Category: My stories

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.

Are You Happy?

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There’s a strange machine in the break room.
It’s about six feet tall, shaped like a box. Solid black.
It says “Are you happy?” on it in big white letters.
There’s two buttons on it: YES and NO.
I pushed the YES button and nothing happened.
I pushed the NO button and nothing happened.
Then, I pushed both buttons at the same time.
A drawer popped open, and I took a small yellow pellet out.
Should I swallow it?
I’m not sure. I’ve thought about it, and I can’t decide.
Just like I can’t decide if I’m happy or not.

Kids Are Stupid

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I remember the kids in the schoolyard telling each other that if you toss a penny off of the Empire State Building, it could kill someone.
Kids are stupid.
You’ve got to drop a roll of pennies to take someone out.
I’d repeat the experiment, but I dropped my binoculars, so I can’t see if I’m hitting anyone or not.
Maybe they’ll tell me at the trial. If they take me alive, that is.
Looking down, I think the binoculars killed someone down there, too.
I wish I’d brought a parachute. Jumping from here would be cool.
I’ll jump anyway.

Taps

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It took years of practice, but Softshoe Kelly learned to encode secret messages in his tapdancing.
He started simple, but his skills soon gave him the ability to transmit complex messages without anybody suspecting a thing.
When he was captured by the enemy, they paraded him in front of a global television audience.
Softshoe Kelly performed his act, and cryptology experts determined that he’d been treated miserably but had quite a lot of information on their weak points.
With this information, the enemy was defeated, but Kelly was mortally wounded in the assault.
At his funeral, the military played Taps.

Mommy’s Home

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There’s a small orange fluffy cat curled up by the front door.
Two words. Two simple words can make such a difference.
He wants to hear them so badly.
He’s waiting for hours. Or has it been days?
He can’t remember when he last saw her.
It feels like forever.
He sniffs the carpet.
There’s a sound at the front door. He perks his ears up, listens.
Is it her?
No, it’s not her. Just some noise. Or someone else is home.
He sighs, curls back up, and goes back to sleep.
She’ll be home soon, Frisky. I promise you.

Birds and the Bees

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For parents who are uncomfortable teaching their kids about… well, you know… the church has tapes teaching in-home sex education.
Well, DVDs these days, but you get my drift. Just sit Little Susie in front of the monitor, hit “Play” and walk away.
The problem is, the pastor’s been known to download… well, unusual movies from the Internet – just for research.
But still, he’s been known to burn the wrong video to a disk.
Right now, Little Susie’s watching “Caged Bitches In Bondage.”
Boy, is she going to have questions. And she’s going to be really popular in high school.