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…“You know, you’re a real snoutfair?”’s all I said to her—spoken, mind you, as a firm believer in urbane wit, you know, just oozing eutrapelia? Then, just like that, aposiopesis, she storms off, as if I were a grobian, a rodomont, who’d called her a bauchle or a faitour, tossing my way, mind you, as she went, a sharp lachrymogenic, “Pegamoid!” and, to boot, a “Bunyip aristocrat!” the latter, by the bye, cast over a rounded shoulder. Imagine…Aah! what else from one so raffish and clamant?…But for all of that, still a real snoutfair, if you know what I mean—not, of course, my ne plus ultra, bathing my soul behind a bokeh. Nah! nothing like that. But let’s not chaffer like a couple of scriptural frums over a verse or two. A real snoutfair, I’m talking—with, as I said, no reason to treat an eiron like a smatchet. True, I am short. No, no, take that back. The average Viking male was five foot six. So basically, I am as tall as your average Viking male, as was she at five or five foot one, as tall as your average Viking female. Not that either was either, but—two Vikings we were, nevertheless, I guess you could say we were in a sense. Yes, two Vikings…Did I mention she embodied a zaftig look and sillage accordingly?…Now—now I feel only—what? a struldbrug…yes, a struldburg…a struldburg exiled in Coventry, you could say…True, true, one must always accept the agathokakological nature of the beast when undertaking such a—air quotes—“project.” Perhaps I’m too Turveydropian? Just a tad, perhaps? I think all Eeygores are, though, don’t you? By nature I am Eeygore, you know, and she, I’m sure she too. But for all of that, did I mention she was a real snoutfair? A-a shero in a heart-shaped, transpicuous cache-sexe with allichent movements oozing with morbidezza? Say what? “‘Stormy petrel,’” you say?—“‘inviting in the fuliginous mist of the night a shumpike to eucastophe’?” Perhaps so. But faute de mieux…Faute de mieux I stay on the way to—“‘Ignis fatuus’” you say? No, no, to eidolon…
After retiring from a career teaching philosophy, Vincent Barry returned to his first love: fiction. His stories have appeared in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad, including The Saint Ann’s Review, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, The Broken City, The Fem, Dual Coast, The Fiction Pool, Subtle Fiction, FictionWeek Literary Journal, Ariel Chart, Star 82 Review, Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Children, Churches, and Daddies, The Blotter Magazine, Terror House Magazine, Cerurove, and Caveat Lector. Barry, whose work was nominated for Best of the Net 2017, lives with his wife and daughter in Santa Barbara, California.