I love the Dutch, that's why I came to Denmark... (short excerpt from comedy play by Oren Shafir)

In this short excerpt from my play, Better Off Dead, Ulla and her friends,  Lars and Lone, are trying to teach Rex, your average Texan cowboy, how to be Danish.

ACT I, SCENE III, ULLA’S LIVING ROOM

(Lars and Lone are just entering)

ULLA

These are my dearest friends, Lars and Lone Lonelarsen. Lars and Lone, this is my new boyfriend, Rex from Texas.

LARS AND LONE

Oh, an American.

REX

What’s a matter, don’t you like Americans?

LARS

Yes, of course. We are Danish.

 LONE

We are very tolerant and extremely non-judgemental.

LARS

But we believe that all Americans are narcissistic, dogmatic hypocrites.

 REX

Why I might take offense with that if I knew what any of those words meant.

 ULLA

Now we shall have Danish hygge.

LARS

Yes, now we shall have Danish hygge.

LONE

Yes, we shall have Danish hygge now.

ULLA

We shall explain.

LARS, LONE AND ULLA

(Lars, Lone and Ulla light

candles frantically as they

sing this song)

THE DANISH HYGGE SONG

DANISH HYGGE IS SO DANISH

IT’S AS DANISH AS CAN BE

DANISH HYGGE IS SO SPECIAL

BECAUSE IT IS SO HYGGELIG

DANISH HYGGE IS SO SIMPLE

AND YET IT IS COMPLEX

ALL YOU NEED ARE 500 CANDLES

AND SOME PEOPLE AT LEAST THREE

THEN YOU NEED SOME DANISH HUMOR

WE ARE VERY FUNNY

WE GAVE THE WORLD BLACK HUMOR

WE INVENTED IRONY

DANISH HYGGE IS SO DANISH

IT IS AS DANISH AS CAN BE

DANISH HYGGE IS SO CHARMING

BECAUSE IT IS SO HYGGELIG

ALL YOU NEED ARE 500 BEERS

AND SOME PEOPLE, AT LEAST THREE

REX

Oh, that’s Danish hygge. It’s kinda like...

Read more or download the full play as a pdf.

Listen to the first act read in a live staged radio reading

All for one (350 word freaky flash fiction) by Oren Shafir

What kind of person could beat a man until his bare knuckles bleed? I know you think I’m horrible, but there’s some things you need to understand.

First of all, it was Frank’s idea. He’s the leader, the thinker, the planner. And he has a way of explaining things with that fancy English accent of his so that it all makes sense. Now that doesn’t mean I will do anything Frank says. No sir, especially not something like that. You need to be motivated for something like that.

You see, that poor kid Jamie is so sweet and innocent, and has been hurt so bad, you just want to protect him. Jamie is the best of us. And it’s like Frank says, if someone hurts one of us, he hurts all of us. So you see, I had to do it. I'm the one who get things done that the others can’t, even terrible things sometimes. I am the doer.

Still when I walked up to that man I did not know what I intended to do. But then he smiled at me like he knew me. Almost like he had been, I don’t know, intimate with me. I could see how he must have hurt Jamie. I thought, Jamie is such an innocent kid, he wouldn’t have seen that; he probably just took it as a friendly smile.

“You don’t know me,” I said, and I swung my whole body connecting a hook to his temple so clean it sent him straight down.

How was I to know that Jamie had been hurt so bad before, that he could get so confused, he might blame this guy for something else someone else did to him a long time ago?

I can’t talk to Jamie (or Frank for that matter) all the time, you know. Usually, one of us just takes over and uses the body, and the others disappear for a while. This time it was me, and I used it to beat that man to death with my bare hands.

 

END

Read another freaky flash by Oren

 

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Alone (200-word freaky flash fiction) by Oren Shafir

I’d been trying to remove a painful piece of nut lodged between my upper right molar and the one next to it when I began to suspect the tooth was moving as well. I tested it, and it was loose alright.

I tore off a piece of my rag shirt, the clean one, and dabbed at the area. That’s when I saw the pus and blood. Without thinking, I pushed it as hard as I could ignoring the pain. Back and forth, again and again ,until there was a crack.

I stuffed a piece of the shirt rag in the hole and looked at the tooth.  Tooth? Whatever it now was, I could only admire it. I began laughing. Softly at first, the kind of polite chuckle you would have heard at a dinner party or the library. But my laughter gradually grew - like it was being pumped up inside me.

Soon, it was like the unchecked giggles of a child. Gradually, it became  hysterical. Tears rolled down my beard mixing with gooey blood. Had someone heard me, they wouldn’t have known whether it was laughter or the bellowing of a beast.  Had someone seen me, they would have thought me mad. Would have, if anyone were left, that is.

 

END

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When I Was Brand New by Oren Shafir

On the night I was born
My Dad used one of the two tickets he'd bought
To hear Frank Sinatra sing
Why Frankie decided to perform in Beer Sheva, Israel of all places
I do not know

How a nice Jewish boy like me ended up in a goyish place like this by Oren Shafir

(Originally published in Rambam, Danish-Jewish history journal, 15/2006)

 

I’ve lived in Denmark for 15 years now, and I still feel like an outsider. But, hey, that’s not so strange. After all I am Jewish; we Jews are perennial outsiders. We’re contributors to the mainstream, yet never quite considered an integral part of the mainstream. We’re familiar with all forms of persecution, and we’re always on the move. Oh yes, Jews get around, and I’m no different.

Dan's Just Fine 200-word flash fiction by Oren Shafir

I have to tell you about something with Mom that freaked me out. Remember I went with her to the North mall last weekend. Well anyway, she met her old friend, Esther Rose. And Esther asked how Dan was. Well Mom just smiled and said, “He’s fine.”

  So, I kept glancing over at her on the way home, trying to see if she looked okay or what was going on. I couldn’t see anything. She looked like Mom. So finally, when we got to a red light, I just asked her.

  “Are you okay, Mom?”

“Yes. Why what’s the matter, don’t I look okay?” she said, and she pulled down the mirror and started checking her makeup.

   “It’s just that, your friend, Esther, asked you how Dan was, and you said he was fine.”

  “Oh,” she said laughing. “That’s right,” and for a minute I started laughing too. But then then the light changed, and as I started driving again, she said, “Yes, yes, he is.”

“Mom…” I said trying to control the alarm in my voice and figure out a tactful way to put it. But finally, I couldn’t think of any subtleties, so I just came out with it.

   “You know Dan is dead right?”

“Of course, I know,” she said. “But he’s fine. Dan is just fine.”

More of Oren's flash fiction

The Veteran (153 word flash fiction by Oren Shafir)

"Hey bud, spare a dime for a vet?"

"One dime, that's it?" I said digging into my pockets and glancing at Bobby with a mischievous grin. This dude was an original. Looked like he crawled out of some black and white World War II flick.

He held out a grimy black hand. I hesitated, then placed the coin in it, feeling his gritty, blistered skin, but surprised at its cool touch.

"Thanks Mister," the bum said.

"Ha, he called you Mister," Bobby chortled.

"Trying to get back home to Chicago," the bum continued. "Haven't seen my folks since I got out."

"Chicago? How many dimes do you have?" I laughed and started to turn to Bobby, but something in the veteran’s eyes held my gaze.

Then, he reached into his pockets and slowly pulled them inside out. The dimes fell, raining over the sidewalk, and flowing into the street like a silver deluge.

(originally published in the, unfortunately, now defunct phonebook.com)

Read "Last Train, a 250-word freaky flash fiction story about deja vú

Half a dozen poems in 20 odd years

Poetry is a tough genre for me. I've only produced a handful of what I consider to be decent work over the last 20 or so years. Here's a few of them.

Here are links to some of my other poetry:
http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/1257-oren-shafir-poetry
http://www.eclectica.org/v2n1/shafir_poems.html


Postmodern Proof
Let's not pretend we're going
Anywhere.
Every place looks the same.
Empty streets lead us
To empty boxes
Where we park cars
Next to neon-colored numbers
That remind us where we are:
On shiny floors amid electronic goods
Gone is the touch and smell of wood.

The Ingrate (100-word freaky flash fiction by Oren Shafir)

Do you even realize how much thought I put into picking out just the right length candles to bring out the beauty of the bone china,
or the perfect heavy red Bordeaux to complement the lightness and delicacy of my beautiful Gruyère and Parmesan Cheese soufflé?

Short story collection: Small Truths and Other Lies by Oren Shafir

A sample short story

Dead Man's Boots
Jinji wore Avi’s boots after Avi died. It doesn’t matter how he died. Maybe he got caught by a friendly bullet. Maybe he caught shrapnel in the head. Maybe... Read more

First lines of some of my other tales

The Almost Man
My short-term memory is fucked. I forget things. My long-term memory is also fucked. I remember things...


Backsliders
Thinking about Sherry's naked body and his mother at the same time made Tiny Teddy nervous...


Photographs and Memories
I am told that my great-grandfather, Moishe, used to get sick every year during the fast of Yom-kippur... 

Read these stories and more. Download the Kindle ebook now

 

Alice (a 300-word freaky flash fiction horror story) by Oren Shafir

 The room seemed to be bending, the shadows alive. How far away

was the window? How far away was the door? Everything appeared out of proportion, and Alice felt dizzy.

Better Off Dead postponed due to acts of God

The scheduled premiere of Better Off Dead has been postponed due to a herniated disc, the ongoing economic crisis and a hell of a lot of snow in Copenhagen. Well, actually the snow is just annoying, doesn't have anything to do with the playl