To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.
The 8th day of the 4th month, the 3rd year of Kōshō (1457)
Ikkyū-shi Sōjun
Ghost Ride
Phantom Soup © Mitchell Pluto 2025
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In case you overlooked it, this universe wasn’t lacking in ambition or size.
It was putting on a spectacle with its production.
The cosmos is just incredible; even haters gotta admit it’s breathtaking.
Zanni, the defendant, is still waiting for a verdict.
In space, sentences float around and words drift apart.
His black and white checkerboard suit embodied the polarities of opposites.
He is a man without a country.
A joker in a deck of cards.
Through gestures alone, Zanni attempted to decipher the universe’s communication.
There was drama everywhere, but Zanni just didn’t understand how it worked or how it occurred.
No one ever knew the truth; it died with them, leaving only unanswered questions.
Everyone figured the headache meant they knew what the problem was.
Less pain means clearer perception and a more optimistic outlook.
Honestly, it wasn’t a matter of right and wrong.
Or pain or pleasure.
It dealt with items of worth later becoming trash.
You could tell what things meant to people by how often they handled them.
It’s a space ballad playing both life and death.
No one will sing the sad cowboy songs of unrealized dreams anymore.
It’s alright.
We are part of a sombrero galaxy, a galaxy that is an eternal sunrise.
Zanni was in a giant empty room with waves of random stuff.
His world symbolized a particular responsibility of being.
Special car keys for a 2025 model, a mobile wallet, a decorative cup, a gold pen, a seasonal tire, headphones from 1979, crumpled up Kleenex, a 1990 professional styling brush and a flashlight from 1899.
These objects surrounded Zanni.
Thankfully, a consumer digital camera from 1996 captured a pic of this.
But for who?
Regular waves swapped out old things for newer ones.
Zanni contemplated this event.
He figured the most likely explanation was that he was inside a massive vacuum cleaner.
He experienced a strong connection to things he saw on his trip.
Zanni speculated that the objects he couldn’t name were from a future timeline.
Things appear and vanished super fast out here.
Zanni drifted between sleep and wakefulness.
We can refer to it as a space fog in the mind.
A magnetic memory was his most beloved possession.
It echoed because Zanni repeated it.
He brought it back to mind in a re-run.
Zanni felt the luscious lips vibrate against his ear. It was a figurine of a woman.
Her name was Colombina.
The teal diamonds and magenta triangles on her dress flowed together to create a pattern of doves.
Hand in hand, they created poetry.
The rhythm of their partnership quivered in the shared space.
The couples’ bond created a constant interplay of elements through the intercourse of their geometric patterns.
Zanni maintained his embrace for as long as possible before the vacuum wave separated them.
He could not pinpoint the incident’s time without a clock.
The arrangement of numbers magically shapes the surrounding space. A regular watch shows what’s going on between the numbers.
Of all the puppets, did he alone ponder his whereabouts?
Only he understood his own thoughts and feelings.
Sometimes Zanni heard voices that didn’t belong to him.
Intrigued by the mysterious voice, he followed it.
The voice led him back to his body.
Those seizures and hallucinations gave epilepsy a mystical quality.
His memories of himself were likely because of thinking about Colombina.
He owned the moment, his own little universe, for a single second. Zanni saw himself as a buoy, helping other objects find their way.
But Pantalone, a hunchbacked old man, considered himself the universe’s ultimate authority.
He was a drifting turtleback tomb from another vacuum wave.
Pantalone preferred the nickname “god.”
His face twisted in anger as he guarded his belongings. Losing things got on his nerves. His tailored red suit reflected Pantalone’s importance.
Every item got a brand and price label from him. He believed he understood your true worth more than you did yourself. He used his talent to make you think whatever he wanted.
Those close to him risked having their self-image stolen and used against them.
Pantalone intended for everyone to rent from his cloud.
He lost money in the vacuum wave, then recovered his losses.
This activity provided him with enjoyment, a sentiment he wished to share. Provided that he had more.
Scattered dollar bills wandered everywhere.
The bills, by themselves in space, lacked any connections.
Now, Pantalone found himself surrounded by dancing product wrappers, toenail clippings, old grocery lists, damaged furniture, empty food containers, broken appliances, crumbled up receipts and dead batteries.
Think of it as a garbage cloud.
Several real estate agents, their eyes wide with nervous energy, tried to appear calm as they floated past Pantalone.
They pretended to own a spot by treading in one place.
While this was occurring, Harry Houdini sailed by and unlocked a satellite.
Intrigued by Pantalone’s possessiveness, Zanni examined the egocentric and deceitful nature of his own point of view.
He observed the ego’s memories fade as the mind surrendered its ownership.
Once the fear was gone, relief came.
Houdini cracked his knuckles. “No worries are necessary. Don’t sweat it. It is a simple lock to open. “
The hierarchy reflects the relationships between things in a chain.
An x-ray showed how brain waves link things up through information chains, like you see in neuron activation patterns.
This electromagnetic wave made Zanni wonder about the engineer of the universe.
It appeared the designer wrote a script for a big stage performance but remains anonymous.
In the meantime,
Pantalone reached his own planet.
Phantom Soup: Short Stories for the Evicted Citizen Paperback
