A Surreal Short Story: Sidestepping

A failed experiment - an attempt at stream-of-consciousness storytelling. There's a reason good fiction writers get paid; they don't write nonsense like this. Still, I think a couple of sentences, read in isolation, are sort of amusing.

Sidestepping

I folded myself into a painting of a choo-choo train coming out of a fireplace - you know, the one by Dali. Dali fireplace, burning itself to death with green flame!

And then, without warning, the universe belched again, and I was hip-checked into another dimension.

The night was quiet when I entered the saloon...quiet but for the fact that Quincy Jones' "Soul Bossa Nova" was playing on the juke...

I thought to myself, "I remember when I thought of this tune as "The Theme From 'Definition.'"

Then the acrid stench of cigarette smoke seared my nostrils, and Icoughed, then sneezed, grey, smoke-stained snot blowing across my upper lip.

"Blurgh!" I grunted in disgust. That was when the lady in red handed me a silk handkerchief. "You know how to whistle, don't you?" she said, "Just put the hanky to your nose...and blow."

Perplexed, I obeyed, and sure enough my nostrils did make quite a whistle as I blew into the handkerchief. But when Iopened my eyes, the lady in red was gone, vanished into the smoky night.

"So it goes," I said to no one, "left with a hanky, but no panky." And so I stuffed the soiled bit of silk into the back pocket of his jeans, wondering...

...BAM! No warning again, falling flat on my face in the dirt, Marty Robbins singing "Devil Woman" as someone tosses an empty whiskey bottle through the space just above my upthrust bum.

I roll onto my back, moaning, and overhear the following:

First voice (male): ...no? I was certain you'd be eating canned bananas. What are you eating, then?

Second voice (female): Taboule. They don't can bananas.

First voice: Oooo, taboule. Fancy.

[Pause]

First voice: Doesn't that have humus in it or something?

Second voice: Nope. Not even fancy. It's just tomato, parsley, and some bulgar-like thing.

First voice: Hmmmm.

[Pause]

First voice: Bulgar...that's like...wheat...or something. If you but marijuana in it, you'd have a taboo leaf salad.

Second voice: [Muffled chewing sounds]