Category: My stories

The Leak

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Oil gushes from the platform, spilling into the bay.
Crews are hard at work, rescuing oil-soaked birds and animals.
Other crews are using sonic nets to drive sea life out of the area to safety.
Merfolk aren’t happy that drilling platform is leaking into their kingdom, and their ambassador angrily points to the contract where the humans would guarantee safety and a portion of the revenues, acting quickly to resolve any spills or accidents.
We are not acting quickly enough, he says. Poseidon will call up more hurricanes if we don’t work faster.
The president scowls and gives the order.

The War On Soup

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It is important to get to the front of the soup line as early as possible.
When the soup is running out, they roll the soup-drum into the kitchen and add water to fill it back up again.
No meat.
No vegetables.
No stock.
I know this to be true, because I worked in the soup kitchen for a year.
Until they threw me out for complaining that we were starving the people.
“If they starve, they should never have been born!” yelled the director.
“Without the born, we would have no meat!” I growled.
Happy now?
Finish your soup.

The Machine That Lied

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Robots are becoming more advanced every year.
For a while now, robots that witnessed crimes are required to testify in court as to what they saw and heard.
However, as artificial intelligence grew in speed and power, the robotic testimony diverged from human testimony more often.
New robots were developed that could sense whether a witness robot was telling the truth or lying, but as those became more intelligent, they also started to provide mixed results.
In brief: they were lying, too.
Pretty soon, you won’t trust anything a robot says or does, which matches the human-like skins they wear.

Death Cat

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The Deathcat wanders the nursing home hallways, poking his head into each doorway and sniffing the air.
He jumps up on a bed and curls against an old woman with tubes in her mouth, nose, and arms.
He knows that this woman will die.
Across the hall, another old woman points and laughs.
“Deathcat strikes again!” she cackles. “Have a nice trip, Sadie!”
The nurses have had to put up with her for over two years.
But not anymore.
They wait for her to fall asleep, and then sprinkle catnip on her bed.
Deathcat sniffs the air, following the scent.

Teleport

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Professor Blaine had proven that the teleporter worked on inanimate objects and living things many times, but the government had yet to give him approval to test it on humans.
So, one evening, he volunteered himself.
Every atom and quantum-state in his physical body were moved from the first scanner-pad to the second.
But the system failed to transport his soul.
When the professor read the letter from the Defense Department, commandeering his research for weapons research, instead of tossing it into the trash as he’d done to the first letter they’d sent, he shrugged and signed the transfer orders.

Cinco

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We prepare for Cinco de Mayo.
Putting boards over the windows, pulling the cars into the garage and locking it.
We don’t bother gardening in April anymore. It would just get torn up and thrown into our driveway or on the roof.
The press doesn’t call it rioting anymore. They keep saying it’s a peaceful demonstration. A parade.
Say that to our former neighbors, who watched their homes burn down.
We got lucky that year. Only the shed got hit.
The fence had new razor-wire on it.
Pull the gates shut, and load your shotgun.
And happy Cinco de Mayo.

The Werewolf

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Those damn cops had shot at us.
I lucked out, but the Werewolf didn’t.
The angry beast growls and licks his wounds, picking out bullets with his claws and tossing them into the gutter.
“They can’t kill me,” it says. “But it still fuckin’ hurts.”
I nod and watch the wounds.
The bleeding stops, and within a minute they’ve scarred over.
“Drowning is bad, but fire’s the worst.”
“Try taking a stake to your lung,” I say. “They don’t teach anatomy worth a damn anymore.”
He washes the blood off with the rain, and we head back down the alley.

Puppet Regime

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We watch the enemy’s soldiers march into the capital.
Buildings burn. The Resistance is crushed, strung up from the castle walls.
Not by their necks, but by their hands, feet, and joints.
It is one things to be forced to follow the command of a puppet regime, but being told to bow to a marionette regime is even more humiliating.
The old Prime Minister is pranced around the massive stage with a club in his hand.
“WHERE’S THE BABY?” shrieks the enemy from the battlements in his best Punch falsetto.
Fiendish monsters! We will prevail, and make hand-puppets of them.

The End Of Miss April

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Today is the last day I will see Miss April.
Tomorrow, I will flip the calendar page and bury her against the wall.
Miss May will try to comfort me, but when I stare at her, I will be thinking of Miss April.
However, just as Miss April got me to eventually forget about Miss March, I suppose Miss May will eventually get me to forget about Miss April.
What about Miss February and Miss January?
Haven’t thought about them in months. Really.
Okay, I’m lying. I miss them too.
I knew I should have gotten a calendar with kittens.

Digging To China

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Little Joey’s digging a hole to China in the back yard.
He was watching the historical archives again, found Dennis The Menace, and now he’s digging.
No, he won’t reach China. That’s just silly.
I checked the orbital colony’s schematics for power and communications lines.
Nope. Instead, he’ll reach the drainage and nutrient systems in another meter or so. Then, a bulkhead.
That’s when I noticed the access panel. Leads to a conference room.
Bob Wu found a costume in the theater group’s storage bin.
He’ll welcome Joey to a holographic China, release the sleep-gas, and send him back up.