Birds of a Feather: Short Stories & Miscellany

By Arik Bjorn

Birds of a Feather: short stories & miscellany is the debut work of fiction by Arik Bjorn.

With these five short stories and one slaphappily true essay, the author responds to his fundamentalist Christian background and counters with rebel angels (“Indiana”), resurrected humanists (“Vonnegut Lives!”) and imbibing ministers (“Birds of a Feather”)—plus divinely-disappeared red states and farting orange tabbies. Bjorn imagines a fresh Christian mythology that runs Möbius strip circles around the apocalyptic-poppycock fiction of Frank Peretti and the Left Behind series.

Arik Bjorn lives in Columbia, South Carolina. He is a graduate of Evangelical Ground Zero, Wheaton College. In 2016, he ran for U.S. Congress as the Democratic Party candidate for South Carolina's 2nd Congressional District.

Visit his website, VikingWord, to read his articles at Forward Progressives and Patheos, as well as his fiction and personal blog, The Viking & the River Horse. His most recent title is about life during the COVID pandemic, "Show & Tell at World's End."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arik Bjorn
• Release date: Apr 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311411853

Arik Bjorn

Arik Bjorn is a novelist, screenwriter and essayist, but most of all, a dedicated father and public librarian. He enjoys French silk pie as well as a quality shot of bourbon. His writing explores such themes as the Problem of Pain and building Civilization (or at least humanity's efforts to-date).Bjorn was the 2016 Democratic Party U.S. Congressional candidate for South Carolina's 2nd District. He holds degrees in archaeology/ancient languages and library science. His work has been read by lots of folks in 190 countries.He has seven books available, including three essay collections: "Waiting for Civilization," "The R-Rated Theologian" and "Why Bad Things Happen to Good Parrots."He has one short story collection, "Birds of a Feather," as well as a book of verse, "Pocket Lint.""So I Ran for Congress" chronicles his experience running for U.S. Congress against Joe "You Lie!" Wilson.Bjorn's most recent publication is about life in South Carolina during the COVID-19 pandemic, "Show & Tell at World's End."To read more of Arik Bjorn's writings, visit his website, VikingWord.com -- he is also active on Facebook and Twitter.p.s. Arik Bjorn is a native Minnesotan who now resides in South Carolina. Please send him pictures of snow on occasion.

Book preview

Birds of a Feather

short stories & miscellany

by Arik Bjorn

Published by Viking Word

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015, Arik Bjorn

for JEM

The God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.

Catch-22

Birds of a Feather

short stories & miscellany

by Arik Bjorn

Birds of a Feather: short stories & miscellany is the debut work of fiction by Arik Bjorn, who recently ran for U.S. Congress as the 2016 Democratic Party / Green Party fusion candidate for South Carolina's 2nd Congressional District.

With these five short stories and one slaphappily true essay, the author responds to his fundamentalist Christian background and counters with rebel angels (Indiana), resurrected humanists (Vonnegut Lives!) and imbibing ministers (Birds of a Feather)—plus divinely-disappeared red states and farting orange tabbies. Bjorn imagines a fresh Christian mythology that runs Möbius strip circles around the apocalyptic-poppycock fiction of Frank Peretti and the Left Behind series.

Arik Bjorn lives in Columbia, South Carolina. He is a graduate of Evangelical Ground Zero, Wheaton College. Visit his website, Viking Word, to read his articles at Forward Progressives and Patheos, as well as his fiction and personal blog, The Viking & the River Horse. You can follow Arik Bjorn on Twitter @arikbjorn and on Facebook.

(He is also the author of an epic retelling of the Divine Comedy that several major publishers and agents assure him will make the bestseller list…someday.)

the author with feathered friend

Table of Contents

Introduction

Birds of a Feather

Vonnegut Lives!

Indiana

Wingman

Oatmeal

Bowl Cutters

About the Author

Introduction

I am a literary snob. There. I said it.

In the electromagnetic cesspool of websites and bloggers, every primate with an Internet connection fancies him/herself to be a ‘writer.’ But every once in a while I stumble—drunk on nicotine and a second or third pot of piss-warm black coffee—upon an actual writer. Not everyone can be a Twain or a Vonnegut or a Salinger. But, people, for {WORD THAT WOULD MAKE GEORGE CARLIN SMILE} sake, there is another word for the mass shootings that take place with regularity in Gawd-fearing, Bah-bull believin’, ammosexual ’Murica other than ‘horrific.’ Just once, I dare someone to call it what it really is: ‘predictable.’ Ahem; I digress. Alas, this is not a screed on the freedumb perteckin’, gun-stroking love of my countrymen—this is an introduction to an actual writer, who might just be the next Twain or Vonnegut or Salinger.

Arik Bjorn may suffer from several DSM-IV diagnostic classifications, but {RICHARD PRYOR LEXICAL SPECIAL} the man knows how to take his imagination and understanding of the human condition—to say nothing of the English language—out for a leisurely stroll. If you’re wise and adventurous, you’ll stroll with him, as I have.

As an independent and decidedly Opinionated Bitch, I rarely let someone else drive my keyboard, but Arik has proven himself a worthy chauffeur of the written word.

More than anything, though, I trust a man who likes cats. Cats have much to teach, as you’ll learn when you get to Arik’s story, Oatmeal. The life of a real writer is also like that of a cat. Independent. A hunter. A being that dares life to run it over, just because.

As a writer, Arik Bjorn is brave, hilariously funny and determined to wind words around my feet until I trip. Somehow, I am always a better person for having tripped.

This crotchety old Lib’rul Atheist, trapped in the bowels of the Bible Belt, is pleased to serve you the debut fictional wine and body of Arik Bjorn. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must remove the disembodied rabbit head from my front porch so lovingly left by my faithful feline companion, Cat Stevens. Life is like that, as all of Arik’s stories seem to remind us.

Carol Baker

April 2015

Birds of a Feather

One early Sunday morning, Pastor Larkin Applegate emerged from his home, adjusted his necktie (an abstraction of vertical horizons), looked up to the breaking sky as if to offer a routine courtesy to his Lord, and watched a downy feather—perhaps from a migrating goose but which later he imagined was a token from Quetzalcoatl—softly descend toward the cinereal sidewalk. The feather climbed an emerging breeze and became lodged in the split bark of a sycamore tree.

Pastor Larkin turned and for a moment became lost in the infinite regress of stone stairways lining his closed-gate community. Nearly every step was festooned with a hoking pumpkin. Despite the thumb of umber in the early October air, he loosened the knot of his tie.

His faith had disappeared.

The once and former man of God was in the habit of departing early each Sunday morning for his church, a mega-house of worship built from faith alone and realty deeds. The New Testament Church of Ecce, or NTCE as the uniforms of the church men’s softball team read, had been located by strategic dictation of the Holy Ghost just off Interstate 35 between Ames and Des Moines. The church’s hulking digital sign was a landmark witness to passing truckers, Hell’s Angels bikers and other transiting souls.

On the Lord’s Day, Pastor Larkin arrived at NTCE several hours before even the most faithful member to perform dutifully the humble role of sexton—to his mind, a kind of facility foot washing. He unlocked doors; adjusted thermostats; flipped on light banks; spot-checked the childproof condition of the four nursery rooms; erased youth group room dry erase boards; and brewed fresh pots of Jesus Java and Deacon’s Decaf in the Koinonia Room, a grand hall with biblical murals where parishioners gathered before and after service to share with their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ how heavenly hosts and principalities had directed their lives since Friday morning’s men’s and women’s segregated prayer breakfasts.

When the church was dressed for its two morning services (one at 9:30, the other at 11, as the digital marquee above the church’s main entrance announced), Pastor Larkin took his place of divine call upon the altar platform. He knew from his seminary days that high church Christians called this part of the sanctuary an iconostasis, but he refrained from referring to it thus in order to avoid the cocked eyebrows of converted Catholics.

Seeking the ministration of the Holy Spirit, Pastor Larkin paced the crimson carpet podium, like a brooding thespian tracing the staged terrain of an imaginary Agincourt, or a zoo-captive polar bear desperate to find a path that leads to an Arctic ice ledge. At the moment his spirit was moved, Pastor Larkin turned on his heels and rendered the opening lines of his memorized sermon to the purple-padded pews; each segmented pad had an embroidered dove-in-flame on the upper-left corner. He next retired to his office and surrendered to genuflected intercession on a Moroccan leather prayer bench until precisely 9:04 a.m.—the chapter and verse of his favorite Pauline passage—at which time, with a righteous furrow across his brow and well-worn New International Version Bible in hand, he emerged to engage in fellowship with the several hundred bleating coffee sippers who entrusted him to shepherd their everlasting souls.

But no more.

Larkin Cole Applegate stood at the edge of his front door steps built with custom stone from Ottumwa. The autumn wind picked at his graying, sculpted bangs. A comfortable suburban manor and his family at his back. A mega-church and ministry at the fore. All built and maintained by imaginative hermeneutics—a reality somehow clarified by a weightless pinion.

Softer than the voice in Elijah’s flame, Pastor Larkin whispered to himself, I am my own paraclete.

He remained motionless. He expected the world, physical and mental, to implode apocalyptically. Surely the demonic pumpkins would erupt in satanic cackles.

Nothing happened.

A squirrel in his front lawn oak tree began to chatter, displeased by the presence of a human interfering with its early morning foraging routine.

Pastor Larkin’s mind wended: A godless universe, if that is what remains….

He retreated inside. Everyone remained asleep; his wife Lane and his three teenage daughters usually attended the late morning service. He filled a toiletry bag and stuffed some clothes into a tote bag with the logo of a regional Christian bookstore chain, Bible Belt Books, of which he was a minority owner. In the foyer, the family dog, a horse-snouted collie-lab mix named Bathsheba, approached for a pet. Its master paused, then grabbed a leash from a wooden rung. He sensed he would soon require humanity’s only true friend of faith.

En route to NTCE in his Infiniti, Pastor Larkin parsed his pastoral career. Bathsheba sat subserviently along for the ride in the back seat. All these years, the ‘Voice of God’ had remained two steps ahead of his ability to discern its source. Somehow the feather had closed the gap; he