This is not Fiction.

...I suppose that much is obvious.   I was about to post a fresh piece of flash, taken from a mega-stupendous ultra-compendium that I am working on, when my breakfast arrived.  Let me share this with you...

A greasy, blue-lipped lady brought my pancakes to my table with a cough and a tremor. Don't you hate that?  The cough deposits all kinds of germs onto your pancakes, and the tremor spills your coffee.  "Hey, Jack, here's yer bloody hotcakes,"  she coughed at me.

"Thank you," I replied, covering my mouth and nose with an errant piece of camphor-soaked ermine.

"What'cha writin'?"  she asked, slapping my breakfast down in front of me.

"Nothing of any importance," I said.

"I wrote something once," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. " You wanna' hear it?"

"Sure," I said, "why not?"

"Once upon a time," she began, "there was a boy named little Mikey Nitrous, who would eventually be known to the world as Mr. Michael Nitrous of West 43rd Street..."

"Wait a second," I said, "Michael Nitrous is MY character...you couldn't have written that."

"Yeah, " she said, "you're right.  I got it off a website."

"MY website," I said.

"Whatever."

"Well, tell me," I said, "why on earth would you steal my character?"

"Well," the blue-lipped waitress croaked,  "I didn't want to get caught."

"Huh?"

"Someone once told me that if you're gonna' cop, cop from the best..."

I felt my fuzzy little melon begin to swell with pride.  "Oh really?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, "but if you don't wanna' get caught, cop from the worst."

I looked down at my pancake.

"You want I should get you some syrup for that?"

I ate my pancake dry and washed it down with a  cup of cool phlegm.

Back to the woodshed.

With a Half-Moon Shake

Half-baked mumbling nutters running down the street and shoving pointy, pointy spears into fragile and innocent flesh is no way to start a tale, and it is sure no way to make a body smile on an otherwise fine day. But there you have it, and there was that pointy, pointy spear sticking straight out of a patch of fragile and innocent flesh.

You have to call them like you see them, I guess.

“You mumbling nutter,” cried a security guard in a dusty blue jacket, “you mumbling, mumbling nutter!” The security guard saw the pointy, pointy spear go right through the flesh, and he couldn't believe his eyes. Would you be able to believe your eyes if you saw something like that? No, I don't suppose you would.

Well, that mumbling nutter didn't pay any attention to the security guard, and just walked right on (after he pulled the pointy, pointy spear back out again). He knew that pointy, pointy spears had been made illegal under the 1974 “Pointy, Pointy Spear Act”, but when pointy, pointy spears are outlawed, you just know that only outlaws will have pointy, pointy spears.

Anyhow.

That mumbling nutter retrieved his pointy, pointy spear, and shambled down the avenue, with the dusty-jacketed security guard following at a safe distance. They passed a man with a small pushcart selling peach fritters, and the nutter thought about stopping. He thought better of it – the last peach fritter he ate gave him heartburn, and so his doctor had advised him to avoid fried pastries. The security guard stopped for one, though, and had nearly caught up to the nutter again when the saturated fats from the lovely, sexy, peachy fritter coursed their wicked, wicked way to the tricky-dicky neurons in his fuzz-covered melon and he toppled over in a heap.

The mumbling nutter walked back and stood over the security guard.

“Fragile,” he mumbled to himself, “but not quite so innocent.”

Tantum Ergo. Well, I Declare.

Peter Switchback done seen the best kinda' horse you ever gonna' need.  A horse like that is hard to find, and worth lots, besides.  Just imagine what it musta' looked like.  We all seen horses like that, but we ain't usually ever able to lay claim to 'em.

Know what I mean?

Sure you do.

So he seen it at the auction, and there was that music playin' - not the music you think. It warn't that "Brown Eyed Girl" song like you might s'pose.  It was even better, and it reminded him of things almost as good, almost as carefree and good.  Hell, it might've even been better.

It was sung in Latin, and he wept.

We all gotta' done have wept now and again.  Some just does it sooner than others.