Category: My stories

War Is Hell

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You know those letters than the Post Office digs up now and then from a World War 2 soldier writing his wife or girlfriend, but it doesn’t get delivered until fifty years later?
I found one of those under some carpet I was ripping up in the office.
Policy says to go get a supervisor to read it before delivery, so I did.
He steams it open, takes a gander, and smirks.
Blah blah blah… killed some Germans… blah blah blah… screwed a bunch of whores… blah blah blah… stole artwork…
He pulls out a lighter and burns the letter.

Nailbiter

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Ned couldn’t remember a day he didn’t bite his fingernails.
The tips of his fingers were always ragged, bloody, and infected.
So he stuck his hands in a pair of gloves and duct-taped them shut to keep from biting them.
Or, so he thought.
By the time he bit through the leather in the gloves, his fingertips had healed and the urge to bite his nails was out of his system.
Of course, he’d ruined his teeth in the process, but Ned never really smiled, anyway.
Besides, it’s so much easier to type a colon and a closing parenthesis.

Gertrude

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As we wait for the water to boil, Old Gertrude pulls glass jars down from the shelf, lifting lids, taking a pinch of this, a pinch of that.
“I’m glad you finally came to see me,” she says.
Sally, crying, holds the baby and mumbled “Thank you” in between sobs. I twist my wool cap in my hands.
Gertrude mixes the leaves and herbs, sprinkles them in a cup, and pours the water from the kettle.
We dip a rag into the tea and put it to the baby’s lips.
She won’t drink. She’s not breathing. She’s…
We’re too late.

Bobby

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Bobby died three days ago. We kept him the the tub, trying to decide how to get him out of here.
Man, did he stink.
We opened all the windows, but the stink just got worse.
“Let’s leave him,” I said. “Let’s leave him.”
Joe said no. “He’s got the key inside him.”
Without the key, no money.
So, we cut him open, slipping our hands all inside him, pulling things out, squeezing and searching.
Still no key.
Did he really swallow it before we shot him in the leg? Or did he palm it…
Where did that key go?

The Cult

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Right in front of their eyes, vision fades to static.
Frightened and confused, we, the masses, heed the call.
Stripping off our clothes, we gather in the woods, swaying in the summer heat, naked… writhing.
One beast, many mouths… many fingers… many hearts beating.
The flesh circle opens briefly, and our leader mounts a tree stump, the cow skull over his head glowing in the moonlight.
We have no choice. We are compelled to listen.
He raises his staff and tells the tales of our childhood, like many generations before.
This is what happens when the neighborhood cable goes out.

The Swarm

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Gigantic swarms of insects crawl the globe, disassembling buildings and erecting massive, looping cellulose towers.
We few survivors watch from Mars, peering through the spy satellites they hadn’t bothered to destroy.
Landmark after landmark, civilization swept away.
St. Basil’s… gone.
Manhattan… gone.
The Eiffel Tower… gone.
For a moment, yarmulke in hand, I get grim satisfaction as the Dome Of The Rock is crumbled to dust.
Maybe… just maybe… this time they’ll leave it clear?
I mumble a brief prayer.
Yes?
My smile fades as another brown tower takes shape.
Oy. If it isn’t one bunch of assholes, it’s another.

The Dusty Siren

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Wearing white lace, just like when we first met.
I chased her into the desert in the heat of the moment.
She sits there, beckoning, just out of reach.
Look again. A ragged sheet, blown across a dead tree stump.
Did I imagine her? Or did she imagine me, begging for one final kiss?
I can’t reach her. Too weak to crawl. Too damn weak to crawl.
Reach for me. Reach out to me and pull me into your embrace, my love.
She sits there, watching.
One final scream, a groan into the wind, and my mouth fills with dust.

The Symbol

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I saw the eagle symbol on her wrist.
Eagle symbols are for good luck and strength, but usually the eagle’s got the beak pointing to the fingers.
Hers points to the elbow, so I know it’s a fake.
It’s got the right colors, and it’s very well done.
But it’s a fake. It’s covering up another symbol.
While she sleeps, I look closely at it… the outline of something is under that eagle.
Weasel? Owl? Snake?
It’s some kind of criminal brand, something she got from the Eagles before they threw her out of their camp.
What has she done?

Finished

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We went to the hospital to visit Grandma.
She wanted to say goodbye to the kids, so we brought them along.
They were scared at first, but Grandma told them life was a long, marvelous journey. You meet so many amazing people while you take it, and she told the kids they were the two most amazing ones she’d known.
But that journey, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t last forever. When God decides you’ve earned your rest, well, it’s time to stop.
“Then God tells you to shit yourself,” said a guy mopping the hallway.
No, that didn’t help.

Feng Shui

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The news called them diplomats. Let’s not bullshit: they were spies.
Countries like the idea of spies with diplomatic immunity. Rules were meant to be broken, right?
One by one, important men were turning up dead in their embassies.
No bullet-holes. No knives sticking out of them. No poison in their bloodstream.
It was a real mystery.
Until one day, someone noticed that no Chinese “diplomats” had died. And the furniture of each death scene was arranged similarly.
It turns out, there’s a Dark Side of Feng Shui. The proper arrangement of furniture can kill.
Assassination through interior decoration.