Category: My stories

New Shoes

639173

They say you don’t know a person until you walk a mile in his shoes.
So the moment I put on a new pair… Amnesia!
I hadn’t yet walked a mile in them.
Who am I?
Where am I?
Hey, these are some nice shoes.
I walked around the mall, staring at my driver’s license.
The people at the Information Desk offered to call an ambulance, but I felt fine.
I jingled the car keys in my hand… which was my car?
I wandered the parking lot, confused.
From now on, I’m using a treadmill and writing myself a note.

The Cakes

639159

Mario keeps seven magnificent wedding cakes in the window.
They are the same seven cakes since he opened the store. Over all those years, they never changed.
Every day, these cakes taunt me. They beg me to eat them.
The donuts or éclairs or brownies or fudge, which Mario also has in vast supply, they don’t call out to me.
I ate them, sure, but yearned for the cakes.
You don’t use the same ingredients for display cakes as you do for ones you eat.
I didn’t know this back then.
We threw that rock through his window for nothing.

Yazghar

639157

I list my race as White.
I’m proud to be a Yazghar, sure, but I would rather not end up dissected at Area 51.
The Field Operations Manual says to blend in as best I can. Carnival jobs when possible, or work from home doing technical support.
Do I look like a Steve? Do Steves have bright orange war-crests and talons?
Usually we outsource observation duties to the Ofokos. They look more human than us, despite the lack of earlobes.
Easily concealed with wigs or floppy hats.
The fangs aren’t. We just tell them not to smile, or go Goth.

Orders

639156

Why did I put a .223 into the chest of a six year-old on a swingset.
It was a justified kill. My orders say so.
Of course, orders are getting weird these days. You hear stories of agents standing naked in the mall shouting “Syrup!” and not bathing for a week.
If you question the orders, someone else gets orders to kill you.
If you know what’s best for you, you just read them and carry them out.
What? You don’t understand these orders? Not sure what flavor cake to bake?
Hold on… there’s new orders coming in for me…

Virtual Class

639163

Imaginary spitballs fill the air. Roger Washington’s back to pulling pigtails. Stacy Miller shimmers and falls to dust.
Third one today. There must be something out of sorts with the holographic system.
I check the diagnostics while Stacy’s parents are threatening to sue the school.
No red lights, so I order a check of the Miller’s unit and read the manufacturer alerts.
Aha. Bad firmware update last night.
I send out an alert to the parents, and I remind them to remove all headsets before performing this flash.
No sense risking a spark and wiping a kid. Even little Roger.

The Lawyer In Your Lap

639172

A universally-despised attorney gives up on making court appearances, using an assistant with a laptop and video software to conduct business.
“It’s safer this way,” he says.
Sure enough, he pisses off a class action defendant, and the guy shoots the laptop.
The assistant is relieved. At least he wasn’t shot, right?
His phone rings. It’s the lawyer, irate.
“That was a four thousand dollar laptop,” he yells.
The assistant asks him how much his suit jacket is worth.
“A thousand bucks,” says the lawyer.
“I’ll be glad to save you the difference by shooting that instead,” says the assistant.

Cathedral

639159

Every colony has a Cathedral.
That’s what we call the terraforming engine after it’s idled and scavenged for useful parts.
The newer the model, the less of a carcass left. Every cubic inch of that behemoth can be melted down and forged into something useful.
Colonists won’t use it all, though. They insist on leaving something to remind them, a vast hollow shell as a monument to the colony’s founding.
Inside, they gather to give thanks, an annual ritual carried out thousands of years ago by our ancestors, many miles away.
Drovo made the rootbird this year.
Pass the gravy.

Control Room

639162

The king wants to go to the control room.
Half of the lights in this room blink for no reason. The others do not blink at all.
The switches aren’t connected to anything, and all that the buttons do beyond changing color when pressed is to make a faint clicking sound.
It makes the king happy, though. He loves to push buttons and flip switches and laugh.
“Die die die!” He yells.
A display lights up with a random number.
He cheers. “High score!”
We laugh with him and pray to God that he never finds the real control room.

The Golden Pen

639164

I was suffering a horrible case of writer’s block when The Devil tapped me on the shoulder.
“Use my pen,” he said, and he handed me his Golden Pen.
“What’s the catch?” I asked.
“The usual shit,” he said. “Brilliant artistry for your soul and eternal damnation.”
“Pffft,” I said. “I’m already fucked.”
I shook his hand and he vanished.
Sure enough, when I tried to write, it was out of ink.
Fucker.
Oh well. I wrote anyway, scratching the letters into the paper, and I held it up to the light.
I’m damned, but my work will live on.

The Blackberry Bard

639158

He writes his tales as he walks the streets, tapping the keys on a telephone.
Before the telephone, he would stop at corner coffeehouses with his notebook to write his stories. Now, he is on the move, the Blackberry Bard enjoys the cool evening.
He is slimmer, healthier. The exercise has served him well.
Not looking as he crosses the street hasn’t.
His latest tale will never be finished.
A cop stands over the Bard’s corpse and picks up the phone.
He looks like over, admires the buttons and the slightly-scratched screen.
“Nice phone,” he says, and pockets the battery.