Caleb Puckett

Key Control


A request for access to key X is an acknowledgement of a person’s chronic normalcy. Who
has, who must have, who wants key X in the absence of administration and special staff? What
of suitability of circumstance? Worth? What of disappearance? Security? One must enter the
system, code the recommended individuals and secure the specific proofs of issuance for them.
One should keep a numbered list with their scanned signatures. Although it is something of a
nuisance, particularly with the results of terminations and resignations, one must consider aspects
of the common ego and clear up matters about the return of key X after a person’s disappearance.
However and whatever temporary status resulted from sharing becomes a serious problem of
expenses then. Administration should track such organizational issues and enforce a policy that
controls key X at all times. This is a story about public services in a library. It involves different
locks and hands.


***


Bunker


We dwell on the roasted meat of snakes. We dwell on cyanide like oxygen. We are desperate for
Passover, dear Lord. These are the earliest days of the end of the world. The crucial steps from
building financial weaponry to the total collapse of the Gulf Coast are impending. As the Mayan
calendar predicted, the bomb shelter business is now booming in Texas. Consider the cold, hard
details of this fool’s errand to block the exits when the Tectonic plates go awry and shift into
darkest space. The surface of earth is a conduit of energy.


For whatever reason, the erratic cult of paranoia can construct a system of preparedness.
Surviving a nuclear attack would be incredible, but the actors and news architects have their
perverted plans. They are lobbing bad news to brainwashed dummies and contracts to intransient
Iranian mechanics from New York to Utah. They are hell-bent on engineering high-end space
stations for the elite. Demonic sun bursts spew from their alien mouths, bringing tribulation to all
the dummies who will bury themselves like moles in their septic underground sanctuaries. Hell is
a lower elevation. Luck is dead. We are hiring, says the savvy killer to the cleric, thriving on the
popular American mindset. The wisdom is reptilian: their business will outlast your activity. Dig,
dummies, dig.


***


Alice


In the orphanage, an absorbed Alice imagines spring to be the perfect mathematician. The
sun is a spiritual number threatening radiance behind the curtains. The curtains cope with
its brash genius, breaking equally. She is truly spellbound, mending past and present paths.
Alice is enamored with escape. She breaks to pursue fate and endures her debut. Alice depicts
excitement with chilling eyes. She markets the heart but sells heartache on consignment. She is
a husk of calculations selling a body in the Demilitarized Zone of the United States. She has not
measured empathy in years, for her suitor traffics underworld fiction. He traffics geishas and
sex in a forced-labor camp. He gifts her with a website and a 10-city book tour. She is available
for conferences. She is available for conclusions. Alice is a novel excerpt, absorbed by her
spellbound suitor. The sun is a beautiful campaign. A published book is curtains.


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