Category: My stories

Decadent

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The “Grenouille Congelée” is just an ordinary martini with an ice cube.
And inside that ice cube is a frog.
The ice cube is hollow, giving the frog a little room to move around.
It doesn’t move much. Frogs are cold-blooded and they hibernate at low temperatures, so if it moves at all, it’s going to be a groggy frog.
The cube melts easily.
Once the ice melts, the frog wakes up, and it crawls out of the glass.
An empty glass, usually, but if you’re slow to finish your drink, you may be in for a small green surprise.

Sinterklaas

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We put bandages on the wounds, but you can clearly read “Sinterklaas” in bloody red slashes through the gauze.
The wounds were deep, but not severe enough to kill him.
His breathing was ragged, moans of pain.
“Did you see who did this to you?” I asked the man.
His eyes remained dull and fixed as he coughed through his confession: “I did it to myself.”
He pulled a knife from his boot, dropping the bloody blade on the floor.
“Why?” I asked him.
“I’m bad,” said the man, “and he’s out of coal.”
Be good, little children.
Or else.

Homesick

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Professor Rickhoff pulled down the map and shouted “WE’RE HAVING AN ADVENTURE TODAY!”
The class jumped from their seats and cheered.
“WHERE SHALL WE GO?” shouted the Professor.
The class responded with all sorts of exotic places.
“Home,” said a voice.
“QUIET!” shouted Rickhoff, and the class lay still.
He walked up to the homesick student and stared into her eyes.
“This is your home now,” he said. “When you are here, you are home.”
The student smiled, curled up in a ball on the floor, and went to sleep.
The Professor rolled up the map and dismissed the class.

She, Wired

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They found the girl in the last room, wires running from the console to a halo connector on her forehead.
Her once-white robes were caked with grime and dried blood.
A bony arm reached towards the console, her hand on a large red button.
Pressing… pressing…
Once every second, she tapped that button.
Aside from a dull green glow in her eyes, no other sign of life.
They couldn’t even feel her breathe.
“We need the machine,” said a technician.
“It can wait,” said the administrator. “Let her finish.”
They watched, until the girl finally stopped.
The green glow faded.

Atlas

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When I broke my neck, such marvelous places across the world – the Pyramids, Everest – were lost to me.
My bed was my prison, chained by tubes in my neck. My arm. My gut.
When I didn’t just die, they drugged me less.
The cloud became the wall. A television, always on.
I groaned. “I want to see the world.”
So they brought me tapes of these places.
I explored, demanding more… Washington… Amazon… Museums… Galleries….
I was Atlas, map of the world, roaming mind.
Trapped in my head. On a pillow. In my bed.
But not my prison.
My throne.

Passing The Rose

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In a land without tears, the tearmaster goes from home to home, selling his sadness.
“What good is joy without its opposite?” he tells everyone. “If you cannot feel the deep lows, what will you feel of the highs? Nothing!”
The people stood and stared, confused.
“You cannot feel good without at some point feeling bad!” he shouted.
A child picked up a rock and threw it at the tearmaster, who yelped at the pain.
His hand came away from his forehead bloody.
More townspeople threw rocks. The blood flowed down the tearmaster’s face.
“Are those tears?” asked a child.

Tuck Her In

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Sally.
Every night, the robot would tuck in Sally, kiss her on the forehead, and say goodnight.
The robot then would sit in a atomic-powered recharging chair for the night.
This went on every night for 500 years.
Every so often, the robot would ask Sally if she brushed her teeth or said her prayers, but it wasn’t advanced enough to take verbal commands. It just asked those things as part of a routine.
When Sally’s corpse decayed beyond recognition, the robot looked for a new house in the ruins.

197 Days

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On the one hundred and ninety-seventh day of Christmas, we dumped the egg nog in the river and sent out a lynching party to kill Santa.
“We’re sick and tired of Christmas!” we shouted over the carols blaring from department store speakers.
“One hundred ninety-seven seals clapping!” went the chorus, and began to gleefully count back down to the damn bird in the tree.
I thought I saw Santa on the streetcorner, but it was a bell-ringer for the Salvation Army.
We pulled down his pants and shoved the bell up his ass.
His screams were music to our ears.

One Calorie

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I started off by ordering a Jack Daniels and Coke.
I like Jack, but it’s a bit to harsh on the rocks for me. Sweeten it up with Coke, and it’s perfect.
For my twenties, that was my drink.
Until, of course, every calorie counted. The body slows down.
Since I didn’t want to slow down at the bar, I went with diet Coke.
Tasted close to the same. But let’s face it – Jack trumps the Coke flavor.
Then out came Coke Zero. That worked a lot better.
The single calorie I saved, well, that didn’t matter for squat.
Cheers.

To The Orcs

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John’s house had a storm drain in the back yard.
To Billy, it was a tunnel to the great underground orc kingdom.
“They made it look like a storm drain to fool the surface-dwellers,” he said.
One day, Billy took a butcher’s knife and a flashlight down the drain.
“To glory and treasure,” read the note he left on the refrigerator.
He never came back.
The police asked questions, and John kept saying “The orcs got him.”
John spent a lot of time in therapy after that.
To this day, he’s always watchful, and he never goes near storm drains.