James made the best-smelling paintings.
No, not selling. Smelling.
He’d go to the beach and paint abstract waves and moonlit skies with tempera and plaster.
The mixture would capture the scent of the sand and the salty air, and if you closed your eyes and breathed in deep, you’d feel that spring Corpus Christi day.
His dream was to open his own restaurant, his paintings on the wall.
And he did. The opening was last month.
He made it.
And died last night of a heart attack.
A whiff, a touch of accomplishment, and your dreams is all you get.
Category: My stories
The Water Marshal
It never rains in The Burning Lands.
But in case it ever does, the citizens must be prepared.
Young salamanders and firedrake students laugh and play as they are shepherded from their classrooms into the gymnasium.
An iron tank covered with warning symbols sits in the middle of the room.
Water: The most dreaded and feared substance in The Burning Lands.
Students hiss with fear as The Water Marshal turns a knob, and an ordinary flame is…
Extinguished! Dowsed!
What magic is this?
Screams. Shouts.
The Water Marshal demands order.
Then, together, they shout the Water Drill:
“SMITE! IGNITE! ALIGHT!
The Spies
The final test for spy training is passing a test conducted in one of our own cities.
However, due to printing mistake, the trainees were given mission parameters meant to go to a counter-insurgency team in Syria.
A rash of political assassinations struck Memphis, and the agency tried to pull their trainees out before they did more damage.
The orders state “NO EXTRACTIONS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.”
And the students killed the teachers sent to collect them.
If there’s a bright side to this, Memphis’ local government runs much better now. No corruption at all.
But Syria? Yeah, they’re still fucked.
Day
Jimmy’s a really annoying guy.
How annoying?
Well, he calls Thanksgiving “Turkey Day.”
And calls birthdays “Cake Days.”
And Easter ends up “Bunny Day.”
“Shouldn’t that be Candy Day or Basket Day?” I ask him.
“No, because people confuse that with Halloween.”
Which he doesn’t call “Candy Day” or “Basket Day.”
He calls Halloween “Pumpkin Day.”
When his mother died, I asked him if he called it “Casket Day.”
He looked me in absolute horror. “Oh my God no! How could you say such a thing?”
“I’m sorry for being so insensitive,” I said. “I guess you had her cremated.”
Not A Prophet
The press says that God talks to Jimmy, but that’s nonsense.
Jimmy can hear God talking, but he’s only overhearing what God is saying.
According to Jimmy, it’s a constant stream of mathematics. At first, Jimmy tried to copy it down, but he didn’t know mathematical notation.
Until the researchers taught him how.
Formula after formula, solution after solution. His notebooks contain tangled nightmares that Bertrand Russell and Einstein couldn’t have comprehended.
I watch him write, then erase what he wrote, write again.
Jimmy laughed. “God stutters.”
The lightning was quick; a charred desk and ashes were all that remained.
The Judges Demand
The fear holds me tight.
The judge demands an answer, but I have none.
I take the Swiss Army Tool from my pocket, flick out the sharpest blade, and draw it cross my left palm.
It doesn’t take long for enough blood to well up, and I quickly draw a circle around my feet.
“O Great Ancestors!” I shout. “Guide me through this moment of peril!”
The dust begins to swirl… the lights grow dark… a rumbling from the skies…
“DISQUALIFIED!” shouts the judge.
The dust settles, the lights come back up.
“Next contestant: Zymurgy.”
And they spell it right.
The great heaving gust
I like to flavor my iced tea with freshly-squeezed lemon.
Usually, I squeeze the lemons with a tool that catches the seeds, but sometimes I’m in a rush and squeeze them by hand, dropping the seeds into my tea.
This usually isn’t a problem. But when I drink my tea with a straw, sometimes the seeds get caught in the straw, and I have to work them out from the straw with a series of squeezes.
Or, with a great gust of breath, I can shoot the seed across the room and out the sliding glass door to the patio.
Vulge
All you could ever hope to learn is contained beneath the robes of Professor Vulge of Crimson University.
Vulge’s shroud, opaque veil, black gloves and socks are legendary.
Not even Vulge’s grad students, who call themselves minions, remember ever seeing Vulge… or hearing him.
Vulge just listens, and either points to the next student to present, or…
Oh, that dreaded, deadly gesture to the door!
Failure! Rejection!
It isn’t a semester without news of one… two… sometimes all of Vulge’s students hurling themselves to their deaths!
The administration is aware of this.
And made tuition payable in advance, and non-refundable.
Dr. Quack
Of all the doctors I’ve had over the years, the best one was named Quack.
Yes, his name was Quack. And he was great!
When I had an ache in my foot, he cured me of it.
Okay, so he cured me by cutting off my foot, and I admit that was a bit extreme, but it hasn’t hurt since.
The ringing in my ear… solved!
The arthritis in my hand… solved!
The migraines…
Well, those, I’ve still got. I made an appointment with him, but his office was empty.
Except for his guillotine.
Mind pulling the cord for me?
Success
She kept a suitcase packed and ready.
Success was right around the corner. She knew it was coming. It would knock on her door at any moment.
It never came.
Oh, sure… Success sent emails and left phone messages and mailed her a few postcards begging her to come out and see him.
Remember the floral arrangements? She was allergic to flowers, but not these. Success was very thoughtful and did the research and found these flowers for her.
And she still wouldn’t leave. Success had to come to her.
“It doesn’t work that way,” wrote Success. “Goodbye, my love.”