Category: Short Fiction & Poetry

Harry could feel it in his bones.

Today was ripe with the possibilities of adventure.  The sun was shining, the world smelled warm and life was all around… squirrel!  Harry yanked on the collar about his neck and watched forlornly as the little beast took off to the higher branches.

“So close!  So close I could taste it!’

But what was that fragrance in the air?  Where was all that noise coming from?  “Aha!”

There were humans on the weird stone path that wasn’t stone.  And with them was a canine he didn’t know!  His tail wagged hard.  He strained at the leash until he was able to sniff the air around them.  The humans came to a stop.  They made their strange grunting’s and whining’s to each other as they are wont to do.

“Hi, I’m Harry!  You smell like adventure!”

“Hi, I’m Lucille! And you smell like adventure too!”

The aroma of Lucille’s humans spoke of other places… other worlds that he couldn’t even imagine.  Everything about them was mystery.  And where there was mystery there was a tale to tell.

Harry barked, “I saw a squirrel!  Almost got him too.”

“I almost caught a bird!” Lucille howled.  “There were so many birds!”

Suddenly, there was a rustling in the leaves and a small brown creature shot up a tree trunk.  Both Harry and Lucille stopped talking and growled together, “Chipmunk!”  Their eyes tracked the small animal as it stared back at them from a safe distance.

“I am so excited right now!  I can barely contain myself!” yipped Lucille.

“Me too!  Oh my goodness!”

Harry felt a tug on his leash.  The humans grunting’s carried the tone that meant the end of things.  As the two groups separated, Harry yelped back, “Maybe we can talk of our adventures again sometime!”

“Yes!  We should do that!”

But Harry knew that a new adventure was waiting right around that corner and he shot off toward it.  His human was heavy but with the right pull, he had him going.  Oh yes, adventure was right ahead and he could smell it.

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire of http://www.gratisography.com/)

“Is it tea time?” she asked.

The edge of his newspaper dropped, “No.  It is not tea time yet.”

He lifted the corner of the newspaper back up and continued reading.  With the edge of her bath robe trailing behind her, she paced back and forth across the room.  Slowly, she came to a stop in front of him.  Her toe began to tap.  As the tapping grew more insistent, he hunkered down behind his paper.

The staccato beat of the tapping came to a stop and silence filled the room.  With a slow and calculated motion, he peeled the corner of his paper back and took a quick peek.  She stood there with her arms crossed and the glare of all glares burned back at him.  He let the corner come back up but the paper was torn from his fingers.

It was then that she noticed the cup sitting next to him.  Shock registered on her face as the steam wafted slowly from the tiny porcelain vessel.

“What is that in your cup?”

“It’s coffee.  Let me explain…” he muttered haltingly.

“Explain?  Explain?” she cried.  “You have broken the main tenement of the morning drink!  Do you know the damage you could have done?”

“Damage?”

She grabbed the cup and held it close to her chest.  With a quick sip, she drained it.  As her eyes widened until the iris was completely surrounded in white, she sucked in a whistling breath.

The words she spoke ground out past her teeth, “There is a process in place for the drinking of morning beverages.  You start with tea, always with tea.  You don’t jump in willy nilly with coffee!”

The room darkened and her pupils dilated.  An odd light effused around her as the room grew smaller.  Her voice boomed loudly, “Tea is the beginning, the first of the firsts and it lays the groundwork.  Time will begin to accelerate and your control will be in place.  Once the groundwork is laid, you can follow with the bean of the coffee plant.  Time will become malleable to your touch and you will be pleased.  Only now can you drink of the yerba mate and feel like a God!”  Strange laughter exploded from her.

The man cringed in his chair and closed his eyes tightly.  The room grew silent and he felt warmth on his eyelids.  He could hear a bird lilting in a tree through the window. He carefully pried one eye open and then the other.  Everything was as it had been and she had a beatific smile painted across her lips.

He muttered into the lovely morning of this fine day, “Well, uh… I had no idea.  My apologies.”

She dropped the neatly folded newspaper into his lap.  As she turned away to leave the room, she stated, “Don’t go messing with the timelines, my good man.  There are consequences!”

It was a beautiful night.  The young couple held hands as they walked around the pristine lake near their camp.

She pulled her hand free and pointed at the glowing ball in the sky.  In the most theatrical tone she could muster, she cried, “That’s no moon!  That’s a space station!”

His shoulders tightened as he kept walking but his face screwed up in anger, “Oh my God!  Will you stop already?”

Her grin dropped, “Stop what?”

Abruptly, he stopped and turned toward her, “You have been making Star Wars references all day today.”

He began to count out each instance on his fingers, “When we left on this trip morning, you said, “Adventure? Hmmpf!  Excitement?   A Jedi craves not these things.”  When I was trying to give you directions to this campground, you came back with “Travelling through hyperspace aint like dusting crops, boy.”

In frustration, his hands fell to his side, “Never mind when we arrived here, you went all “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Even when I told you I loved you, you replied “I know.”

“It’s not my fault.” She said with smirk.

His teeth ground into each other, “You’re doing it again!”

She sighed loudly, “No reward is worth this.”

“Stop!  Stop it!  I can’t take it anymore.”

Maybe she had gone too far but she couldn’t resist the urge, “Well, you said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake.”

He just glared at her.

Suddenly, the sky lit up with a green haze that only grew brighter.  He glanced up and noticed that it seemed to come from the moon.  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

With a sense of triumph she shouted, “The circle is now complete!”

I wake suddenly from a dream and I am lost.  Blearily, I watch a vortex form above me.  What is this place?

A beast screams its strident tone repeatedly.  Its red eyes glare at me.  I smack at the monster until it quiets but its disgruntled presence fills the room.

My body tells me that I am bound.  Am I sandwiched between the petals of a flower?  Or is this luncheon meat that surrounds me?

I realize that these are the sheets that I sleep within.  The vortex is the ceiling fan as it does its lazy dance.  The beast is the clock by my side.  Its angry red eyes the numbers that equal time.

Darkness reigns supreme. Why do you still exist Daylight Savings Time?

I need the coffee so that I can think.

I need to think so that I can work.

I need to work so that I can eat.

I need to eat so that I can sleep.

I need to sleep so that I can wake.

I need to wake so that I can have coffee.

(image courtesy of https://www.goodfreephotos.com)

 

 

“I’m a super hero!” the little boy cried out.  “I fight crime in the most dastardly of places against the most evil of foes!”

He took off running toward the far corner store of the little borough.  With a flip of his cape, he burst into the shop, “Mr. Store Man, have you spotted any crime happening?”

The manager of the shop smiled down at the young lad, “Why no, I haven’t.  Did you check the Laundromat?  I hear that’s where they hide out.”

The little boy put his hands on his hips and stuck his chest out, “I was there earlier this morning with my mom.”  He got closer to the store manager and whispered loudly in that way that young kids do, “I was under cover, you see.”  His eyes lit up in shock, “But I mustn’t tell you my secret identity!”

As the older man chuckled, “We appreciate you keeping our neighborhood safe.”

“Of course!” cried the boy.  “It’s what I do.”

The young boy stepped back and looked around the store.  Once he was satisfied that there wasn’t a criminal lurking about, he wiped his arm across his forehead.

“Fighting crime is thirsty work, Mr. Store Man.”

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire of http://www.gratisography.com/)

There are moments when life is lonely.

Days pass and you have no one to talk to.  Weeks pass and you still have no one to tell of your exploits.  Months pass and still no one comes over to see how you are.

Maybe it’s you.  Maybe you have nothing to offer them.  Maybe they know that you’re just a shell of your former self.  Maybe they know that you’re empty inside.

Sometimes you wish for more but you can only be who and what you are.  It’s on sad days like these that I dream of being someone else.

But I am nothing more than a dumpster behind a long closed factory.

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire of http://www.gratisography.com/)

There are days when being trapped inside a human skin suit can just get wearing.  See how I did that?  God I kill me sometimes.

Unlike those guys behind me, who really do want to kill me.

Why, you ask?  Do I really have time for questions while I run for my life down a filthy alley?  Well sure, Captain Hindsight.  Why not?

Like I was saying, these skin suits get itchy.  Every now and again, I’ll slip out and stretch in the warm sun.  They must’ve seen me.

I know, I know, the High Overlord says we’ve got to blend in.  We don’t want them to know that were here and these things will help with a smooth take over.  But they’re itchy.

Their insides catch on my scales.  The ribs cut into me when I’m trying to digest a pig.  And don’t get me started on those leg things.  I mean seriously, who needs two of them?

Great.  Now they’re throwing things at me.  Could this day get any worse?  Oh yes, of course it can.  My tail is slipping inside the left leg casing and the ankle is all bunched up down there like a bad sock.

I’d curse them out but I’m already sticking out of the mouth hole of this thing.  I taste the air and realize that I’ve run out of alleys to run down.  I’m stuck in one of those small open plots you find in the city sometimes.

Well, I best shed this skin and slither out of here.  I’m going to catch plenty of hell for the lost flesh bag.  No need to give credence to a conspiracy theory or two.

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire of http://www.gratisography.com/)

I must not sleep.  Coffee is the awakener.  Coffee fends off the little-death that brings total unconsciousness.

I will face my cup.  I will permit it to pass into me and through me.  And when it has gone past I will turn my mind to watch its path.

Where the coffee has gone, there will no longer be sleep. Only grounds will remain.

(image courtesy of https://www.goodfreephotos.com)

Ever have that sense that you are being watched?  But every time you look around there is no one there?  And that feeling won’t go away, it just grows.

Who would want to watch you and why?  These questions eat at you until the very sense of paranoia consumes you.  It controls your every move, your every decision.  You can’t find any proof for it and yet you can’t escape that feeling.

Everyone you know breaks contact with you because of your actions but it stays with you.  Your home is a shambles as you’ve ripped it apart in search of anything to answer the question.  But that feeling is still there.  You’ve reached your limit.

Just as a warning for you if you get to that point, don’t dig the eye of your own skull to see if it’s a camera.  It hurts like the dickens.