Hamburger Magic
by Jason Nelson
Having realized that magic had become a dull and obvious profession,
Gloria, whose fastest desire was to become a worldly magician, searched
for an innovation. From disappearing critters to clairvoyant astrology
to sexual fruit hiding, all the usual acts had been packed with hack
magicians for decades. When she was ten, Gloria lost her left pinky to a
stabbing sword during one of these hack’s act. The shame of a four-fingered
hand kept her wearing gloves at all times, during swimming lessons and
finger painting. So in its place she had sewn a hot dog, which functioned
as a surrogate digit until it began to rot. Since then she had also been
fascinated with meat. Articles on everything from cows grazing to the
marketing of ham in fun cartoon shapes gathered to plot an overthrow
under her bed. Perhaps it was this food flesh obsession that coaxed her
to stop at the butcher and purchase 18 pounds of cheap one-day
out-of-date ground chuck. At the time of impulse she had no reason for buying
the browning hamburger. But on the weaving drive back to her house in
the hills left of town, Gloria uncovered a form of magic unpracticed.
Her car’s slamming brake stop before clipping a Texas armadillo threw
most of the chuck to the floor, covering her
costume shop wand, hat and cloak.
These are stories about towels….(part one)
There is precisely one and one quarter inch between the middle fold of
each Supima plush towel and the deluxe satin divider separating each of
the nine available colors. Although the names of the colors change
yearly, the actual hues and tones of the towels are alarmingly
pedestrian. The man who creates these names lives twelve feet from the
towel factory, in a small round house, the last footprint of the naval
training facility that once weighed down this landscape. Its curving
hallways are stacked with Victorian era newspapers and five-hundred
glossy copies of the March 1964 Scientific American. He says the
contrast between the romanticized past and the only known
article on the mechanical wonders of the Plushnell reordering machine
stimulates his creative and marketing centers.