the pauper

A spot of bother for Rhu, thinks Barb. In the case of the manifesto, outthought by the pauper, a malcontent from the south side, nothing seemed to fit anymore, certainly not this -- a piece from the wrong puzzle, massaged at the edges to fit, but obviously not.  A spot of bother for Rhu, certainly, the fool.  Barb put her pencil down, sharpened it on a rusty grater lying nearby in the kitchen and resumed her monologue.  "To whit, the pauper answered montonously, 'If it were me, I'd have answered affirmatively,' he paused momentarily, then continued, 'in order to disguise my dissatisfaction with the dossier.'"  Barb paused the dictaphone to light a fat Cuban, given as a gift by that idiot savant Rhu.  Puffing melodramatically, she unpaused the dictaphone.  "A footnote on Rhu's relationship to the pauper perhaps: it is with regret that Rhu ever met the pauper, for it was the pauper's dissatisfaction that led to the incident that led to Rhu's dismissal from the establishment.  Nothing more can be said at this time, due to it's classification.  Footnote 3b."

The pauper turned to Rhu, "Don't you see, it will never fit!"
Rhu turned the piece over in his hands.  "You are right, but it is close."
"Put it in and see for yourself," replied the pauper.  Rhu placed the piece into the slot in the wall.  It didn't exactly fit, but a bit of nudging got the sucker in.  The pictograph flashed suddenly and turned red.  The manifesto closed and slid into the wall, emitting a loud wailing sound.  "Oh dear," mumbled the pauper, a thin smile spreading on his lips.  Rhu looked at him nervously, shook his head, then quickly made for the window and down the fire escape.  'Damn that pauper!'

Barb let out a chuckle.  'Yes,' she thought.

swill

Why can't I get a good cuppa in these foreign parts, Juke mused, slowly stirring the steaming mug in front of him.  Abruptly, his headnet buzzed, cutting his ponderings short.  "Hello?" Juke responded.
"We have a four-oh-three in progress," came the crackling reply.   
Have to get these magnets replaced, he thought. "Rightio, transmit the details."
Placing a fiver on the counter, Juke eased off the stoop, and turned to leave, grabbing his cup of caffeinated swill as an afterthought.  I paid for it, might as well.  The aftercinct didn't have better.  More cracklings emanated from the headnet.  Damn magnets.

What a bore, lamented Boar to himself, switching off the transmission.  Swill.

davis

If fault had a name, it would be called Davis.  Davis was, by all accounts, a faulty appliance; one that after purchase works once then dies in a wisp of smoke named Parfum de Molten Plastique.  A "made in Taiwan" sort of fellow, which was ironic him being a janitor from Taipei.  Davis was not his real name, obviously.  His real name started with an "x" and ended with "z", had a "q" in it which didn't have a regular "q" sound, and the rest interspersed with a random assortment of vowels.  But he called himself Davis, a less faulty-sounding name for a flimsy wooden hut on a cataclasite rock formation, shaped exactly like himself, but less pungent.  Davis was the conspirator of naught, the orator of lip-curling foreign mumblings, the protagonist extraordinaire of nonsensical vignettes.

overherd

"Go on, buy it," crooned Mara.
"I don't have enough hands," replied Kali, "nor enough time."
Mara sniggered.
"Oh, ha, ha," said Kali sarcastically, noting the price surreptitiously anyway.

---

"..." said Mr Ellipsis.
"?" Signorita Pregunta raised an eyebrow.
"..." repeated Mr Ellipsis.
"Oh," signed the fifteenth elephant, who was deaf, waving his white stick seemingly randomly.
Mr Ellipsis sighed and wandered off, dejected.

---

"I took to it like a duck to water," enthused the swan.
"I know, I know," replied the duck, doing a swan dive into the murky green.
The swan had been rabitting on about it for hours; though she wasn't there, having stepped out for a carrot.

---

"...and in the end it was all a dream," concluded the squirrel, coughing up the last of the phlegm and tucking it behind his right ear (which was the wrong one, as we will discover later).
"I see," said the mole.
"No, you don't,"  said the squirrel.
The mole replied, melancholy, "You're right."  'When was the squirrel ever wrong?' he thought.
And so it was.

---

"I will kiss you," voiced the mute ant, adjusting her freudian slip.  "Miss you, I mean," she corrected, eyeing his torch thoughtfully.  "Ah," squeaked the boa, his throat tightening.  He never knew she felt that way.

The rest of this exchange was lost to white-out, accidentally spilt by Timmy.