| January 2008 |
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copyright the
owner. No
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FICTION
Stoners
by California's George Sparling
Stewart, or sometimes I call him Stewfuck, other times I want to scream at him, "Screwpiss," is my father.
He stands on the verge of the other side of our street, in front of our home, and flings stones fiercely into
what he calls a field. In fact, it's a large vacant lot. He puts his entire body into each heave. I've never seen
anyone throw with as much ferocious agitation, not even Major League pitchers. As he grunts after each
toss, the noise transfers its intensity into my guts. I watch him from atop our sloping blacktop driveway.
Even though I really need to take a piss, I'm transfixed by this after-dinner routine. Think of the healing
qualities of sand painting, only with rocks; violence, aggression without bright, natural colors. I've had
dreams where Stew kills strangers on the street, then gets into a car, drives to a quarry, and throws
stones, as if wanting more than plain murder. What's the opposite of sand painting? Fascism. What's the
antonym of healing?
Fascism.
Stew wears beige flannel Armani pants, Hugo Boss shirt, and shoes by Cole-Haan. He's a middle-
management insurance executive, once explaining in speech so arcane I understood only every other
word, how his business was going green. I see him bend down hurriedly to retreive another rock, only
more mechanically, looping crescents now his pattern. He throws each rock in circular, iron-clad cycles.
He never pivots, seeing me watching him. Bending, seizing, winding up, throwing, groaning. It's a wonder
he never barfs up the day's food.
Suddenly, he stops the rock ceremony. His arms hang like dead snakes at his sides. Spent, he walks
toward me, corkscrewing his face, giving me a paranoid stinkeye. He thinks I'm checking him out, seeking
answers to questions he himself wouldn't ask. I am. A delta of varicose veins throb on either side of his
bulbous drinker's nose.
“Stop looking at me that way," he barks. He always says that, assuming I know exactly who he is, contrary
to Stew's refusal of introspection. "What do you see, gimp?" I'm home from college, and whenever I'm not
doing anything, I'm subject to Stew lashing out, calling me derogatory names. Stew is a stoner, my word
for fascist. Stoners hate them-selves, but rather than dig into their souls, they take out their inner-spite on
the world.
Stew throws stones, all the while wishing to kill me. Or so I assume. Every rock thrown he grunts my
name, "Steve."
"Nothing," I say. Stewfuck knows perfectly well I know him as a wild-at-heart killer. I smell his
pheromones. Mammals convey to others of their species message encoded in
this hormone. I honestly believe he has murdered someone. Stew wants me to do some-
thing. His eyes weepy, but there's no such thing as concrete tears.
"Let's get in my blue beauty," he says rapidly. "I've got to get it looked at." Spit flies from his mouth onto my
cheek as he speaks. The beauty is a 1957 Ford Fairlane he bought at auction.
"Do I have to?" I'm twenty years old, and Stewbleep still makes me whine.
"Why not? You don't go out on dates. Have some fun," he says. Fun is not hanging with Stewart.
"I want to write." This pisses him, my literary aspirations. I love to express literati BS in the most
pretentious and precious way possible Yeah, I want to write about a serial killer getting good ole Stew.
"Gimps gotta party too," I say.
I watch TV alone in my room. The live mise en scene is Waco, Texas. A religious cult, stoners who've
turned religion into defilement and corruption vs. the newly elected U.S. administration, stoners wanting to
demonstrate they're tough on terrorism. Hundreds of troops, their tanks, bombs, bullets, shrapnel, then
the blood and corpses---a national event. No negotiations. Rumors and lies. Rather than celebrating the
Fourth of July, tens of millions watch their screens. Springtime for Clinton and democracy could be a
satire on government and religion, their power. Except it's for real.
As I watch, yellow lights flicker over the screen. Very fast. Then slower: Digital-17 it read, pulsating at
different places and varied angles, slow enough for me to see a hundred times. LEDs, going Digital 17
Digital 17.
Stew comes in, vodka martini in hand.
"Which side's winning," he says, sipping the glass, then winks.
"The gorier the better for the power elites," I say. "I don't mean Edward Gorey."
"Who is he? Power elites?" Mystification, a prime mover and shaker of fascism. Icons are needed: the
Waco setting serves as one. In my humble way I undercut Stewdad.
"David Koresh and Bill Clinton. I mean bloodier the better."
"Stick your head out the window," he says. "I gotta see Val." Like a dog, stick my head out?
"Your diet pills make your blood pressure boil," I say. "Lots of amphetemine in them." He shoots me his
best paranoid face.
"You think I'm a speed freak, throwing those rocks?"
"Paranoids gotta have fun too," I say, meaning him, not me.
"You calling me paranoid because of my high blood pressure?"
"There's no amphetemine in those pills so how could you be paranoid." I never tell him he's a stoner.
We drive to Val's Vintage Automobiles. The breeze wipes my face, relaxing me, wiping me a bit cleaner so
I won't despise Stewart as much. "Gotta watch my back or it's the guillotine," he says, doing a finger-slash
at his throat. The Ford swerves until Stew lets up on his rage, restoring the car back to the highway. This
always happens when I ride with him, the insensate anger he must live with.
"It's not bad, my temper." he says. I'm going to be a writer, not a mental health counselor. "I support you
and Hazel," he says. My mother is now at raja yoga class. I rarely see her when Stewart gets back from
work. She has something going on every week night, but makes us dinner before leaving. I'm glad we're
pulling into Val's garage because I'm never sure when Stew will start going off, screaming at me not to
write. I just don't have enough distractions, so in walk stoners.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Fredrickson," Barnes says. His wears a nametag. Stewart doesn't shake
hands, and leaves Barney's out-stretched hand empty. Barnes never calls him Stewart, probably because
his expensive clothes intimidate him. All other customers wear casual, everyday clothes.
"Where's Val?" Stew says. He wants to bend, throwing a stone at Barnes. Those pheromones going off
again. Sniff sniff.
"He's busy," says Barnes, pointing to another car across the lot. Barnes speaks as if he hasn't been
shunted aside, but I know he's covering his anger.
"I need work on this Fairlane. Sooner that later," Stewart says.
"I'll get him," Barnes says, and walks over to Val. But he turns, giving Stew a quick snarl, then flashes a
smile. Stew doesn't understand the mixed emotions. He's only good with binaries.
I see Studebakers, Nashes, Hudson, Packards on their grilles or bodies. Five minutes
Later, Val comes over.
“Motor stalls out completely when I accelerate fast," Stew tells him.
"Too many parts. Why can't there be one big single engine," I joke.
"Quiet," Stew says. Stewball knows jackshit about engines.
"Dirty carburetor. Maybe a defective fuel pump," Val says. He speaks loudly, asserting himself over stoner-
Stew.
"It's making me lose sleep and the world doesn't want a guy like me not getting his REMs," Stewart says.
Val must think that a joke, but I've sniffed out Stew's biological hatred of all living things. Stoners are like
that. I've seen Stewshit go out of his way to
squash slugs. He yanked me out of bed once, literally, then walked out, saying, "Rise and supernova,
Steve." It's not cruelty per se, but a need to keep people off balance, never knowing when or what he'll do
next. Good torture technique, I think.
"I'll palpate this patient," Val says with a slight grin. Stewart chew his upper lip. He fires fifty Tic-Tacs into
his mouth. They're meant to suck but he gnashes them.
"Sunflower seeds are better, " I say. His face reddens. I throw my arms up, pretending to shield the
expected blows from him. He leans on the fender close to Val.
Two minutes pass.
"Can you fix it soon? I have a meeting," Stew says. "Now."
"What meeting?" I ask. He thumps my solar plexus with his knuckles.
"Sure. It's only a diaphragm you need," Val says. "There's a perforation in your old one. Makes for negative
pressure. That's what makes the acceleration jump."
"Thank Jesus," Stewart sighs. He never takes the Lord's name in vain, never mentions Him until now. His
relief, its bathos, comes as if he has just engineered a successful Latin American coup.
Val installs the small, cone-shaped diaphragm. Stews uses his bankcard to pay him.
"From now on I need quicker attention," he says. "Time's gold. My nervous system can't bear strain."
"Fine Mr. Frederickson." says Val, spitting a big lugie. I imagine Val thinking, Why is this guy playing my
bones? Is he a shrink or something? Stewart jawing Val close
up like a baseball manager in the face of an umpire. Val's expression goes from compliance to
blankness, complete negation, the highest form of contempt possible.
"You really have to stick it to those guys or they'll run over you," Stew says in the car as we drive back
home.
"Val and the other man really hate you," I say. Aren't prophets killed and sacred books their legacy?
"They're just proles, who cares?" A woman gives Stew the middle finger because he just cut her off
changing lanes. I want to listen to U-2 but he says that's for my bedroom radio, not this vintage auto.
Who's being precious now?
Home, he parks the Blue Beauty in the garage, covering it with a clean tarpaulin. Then, he marches
across the street to throw stones. He picks up a handful and gives each one a violent toss. I stand in the
usual spot, sort of like an on-deck hitter waiting for the next at-bat. The profane loudness of Reservoir
Dogs couldn't match Stewart's turned-up audio. Abruptly he turns and stares at me, bluffs throwing a
stone at me. I cover my head, ducking, knowing there's an unlimited cache of stones.
"Don't get screwy ideas about putting this in your book," he yells. I peek through my arms protecting my
skull. He's poised to throw all his weaponry at me, I'm certain.
"What gives you that idea?" I shout back. We've broken the vow of silence during his
ritual. And he's no Sufi. I quiver, thrill bumps rippling over my flesh.
"Here's something for that book!" He flings a few stones at one time, then back to the archetypal one-at-a-
time. Some hit my arms and torso. "Uff, uff," I say, hoping my noisy response will disturb his rhythm, stop
the torrent of rocks.
"How's that, little man," he screams. Rather than fleeing to the garage or house, I stand there.
"Rock the lot, rock the lot," I yell. Why cringe in the face of stoner Stewpiss? His body shifts, picks up more
projectiles, and keeps firing them at me. Finally, I run into the house and go to my bedroom. I'm blinking
rocks, a ceaseless barrage of rocks.
I sit in front of a large monitor. I see these words written as you read them now, "Digital 17" winking on
and off across the screen at random angles and intervals. My fingers are bleeding so I've either been
physically tortured or pounding the keyboard for how long? I write 2017, as you can very well see. That
may mean the year, I can't be sure.
I now see a familiar person. For one moment, this moment, now, I think it's Stew. Then a flurry of
cyberrocks get cast at me from the screen. I write "THE END." I know it's "THE END" because that's what
the screen reads, its LED "THE END" fluttering. Then I stop, starting over on a blank white screen, writing
the very words I've written before, starting
with the first sentence, "Stewart, or sometimes I call him Stewfuck,"
THE END
More fiction in this issue:
Counting Down the Storm
The Library
Back to main page
Stoners
by California's George Sparling
Stewart, or sometimes I call him Stewfuck, other times I want to scream at him, "Screwpiss," is my father.
He stands on the verge of the other side of our street, in front of our home, and flings stones fiercely into
what he calls a field. In fact, it's a large vacant lot. He puts his entire body into each heave. I've never seen
anyone throw with as much ferocious agitation, not even Major League pitchers. As he grunts after each
toss, the noise transfers its intensity into my guts. I watch him from atop our sloping blacktop driveway.
Even though I really need to take a piss, I'm transfixed by this after-dinner routine. Think of the healing
qualities of sand painting, only with rocks; violence, aggression without bright, natural colors. I've had
dreams where Stew kills strangers on the street, then gets into a car, drives to a quarry, and throws
stones, as if wanting more than plain murder. What's the opposite of sand painting? Fascism. What's the
antonym of healing?
Fascism.
Stew wears beige flannel Armani pants, Hugo Boss shirt, and shoes by Cole-Haan. He's a middle-
management insurance executive, once explaining in speech so arcane I understood only every other
word, how his business was going green. I see him bend down hurriedly to retreive another rock, only
more mechanically, looping crescents now his pattern. He throws each rock in circular, iron-clad cycles.
He never pivots, seeing me watching him. Bending, seizing, winding up, throwing, groaning. It's a wonder
he never barfs up the day's food.
Suddenly, he stops the rock ceremony. His arms hang like dead snakes at his sides. Spent, he walks
toward me, corkscrewing his face, giving me a paranoid stinkeye. He thinks I'm checking him out, seeking
answers to questions he himself wouldn't ask. I am. A delta of varicose veins throb on either side of his
bulbous drinker's nose.
“Stop looking at me that way," he barks. He always says that, assuming I know exactly who he is, contrary
to Stew's refusal of introspection. "What do you see, gimp?" I'm home from college, and whenever I'm not
doing anything, I'm subject to Stew lashing out, calling me derogatory names. Stew is a stoner, my word
for fascist. Stoners hate them-selves, but rather than dig into their souls, they take out their inner-spite on
the world.
Stew throws stones, all the while wishing to kill me. Or so I assume. Every rock thrown he grunts my
name, "Steve."
"Nothing," I say. Stewfuck knows perfectly well I know him as a wild-at-heart killer. I smell his
pheromones. Mammals convey to others of their species message encoded in
this hormone. I honestly believe he has murdered someone. Stew wants me to do some-
thing. His eyes weepy, but there's no such thing as concrete tears.
"Let's get in my blue beauty," he says rapidly. "I've got to get it looked at." Spit flies from his mouth onto my
cheek as he speaks. The beauty is a 1957 Ford Fairlane he bought at auction.
"Do I have to?" I'm twenty years old, and Stewbleep still makes me whine.
"Why not? You don't go out on dates. Have some fun," he says. Fun is not hanging with Stewart.
"I want to write." This pisses him, my literary aspirations. I love to express literati BS in the most
pretentious and precious way possible Yeah, I want to write about a serial killer getting good ole Stew.
"Gimps gotta party too," I say.
I watch TV alone in my room. The live mise en scene is Waco, Texas. A religious cult, stoners who've
turned religion into defilement and corruption vs. the newly elected U.S. administration, stoners wanting to
demonstrate they're tough on terrorism. Hundreds of troops, their tanks, bombs, bullets, shrapnel, then
the blood and corpses---a national event. No negotiations. Rumors and lies. Rather than celebrating the
Fourth of July, tens of millions watch their screens. Springtime for Clinton and democracy could be a
satire on government and religion, their power. Except it's for real.
As I watch, yellow lights flicker over the screen. Very fast. Then slower: Digital-17 it read, pulsating at
different places and varied angles, slow enough for me to see a hundred times. LEDs, going Digital 17
Digital 17.
Stew comes in, vodka martini in hand.
"Which side's winning," he says, sipping the glass, then winks.
"The gorier the better for the power elites," I say. "I don't mean Edward Gorey."
"Who is he? Power elites?" Mystification, a prime mover and shaker of fascism. Icons are needed: the
Waco setting serves as one. In my humble way I undercut Stewdad.
"David Koresh and Bill Clinton. I mean bloodier the better."
"Stick your head out the window," he says. "I gotta see Val." Like a dog, stick my head out?
"Your diet pills make your blood pressure boil," I say. "Lots of amphetemine in them." He shoots me his
best paranoid face.
"You think I'm a speed freak, throwing those rocks?"
"Paranoids gotta have fun too," I say, meaning him, not me.
"You calling me paranoid because of my high blood pressure?"
"There's no amphetemine in those pills so how could you be paranoid." I never tell him he's a stoner.
We drive to Val's Vintage Automobiles. The breeze wipes my face, relaxing me, wiping me a bit cleaner so
I won't despise Stewart as much. "Gotta watch my back or it's the guillotine," he says, doing a finger-slash
at his throat. The Ford swerves until Stew lets up on his rage, restoring the car back to the highway. This
always happens when I ride with him, the insensate anger he must live with.
"It's not bad, my temper." he says. I'm going to be a writer, not a mental health counselor. "I support you
and Hazel," he says. My mother is now at raja yoga class. I rarely see her when Stewart gets back from
work. She has something going on every week night, but makes us dinner before leaving. I'm glad we're
pulling into Val's garage because I'm never sure when Stew will start going off, screaming at me not to
write. I just don't have enough distractions, so in walk stoners.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Fredrickson," Barnes says. His wears a nametag. Stewart doesn't shake
hands, and leaves Barney's out-stretched hand empty. Barnes never calls him Stewart, probably because
his expensive clothes intimidate him. All other customers wear casual, everyday clothes.
"Where's Val?" Stew says. He wants to bend, throwing a stone at Barnes. Those pheromones going off
again. Sniff sniff.
"He's busy," says Barnes, pointing to another car across the lot. Barnes speaks as if he hasn't been
shunted aside, but I know he's covering his anger.
"I need work on this Fairlane. Sooner that later," Stewart says.
"I'll get him," Barnes says, and walks over to Val. But he turns, giving Stew a quick snarl, then flashes a
smile. Stew doesn't understand the mixed emotions. He's only good with binaries.
I see Studebakers, Nashes, Hudson, Packards on their grilles or bodies. Five minutes
Later, Val comes over.
“Motor stalls out completely when I accelerate fast," Stew tells him.
"Too many parts. Why can't there be one big single engine," I joke.
"Quiet," Stew says. Stewball knows jackshit about engines.
"Dirty carburetor. Maybe a defective fuel pump," Val says. He speaks loudly, asserting himself over stoner-
Stew.
"It's making me lose sleep and the world doesn't want a guy like me not getting his REMs," Stewart says.
Val must think that a joke, but I've sniffed out Stew's biological hatred of all living things. Stoners are like
that. I've seen Stewshit go out of his way to
squash slugs. He yanked me out of bed once, literally, then walked out, saying, "Rise and supernova,
Steve." It's not cruelty per se, but a need to keep people off balance, never knowing when or what he'll do
next. Good torture technique, I think.
"I'll palpate this patient," Val says with a slight grin. Stewart chew his upper lip. He fires fifty Tic-Tacs into
his mouth. They're meant to suck but he gnashes them.
"Sunflower seeds are better, " I say. His face reddens. I throw my arms up, pretending to shield the
expected blows from him. He leans on the fender close to Val.
Two minutes pass.
"Can you fix it soon? I have a meeting," Stew says. "Now."
"What meeting?" I ask. He thumps my solar plexus with his knuckles.
"Sure. It's only a diaphragm you need," Val says. "There's a perforation in your old one. Makes for negative
pressure. That's what makes the acceleration jump."
"Thank Jesus," Stewart sighs. He never takes the Lord's name in vain, never mentions Him until now. His
relief, its bathos, comes as if he has just engineered a successful Latin American coup.
Val installs the small, cone-shaped diaphragm. Stews uses his bankcard to pay him.
"From now on I need quicker attention," he says. "Time's gold. My nervous system can't bear strain."
"Fine Mr. Frederickson." says Val, spitting a big lugie. I imagine Val thinking, Why is this guy playing my
bones? Is he a shrink or something? Stewart jawing Val close
up like a baseball manager in the face of an umpire. Val's expression goes from compliance to
blankness, complete negation, the highest form of contempt possible.
"You really have to stick it to those guys or they'll run over you," Stew says in the car as we drive back
home.
"Val and the other man really hate you," I say. Aren't prophets killed and sacred books their legacy?
"They're just proles, who cares?" A woman gives Stew the middle finger because he just cut her off
changing lanes. I want to listen to U-2 but he says that's for my bedroom radio, not this vintage auto.
Who's being precious now?
Home, he parks the Blue Beauty in the garage, covering it with a clean tarpaulin. Then, he marches
across the street to throw stones. He picks up a handful and gives each one a violent toss. I stand in the
usual spot, sort of like an on-deck hitter waiting for the next at-bat. The profane loudness of Reservoir
Dogs couldn't match Stewart's turned-up audio. Abruptly he turns and stares at me, bluffs throwing a
stone at me. I cover my head, ducking, knowing there's an unlimited cache of stones.
"Don't get screwy ideas about putting this in your book," he yells. I peek through my arms protecting my
skull. He's poised to throw all his weaponry at me, I'm certain.
"What gives you that idea?" I shout back. We've broken the vow of silence during his
ritual. And he's no Sufi. I quiver, thrill bumps rippling over my flesh.
"Here's something for that book!" He flings a few stones at one time, then back to the archetypal one-at-a-
time. Some hit my arms and torso. "Uff, uff," I say, hoping my noisy response will disturb his rhythm, stop
the torrent of rocks.
"How's that, little man," he screams. Rather than fleeing to the garage or house, I stand there.
"Rock the lot, rock the lot," I yell. Why cringe in the face of stoner Stewpiss? His body shifts, picks up more
projectiles, and keeps firing them at me. Finally, I run into the house and go to my bedroom. I'm blinking
rocks, a ceaseless barrage of rocks.
I sit in front of a large monitor. I see these words written as you read them now, "Digital 17" winking on
and off across the screen at random angles and intervals. My fingers are bleeding so I've either been
physically tortured or pounding the keyboard for how long? I write 2017, as you can very well see. That
may mean the year, I can't be sure.
I now see a familiar person. For one moment, this moment, now, I think it's Stew. Then a flurry of
cyberrocks get cast at me from the screen. I write "THE END." I know it's "THE END" because that's what
the screen reads, its LED "THE END" fluttering. Then I stop, starting over on a blank white screen, writing
the very words I've written before, starting
with the first sentence, "Stewart, or sometimes I call him Stewfuck,"
THE END
More fiction in this issue:
Counting Down the Storm
The Library
Back to main page
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our ultimate goal of paying all the artists
who contribute to the magazine, as well
as to improve the website and build the
infrastructure necessary to further unite
art and activism in the Calgary
community. If you like the magazine
and the values it stands for, please feel
welcome to contribute.
Equally important is to get the word out.
Advertising is expensive, and the best
advertising is by word of mouth. If you
like the magazine, or any content in
particular, please take a few moments
to share the link with your friends.
Feel free to join our Mailing list or our
Facebook group.