seemingly endless interviews, but then Melissa left.
The phone rang and the machine picked up. His mother urging him to go to church with her. She would pray for him.
He rubbed his eyes and they retreated further.
From somewhere, on the other side of the mirror, someone passed him a hammer.

Exploring the Grass Hut

Justin Morrison was a fan of Bwana Spoons’ artwork, but he didn’t completely believe that “Bwana” was a real name.
Morrison was setting up an impromptu art sale outside a gallery where Spoons was having a show when the two met for the first time.
“I was like, whatever, this guy’s name isn’t really ‘Bwana.’ I said, ‘I’m Scrappers.’” Morrison was thinking, Yeah, I got a nickname too, buddy.
“Scrappers” was a nickname Morrison’s mom had bestowed upon him as a child. He resurrected it in the heat of the moment.
Later that evening, Spoons left the gallery riding a one-wheeled, wooden whale.
Morrison was left speechless, but knew he had found a friend when Spoons “biffed it” in the middle of an intersection.

Sword(play) Master

John Elliott found his calling during a matinee production of Hamlet.
“In the Laertes fight scene, part of a fencing foil broke off, flew through the air and stuck in the seat next to a large, overweight gentleman sitting a few rows in front of me,” said Elliott. “He passed out and voided right there.”
Elliott, who was training in fencing at the time, knew the swords given to actors were not usually of the highest quality.
“Actors would come and ask to borrow swords and the instructors gave out the stuff fencers wouldn’t even touch,” he said.
After the play, he approached the director and asked why no one had checked the stage equipment. The director had no answer.