Daniel Salvidor Trueba de Clausen returned to town. It had been six years seven months three days fourteen hours seven minutes since his review of Gabriela Garcia Marquez's "Collected Stories" had rocked the town, depriving one priest of a much-needed robe and the town of three skilled whores.
The whores had gone into politics and had relieved the country of a great deal of its excessive corruption. The resulting foreign loans had brought a whirlwind of new problems, including the financial success of one former book reviewer by the name of Daniel Salvidor Trueba de Clausen who was now obliged to return to liquidate certain assets so that they could be re-invested in his various business ventures.
He stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow and as he did so he felt a burning in his right cheek. This was the exact spot Gabriela Garcia Marquez's "Collected Stories" had manifested into a woman and kissed him on the cheek that summer day. His attention soon turned from the love of senorita "Collected Stories" to apprehension at the state of his review machine. The mechanism by which judgment was rendered into the type, embedded on yellowed paper.
He returned to the house of his youth, the residence of ten generations of de Clausens. As expected, the old priest was busy at the machine turning out reviews in the rarefied yellow paper.
"Go back where you came from de Clausen. You are no longer wanted here."
Mystified, de Clausen lamely displayed the title, deeds, triple certified documents, and notarized documents laying claim to the house, its contents, and the very rare review machine. He displayed them magnanimously all to the back of the all but naked priest.
Before he could open his mouth, the priest said, "I see your official claims, deed, notarized documents, and triplicate certificates. I refute you thusly." The machine produced a single sheet of yellowed paper.
On the paper was one simple word: mierda.
He left the house, the priest, the machine, and the town of his youth to return to his empire. An empire of mierda.
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Pure Writerly Moments 2 (Short Stories, Essays, Book Reviews, and More)
General FictionWhat is the connection between artistic expression and the joy of living? How can one best live a literary life? This book is a collection of small word-projects. Each examines a book, a moment, a story that helps to deepen the author's literary adv...
