Category: My stories

The Muse

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Bob and Shirley sat at the dinner table. Silence was their guest, as it had been for the past few days.
“Any ideas today?” asked Bob.
“None,” said Shirley.
Bob went into the basement, turned on the light, and walked over to a metal box under the stairs.
“Modular Unit Suggestion Engine,” mumbled Bob. “Here’s one: ‘start working.'”
The MUSE sat silently.
Bob kicked it. “Any bright ideas?”
Still nothing.
Bob shrugged, walked over to his workbench, and started to build a birdhouse out of his ribcage.
No blueprints, either. The idea just came to him out of the blue.

Circling the bowl

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“Where’s your story?” asked Guido, adjusting his glasses and reloading the page. “One story a day, come hell or high water, right?”
“Didn’t feel like writing one,” said Laurence, shrugging.
“Didn’t you pick the theme?” asked Guido.
“Yeah,” said Laurence. “I just… you know… something’s missing.”
Guido looked at his nephew’s bloodshot eyes. “You don’t look so good,” he said. “Getting enough sleep?”
“It’s not that,” said Laurence. “It’s the inspiration. It’s missing.”
“Well, if the site hasn’t completely flushed away, it’s certainly circling the bowl,” said Guido.
Laurence nodded. “Maybe tomorrow will be different?”
Guido shrugged. “Maybe it will.”

Later flight

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Despite a running through the terminal like O.J. Simpson, I was late.
I remember pounding on the door and yelling at the gate attendants to stop the plane.
They didn’t. Instead, they stopped me.
“I gotta be in New York by five or I lose the client!” I shouted.
“Then you should have been here by two-thirty,” grumbled the cop as he handcuffed me.
Two hours later, they opened my holding cell.
“The plane went down over Indiana,” said a guard. “You’re the luckiest man on earth.
I called the client to explain, but luck only goes so far.
Bastards.

The Wacky Adventures Of Abraham Lincoln 47

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Abe’s first State of the Union Address didn’t end with God Bless America. Instead, it ended with “Man, this is dull.”
The next year, he gave his address while wrestling a bear. Three hours to finish the address, and the bear. It would have been quicker if not for applause breaks.
The year after that, he sang it with a full orchestra. Sadly, the sheet music never made it into the Congressional Record.
After that, he did a Punch and Judy show.
After Lincoln died, Andrew Johnson went back into The House to give his address.
What a dull man.

Shadowplay

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There’s this bar Downtown that features exotic dancers, but they are only visible behind backlit scrims. The patrons are treated to the erotic display of shadows, while the owners can claim that the patrons aren’t actually seeing the nude performers.
Nothing is exposed, no flesh is visible at all. Technically, everything’s legal, and everybody’s happy.
Well, not everybody. There’s always somebody.
They balked, claiming some kind of harm, demanding that they stop the titillating shows at once.
The bar owner refused to back down and fought them in court.
After extensive and painstaking research by the judge, the owner won.

Trashman

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You thought you could hide from me.
You were wrong.
Every morning, I want to see her there, feel her touch.
You took her away from me, left her under a garbage heap.
Her hand in mine. Her other hand. Her foot.
Torn to pieces By you.
I want to see you bleed, but the years have taken their toll. I am blind now.
I will have to satisfy myself with feeling the warm, slick blood running down your throat.
Maybe I will taste it, seeking the flavor of your rapidly ending life.
I want to see you bleed.
Forever.

The Roar

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All he could remember from the speech was saying “Thank you” and descending the steps from the stage.
“Great speech!” said his assistant. “Inspiring!”
He thought for a moment. Still a blank.
“What speech?”
The audience, applauding even louder, shouted for more.
He looked at his notes.
Blank.
“Go ahead,” said his assistant, pressing a sheaf of paper in his hand. “Give them an encore.”
“An encore of what?”
He looked at the new set of notes.
Also blank.
He shrugged, stood up, and raised his fist in the air as he walked back up the stairs to the stage.

Tossers

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Spotters located asteroids.
Grabbers grabbed asteroids.
Shovers retrieved asteroids.
Chewers pulverized asteroids.
Sniffers analyzed asteroids.
And Gulpers ate them for sorting and processing.
Thanks to goofball rules held over from Terran Days, there were also Packers and Tossers. They packed the tailings back into dense balls of spacerock and launched them back into the belt.
Sometimes, tossers liked to have a little fun, whizzing a million-ton boulder inches from a control pod or a cruise ship.
Tosser 7-D used millimeters instead of inches. Another holdover from Terran Days, that stupid Metric System.
Bye bye, Titanic. We’re still counting the bodies.

Sammy was the Sole Survivor

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Five kilometers past Strayhorn Reef was where the map said the lost freighter exploded and sank.
Bits and pieces of the vessel littered the ocean floor, if 2-ton glowing chunks of iron and steel could be described as a bit or piece.
The only survivor of the wreck was a one-legged parrot. All it said was “Sammy!”
The investigators tried to coax more out of the parrot, using crackers and peanuts, but all it ever said was “Sammy!”
Divers went down, but never came up. Even when tagged, their signal would vanish.
And so did they.
“Sammy!” shrieked the parrot.

Scenario D

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“Scenario D,” said a voice.
Darkness everywhere, his ears ringing.
Was he indoors? Outdoors?
Ed thumbed the switch on the flashlight.
Dead.
He twisted off the top, rattled out the batteries, and felt for the poles.
He put the flashlight back together, and flicked the switch again.
Still dead.
Ed felt around the ground, but it felt somewhere between concrete and pavement.
No ambient noise. The ringing.
“HELLO!” he yelled.
No echo. Or…
“HELLO!”
The ringing wasn’t helping.
He got down on the ground and crawled around Scenario D for what seemed like hours.
“My name is Ed,” he mumbled.