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1: Jack Baby [Oct. 29th, 2007|02:37 pm]
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I dipped the old jar down into the creeping slurry and scooped a pint of shit-water out of the Thames, down where the sewers meet the river. It's come to this, I said to no-one: making jenkem rather than seeing the Jack Baby.

Seal up the jar, watch it ferment for long sleepless days, and then inhale the gas off the top. Jenkem: ghetto drugs. An hour of laying like a corpse and seeing dead things instead of the orgasm-jerking and spacewalk day of a Jack high. But I couldn't afford Jack, and I didn't want to think about the Jack Baby.

Jack was a bastard brew of neurotransmitters and genetic plug-ins, the black market product of universities that wanted to keep the power on. Addictive and deep-tissue-persistent enough that, like crack before it, Jack babies were born. But they weren't just thin and sickly. Jack was bound into their genetic structure. Narcotophores pulsed under their grey skins, tiny little Jack labs.

The things we choose to care about. Not getting clean, but huffing shit-gas instead of seeing her.

Squatting under the jagged stump of the bridge, I twisted the jar shut, willing the muck inside to do its stinking magic. Dreading the sleepless days of waiting, where I knew I'd see nothing but my grown-up Jack Baby, letting men make her sweat so they could lick the Jack from her pores.

The things we choose to care about: I could live with her being a whore, but I couldn't stand her being someone else's fix.



33degrees
fastfictions
do not post your fiction in comments
© warren ellis 2007
33D01

music: The4am 05
book: crooked little vein
be gentle: i'm out of practise!
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Comments:
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[User Picture]From: [info]djluminal
2007-10-29 02:43 pm (UTC)

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That was brilliant, thanks for posting. Good to see you on here again!
[User Picture]From: [info]spocksbeard
2007-10-29 02:44 pm (UTC)

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i'm so glad these brutal shards of fiction are back in my life . . . they're best when it's 3am and you're high, and you log onto LJ not expecting anything like it, then bam . . . there's a sliver in your eye
[User Picture]From: [info]eridan
2007-10-29 02:48 pm (UTC)

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good god, man.

Your fictions scare me because they're JUST that close to truth.
[User Picture]From: [info]planetx
2007-10-29 02:48 pm (UTC)

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Out of practice, my patoooie, sir! You're sharp as ever.

Does this mean Falconer shall be returning?
[User Picture]From: [info]fatfred
2007-10-29 02:51 pm (UTC)

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Mmmmm.
Yummy!
[User Picture]From: [info]oml404
2007-10-29 02:52 pm (UTC)

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That's a nice little story. I'm always impressed by nano-tales, there's something pure and direct about fiction that short.
[User Picture]From: [info]lost_in_my_room
2007-10-29 02:58 pm (UTC)

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Reading Doktor Sleepless is the only thing that kept me from punching my mother-in-law this weekend

so thank you
[User Picture]From: [info]ydna
2007-10-29 02:59 pm (UTC)

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Thank you thank you thank you thank you!
[User Picture]From: [info]stylishbastard
2007-10-29 03:01 pm (UTC)

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I liked it when you did this first time round with Lazarus Churchyard!

I wonder who would win in a fight between Doctor Sleepless and Doktor Sleepless.
[User Picture]From: [info]lunar_symphony
2007-10-29 03:11 pm (UTC)

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Impressive, sir! Your dark, brutal style is inspiring as always. This piece is particularly good as the character is as far fetched as he (or she) is believable.

Keep up the good work,
~Tim
[User Picture]From: [info]ysidro
2007-10-29 03:16 pm (UTC)

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You scare me.

In a very good way.
[User Picture]From: [info]graymalkan
2007-10-29 03:17 pm (UTC)

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Shakespeare gots to get paid, son :)
[User Picture]From: [info]happymrlocust
2007-10-29 03:18 pm (UTC)

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I cannot help but wonder how long before someone ignores the "do not post your fiction in comments" and the whole thing goes to crap... again.

Still.

The fastfiction must flow.
[User Picture]From: [info]cuddlycthulhu
2007-10-29 03:22 pm (UTC)

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Welcome back, sir.
[User Picture]From: [info]sandmistress
2007-10-29 03:30 pm (UTC)

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I love your disgusting brain.
[User Picture]From: [info]blackwell
2007-10-29 03:32 pm (UTC)

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Fantastic.
[User Picture]From: [info]cjtremlett
2007-10-29 03:34 pm (UTC)

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I needed that on a Monday morning while grading papers. Thank you, sir.

I read Doktor Sleepless #3 before bed last night. It did weird things to my dreams. They looked kind of like the cover. Black and white and complicated and vaguely Lovecraftian. There wasn't a plot, but I didn't miss it.
[User Picture]From: [info]charlycrash
2007-10-29 03:39 pm (UTC)

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Cool. Reminds me of Bill Burroughs.
[User Picture]From: [info]voided_space
2007-10-29 03:46 pm (UTC)

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Gentle? What would you do with gentle?

Might be the mom in me, but it makes me sad. Nice and evocative.
[User Picture]From: [info]tsukikokoro
2007-10-29 04:04 pm (UTC)

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I'm not sure my comment will be of much use, but here's hoping. (Also hoping that you're looking for constructive criticism and not just a bunch of "Awesome!"'s. Heh.)

Positive:
My favorite part of this short was the last sentence. The most vivid and sensational part was the description of "my grown-up Jack Baby." My favorite word: "narcotophores."

Negative:
The transition from the first to second paragraph seems incomplete. As a reader, I was a little thrown off and disconnected by the first sentence of the second paragraph. I'm wondering why jenkem is worth making (or describing) until the high from jenkem is compared to a Jack high.

I think "seal" also had me thinking that the jar was already closed, which surprised me when the narrator twisted the jar shut later.

The last thing is that (and I'm probably being stupid) I'm confused as to whether the narrator gets high off the Jack Baby and/or stills houses the Jack Baby.
[User Picture]From: [info]margoeve
2007-10-29 04:07 pm (UTC)

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I don't know, it's missing something. I get that there is the drug Jack with the resultbeing Jack babies... and then there is the narrator who had a Jack baby of his/her own? Or was it that he/she dated a Jack Baby and got hooked? For the ramblings of a junky who'd be willing to scrape the Thames for hopes of a high from neuro-chemical spillage waste, it sounds disjointed and rambly enough.

But something is missing. Perhaps it's just my need for more to satisfy the curiosity of the questions this snippet brings up.
[User Picture]From: [info]richenza
2007-10-29 05:03 pm (UTC)

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Creepy. I think I like it, but I've read it three times now and I'm still not sure. An intriguing concept...
[User Picture]From: [info]card0
2007-10-29 05:33 pm (UTC)

ohthankfuck

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highlight of my day.
long and miserable day that it was, then I caught this on my vario waiting for the train. commuter poetry. cheers.
[User Picture]From: [info]wyldkyss
2007-10-29 05:42 pm (UTC)

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This reminds me, I had a high school teacher that would always accuse the class of being a lot of crack babies...
[User Picture]From: [info]jjgalahad
2007-10-29 05:59 pm (UTC)

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Thank you for this, sir. It's all sorts of lovely wrong.
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