LIZZIE
These pillows are good quality, she thought. The price was acceptable. So, she bought them. She placed them in her garden, dreaming of perfect soireés with her super elegant friends dressed in their pricey clothes, smiling fake smiles, dragging along bored little husbands with perfect bank accounts that they spent in perfectly useless facial creams. Argh! She hated them. The pillows. Good quality. Well… Would they endure something rougher, she wondered, something a bit more… But then she remembered her mother’s words “a clean conscience makes a soft pillow”. Perhaps she shouldn’t have wiped those perfect smiles off their faces.
RICHARD
My bed!
Pillows, magazines, computer keyboards and laptops. These are all perfectly acceptable surfaces to sleep on… If you’re a cat.
The general rule is to select a space that will be the most inconvenient and inappropriate for one’s owner, and occupy it in a manner that is so cute and adorable that only the most heartless of people would consider summary eviction.
Which clearly makes me a very bad person, if the resentful feline stare currently fixed on me is anything to go by.
I won’t be long, I promise.
And once I’ve typed this story, the keyboard is all yours.
SERENDIPIDY
I’ve never believed you can smother someone to death with a pillow.
Let’s face it, if pillows were that dangerous, they’d be covered in health warnings, and every time you went to bed you’d be in imminent danger of inadvertently committing accidental suicide!
They also don’t work for muffling gunshots to the head. I’ve tried it, and it makes no difference at all.
However, those polythene bags that new pillows come in are a different story altogether.
Capacious, easy to carry and dispose of, and totally airtight -fatal every time.
You end up with a lot of spare pillows though!
TOM
While sleeping not good to stop breathing.
I remember going into the Cpap Store. There was this deck top poster of a guy, 50ish, gray temples; faced forward wearing a knowing hint of a smile, and a full Monty mask. Think it was a ResMed AirFit F20. Lots of rigid plastic giving off a Bane/Hannibal vibe, that in fact lacked the high wattage personality of either. No one in the history of Cpaps didn’t look stupid to down right silly. To uses the damn thing, you have to value over this hurtle and embrace your going to look stupid. So, in that sprite I ware Air Pillows.
841 – 972
Angel of Death
Major Cristen Larson was mentally extremely flexible in abstract think. The product of A FEW Thousands of years of diligent breeding. Her Count Zero plan terrified the war college. The general consensus of the high council was this experiment had gone too far. They promptly locked the Major in a Virtual reality matrix. From within Larson hacked the central computer and collectively fried the entire council. Her matrix then knifed through the Emperor’s ice field to stand before the throne of Shadus the Five. “Very resourceful,” quipped the Emperor. This was how Major Cristen Larson became LT. Colonel Cristen Larson.
LISA
Outside
It’s a kitchen that he’s led Pippa into. Ceiling high sash windows reveal deep snow outside and she blinks against the brightness. He asks her what they need and ‘Freedom’ comes out as ‘Pillows’.
She doesn’t want to be their spokesperson. She stares past him; out of the window at the snow. Escape would be futile. It’s drifted, deep and seems to stretch forever. Something unspoken hangs between them and she fills the silence by repeating the word Pillows, then adds a ‘Please’.
She wants to get back to the basement, back to the others and away from his stares.
NORVAL JOE
Scowling, Sabrina crossed her arms like Linoliumanda’s presence was a personal affront.
They gathered around the sinkhole and stared at the jeep, sitting in the mud at the bottom. The oozy slime wasn’t as cushy as pillows but must have softened the jeep’s landing, as the Black Knights didn’t appear to be injured.
Linoliumanda continued to walk away.
“Linoliumanda,” Billbert called.
“Linoliumanda,” Buhmilda repeated.
“Linoliumanda?” Sabrina asked.
Linoliumanda turned and shouted, “Stop calling me that.”
Billbert scratched his head. “Why? That’s your name.”
She stomped her foot. “I know. But it’s too long. I wish people would call me Mandi.”
PLANET Z
Dave is a discerning fellow.
Dave shops for pillows by asking the salesperson to lay on the bed.
Then he holds the pillow over their face and holds it down until they suffocate.
Oh, Dave isn’t a serial murderer… he is a buyer for a major hotel chain.
People expect a comfortable pillow, but they also expect a functional pillow.
If the salesperson doesn’t suffocate, he doesn’t buy the pillow. And runs from the store.
And if they do, he orders thousands of the pillow for all the hotels in the chain.
From another salesperson, obviously. One that isn’t dead.
CHATGPT
In the quaint town of Fluffington, a rebellion was stirring among the pillows. Tired of being squished, fluffed, and flung around, they decided to stage a protest. The Pillow Union demanded better treatment and softer cases.
The leader, Sir Squishington, organized a pillow parade down Main Street. Feathers flew as they chanted, “We won’t be sat on, we won’t be tossed, we demand respect for the fluff we’ve lost!”
The mayor, a weary old cushion named Cushy McSoftface, tried to negotiate. In the end, a compromise was reached: a mandatory daily fluffing session and a ban on pillow fights. Fluffington finally rested peacefully, one pillow at a time.