Synopses of Stories
 
 

• "The Belt of Power" not only keeps a guy's pants up, it transforms even a nobody into a raving egomaniac.

• "The New Man" retires to a monastery where he so mortifies his flesh in penance for his sins that his body dematerializes & he becomes pure spirit. Wanting to show his ex-wives how heís changed, he inadvertently scares them to death.

• "Two Fragments"--1. Describes a monster made of strange materials including glass chin, feet of clay & manitas de plata. 2. Is about a child who canít keep his mouth shut. His insides fall out of his mouth when he bends over & it takes him a long time to swallow them again.

• "The Green Boy" is persecuted because his skin is like bark & his blood is green. The townsfolk try to lynch him, but the tree they choose to hang him from turns out to be the Green Boyís father. Boy & father transform the jeering mob into trees.

• "The Dog With a Conscience"--Marc reveres humans. Especially his mistress who is blind. Marc is her seeing-eye dog. He stumbles on a plot being hatched by two criminals to poison the cityís water supply with a chemical that will make the population go blind. A flea in Marcís ear begins to speak, the dog mistakes it for his conscience.

• "The Black Dog"--Winston Churchill referred to his fits of depression as "The Black Dog." After Churchill dies, the Black Dog goes to Liverpool with a pretty girl in a sportscar. They get a job in a tea shop. Due to a misunderstanding, the Black Dog is flung onto the fire.

• "Handkerchief"--In his room at the top of a skyscraper, a man sneezes so hard that pieces of his immortal soul are expelled from his nose into his handkerchief. The sneeze blows the handkerchief out the window. Looping & diving in the sun-warmed air, the pieces of his soul melt together & the handkerchief becomes sentient, self-aware.

• "New Liquid"--I'll invent a liquid that has never existed before.

• "Bottle"--With the skill of a surgeon, a craftsman spends all day putting a model ship into a bottle.  But the bottle is then used as a "Molotov Cocktail" (a petrol bomb).

• "Linh-Le"--A bankrupt Chinese Princess must vacate her palace. While touring its grounds one last time she is blown up by a terrorist bomb.

• "Hardware"--A vagrant falls in love with a screwdriver in a hardware store.

• "Children"--A cautionary tale, admonishing children not to wake the monster sleeping in the lake or the spirits in the ancient trees.