Thursday

define: sex

"Sex is the seat of intelligence when we stop thinking. Or when we start thinking seriously." - (Stephane MOT - Dura Lexicon Sed Lexicon)

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Sunday

Flash fiction : Monsoon Story

Chris suggested "monsoon story" as a prompt for Saturday's SWW (under pouring rain - typhoon hitting Korea). My poor shot :

The kid doesn't even try to yell. Their eyes have locked and all the information has been transferred at broadband speed : I'm stuck on this roof, this flash flood is going to swallow it soon, and there's no way a 12 year old like me can survive this fury. What can a 40ish guy like you do to help me, beyond documenting my certain death with his camera, that is ?

Brad keeps shooting, the quizzical look on the kid's face now an angry stare. Now he can't lower his Nikon for fear of facing it without the protection of several layers of lenses.

Won't this goddam roof ever collapse ?

Answering Brad's prayers, a sinister crrraack tears through the merciless downpour.

The first thing the kid asked his rescuers in the chopper was if they could pick his camera, still hanging on that tree by the broken bridge.

Stephane MOT - 20110625

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flash fictions

Friday

Flash fiction : What am I doing here ?

Not a fiction but flash nonetheless (the deal : "What am I doing here", true story that happened to you, under 200 words)


"Late December 1991. After a few weeks in Korea, I’m getting used to the diffuse tension of Seoul streets, and already hooked to local eateries. Today, I’m heading for a late lunch in Pimatgol, and the street behind the US Embassy feels surprisingly quiet and deserted.
Suddenly, a projectile passes just inches from my nose. In the corner of my eye a man ducks behind a concrete fence. More dark shadows swiftly shift positions in the street covered with snow.
Then I realize these Korean soldiers are enjoying the mother of all snow battles, running for cover behind fences, giggling as they pack their next balls. Kids playing with kids weapons, but also full grown men with the most advanced military training.
Now tens of snowballs are crisscrossing the street at the same time in a perfectly organized choreography. I wish I had a camera to catch this ephemeral Bruegelian scene but at the same time, this moment should not be existing.
I don’t remember if I stayed long or just kept walking across this surreal battlefield. I do remember smiling back at a few warriors, cheering for a bull’s eye shot, and never again witnessing such joy on their faces."

Thursday

Did you hear the paper this morning ?

Did you hear the paper this morning ?
It drunk crashed on our doorsteps
Barked insane stories in our kitchen
Spread thick traffic jam over my toast

Did you hear the paper this morning ?
I tried to stamp it with a coffee ring
To cut the comics for the young lady
But couldn’t even swat a fly with it

Did you hear the paper this morning ?
Nope, I couldn’t hear a thing
Not even a ping from your cell
Paperless papers burn in silent Hell

20110216

Saturday

Flash Fiction: Christmas Carol

Here's my piece for tomorrow's Seoul Writers Workshop Holiday Brunch. Like last year, the thema is simply Holiday. This story is not very original either, but that's what knocked first on my attic's door today. As usual it ended up at least twice shorter than the 600 word limit. SM

Christmas Carol

The kids are back. Again, the same tuneless, inarticulate song.
They started on Christmas eve, last week. They've come back every night. He wouldn't open the door then, he won't now.
Granted, he's never been much of a good neighbor - but stalking certainly won't change that fact of life.

Robert simply uncovers the peephole. Lights are off outside, but thanks to the fat moon and omnipresent snow he can clearly make out each face.
Like on every night before, there's one more kid in the crew.
And tonight, guess who ? The Gonzales girl.
Robert wants to think about last summer, her contagious laughter when she played with Tommy Evans and his dog… But he only can hear the sick dry sound as the stake pierced through her ribs, two weeks ago.

What's her name by the way ? Not a Maria but something close… Marila maybe ? Whatever. The name can be close, this thing is not close to the Marila he knew…

Not even two weeks, come to think of it. And here she is, standing and singing, this big dark shape on her white dress.

Something tells him he'll see more of those big dark shapes around. Particularly when the adults are back from wherever they went to lately. Some maul frenzy, probably.
Robert manages a chuckle. He who always found Christmas Carols depressing…

Oh. It's over now. At last, a truly silent night.
But they'll come back.
Looks like they always do.

Stephane MOT
Seoul 20101211
Copyright

PS: I'll probably switch back to the initial ending, which echoes the title: sounds like they always do

Friday

KIM Mudangnim

Hunting for “KIM Mudangnim”

Yesterday morning, Seoul Mudang Union officially cursed the new chief of police to protest his controversial decision to issue an arrest warrant against the elusive Kim D. K.

“Miss Kim is a most eminent and respectable member of our community” said Gwang Mu-I, leader of the country’s most powerful shamanist association. “She has been collaborating with the police for years, and helped them solve countless cases. Miss Kim embodies the fight against corruption in this city and all of a sudden, one troubled man decides that the best way to clean the streets of corruption is to get rid of her, to turn our national hero into a fugitive. Tell me : is this justice or obstruction of justice ?”

Chief Kang answered during a press conference interrupted several times by mudang demonstrators performing cleansing rituals : “Well, now I’m cursed, so what ? Protecting this city is not a walk in the park anyway. And what am I accused of ? Come on, that person has always been a fugitive : no one knows where Kim lives, how she lives, nor even if Kim is her real name. Here’s someone who doesn’t have any I.D. and keeps evading taxes and all civic duties, and that’s already a crime. Furthermore, she’s constantly trespassing on restricted areas and we decently couldn’t tolerate that any longer. For all we know, we were palling around with a terrorist or a foreign agent. No doubt about it : Kim D. K., or whatever her name is, represents a clear and immediate danger to our society.”

Apparently, this feeling is not shared by all members of the police. On condition of anonymity, many expressed their support for the star shaman, and their disagreement with their new Chief.

Still. If they overwhelmingly respect Kim D. K. for what she accomplished over the past ten years, most officers remain uncomfortable in her presence. Senior Police Officer B. confesses that he feels goose bumps whenever he meets her : “She doesn’t even have to call some spirit : just knowing her in the room gives me the creeps. And her ability to summon doors whenever she needs one… I know you can reach the other end of the city instantly, but I would never follow her down there. Only Inspector Suh did. You gotta be crazy… either crazy in love or crazy, period.”

To the risk of disappointing millions of fans, neither Senior Police Officer B. nor any of his colleagues would confirm what only popular novels or the hit movie “Kim Mudangnim” (김 무당님) established as a fact in their hearts : Suh Bong-soo and Kim D. K., the most glamorous pair of crime fighters, would be partners far beyond their common quest for justice… Needless to say, the inspector’s resignation the very day Kim’s arrest warrant was issued and his subsequent disappearance did more than fuel speculations across internet forums.

Likewise, a lot has been said and written about the “hanok portal” phenomenon, but all attempts to film or photograph it – or Kim herself, for that matter – failed miserably, resulting only in overexposed images. The mudang would have the power to materialize doors only on the walls of authentic traditional houses, and all hanok owners pretend to have seen her honor them with a few discreet visits. Many display this message above their thresholds : “Welcome to our house Kim Mudangnim. Know that you can also use this door next time you pass by”.

The shaman is said to feel actual pain each time a traditional house is destroyed, as if it were a part of herself. Urban redevelopments have considerably reduced her reach, but over the past few years, several projects were canceled because of her popularity. Yesterday, one officer went as far as accusing his new chief of being the corrupt one : “Kang owes his nomination to construction lobbies, and these guys have always dreamed of sidelining her. Our mudang is the most charismatic advocate of hanok preservation”.

Some Kim D. K. critics maintain she excels even more in her own preservation : behind this legendary beauty would hide an old witch who seduced a policeman to seek revenge against criminals. Her name itself would be a pun in English to celebrate her own decay.

Old witch or young heroin ? Whatever the answer, Kim Mudangnim definitely added a modern twist to traditional Korean shamanism : she’s rumored to work plain-clothed, to call spirits through any brand of cell phones, and to perform ritual dances and songs luscious enough to raise more than a few “goose bumps”.

A heartthrob for men, a symbol of independence for women, a modern hero for kids, a guardian of traditions for older citizens… Seoul loves Kim D. K.

As the movie scenario goes, Kim started a poor school drop-out desperately looking for a job. One day, she overheard a ceremony from an alleyway and peeked through cracks in a wall : what appeared to be a crafted con artist was overacting a gut, collecting an amazing amount of money from a very poor and gullible audience. After the “show”, Kim followed the old woman and threatened to denounce her if she didn’t teach her the tricks of the trade. But the young girl turned out to be a genuine psychic, and the fake mudang introduced this diamond in the rough to an authentic master. The novice would then meet another legend : Ho Rang-hee, the semi-god figure of underground Seoul many consider to be, unlike D. K., a pure myth.

Chief Kang also shared his opinion on the matter : “We don’t know if this ‘Tiger’ really exists” (‘horangi’ means ‘tiger’ in Korean), but we sure meet some of his ‘cubs’ every now and then. Most of them are just stupid attention-seekers : clowns dressed in black from head to toe, doing martial art stunts, and pretending to work for the big guy. The “real” ones pop up when Kim needs a hand to fight, and they disappear as soon as it’s over. We never heard them say any word nor utter any sound : they’re tough, and they’re professionals. The way I see it, she’s the boss, and a mafia kind of boss. Tiger ? That’s just a smokescreen, a name to make us believe she has nothing to do with them.”

In the movie, “Tiger” is to the contrary a force of good defending the city against organized crime. Kim Tae-gun gained much more fame thanks to his role as the old giant with a ruined face than as the former captain of Korea’s national basketball team. The Ho Rang-hee legend starts over a century ago up in Buram mountain, with an old woman finding a baby boy soundly asleep on a tiger’s lap, his scar presumably the mark of a rival feline. The boy grows into an illiterate teenager with the body of a man, exploited by brutal entrepreneurs, working on infrastructures during the day and sabotaging Japanese compounds at night. After the murder of his surrogate mother, Tiger withdraws completely from society to organize resistance (first against occupants, then against dictatorship, and finally against mobsters), shifting from one secret lair to another.

“I want my fellow citizens to understand that I’m not launching a witch hunt against popular movie characters”, Kang pleaded to the cameras. “I’m not a bad guy, I’m just trying to be a good cop, to do my job in this real world of ours. I know that’s not very sexy, I know I’m not very sexy” (laughters : a little under 59 and over 5 feet, the new Chief won’t make the cover of any fashion magazine), “but I do care for this city and someone has to wake it up from its pleasant dreams.”

His “fellow citizens” obviously decided otherwise : after sunset, downtown Seoul took an air of joyous and surreal carnival featuring lotus lanterns, people parading as shamans or Ho Rang-hee shadows, couples dressed like the movie version of the Suh-Kim duet, and pranksters drawing fake hanok doors on all public buildings.

The first such joke was discovered in the very headquarters of Seoul Metropolitan Police, right after the press conference : the door had been hastily drawn with its caption “shortcut to Kang’s soul” on the restroom’s wall.

At the time this journal goes to press, the Korean capital seems to be more actively looking for its weirdest citizen than for some sense of sanity.

Stephane MOT 2008

Saturday

Flash: 9 steps to Heaven

Another writers gathering, another flash fiction. Thema : self-help.

Looks like I didn't start this decade the most glamorous way.

Sorry, and happy new year still.


SM

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9 steps to Heaven

2 - If you’re reading this you’ve already fulfilled task #1, to wit opening the box. Now stop congratulating yourself and advance to #3. Do not pass go, do not collect $ 200.

3 – Before going any further, we want to thank you for shopping with us. Should anything go wrong, Ayatollahmazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates would decline all responsibility and liability for any damage not caused by this bomb, or God forbid, for any unplanned damage. You want to be extra careful with this loaf : it looks and feels like Play Doh, but up to a certain point only.

4 - Check the contents with the list below. Yes, the book is a Bible and not a Qur’an but we ran out of supplies and got good prices from our White Supremacists partners. Anyway, you must already have one and furthermore, OUR agenda is political and has nothing to do with religion.

5 – Now insert the green wire into the Play Doh and connect the other end with the “plus” slot.

6 – Set “A” on “1” and switch toggle to “power on”.

7 - Ah ah gotcha. That was only a slight 20 volt shock to let you know what to expect in case of major f..k-ups. This stuff needs at least 200 volts to detonate, but when you shave your beard on that glorious day, please opt for a manual razor. And if, before attacking #7, you need to use the bathroom to clean the mess you’ve just made, be our guest.

8 – If you haven’t switched toggle back to “power off” yet, do so… unless you’re using the device as a vibrator right now, in which case you’re f..ked-up enough to go all the way and that’s precisely the reason why you’ve been recruited so be our guest. BTW don’t count on the 72 virgins in Heaven : a marketing gimmick from our HR department (these guys are pretty good at twisting facts and distorting Holy Scriptures).

9 – Unplug the whole shebang, put your hands up and smile. You’re being videotaped and FBI stewards will soon escort you to the Gitmo Club Med. Be our guest.

Stephane MOT 20100102
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