From: prouvairejean	Date: June 26th, 2008 02:28 am (UTC)		(Link)

Fascinating stuff.

There's a rather strange, disquieting, but compelling short story called "Vestibular Man" by Felix C Gotschalk which it seems may have been inspired by the Mellified Man.

	From: jasonfischer	Date: June 27th, 2008 09:29 am (UTC)		(Link)

As always, every interesting idea has been thought of by someone else already! :-) the challenge still stands.

The intarwebs pointed me to an OSC antho called "Future on Fire", which contains this and other assorted goodies. Another book I must hunt down.

Thanks for the heads up!

	From: lauragoodin	Date: July 2nd, 2008 02:21 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	The Mellified Man

Joanie loved to make sweet food: satay, sweet and sour chicken, mooshu, glazed hams, stews thick with dried fruit. And in every dish, the strange, soft bite of honey. The longer we were together, the more she used. She told me, "Love can go sour."

"Are you so unsure of me?" I would say, feeling resentment, soft and biting and tempting as honey. Her answer tonight was to add more kecap manis. Soy sauce thickened to sloth by palm sugar. Each time I asked, out would come sweetening, sugar in all its colors and sources, maple syrup, palm sugar grated from a gritty brown block, honey.

I grew to like it. Then I grew not to notice it. I stopped eating out: everything tasted sour, or bitter, or thin and unwholesome. Joanie cooked for me. I ate.

My spit started tasting sweet, even in the hours between meals. A few days later I blew my nose and filled the tissue with syrup. My pee made the bathroom smell like honey. And when Joanie and I made love, the wet spot dried to sugary crystals by morning. I was afraid to mention anything. After a while, I didn't think about it.

When my shit became a stream of viscous, sticky, golden stuff (I couldn't make myself taste it, so I didn't know for sure it was honey), I had to speak.

"I'm scared," I said to Joanie, who was putting the finishing touches on some crème brulée.

"It's supposed to be that way," she said, hardly glancing up. The tiny propane torch roared in the silence between us, the sugar bubbled and darkened to caramel, bittersweet. "Almost ready." I thought she was talking about dessert.

I stopped going to work. I just smiled and slowly, carefully, reached for the food Joanie made. Soon I couldn't even do that, and she fed me gooey morsels from her fingers. She started making morsels too gooey for fingers and used a spoon, and then simply fed me honey, hour after hour, day after day.

A morning came when I could not rise by myself, even to eat. Joanie gently took me from the bed and led me to her workroom. There was a box, just my size, and I could see the mechanisms for locking it tight, tight. There was a layer of honey on the inside. Still gently, she made me lie down in the box, and began to fill it with more honey. While she poured, she began to talk. "In a hundred years, you will still be sweet, our love will be sweet, and it will cure all broken hearts. They say it cures broken limbs, the sweetness of a man become honey, so why not hearts? And who knows what else? Whatever happens to me, you will be my cure, my medicine, my ever-present help. This is how it's supposed to be."

The honey covered my ears and I heard no more.

	From: jasonfischer	Date: July 2nd, 2008 11:16 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: The Mellified Man

that's a bloody ripper! nice work!