Nikita Linivenko

“Imperial Guest Rooms” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #96

The guest room overlooked the yard where wedding guests were being ushered to their seats, and was empty until I came. The bride was a real bitch-kitty, but it was no coincidence that whenever she entered a room smoke alarms went off. Her dad was loaded. I figure that helped the groom make the leap. The kids in the yard with the violins pressed to their chins whom the groom had given five bucks each to stand in for a wedding orchestra were plucking out “Danger Zone” – picked by the groom of course – because he knows damn well what he’s getti...

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“Untitled 32, or: French 75” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #96

“The only wisdom is that wisdom is bullshit.” “Got that right.” “Who said that, do you think? – cuz’m pretty sure I’d heard that somewhere.” “Maybe you just made it up. Or you’re paraphrasing.” It had snowed all morning and into the afternoon. I was still at the station waiting for the 1:45 and it was already quarter past two. Snow fucks everything up, in the best way possible – I’d been puffing my second to last smoke down to the filter when I see this guy slipping out this door a’ the other end a the station– I assume it’s the room from...

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“The Myth of Human Civility” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #94

 The cameraman gave the signal and Barry gave himself a quick pat down, straightening his tie as he did so. Two talking heads scuffed their heels in the wings on either side of the stage waiting to be called up. “Welcome back to Barry Ring Live. Tonight’s guests are a lawyer, snitch, human version of a pampered poodle and all-around professional narc; and a gruff, on-edge mettle man made of gristle.”To Barry’s right Lance Strawman sat bolt upright, tall and gangly, prim and proper like he had a stick shoved up his ass in his tweed ...

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“A Lesser Gatsby ” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #93

It’s not a real party until someone dies. Prodding the body of the keg-stand champ floating face down in the backyard pool with a pole, trying to bob him up to the edge, I’m thinkin’: this is the part Fitzgerald never told you about. The clean-up after the party; though I doubt Gatsby ever had to do it himself. Nope, Gatsby never had to lift a finger. And now that someone else has been offered the role of death by pool, you, a lesser Gatsby, can feel at ease.  A few of the blokes and a girl I’d like to get up to a bit of the old Animal ...

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“Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #92

“When Cobain said “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous” – that was a load of rubbish, wasn’ it?” “All his lyrics were rubbish. That was the whole point. He was rubbishing you.” “I still say it was an EMP.” The rolling blackouts hit L.A. every summer, and every summer Eyeball chalked it up to the Chinese or North Koreans or Nazis from the dark side of the moon having a go at the electrical grid. Standing on the East 4th Street bridge in the dark, strapped to the tits with paintball guns and taking blind potshots at the homeless scurr...

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“All The Cool Kids Smoke” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #91

The principal of our school waved me out of his office. I went down the hall and when I got to the library, Mike Manson and Tom Feldman were being chewed out by the librarian. The way she was going off you’d think they were planning to torch the joint or something. Lianne Thompson paradoxically had a body where everything was tight and flat, yet somehow managed to be what Patrick Bateman would call a ‘hardbody’ all at once. Bluntman and Chronic over there snickered and kept their eyes firmly glued to her button-up blouse. She was completely ...

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“The Capitalist Cookbook” by Nikita Linivenko

The pimple-faced teenager who looks like Ron Weasley in a clown wig and who works part-time behind the library check-out counter grins at me when I slide my return over to him, a slim 248-page paperback of The Spook Who Sat By The Door. He winks and sez: wanna see something?He shuffles to a room behind the desk and comes out with a bundle of papers. When he plops it down I flip through it:Chapter One: Drugs. Chapter Two: Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance. Chapter Three: Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons. Chapter Four: Explosives a...

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“Trainfishing” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #90

I give up on trying to read the Irvine Welsh novel, what with the bloke across from me yammering on. “David Bowie was such a big fan of Shallow Grave, that’s why he let Danny Boyle use his music in Trainspotting.” I nod along and out the corner of my eye tick off the people shuffling past periodically up and down the car. Much like Lavrentiy Beria, I have a knack for names and faces, but mostly faces, a nack which I, much like Stalin’s personal bitch-boy, use to screw over just about everyone I lay my eyes on. Know that bit in Fight Club, ...

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“My Steak Dinner With Andre ” by Nikita Linivenko

  “See, a good steak dinner serves a purpose,” sez Andre, knifing a hunk out of a slab of cow. “Scientists theorize that at one point, way back in primordial Africa, the human race came close to extinction. This was like a million years ago, before we were humans, there was this drought, and when the water became scarce, plant life became scarce. At that point, seems like these critters were mostly vegetarian, so when the plants and berries went, so did most of the race. Being vegan nearly killed the future of the human race. Then one s...

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“Wear Flowers In Your Hair” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #90

“And Spring brought me the frightening laughter of the idiot!” -Arthur Rimbaud A Season in Hell On a Friday in April, we crossed St. Johns bridge outta Portland and into the sawmill country below. Before we pulled out, the lines on a local college station were open, taking requests and Big John put in the call. They were swamped and the DJ finally threw on “Velouria” ten minutes later as we curved along Oleson road, passing Hideaway Park. The DJ must’ve been jolted by our Pixies request, because right after that song finished, he spun “D...

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“Scotty Beam Mich Hoch, Part Deux ” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #88

Nestor, now sober, crossed under the spotlight and tapped his hands on the podium, trying not to make eye contact with the packed auditorium. “Dim the lights. Thank you. It’s not that I have an aversion to public speaking, I just feel better if I don’t see all those eyes on me. Now, all you sitting there in the dark. I could rave like always. I could give you all the schtick you expect from me. I could spew platitudes about how our penal system began in Salem, or our policing started the first time a plantation hand chased after a runaway s...

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“I Will Follow You Into the Park ” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #86

You slipped out of the house halfway through the Vincent Price marathon. I don’t think you could’ve seen me. We went downhill together; I think I wet myself somewhere along the way. You stepped through the east gate onto the green, the Walpurgis Night bonfire already heaped and leaping high with benzine. You hung around the edge and watched the glow and though there were people there you knew, you didn’t talk to anyone. You passed, not even a ghost, less than a ghost through the crowd. Glances fell over you – someone with a beer bottle in ha...

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“The W.A.S.P. Factory” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #84

Taking my eyes off the page, I pluck my house key from my pocket and scratch another notch into the desk. I then stare across the room for a while at a wall calendar taped up between two floor-to-ceiling windows, searching for a clue as to which of those squares this morning falls on. Somewhere around the middle of that grid. That much I can say. I poke my head into the next cubicle and ask Hollis: what day is it? He says he doesn’t know either. I plop back down into my swivel chair. The screensaver pops up and I quickly move my mouse so ...

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“Islands on the Coast” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #83

“When he was ousted from office, Porfirio Diaz boarded his yacht to Europe, turned, took one last look at his country and said: “Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!” Porfirio Diaz also said: “Nothing ever happens in Mexico until it happens.” The bucket hat wearing hipster snubbed out his clove and let his opened paperback of The Savage Detectives slide down his chest. Above him the canvas of a yellow parasol rippled in a wind coming off the ocean, the sorta yellow parasol you see Neil Young standing near on the...

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“Fear and Loathing Made Easy” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #83

I imagine my deliverance coming in the form of a bottle of Klonopin I find in my pocket and take with me into the bathroom. Going out on a handful of ’90’s designer drugs, frothing at the mouth and thinking of pigeons and insects, millions of insects; fade to black, maybe white as a final electrical surge jolts through my occipital lobe in one last desperate bid, on the image of Piccadilly Circus as I saw it, chasing pigeons as Underworld’s “Born Slippy” pulses through my head. As such my prayers go unanswered, and we are only at the half-wa...

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