Fiction

The Ash Virus

Nancy wasn’t surprised when her father left, but her mother was. The incessant crying, moping, and sobs interrupted with something about “our vows” were grating. Repeat after me, she thought. Loss of motor functions, loss of bowel control, internal bleeding, death. The floating heads of Health Canada officials, eerily bobbing at the top of their white lab coats, issued online advertisements. “Government-sanctioned vaccinations did not create the Ash Virus so please keep vaccinating your children,” and “the Ash Virus is only contagious for those with the dominant, but rare, gene.”

The Tale of Bob

Once upon a time, almost before recorded history, but not quite, in the time of Gilgamesh there lived a weaver of cloth named Gorfflemychu. Gorfflemychu, which means bright flame, is also the meaning of the name Bob. In order not to make things too confusing to our modern readers and listeners who have no passing conversational ability in Babylonian, we’ll keep his name as Bob.

Mission 197

It was the seventh mission of The USS-MASON and after lots of external ship repair the preparation for re-entry was underway when something happened. The EVA was a disaster. Alex, our number one expert in Extra Vehicular Activities coordinator exploded into a bloody mess and when retrieved, showed most unusual symptoms. Although he was mostly liquid, he would gather in small organ-like pieces inside the spacesuit and looked like he was trying to reconstitute. It was the scariest looking mess and Doctor Kellner was totally perplexed.

They Never Knew

"It is best to keep ones state intact; to crush the enemy is next, to win myriad battles is not the ultimate skill of generals and leaders…. But to subdue the enemy without firing a shot. That is the highest excellence" SUN TZU, 'THE ART OF WAR' (Warring States Period 403- 221 BCE) PROLOGUE: The successful anti-satellite attack by the Chinese military in 2007 against one of its own satellites was a diversion, a Red Herring, if you will. Add to that, in the same year, a diesel electric Song class attack sub popped up in the middle of a US Navy Battle Fleet undetected.

Teddy and Oliver Talk It Over on the Bus

Teddy Fister took the bus to work today, something he will never do again, unless the used car he plans to buy tonight also croaks in the middle of an intersection the way his 1960 Rambler did last night. He sold the clunker on the spot to the tow-truck driver who took it to his junkyard. And that's where his beloved Rambler, and its 210,000 miles, sits in a row with other cars, some terminal and others deceased, every one of them waiting for an automotive mortician to part them out.

Crew Cut Boy

It was autumn in Iowa, 1963. I was fourteen and about to begin eighth grade. My mother remarried--for the sixth time--and we moved from my hometown of Muscatine to a farm just outside the rural community of Atalissa. This was the nineteenth move for me since my dad died in 1953. I was four back then.

Ocean

It was a gray day at the beach. The wind was whipping up and a storm was imminent. Seagulls rode the shifting gusts, gliding low in search of food. The crowd on the boardwalk was thinning out as people began to realize they'd better take shelter. The few people still out on the sand and playing in the green choppy water would soon be coming in.

East Carroll Street

I remember as a child lying in bed at night Covers over my head, listening to them fight. And I always wondered when I heard my name If I was the cause or if I was to blame. The only real home I remember as a young child was the light green house trimmed in white on East Carroll Street. My mom, older sister Carla and I settled there after moving from one tiny Illinois town, Weldon, to another, Macomb, sometime during the summer of 1955 after my dad died. We lived there four years.

God Was Mute Today

I went to talk to God again today. I wanted to know why my brother died. I mean he was a combat veteran. He had a kid. His wife was dead and who was going to raise the kid? The State of Georgia? I hope to Hell not. I went down to God’s Chamber and paid my fee and they let me in. I had an hour.

La Mordida

AeroNica Flight 242 from Managua touched down without incident at the Mexico City Airport just after noon on a bright, sunny fall day. Kyle Alexander and Wendy Bennet, back from a church-sponsored, three-week fact-finding mission to Nicaragua, had earlier only passed through the Mexican capitol on their way to Central America. Now, with a couple of free days before they had to return to their separate Wisconsin hometowns, the new friends planned to spend some time seeing the sights of Mexico City.

Impossible Realities

The Mustang raced through the intersection. It's driver was oblivious to the streetlight being red; it simply didn't matter to him anymore. After all, he was the last person left on Earth.

Foster Child

The boy sat in the brown grass in the small backyard, his mutt bouncing around him, sniffing the corners of the confined yard. In his hand he held a toy truck, bright yellow with thick masculine tires and a cool moving shovel. Inside the drivers cabin, there was a small painted figure, a man, with a hard hat and a sleeveless reflective traffic vest. The boy pushed the truck across a small gravelly rock and imagined moving a big machine like that.

Complications, Yearning, Longing

In misty pathways we walk Truth, is the experience of the soul. Bundt T. Jameson was a condemned man. He was a prisoner of the state. One of only two passengers, free to roam on the immense, all but empty space-ship, like an octopus attached to the giant 10km comet headed for the inner solar system to supply volatiles.

Despair

Well and into the suddenly permanent departure known as ones heart breaking from another, sometimes that nasty little monster quietly known as DESPAIR comes out to visit for a while.

Four Arms

Bob the Big Dog – the Chevrolet dealership manager – was rocking and rolling. He had ordered the Y chromosomes to march into his pirate mustache and to militarize his Elvis sideburns. The woman sitting across from him had nothing to match his male follicles, and she knew it.

The Most Important Man In History Retires

Zoli Wister was retiring today from the TipLand Corporation. A hundred people, all older than 200, convened in the massive foyer lounge at the peak of the Dubai Hilton, a half mile in the air. Zoli was only about 30 when he was recruited to be an engineer on the Micro-Tipler Device. He helped to create the first LookingGlass Device, and recorded the first ever data from the future. Of course back then it was only from microseconds in the future.

“It’s Best to Leave Cootie Alone”

"Damn the vernal equinox! Full speed ahead!" is all that Cootie Murphy would ever say when he sat on the last stool at the end of the bar in The Stag & Doe Inn. He wouldn’t say it very often, only when provoked by someone or stirred by thoughts known only to him. Mostly he would simply sit at the bar in silence, staring straight ahead, tapping his fingers now and then, and sipping his Guinness.

Mike Fitzgibbons and his Morning Paper

For 35 years, Mike Fitzgibbons had never missed a day driving off at 4 a.m. to buy the newspaper at his local convenience store. Snow, sleet, hail or rain couldn't stop him. There was only one paper being published in St. Louis at the time, but Mike was addicted to newspapers. He had spent his early years reading four papers a day in Chicago--two in the morning and two in the evening. He worked for one of them and enjoyed every minute of it. However, an opportunity to earn more money as an editor for a defense contractor required his large family's relocation to St. Louis. Mike needed more money to feed a wife and seven children.

Paranoia Persona

“This marvel of an exercise machine can provide you with twenty-seven different workouts, working all your core muscle groups!” The combination of a pine scented candle and lemon air freshener proved no match for the overpowering, potent, musty stench of the small bedroom. Only half of the bulbs in the chintzy ceiling fixture worked, emitting a dim glow over the dingy, cluttered bedroom. Nicholas sat slouched over in his ratty brown leather armchair, motionless, staring blankly at his sixteen inch television that rested on a stack of unused textbooks atop a small dresser. Dozens of beer bottles littered the floor, surrounding him like a minefield.

Good As New

Bobble was lying on his back trying to get his wits about him. He knew he was sleeping, about to wake up. He tried to orient himself. Where was he? It was quiet. Was he at home? At the Front? The door swung open, it’s rusty hinge skirled loudly in the dark. A crash cart rattled in towards the bed, two dark orderlies and doctors behind them. One pulled a syringe out and posed, a silver gleaming point protruded in the air, growing longer, squealing the way metal does when it’s bent. The doctor’s face was a torrent of darkness, and fragments of features foamed up and sucked back into the faceless void.

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