Category: My stories

City of Smoke

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The smoke came gradually, over decades.
At first, people could go around with a wet handkerchief on their faces, but after a while we needed full facemasks and breathing filters.
Eventually, nothing but air tanks would suffice.
Travelers say the Five Cities have also been swallowed by the smoke, and it has almost reached the Sea of Sorrows.
Warlock Sturgis once kept the smoke at bay, but he and his apprentice vanished years ago.
He left his library behind, but none of the sages and scholars can comprehend his writings.
Maybe one day he’ll return.
Until then, we breathe uneasy.

A Medical Issue

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The minister’s absence was explained as a “medical issue.”
He sat in the morgue, waiting for the coroner to find a body similar to his for substitution.
“What about DNA?” asked the coroner.
The minister rolled up his sleeve. “Take blood from me now, compare it to itself when they bring you the body back.”
The coroner nodded, took a needle from the supply closet and swabbed the minister’s arm.
The minister smiled, and then his strange face went slack.
The new minister entered the room, patted the coroner on the shoulder.
“Poisoned needle?” he said.
The coroner destroyed it.

Mirror Mirror

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What?
Yes, my name is Mirror Mirror.
My parents had a sick sense of humor.
The Queen was just plain sick.
When she found out about my skill with poetry, I was dragged to the castle so that I could heap praise upon her beauty.
Well, until that beauty faded.
Then, one day, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful girl walking down the road outside the castle.
“Snow White,” the scullery maid said her name was.
I was left speechless.
The Queen asked me who the fairest of all was.
I answered, and was chained to the dungeon wall.

Keep Warm

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Winter is coming, and we watch the nearby islands raise their sails to catch the tradewinds for warmer seas.
But ours will not join them in the Great Migration.
“We stay,” says the tribal chief. “We have plenty of food, warm houses to live in.”
“But it will be cold!” the people say. “We can be warm all year round like the others.”
“Then go join them,” said the chief. “Get in your canoes and go to them.”
Many leave, but even more arrive from other islands.
“We will help you stay warm,” they say.
The chief winks and grins.

Chances

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Four gangsters sit at a card table in a room in an abandoned warehouse.
They pass around a revolver, each spinning the cylinder and placing it against their head before pulling the trigger.
They pass it round, sliding cash into the center of the table to up the stakes.
As if their lives weren’t stake enough.
Eventually, one of the men checks the cylinder.
“There’s no bullet in here,” he says.
He gets up, and tries to open the door.
Locked.
He pulls out his cell phone, but there’s no bars.
Then the lights go out.
And they smell… smoke.

Butt Dial

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Even though the experiment was a success, Bell and Watson needed to perfect the telephone device before heading to the patent office.
Some of their ideas were improvements on the original concept and others weren’t.
For instance, Watson rigged up a chair to the telephone that would call the other unit when someone sat down.
“Call someone else with your butt?” said Bell. “How brilliant and simple!”
After sitting down to think and calling each other over and over, they decided not to add the feature.
But today, it’s standard with cell phones.
Just put it in your back pocket.

Rafting

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We’ve had this white water rafting business for a while now.
We load up the trailer, head upriver, and then Bart and the rafters head downriver. Then, I drive back down with the trailer.
We used to work out of the cabin upstream, but folks preferred to do the road trip first.
They also like midnight runs, but they’re not safe.
Tonight, something went wrong. I got to the downstream cabin and saw the boats floating down the river.
I check with a flashlight. Nobody in them, splattered with blood.
It’s a full moon.
Howling.
As I said, not safe.

Blue Skies

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Cindy looks up at the sky and scowls at the hideous shade of green.
“Blue skies, please,” she says, and the scene vanishes for a moment before rendering again, this time with blue skies.
She brings up a catalog of clouds, cycles through her favorites, and tosses them into the sky.
“Drift,” she says, and the clouds begin to slowly roll eastward.
She got halfway through the forest before the power spike wiped out her simulation.
She checked her settings.
No auto-save.
The skies boiled red for an hour before she regained her composure.
And started again: “Blue skies, please.”

Leviathan 2000

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Looking through the ruin and carnage, I picked up a brochure and read:
The Leviathan 2000 is the latest in automated remote divine intervention tools, complete with long-range supernatural telepresence, formidable firepower without match, and a preternaturally intelligent network system for coordinating complex maneuvers from dancing on the head of a pin to waging battles against the fires of the infernal pit.
Furthermore, this miracle of modern machinery will go where angels fear to tread, all through the Divine Will of the operator.
From the looks of things these days, blood and ashes, the angels didn’t take to downsizing well.

The Smell of Gasoline

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There’s one thing worse than the smell of gasoline, and that’s the taste.
Murloney’s boys dragged me to this warehouse and tied me to this chair so they could splash me with high-octane cologne.
“You missed behind the ears,” I said, and they punched my lights out.
I woke up to a spotlight in my face.
Laughing, glasses clinking. Groans from dozens of other guys tied to chairs.
All on top of a gigantic cake in the middle of a party.
“Happy birthday, boss!” said a goon. “Sixty years young!”
Mulroney laughed. “I’ll take my time blowing out these candles.”