Category: My stories

Marathon

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We depend on tourism down here. The whole place is geared for tourism. Hotels, reef diving, restaurants – you name it.
Okay, so a skanky college student came down here and partied just a little too much, and she vanished without a trace.
Now everybody’s screaming boycott or sanctions, FBI’s trumping all over the place.
What a mess.
Our image needed a boost, so I suggested a marathon. Never mind that you’d have to run in circles to make a course of 26 miles.
We did it anyway. And was working.
Until a runner tripped over the skank’s body.
Crap.

Classroom of the Mind

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With the invention of Dreamshare, it was only a matter of time before dreamactors came about.
Professional dreamers, dreaming up dreams for sale.
The Morpheant Union tried to regulate entertainment-product dreams. Thankfully, independent production resisted and won out.
Then, someone got the bright idea to shift education from schools to dream academies. The classroom of the mind was born, a one-on-one tutorial between the slumbering student and the teacher.
No more bullies. No more cliques.
Every one was the teacher’s pet. Or was the Homecoming King. Or Queen.
Such fond memories I have of school. I replay them every night.

Better Luck

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Sure, I gave a fortune to Over-President Ichiro’s campaign, but the ambassadorship wasn’t the reward I had in mind.
The other day, a Grelp was in the embassy, asking about the horseshoe above my office door.
“Old Earth custom,” I said. “It’s for good luck.”
The next day, there was some sort of problem with a power converter trade agreement, so I headed over to the Grelp Ministry of Off-Planet Trade.
Nailed over the oozeway to Minister Sploch-Brbl’s puddlechamber was an entire horse, dead.
“For muchly more luck,” said Sploch-Brbl, flibbering happily.
Thank God I didn’t put up my crucifix.

Home

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When you are far from home and all you see is a pile of stones, fill your heart with memories of home and arrange the stones like the night sky above it.
Now close your eyes, take a deep breath, and forget where you are.
Concentrate completely on home. The sounds of home. The smells of home.
The weight of the air of home on your bare skin.
Know that you are home. Believe that you are home.
Count three beats of your heart, breathe deeply, and open your eyes.
Welcome home, apprentice, for you always bring home with you.

The Fourth Crewmember

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The robot listened for the homing signal.
Nothing. No sign of the crew, either.
Looking down at the pile of rocks, it decided to investigate.
An hour later, all of the rocks were removed, revealing three battered corpses.
The robot’s visual records were corrupted, so it took DNA samples and did a quick analysis.
TRAVIS. BLAKE. AL-MAJD.
All matched with the crew.
Placing the bodies back in the grave, the robot stacked the rocks back up.
The robot snapped a photograph for-
ERROR
It rebooted, and the robot listened for the homing signal.
Nothing. No sign of the crew, either…

Trinkets

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The ancient Indian closed his eyes and hissed a curse:
The land, it hates you. It trembles with rage, shaking under your accursed White Man’s feet, wishing it could swallow you whole and spit you out in Hell.
Those maps in your wicked hand will not guide you. The land will twist and writhe like The Snake Spirit, sending you to your doom.
I looked at the trinkets on his table again.
“Okay, twenty bucks for the necklace,” I said.
“Thirty,” said the Indian.
“Twenty-five?”
The Indian smiled. “Sold,” he said. “And you’re lost because your map is upside down.”

Remedy or Cause?

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“Where’s my icepack?” shouted Alice.
Elmo pulled the tray from the freezer, bent it over the ice bucket, and waited for the cubes to fall out.
Nothing.
He scratched his head and smirked.
“Maybe they’re not clean?” he said.
Elmo ran the trays under the faucet, then poured them out and wiped them down with a kitchen towel.
He smiled as he stuck them back in the freezer.
“Where’s my icepack?” shouted Alice. “This migraine is killing me!”
“I’m still working on it!” shouted Elmo back, happily. “And don’t you worry – that ice is going to be really clean!”

Moonlighting

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They made fruit smoothies by day and killed babies by night.
We found the tiny corpses in the dumpster behind the Blend-a-Rama. If it hadn’t have been for a hungry stray dog, we’d have never known it was a front for a backalley abortion clinic.
The problem is, it’s not their dumpster. And the geniuses at Crime Lab screwed the evidence in a mixup. Someone got high on seized weed, had the aborted tykes incinerated.
All they’re getting is a health code citation and a slap on the wrist.
Word spreads fast. Their business is booming now, day and night.

Unwelcome Visitor

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Too much TV is bad for your eyes and the fabric of space-time.
A rent in the universe opened up behind my entertainment center last week.
Every now and then, a hideous tangle of tentacles and fangs comes screaming out of the wormhole, lashes around for a minute or so, then slowly wiggles itself to death as it chokes on our nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere.
We dump their bodies in the trash. Double-bagged. Those fangs are sharp, you know.
The dog ran through the portal this morning. The kids want me to go after him.
Screw that. We’re getting fish.

Dragon’s Hoard

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Nobody knew why Dragon’s Cliff was named as it was.
Except Arthur. He knew.
Arthur clutched Captain Dragon’s treasure map and laughed.
“Fifty more paces, and I’ll be rich,” he mumbled.
As his feet walked the final fifty paces, his mind raced through all the wonderful things he’d buy with the gold.
Or diamonds. Or whatever Dragon had buried.
It was after forty-five paces that Arthur encountered two forces of nature at once:

  • Erosion had worn away the cliffs in the three centuries since Dragon made his map.
  • Gravity yanked him the seventy feet down to the rocks below.

Thud.