Category: My stories

The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #100

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Bill Herndon opened his former law partner’s letter and read the final line once more:
I’m coming back sometime, and then we’ll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened.
Strange events had been happening since Abe died.
Odd noises at night.
Books removed from shelves.
Papers strewn on the floor.
It was when the unconscious prostitute appeared on his desk did Herndon fear for the worst.
“Abe liked his post-trial hookers,” he chuckled, and he sent for a exorcist. “You’ve done enough, old friend. It’s time to rest.”
The whore fell to the ground, still comatose.

Demolition Derby

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Hey, man!
Bored with football?
Tired of all these baseball players juicin up?
Hockey not bloody enough for you?
Lemme tell you about a new sport: communication satellite demolition derby!
All it takes is override commands, some maneuvering propellant, and a decent grasp of orbital physics.
There’s nothing quite like watching two expensive chunks of metal surrounded by gigantic solar arrays smashing into each other, leaving tiny sparkling fragments to cloud the the skies for all eternity.
Call your friends. Point your telescopes to the sky. Place your bets.
Then put on your crash helmets and watch the aerial carnage!

Molly

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By day, Molly Scott’s soul is where it belongs – inside Molly, making Molly uniquely Molly.
If you’ve read her books, you’ll know what I mean. Children’s books totally unsafe for children. “Cooking With Broken Glass” and “Boogertime Blues” are favorite of mine.
At night, her soul wanders and resides in a CPR dummy in Fairfax.
It was during a late First Aid class that I discovered this phenomenon. Five chest compressions, pinch the nose, breathe in, and a slow, faint whisper: this is why I do not dream.
No movement, no animation. Just plastic.
I switched to a cooking class.

The Alchemist

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The world is turning to bright yellow glass.
The Alchemist. I have to see her.
She has the pills I need.
Her blend of phase-anchoring nanobots and cellular dimensional disruptor isotopes aren’t cheap.
What’s your task?
Reach across time for an artifact?
Disrupt the future for a prophesy.
Bring me a Weaver Crystal, she says. Red.
Ah. Materials collection.
Easy.
I reach through space to The Hive, my hand brushing across Clusterdrones from cave to cave.
I break off a shard and hand it to the Alchemist.
Orange will do, she mutters, and my lead-weave pouch is full once again.

Shaving

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Every time I shave, I miss a few hairs.
It doesn’t matter how many blades my razor has or what kind of shaving cream I use.
Hairs appear in the mirror, or I run my fingers across my face and they spring back out of my skin.
It’s frustrating.
I used a cream that a friend suggested that women use to remove the hair from their legs, but that didn’t work, either.
There was this pad advertised on television. Tiny crystals that lift and exfoliate.
After one use, my face was smooth.
Then, slick. With blood.
My skin was gone.

Boxes

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I wake up, get out of bed, and walk around the house.
I do this every morning.
Six cardboard boxes in a pile by the door.
No labels on them, no markings at all.
I have no idea what’s in them.
Or where they came from.
Some are heavy, some are light.
Do I shake them? Will I break what’s inside them?
I put my ear to each box. No ticking, no breathing.
Maybe I should open them?
Which one to open first, the heaviest? The lightest? The biggest? The smallest?
I go back to sleep.
Maybe they’ll be gone.

The Quiet Ones

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It’s the quiet ones that kill.
Just sitting there, watching you from across the coffee shop.
“What a beautiful cat,” says a customer.
The owner nods, hands over the mug.
Those eyes follow you everywhere: you walk into the shop, over to the counter, back to your favorite table.
What is it about you that’s so interesting?
“Sasha likes you,” says the shop owner, smiling. “Would you like to pet him?”
You think about it, wondering what that deep orange fur will feel like, so soft, so rich.
“I’m allergic,” you say, leave a tip, and walk out the door.

Sabbath

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Servants are unreliable.
When the Sabbath comes, you cannot depend on them to do work.
Unsupervised, they do such a poor job. And they steal.
So, we decided to build robots to do the Sabbath chores.
It wasn’t enough to program them with the ability to cook, clean, and mend. They must do it the right way. We also filled them with reason and piety, all of the Talmudic Law on a chip.
The robots worked great. They freed us to do so much.
Until Sabbath. They joined us in prayer, reached for their own switches, and turned themselves off.

De-inspiration

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Inspiration means to breathe life into a creation.
But what happens when you want to take that part of your life back?
Especially when your creation wants more, and is sucking the life out of you?
Always waking up breathless, needing to do more.
No more.
You step back, close your mouth, and hold your breath.
Your creation begins to turn blue and suffocate.
It begs for air. It begs for life.
“I need it more than you do,” you think to yourself.
It’s hard to watch your creation die.
And once you kill it, you feel empty yet again.

Frozen Barbie

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My little sister was so weird.
One day, she stripped all of her Barbie dolls naked and wrapped them in aluminum foil.
“What are you doing that for?” our mom asked.
“Cryogenics,” she said, sticking the dolls in the freezer. “We’ll wake them up in the year 3000.”
Late that night, I took out the Barbie dolls and wrapped up some corn cobs in the foil.
The next day, she checked up on her time capsules and screamed.
That night for dinner, we had roasted chicken and steamed corn on the cob.
Sis put hers in a dress and cried.