The Oliver Twist & Other Experiments in Narrative

By Randal J. Junior

Heretical discontent; that's what this collection of short stories is primarily intended for. Some of these stories are funny. Some of them are not. One of them is about a 'truffle-hunting hedgehog' as told by a silly old piss-pot. The publishers of 'Pride and Prejudice' may want to sue for damages after they see what has become of that pompous bore, Mr William Collins. Another story is set in Brooklyn, New York, against a backdrop of ferns. All of them are influenced by the barbarian age within which we continue to exist, ignorant of the fact that we cannot have our coke and capitalist edicts too.
The concept of reality is increasingly vague as we proceed into the cyber-age so the author makes no apology for merging the genres of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Civil War Era historical fiction. Neither does he/she repent any offence given to conservative religious groups who pathologically fail to recognise the feminine nature of the universe within which we exist. But this is not an evangelical text proposing that John Lennon's vision of a secular world free of both religious dogma and political subterfuge is either possible and/or likely to develop in the next thousand years. This is a book. Read it and weep.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randal J. Junior
• Release date: Nov 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310460166

Randal J. Junior

As a student of literature for the past eight years, the author has endeavoured to learn the art of compression; reducing the infinite into the barest minimum of words required to hook the reader’s interest, cast doubt within their mind and then dispel it with either an inconclusive twist or an enduring sense of finality. As a failed student of philosophy, Randal J. Junior has been beaten into the school of weary acceptance after finding that all human endeavour is fraught with either idealism or an opportunistic narcissism. But she/he still has faith in humanity and believes that we all learn something new every day.

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The ‘Oliver Twist’ & Other Experiments in Narrative

Copyright 2013 Randal J. Junior

Published by Randal J. Junior at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

The Oliver Twist

The Mouse With No Pants

The Underwater God

Hermann the Hedgehog

Mason Rack & the Death of the Doof

And God Shuffled Her Feet

The Bright Side of Life According to Frankie Blackman

The Irascible Mr Collins

Sailing of the Neptune

About the Author

Other Books by Randal J. Junior

Connect with Randal J. Junior

Acknowledgements

I would like to give thanks for this opportunity of artistic expression, in the form of a fictional narrative that reflects both my experience of the world and the shared experience of other writers, both great and small (who have added incalculably to my own worldview). The artists responsible for so enriching our collective tapestry of cultures (and who will continue to do so despite the influence of religion and reactionary politics which would divide us and thus profit from the resulting conflict) are innumerable, and so too the patrons of the arts who make the proliferation of the arts possible; be that the bequest of an inheritance to fund an educational institution or just the time and energy given to the reading of this book.

I would also like to express my gratitude to those who fought tenaciously for the signing of the Magna Carta, thus paving the way for a similar legislation to be passed in response to the corporate entities of the present day (who would exploit a similar monopolization of resources in order to accrue a vastly disproportionate level of wealth for those who invest both capital and political contrivance in the afore mentioned entities).

I also feel indebted to the victims of the Spanish Civil War who suffered the direct consequences of every modern political doctrine going head-to-head, in a war that saw the dominant forces of right and left-wing politics triumph over the democratic government that was installed following the voluntary withdrawal of the Spanish Monarch, King Alfonso XIII. It was only through the sacrifice of so many lives that the inevitability of a centralized government reverting to autocracy could be observed (more so when society is subjected to the fluctuations of financial speculation by the filthy fucking rich).

I believe some sort of acknowledgment is in order for those who invented fire, the axe and the printing press, these being the primary drivers of modern culture; besides that of the steam engine, trade-unionism and the internet.

Prologue

A prologue is optional.

The Oliver Twist

The old man sits at his desk and contemplates the globe spinning slowly on its axis in front of him. It is the work of a lifetime, a creation beyond any other wonder he has ever wrought by the magic of his hand. First he discovered water, a crystalline substance that exists in a liquid form if heated to a very narrow spectrum of relative temperature. Making that temperature constant was a great challenge to him, and he eventually resorted to making a G-type main sequence star that revolved around the sphere.

He never ceased to marvel at the way great rivers of ice would tear through the bedrock as they inched their way down the sides of great mountain ranges; that too was a clever invention of his, tipping the plates of mineral crust on their sides to overlap, and thus stand clear of the oceans and he really felt that there was nothing prettier than to see molten rock spewing forth in the midst of all that cacophony of water, wind and ice, especially at night when that aspect of the planet was shrouded in darkness.

Before long, the oceans were teeming with all kinds of creatures and he delighted in their antics, dancing in the waves, diving deep beneath the surface and tearing each other to shreds in their quest for survival. Then one day, a rather large freezing of the poles caused the sea levels to drop and, despite this, some of the weeds and kelp and seagrass managed to survive in freshwater lakes and ponds. And not only that