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| Contents |
Lpnet1
Lpnet2 Lpnet3 Sci-shorts-01
Sci-shorts-02
Sci-shorts-03 Sci-shorts-04
Gallery |
Animation |
| Sci-Shorts-300 Science-Fiction Short-Stories The Refracted Man Chapter 1: Purgatorial Limbo Chapter 2: Dead American Dreams Chapter 3: A Transcendental Dream Chapter 4: The End of the World? Chapter 5: Changes in Reality Chapter 6: The Mysterious Solspire Chapter 7: Spectres in Sunlight Chapter 8: The Sadistic Step-brother Capter 9: The Evil Step-father Chapter 10: Man with a Cooler Chapter 11: At the Solspire Chapter 12: The Key to the Refraction |
The
Refracted Man
Nick Zentor* Chapter 1. Purgatorial Limbo Random Ecks was only a fraction of a man, and he was quite disappointed by that fact. As such, he was also unable to 'win' at any of the competitive social 'games' that people played, including the games called 'Get a Job' and 'Get a Girl'. What else was there? Oh yeah, 'Get Money', but that was much the same as getting a job, actually. Obviously, all of the highest paying jobs were the hardest to get. Miserable. He was miserable. Nobody knew just how miserable he was. Nobody cared. It was next to impossible for him to make any 'friends' in the miserable state he was in. Yet, if he could not make any 'friends', how could he explain to them that he was so miserable? This was a problem that made the aspect of 'socialization' much more difficult than it should have to be. Not that he really cared to make friends with any of the ugly 'males' he was surrounded by. What misery, what hell! After 30 years of lousy, low-paying, dirty-work for small-change jobs, he was still nowhere. It was a relief to escape the house of his stepfather, but now, to be stuck in some of the cheapest apartments, in one little room, surrounded by ugly men in rooms all the very same size.... it was not easy for him. The worst thing about it was the bathroom and showers had to be 'shared' with dozens of other 'ugly' men, and some of them acted as if they were the only ones in the whole apartment building, as if he wasn't there or didn't count. It was the ugly ones with the big, fat egos that he hated the most, but usually, they were also the ones that were in and out in one or two months. He was sick of ugly men. He desperately needed a female companion, but he had so little to offer them that they had no interest in him. He barely had enough money to pay the rent, the bills, and put food on the table. He was lucky if he had enough left for a bottle of cheap wine after everything else was paid for, never mind dishing out fifty or a hundred for a prostitute. He had done that before, when he had more money, and found the girls to be greedy as hell. They demanded the money first, and then they ran out the door as quickly as possible. In short, they took him for all they could get and gave him practically nothing for it. It was a waste of money. To heck with prostitutes. Now he understood why some guys abused them. It wasn't just prostitutes. All females were greedy. That's why he never had any. Because they all wanted money that he didn't have. To hell with this life, he decided. To hell with this world. To hell with it all. It was plain to see that he was a loser. He had been born that way. His older stepbrother and stepfather had both abused him. When he was 18 he began to see it all so clearly. The only reason they let him live in the first place was so that he could do the dirty-work for small-change. That was it, it was all he was good for. At the age of 26, after traveling across the country and roughing it, homeless most of the time, for 3 years, he returned to the house of his stepfather, and the old man almost had a heart attack, when for once in his life, Random stood up to him without fear. His mother managed to connect him with a job, in a pet-store, taking care of the animals. It was a dirty job, cleaning the cages constantly, but it was money, and a chance to start his life again. But even though he was older, and wiser, life was still quite difficult. He had been a fairly adequate artist in his youth, and he decided to try his hands at 'animation', and dreamt of making a career in that field. He could not imagine cleaning animal cages all his life. But after 4 years at the pet-store, his animation had gone slow and then one day, he lost his job when the store closed. He went on unemployment, and presently, he was still seeking another job. It was hell. He was sick of his life. He was so miserable he was wasting all his spare change on cheap liquor and drinking his time away. It had been so long since he'd had a female companion, he couldn't remember what it was like. It was this fact that made him all the more repulsed by the closeness of so many ugly men. He was going insane. He was contemplating suicide. He had even constructed a gun from junk metal and was prepared to use it on his miserable head. Animation was too expensive a hobby. He had not enough money for the necessary supplies. After losing his job at the pet-store it went slower and slower, until it went nowhere. As he drank himself into a stupor, he played with the idea of turning himself into a cartoon character, and quietly laughed at the thought. If only it were that easy. ---------------------------------------------
* Zentor was using a few different pseudonyms when he wrote this one. The pseudonym he put on this story in '95 was Ray K'Shenz. |
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| Copyright 4/2007 by Nick Zentor |