Category: My stories

You’ll fit right in

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The Berkman was a Class Three cruiser, and they needed a new research analyst.
“What happened to the last one?” I asked.
“That’s what our next mission is,” said the captain.
I bought life insurance for the wife and signed on for the mission.
As the ship scanned black holes and missing-matter, I looked through the Berkman’s logs and the researcher’s notes, but as far as I could tell, the crew had killed and eaten him.
There’s a knock on my door.
“You’re needed in the galley,” says the captain.
I suppose this is the end.
Enjoy the cash, dear.

Warning Signs

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My boss handed me an assignment: design a warning sign for nuclear waste that will make sense to anyone digging it up a million years from now.
My first few efforts focused on skulls, crossbones, frowny faces, festering zombies, and other symbols of slow, painful death.
Then, I realized. If these people of the future don’t understand simple English, that means our country’s been conquered by China. Or overwhelmed by those Mexican immigrants.
Well, screw that. This is my country, dammit.
That’s when I started drawing smiley faces and people with shovels, happily digging, and pouring barrels over their heads.

Mother Nature

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It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, but it’s much easier since she slipped on a riverbank and hit her head on a rock.
With a bandage on her forehead and a smile on her face, she nods with contentment from her hospital bed.
There’s no need to bring her new flowers every day. The flowers I brought her the first day are still fresh today, so all you need to do is take them away while she’s asleep and bring them in when she wakes up.
“Look what I have! Flowers!”
She smiles peacefully and looks out the window.

Punchy

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Twenty-two years ago, The Champion died in a plane crash.
The Boxing Association had enough of his DNA on file to let us grow and train a copy.
But not before Fights Incorporated got their own samples.
After a generation of hungry contenders, the Boxing World was taken by a storm of Champions.
Evenly matched in the ring in all ways but one: their training.
We had trained him before, so we knew his weaknesses.
Our champion came out on top, and he held the belt over his head in triumph.
We made sure he and the belt flew separately.

The Betting Man

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Governor Stack begins each sentence with “If I were a bettin man.”
Which everyone thought he was.
Tickets and race forms poked out of his jacket, and you could always find him down at the track, sipping a martini or a mint julep.
“I just come here for the drinks,” he says. “Best mint julep in the state.”
Which made no sense at all, since the racetrack made horrible drinks.
So, while he’s getting drunk on bad liquor and wasting his money on the horses, we run the state.
We run it better than Stack.
You can bet on that.

The Cubicle

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Joshua has two minutes to live.
He rubs the back of his neck, and the strange sensation there goes away for a few seconds.
Then, he passes out in his cubicle.
Only when his supervisor sees Joshua’s keystroke rate drop below the quota does he come out to the floor.
At first, he thinks Joshua is sleeping on the job. So, the supervisor pulls out his phone to call the department manager to get him fired.
Then, he reaches for Joshua’s neck.
No pulse.
So he makes another call to get someone from the next shift to come in early.

The Asteroid

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Astronomers spotted the asteroid last week.
It didn’t take long to figure out it was coming this way.
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
The governments of the world called for calm.
The police of the world tried to maintain order.
They failed. The people rioted.
That’s when someone remembered that the great science fiction authors had met with NASA to construct a plan.
But NASA had shelved the project and couldn’t find the report.
Harlan Elisson was the last one alive.
They went to his house, found he had shot himself, and read the simple note:
“Fuck you all.”

Millard!

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O, Millard Fillmore gold dollar coin!
How shiny thou art!
Zounds!
Your luster and glisten have no equal among currency!
Your visage may be one that scowls, but your undepicted heart beats bravely, rest assured.
I tap you against a glass table… once… twice… three times, my, how you sing brightly!
If it were not a sin, I’d worship your graven image, I would.
But, alas, parting is sweet sorrow, and the waffle-chips are my craving.
Sally forth into the coin-slot as the ransom for my snacking desire.
I will gaze upon your beauty no more.
Farewell, brave coin, Farewell!

The Ark

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Noah brought the animals on to the ark in pairs.
And after days of rain, the ark reached land and Noah let the animals back out.
Then, when the checklist was complete, he watched a brood of platypus chicks crawl down the plank.
Noah called the beavers and ducks over for a meeting.
“We were bored!” cried the beavers. “It was dark in that boat. Things got confused.”
“We were drunk!” growled the duck. “They took advantage of us!”
Noah sighed, dismissed the animals, and looked at a horse.
“I don’t want no centaur-babies,” said Noah. “You’re having an abortion.”

Johnny comes marching home…

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When Johnny comes marching home again, we won’t be singing Hurrah Hurrah.
No, we’ll be waiting behind the woodshed with knives.
Johnny may think he’s a big hot-shot war hero, but his brothers who went to the front with him sent back letters saying otherwise.
A lousy shot.
A worthless coward.
A loose-lipped traitor.
He may think he made the explosion look like an artillery shell accident, but Tomkins saw it. And he sent the letter before Johnny finished him off, too.
We hear his horse come up the path, draw our knives, and his whistling grows louder.
STAB HIM!