Thursday 26 June 2014

Gieger Countering - Friday Flash

This is a sample story from my new flash collection "28 Far Cries"






URANIUM:
With our mutual leaden marital cores, affection was stopped up by my blockish shields, while it merely passed through yours like gamma rays.

PLUTONIUM:
We are each charged with containing the neuroses and blind spots of our partner, it being rare that we both share the same agitators. But such were the reciprocal irritations that more and more were classified as neuroses and blind spots, until it reached the critical mass of every single word out of our mouth, or every single one of our actions being deemed as being beyond redemption. We were both balls of seething fissile material.

THORIUM
In respect of cleaving together in a fusion that makes us more powerful, we manage to effect a fission that only serves to cleave us apart and bleed away any supposedly enriched energies. We were both left depleted.

CALIFORNIUM:
Each live radioactive substance will naturally decay and transform into another element, which if isotopic will in turn decay further, until finally a stable, inert element is rendered. My spouse and I have hit our inert basal states and yet I cannot say we went through the transmutations into other constitutions along the way. Spontaneous half-life decay takes eons to occur. We achieved a rapid acceleration of the process.

NEPTUNIUM:
It has been pointed out to me that smashing the atom in order to release the pent up energy of rage is a particularly destructive practice. And yet it was one we were both content to pursue.

AMERICIUM:
In order for a chain reaction to be unleashed, we both had to stockpile an impressive and intricate battery of sleights, grudges and other grievances. We conducted our own arms race to mutually assured destruction with barely a bat of an eyelid in the direction of the concept of deterrent.

CURIUM:
One segment of the fission process could, I concede, be considered as successful. Parts of our material corpus divided and split off. Eczema, weight loss, hair loss, hearing loss, incontinence, ulcers, thrush, hives and a host of other dermatological rashes afflicted us. Although perhaps some of these could be viewed as a gaining rather than a reduction. In a quantitative rather than a qualitative way of course. 

RADIUM:
Though we have long separated from one another in physical space, we remain contaminated with one another’s toxic waste, rendering us useless for future generative power. We are both decommissioned. 


URANIUM:
Two half-lives do not make a whole. 

14 comments:

Jason warden said...

Very clever, although I must admit I don't know where I fall within it. Must be too close to the nucleus for perspective.

Helen A. Howell said...

Certainly a fair amount of toxic waste in there.

Clever use of radioactive elements ^_^

Stephen said...

I love the use of elements to explain why some relationships just do not work. I also love that you created some new elements (Californium, for instance) to use as part of your story. There is a sad truth here, too: though separated, some relationships have toxic waste that never breaks down.

Larry Kollar said...

The closing line was my fave. "Two half-lives do not make a whole." In fact, they make a quarter-life.

Roslyn Fain said...

Having been there, done that, (not too long ago) I can attest to the absolute truth in each of these statements, or should I say states?

Excellent concept very well delivered Marc!

Casey said...

That was a really clever way of showing relationships via elements. I am not sure I picked up on every nuance but like Stephen said, I enjoyed the made up ones.

Denise said...

Lol. Too clever by half! *slinks off to find a radio-active dictionary*

Li said...

Enjoyed this Marc! (Have to add that I know these elements all exist, BTW.) A brilliant, and unfortunately dead-on way of looking at toxic relationships. And I agree with the others, a perfect summing with "two-half lives do not make a whole".

Steve Green said...

A very clever comparison of a doomed relationship.
I particularly liked the Uranium - Two half lives don't make a whole, brilliant.

Cindy Vaskova said...

Oh Neptunium!I get that, so true, so often. And then Uranium again, the undeniable statement. Clever, clever work, Marc!

Sonia Lal said...

hahah funny flash.

Miss Alister said...

Yup, that about sums it up. It takes two egoless people to get along, and what are the odds of that? No sane betting man or woman would touch it…if they were immune to Biologium and Fantasium… But oh the stories the paired ones left standing can tell!
Miss A

Unknown said...

I like the poetic feel of this. It is a bit like structured poetry.

Katherine Hajer said...

Curium, radium, and the final uranium, yeah. The only good I see in this toxicity is that they were both reactive. It's a whole other thing when it's lopsided.

And now I want to read At Work in the Fields of the Bomb again, but it's so hard to find.