Tag: tragedy

Memorials

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On the tenth anniversary of landing on Pluto, a service was held at Johnson Space Center. Wreaths were laid at the memorial by three widows and an assortment of children.
A few billion miles away, a scene of a different sort stood in the frozen icy wastes. Inside the shuttle-hopper, three statue-like corpses sat for eternity, faces obscured with crystal clouds sprouting from their mouths and nostrils.
In cartoons, underwater characters often exhale bubbles that pop at the surface, releasing the words screamed from below.
Would you hear “What the hell are we doing here?” if the ice were shattered?

The Dead City

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Strangled by wires and smothered by concrete, The City yearned to breathe free once more.
It remembered when it was just a tiny village, a few houses by a bend in the creek.
Those were the days.
Soon, it grew into a town, then a city, then a City – Big C.
It had to act before it became what comes after a City with a Big C.
Strange messages bled through the sidewalks… fires with no rational explanation… plagues… droughts…
The people fled. But they left the concrete and steel to weigh down the corpse of The Dead City.

The Old Man and the Sea of Tranquility

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Everybody’s familiar with the movies showing astronauts moon-golfing, but you’ll never any of Luke “Studs” Morgan casting his fishing reel.
In the lesser lunar gravity. he could cast a mile.
Reeling it back in with those thick gloves was hard, Luke said, but the worst part was spearing a vacuum-exposed, subzero-frozen worm on the hook.
His crewmate “Tank” Washington hid behind a boulder and planned on sticking a frozen salmon on the hook, but there’s a scream and that’s where the tape ends.
He came back as cargo and got buried at Arlington.
Hence the tape label: “Fishing Tank Accident.”

Crosseyed Joe

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Crosseyed Joe’s work was done. Black Bart and his gang of cattle rustlers were dead.
So was the sheriff.
And the barber.
For that matter, everyone else with the bad luck to be in the Last Chance Saloon this afternoon with Joe firing wildly.
Joe tipped his hat and rode off into the sunset, despite the horse’s protests. He spurred the horse harder and harder until the thing just gave up and ran for all it was worth.
That was yesterday.
This morning, vultures are circling over the canyon.
So much for Crosseyed Joe.
I feel bad for his horse.

Invitation

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Even though the Red Cross has opened up multiple massive shelters for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, it is imperative that people are moved out to smaller accommodations.
Large, anonymous masses of people afford opportunities for criminal elements, or much worse kinds of predators.
Many people are opening their homes without any question or fear, but just as the dead float in the flooded streets, some still walk them.
Whether voodoo zombie or vampire, protections against inviting undead into your home should be in place. I’d suggest greeting your new roommate with plenty of garlic and exposed mirrors.
In daylight.

Life Is Cruel

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“Alive,” mumbled the wizard, casually flicking his wand.
The chair, startled, walked around the table and settled back into its usual spot.
“Alive,” yawned the wizard, waving his wand yet again.
The clock’s hands spun. Then, the minute and second hands turned back and forth, seeking out the correct time.
The wizard smirked and wandered off to his workshop.
Later that evening, both the chair and the clock slowly died.
Nobody noticed, and nobody mourned their passing.
Just like every other object the wizard had brought to life, blithely ignored, and allowed to die.
Sometimes, life is cruel that way.

Bob and Lena

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For their diamond anniversary, Bob and Lena wanted a divorce.
“He leaves the seat up,” said Lena, “and his snoring keeps me up all night.”
“She’s a nagging, vicious shrew,” said Bob. “Nothing I do is good enough.”
They hired lawyers and prepared for battle. The networks caught wind of the story and sent reporters to cover the proceedings.
At nine in the morning, neither Bob nor Lena showed up to court. They were found in each other’s arms in the bed they shared for three-quarters of a century.
Okay, so they strangled each other.
Keep that a secret, please?

The Season of Death

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Up here, they call we repair guys a “Scotty.”
I have no idea why.
Sometimes, the motors and gyros on a solar array get jammed, and I have to suit up and go out to smack it with a hammer for a while.
We’re supposed to use remote-robots to do this, but a good Scotty wants to smack the machinery with his own hand, not through some joystick or virtual glove.
Until the seals break, that is.
From a dry spring day in your suit to colder than the coldest winter in less than a second.
I call it Death.

The White Flag

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Alexandre’s unit was surrounded and running out of ammunition. The enemy was closing in and the situation looked bleak.
“Options?” he asked the men.
Nobody wanted to be the first to say surrender.
A mortar whistled overhead, and everyone ducked.
“We’ll surrender,” said Alexandre. “Time for the white flag.”
Alexandre looked around, but all of the bandages were soaked bloody red.
He broke open a laundry parcel, but someone had washed the sheets with something red and they’d been stained pink. “Will pink work?” he asked the men.
He tried it, and it sure gave the enemy a good laugh.

Rosetta Stone

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Don’t assume by Galactic Standard that writing systems are all right-to-left. Even some of that language’s progenitor scripts went left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
Plask is the best example of a back-to-front script, and the intricate concentric design on my wall is actually an inside-out Helian manuscript. Toova is read like raindrops, scattered in a seemingly incomprehensible pattern only understood to their way of perception.
I’m fond of the scent-communications of Frond myself. The order you experience the various rich smells and tastes they emit determines the conceptual order.
Of course, all it took was one horrid fart to start a genocide.