Category: My stories

• Lisa
• Lizzie
• Richard
• Lewie
• Serendipidy
• Tom
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The next topic is Complete idiot

LISA

A Family Portrait
We were playing at grannies. A raucous game of ball: when it hit a frame on the mantelpiece that fell with a clatter on the floor.
Nothing had broken. We all felt that relief but as I picked up the photograph I uncurled it: it had been folded to hide two more people. The mood in the room changed. The man looked like Daddy. He was set apart a bit from the others, emphasised by the crease.
I wished that the glass had broken so we could pick up the pieces, so we had something else to focus on.

RICHARD

Brushoff
I commissioned a painter to do a family portrait. It was one of those crazy, spur of the moment decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time.
I thought everyone would get into the spirit of things and be totally up for the sitting, but half the family just weren’t interested. Most of those who were, changed their mind when they found out how long it would take.
As for the rest, they all made excuses, and come the day, I was the only one who bothered to turn up.
I got him to paint me as Superman!

LIZZIE

Everyone stood, side by side meekly. Four generations. The photographer tried his best, but no one smiled. Back in his studio, he decided to reinterpret the concept of a family portrait. The grandmother’s face looking like a flowerpot, no top of the head, chopped horizontally above the nose, twigs around it (each twig representing a family member). At the last minute, he added, “We are all a part of this mess.” Why? No idea why he did it. He’s still waiting to be paid. The photo, however, was sold for a million to a multi-millionaire. Nothing happens by pure chance.

TOM

1044

Can’t just brush it off.

The town was deadly silent. A number of white vans glided up to the center of town. Slow crews of hazmat researchers exited into windswept streets. Methodically they gather items from every structure anyone may have spent even the shortest amount of time. Numbered and bagged mountains of items were collected. After days of collection members of the sorting teams had found one object evenly distributed across the city. On further inspection the shocking truth weighed in. The objects were not of this earth, so to the death they brought. The report on the president’s deck read: Hairbrush Fever.

1045

C.L.W.P

In a family someone is always the designated photo-take. A truly thankless job. And only possible if your baseline personality is sneaky. Sadly, even with the will to record your family over the year you just get wore down by the sour faces warding off the casual portrait. In my case I didn’t declare my with draw from the familial fray. So it took year before they notice a lack of Family portraits. Now the complaint were why I wasn’t sticking lens in their faces. Want to hear a secret: all photo will one day be images of dead people.

SERENDIPIDY

I guess it’s not your usual sort of family portrait.
Certainly, you can see us all stood in a big happy group, (I’m the one at the front, in the middle), and we all have big smiles on our faces, caught just at the moment we said ‘cheese’.
Of course, apart from me and my sister, you can’t tell that anyone is smiling; mainly because I’ve scratched their faces off.
My sister’s next on my list, and once I’ve slit her throat, I’ll be scratching her face off too.
And my smile will be even bigger than in the photo.

LEWIE

Title: Prompted Royalty

Secret Service agents entered the studio and informed Nancy, the photographer, that someone important was about to arrive. More agents swept through the back room, upstairs, and secured the building. Snipers could be seen on a nearby roof outside the windows.

The King and Queen soon arrived for a family portrait.

“Where is your family?” Nancy asked.

The King turned to her and said, “Probably off saving the world or something. Can’t you just Photoshop them in?”

“No worries. I can use ChatGPT,” Nancy replied. “Done.”

The Queen asked, “Don’t you need to take our picture first?”

Nancy replied, “Nope.”

NORVAL JOE

Still confused after his fainting spell, Billbert muttered, “Your grandparents rings?”

“Sit up,” Mandi said.

Though Billbert’s head was spinning and he felt terribly weak, he was suddenly sitting.

Mandi pointed to a picture on her bedroom wall. A young couple with flowers in their long hair and love beads around their necks were holding a baby.

“My grandparents were hippies,” Mandi said. “They were given these rings by a Romanian fortune teller. She said that if they wore the rings faithfully, they would never fight. My mother said it was true. My grandfather always did whatever Grandma told him.”

PLANET Z

I used to keep a photo from my childhood on the shelf.
The Salmon Seeker, a Lake Michigan salmon trolling boat my grandfather would hire now and then.
He, my brother, and I in foul-weather coats, sea pants, and boots, holding up a fish rack.
Everyone smiling, but me.
I get sick on boats, and had vomited continuously all throughout the stormy trip.
On the back of the photo, I had written “Never get on a boat again, never trust family.”
Now that most of my family is dead, I’ve burned the photo, all the photos, everything from those days.

The first permanent lunar base wasn’t named after Neil Armstrong as we hoped. Instead, it was named after some Chinese God. Despite years of planning and designs and technological development, NASA got bogged down in bureaucracy and politics to the point where the Chinese sent thousands of students and researchers to universities to steal the plans and technology, and they made it work. The finger pointing went on for years in Congress and online and on news shows while money continued to pour out of NASA into illegal immigrant fraud, schemes, and paying for sodas and candy on food stamps.

Cell phone service is really gotten bad around here. The company sent me out to the tower, and I went up the ladder, clipping to the safety wire, and when I got to the top all of the antenna and modules cables are fine. But there was a big hawk nest up there. So I put a camera up there and sure enough later in the day Signal strength went into the toilet again, and right there on the camera was the hawk. And it had an identification band on one of its legs, which seems to interfere with signal.

Some people get really cool superpowers like flying or invisibility or invulnerability, but Rose always knew which direction north was. And not just magnetic north. She knew all the different norths. The map north and the magnetic north, and all the other norths. However, she couldn’t read a map for shit. She never knew where she was half the time. She pulled out her phone and bring up the map application and the GPS would find her and say there you are and she not didn’t say ok. Five minutes later, she’d be asking for directions again.. kinda useless.

I loaded up my cart with olives for the run to Caeseria.
The Roman roads made the trip so much easier.
“Let’s go, boy,” I said to my mule.
After a morning of passing olive trees and rocks, we came to the first of the roadside crosses.
Counting dozens… hundreds lining the road.
“Must have been a big rebellion,” I said.
I recognized a few customers among the dead.
And a few fellow merchants.
“I hope the market is open today,” I said. “Would be a shame to have to turn back.”
And we continued down the road to Caeseria.

Mindy kept a switchblade in her purse.
The walk from her office to her car in the parking garage wasn’t the best.
On some nights, the lights were out.
Was it a power issue?
Or did someone smash the lights and hide around a corner to wait for her?
Carrying mace or pepper spray could work, but masks and goggles make them ineffective.
A gun? Hell no.
In the end, she got a laptop and worked remotely.
A few weeks later, her boss, who worked on site, got killed in a robbery.
Mindy took his job. And still worked remotely.

Alarms went off almost daily in processing plant seven. It was an orbital asteroid rendering facility that had seen better days. Demoted to a training facility, instructors ran the orbital base. Sometimes the alarms were just drills, but other times the alarms were real. Either way, it was good practice for the future miners, engineers, processors, and administrators. When seven had a full blowout, the company retired the facility. They wrote off that crew, designated the next oldest facility as a training base, and launched a new processing plant for improving production volume and efficiency. Next quarter’s profits will rise.

After we had grass rolled out on our front yard, I would let our cats out to roll around and play and stock out there. I got an Apple AirTag on a collar in case they would run off. They roll on the grass and the sun beams. They claw the trees. They look so happy. I let them in the backyard as well and they explore. I had to put planks of wood on either side of the shed to keep them from burrowing under there. It’s time to come in. I pick them up and they complain loudly.

I live near the bay, and when I go to the beach, I see pelicans and eagles and other birds hunting for fish on the water. I like to watch them striding along the shore or flying above, ducking their head under the water and pulling out a fish or swooping down. It’s just so graceful and peaceful to watch. It’s certainly more enjoyable than when I bring some snacks to the beach and I get mobbed by seagulls. One time I brought a burger and fries and I got set up on the moment I opened the paper bag.

It hasn’t rained here in Pleasant Valley for a while. The stream that goes under the old library bridge is dry. The pond in the park, you can tell from how the bank is exposed from the receding water. The almanac said that this year would be wetter than usual, but nobody believes it. Sundays, Pastor Smith leads the congregation to pray for rain, but it doesn’t rain. And then one day the skies went dark, the winds blew hard, and we were in the middle of a hurricane. Not all at once Lord, said Pastor Smith, and he laughed.