EXAMPLE 6 PRINT

Simon filmed a breakfast with his in-laws who we all knew he hated because of the way his mother-in-law insisted on asking what it was he did all day and Simon telling the story in the break room buttering a piece of bread until it was sopping and then slamming it onto the wall splattering us all with grease claiming that now we all knew how he felt but in the end the in-laws insisted on coming to the film debut of their breakfast and Simon kept one hand pulling on his ear as he tried to make a single breakfast explain in three minutes his entire life’s torture and he cut the original sounds and instead of silver clinking against china recorded plastic forks thunking upside Tupperware and the family’s enunciations became Simon’s mumbling but with the theatre packed opening night the sound fizzled on our cheap projector and Simon was forced to take the forks and clear glasses from the gallery patrons and jump onto the stage and imitate the sounds of four people with a fork, a ragged napkin and a cup he drained of wine and we thought he was going to pull it off until the filmed father-in-law was eating his traditional bacon and Simon was forced to ask and then scream to the audience if anyone had a steak a piece of meat?

Patrick Scott Vickers is a technologist and instructor for Virginia Commonwealth University’s English Department and a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program. He graduated in 2006 with an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama. His stories and poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, Mid-American Review, and Touchstone. Most recently, his Flash art has appeared in the online journal failbetter.