Future History Lesson

“Science teaches us that life on Earth emerged from the seas millions of years ago,” Mr. Finny began. “Our ancestors crawled out of the waters, entering a world brightly lit by a star during the day, and by a moon and more distant stars at night.

They discovered remnants of an ancient, barbaric civilization. Dwellings taller than the world loomed over them. They wondered what sort of creatures populated the planet before.

Then, they found the pictures.”

Mr. Finny held one up for the class to see. 

The children squealed in mock terror, covering their eyes with their foremost tentacles. 

The Crystal Chamber

This story was published Wednesday in Luna Station Quarterly's "Drabble" issue and was selected as one of their stories of the week. 

The second survey crew landed near the object embedded in the southern hemisphere of a dead world. They’d lost contact with the first team months ago.

The artifact resembled an enormous crystalline worm buried in the earth. A nearby cave led them down into a chamber filled with alien devices. Numerous bones lay scattered all around.

What they thought was the artifact blocked the passageway on the opposite side.

A portal was set into the construct, lined with spikes that sparkled like icicles.

They understood too late as the chamber began broadcasting black noise.

The worm was ready to feed.

The Best Homework Excuse Ever

November 18, 2010 marks the 25th Anniversary of the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." Enjoy.

I was sitting under the tree in our backyard with a notepad and pen, writing my book report which was due in the morning. 

The sky was beginning to darken. 

Suddenly, a very bright light stabbed through the branches overhead, shimmering oddly. 

A spaceship landed in front of me. 

I jumped up, startled. A scream caught in my throat.

Then, the aliens emerged: five little green men. One ran up and snatched the notebook from my hands. Scurrying back to his brethren, he began tearing paper out, handing the torn pages to each of them. 

I guess they were hungry.

The Pendulum Swings On and On

I  stand on gray museum marble, watching the pendulum’s parachronistic swing.

A strange desire fills me. I dismiss it as madness. 

Sensing movement, I turn. A familiar gaze, like looking at an old mirror, cracked and gray, meets mine. "I’ll see you in twenty years," he says. 

He jumps, gracefully arcing, mounting the oscillating arm like a fireman's pole. Our mental connection surprises me, then he winks and I understand. 

My vardoger fades out of existence.

I replay the scene in my mind over and over, so that when the time comes, I’ll be able to execute it perfectly again.

The New Book on the Shelf

The new book was placed on the bookcase between Lady Chatterly’s Lover and The Kama Sutra.

Since one can endure only so much of anything, the stunned little paperback crept sheepishly away from those two naughty tomes and jumped to the shelf below.

There, it nestled comfortably between Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey.

Within minutes, the people on the cover began ducking, shaking their fists as arrows and bullets whizzed past their heads, dangerously close.

The book catapulted to the shelf underneath, sighing with fatigue. It squeezed between Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

And then all hell broke loose.

A Girl With Brains

This weekend I'm celebrating my first ever premiere and book signing event. Yay! I have a story appearing in a local anthology "Zombie Nation: St. Pete." You can read more about it here, and also about a contest I'm thinking of having to give away any extra copies of the book that I pick up. Also appearing in this book is Jeff Strand, who is sort of the Stephen King of Tampa Bay. He's that good. So, please visit this blog post titled: Creepy Things, Zombie Nation and a contest..., and leave a comment on how you would best enjoy participating in this contest. In honor of the release of "Zombie Nation: St. Pete," this weeks #fridayflash is a "resurrected" zombie drabble. Deanna Schrayer inspired me to use it with our "mushy love" tweets this week. I'm still going to write another "mushy love" story for you, Deanna. ;)

"Men!" Barbara shouted indignantly, to no one in particular. "They're so thickheaded. They only love my body and not my brains." Barbara's latest failed relationship had left her feeling somewhat jaded.

She pondered the absolute pointlessness of her love life. She'd had many lovers recently and none of them had understood or really satisfied her. But they were smart, and she’d learned something new from each one of them.

"After all," she sighed, "I loved them for their brains."

She lifted the oozing skull of her latest lover to her lips and, making loud slurping noises, sucked the brainpan clean.

Creepy Things, Zombie Nation and a contest...

Well, lets get to the good stuff first.

I'm considering having a contest on my "Risky Fiction" blog for writers, in particular my #fridayflash friends. You will have a chance to win copies of the anthology "Zombie Nation: St. Pete." This is an anthology of local zombie fiction that will be released at a premiere party at the St. Petersburg Pier this Saturday. I get to go sign books and hobnob with great writers such as Jeff Strand and pretend I'm an author, too. My story "The Lust, the Flesh" is among the other great stories that local writers have put together for this really big event in my hometown. I'd like you, my friends, to help me celebrate...bust out the virtual champagne, all that.

Here is the book you'd receive if you are one of the winners:

There may be another prize in the offing as well for the very best (grand prize) of whatever contest I decide to do.

I need your help with this. Please leave a comment on this post about what you'd like to see happen with a contest. The idea I have so far from Jim Bronyaur involves me posting an excerpt of my story and then giving you all a story starter for another zombie story and having you write the story. People could then go to the Risky Fiction site and vote on their favorite stories. The top vote getters win. How does this sound? If you have other suggestions, please include them in your comments.

Those of you living in New York, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles have further reason to want to check this book out. Future "Zombie Nation" projects are scheduled for these areas. In fact, the submission deadline for "Zombie Nation: New York" is December 31st, 2010. Go here to learn more.

Now for other news:

I've received my copies of "Creepy Things," the anthology by "Static Movement" that published my former #fridayflash story "World Wide Web." This anthology is now available to purchase on Amazon.

Below is a picture of me holding the book at the mini-cafe on campus at St. Petersburg College, where I'm currently a full-time student.

I thank my friend in my Algebra class for taking this photo.

Old Man Carver Opens A Can Of Whoop Ass

This story was entered in Michael J. Solender's micro-flash 101 word contest "Dog Days of Summer" in which the words "summer" and "heat" had to appear in the story. Michael has published an e-Chapbook over at his website: "NOT from here, are you?" I am thrilled that my story made the cut, and appears in Michael's book. Many of the #fridayflash community participated in this fun contest, including the winner: Sam Adamson. Go give them all a read. It's only 101 words. You can read them by clicking on the links above.

The TV was loud. A Miami Heat game. Old Man Carver, asleep in his recliner, sparse grey hair flying in the summer breeze through the open window, didn’t hear the intruder enter the decrepit farmhouse. 

Boots (the cat) heard and saw; hissing from atop the parlor table, fur rising. 

“Who that?” Carver shook himself awake, then looking up, saw who. 

“The hell with you! I 'aint goin’!” 

The intruder said nothing. 

Carver stood, brandishing fists. “Try me, you bastard!” 

Minutes later, the black-hooded figure limped up the lane, fiddling with a PDA. 

“I was so sure it was today,” Death whimpered. 

The Way Home

Michelle sat under the crumbling gray eaves of the old house and waited. 

She supposed she was waiting for the woman to come back. But the woman, her 'mother,' had been gone a long, long while now. The house had been white when the woman last left it, and there had been doors which opened, and stairs and floors. Now, if there were doors at all, the hinges were rusted shut and they were impossible to open. The stairs had long since rotted away and the second story had collapsed and was now just piles of decayed rubble in the rooms of the first floor. None of this troubled Michelle.

The house was an empty shell without a middle. Michelle thought this was just fine, because she was an empty middle without a shell. In this way, she and the house complimented each other. She had no great love for the house, however.

She came to the house in the morning, and returned to her place down by the creek at dusk. She spent all of her moments from dawn to dusk at the old house, waiting.

She was also searching.

She sat on the sagging porch, or went inside the house and drifted like a pale shadow from room-to-room and dug a deep well in what passed for her memory, each day trying to dig a little deeper. 

Sometimes she found objects in the house that triggered memories. Like the poker by the fireplace, for instance. And the old blood stain on the kitchen floor. 

But the precise memory she was looking for had no attachment to the house, or her time spent here. She was trying to go back to the time before. Before coming to the house. Before the outbursts of an ill-tempered woman. Before the violence of fists and pokers. 

She was digging deep in the well today, tracing time backwards (there was only backwards-time now, no more going forward for her). She was in a car. Crying. Playing with a dirt-smudged dolly. It was raining. The woman was shouting at her. "SHUT UP" screamed in time with the thudding windshield wipers. A stinging slap. The first of countless other blows. 

Before that...dimly...another woman, and a man. She tried to dig deep enough to see their faces. It was all silver mists and shadows. She tried to see in her mind's eye the house...the other one...the one she'd been in before the woman had picked her up at school. 

"I'm your Aunt Sally. No, you've never met me before now. I just got into town. C'mon, I'm here to take you home," she'd said. 

Of course, they hadn't gone home. They'd come here. 

#

Michelle was sixteen years old when it happened. 

By that time a part of her had come to believe the woman really was her mother. But another part of her rebelled at the idea...a vision of a red-brick townhouse swirling in the mists of memory, something of pink hydrangea and a foggy image of a blond-haired man and woman. Hair as blond as hers. 

When the argument escalated (Michelle had wanted to go on her first date with Bobby Allen, but her 'mother', always overly protective, said 'no.') the mists cleared for a moment and she'd voiced her suspicion.

"You can't tell me what to do! You're not my real mother! You're not even my Aunt Sally!" She'd stomped angrily off to her room. She'd crossed the line, she knew it, and she waited fearfully for the woman's footfalls on the stairs. The reprisal. It didn't come that night. 

In the morning, she went downstairs to a quiet house and entered the kitchen in search of breakfast. 

She caught a split-second glimpse of the swinging poker in the corner of her eye, a dull CRACK! and she saw no more. 

#

She woke up on the creek bank. She could hear the woman somewhere nearby.  

Michelle stood up and when she turned around, saw herself lying on the ground. 

"I'm dead," was all she could think. 

The woman was digging her grave. 

She did not stay to watch her burial. Instead, she strolled along the creek bank, watched autumn leaves floating in the current and marveled at the way the sunlight made everything it touched look like liquid amber, and wondered why she never noticed these things when she'd been living. 

#

She returned to the house the next morning, consumed with rage. She devoted all her ghostly energy into tormenting the woman. Her favorite was walking through her, causing her sudden chills. She rapped on doors and windows and made loud noises at night, keeping the woman awake and terrified. This made Michelle very happy, to see her former tormenter propped up in bed, lights on, teeth chattering with fear, with the pouchy gray bags of sleeplessness under her eyes. Finally, the woman moved out, leaving Michelle alone. Other people lived in the house over the years, but they never stayed long. It was devoid of living dwellers for over fifty years now, left to fall into its current state of disrepair.

#

It's the memory of that car trip she most longs to recover from her deep well. But she'd spent most of it crying. She has snippets, though...hydrangea bushes...a turnpike...a long bridge over a wide river...but then the vision grows hazy and the mist closes in. She keeps trying, though. Every day she glides through peeling walls and digs desperately for each new vision along the road...and when she finally has it...the mists will part and there she will see it...

Like a signpost...pointing the way home. 

Six Minutes

UPDATE: I have entered this story in a Birthday-themed writing contest at Deanna Schrayer's website. Here is the link: The Other Side of Deanna. I'd also like to thank my aunt, Leona Adkins, for providing me with the pictures for this post. 

I started to write this piece for #fridayflash for Mother's Day, but I was overcome with emotion in the middle of writing it and couldn't finish. I decided to start writing a new version to post for my birthday. 

There are sacred traditions that exist between mothers and daughters. Traditions which bind them together like thread on a loom.

I am my mother's first born, the first daughter of her womb, and we had such traditions. 

One of our rituals, repeated every year on July 3rd (by telephone, when we were living long distances from one another) was in the form of staged conversations that occurred during the years following my move to Florida. My mother left her home in Ohio when I was in my teens, escaping a marriage marred by perpetual violence. I left the Buckeye State and flew south to live with her when I was twenty. These dialogues began shortly after we were reunited. 

#

Mom said, "Do you know what I was doing on this night in 1965?"

Me, straight-faced: "I don't remember, actually." 

"Smart ass," she said. "I was trying to push a baby out of my belly. It hurt like hell!" She laughed then, a dry-sounding laugh that bordered on coughing. She was always very sickly. Doctors tested every year for TB. Her father died from the rare kind that attacks the bone, before she was old enough to say her first word. 

"I'm sorry," I said. 

"I'm not," she replied. On the occasions when we were together, this would prompt a warm hug. 

So that the situation would not turn too mushy, I broke away with a light jest. "11:54 p.m. Why couldn't you wait six more minutes so that I would've been a firecracker baby?" 

My mother exploded in a burst of mock anger. "ME! It was YOU that couldn't wait."

"That's right. I wanted to get out and start partying!"

This was our cue to collapse into laughter. 

"You're still a firecracker," my mother said. 

We would then proceed to get uproariously drunk and argue about whichever Stephen King book we happened to be reading at the moment. These arguments would follow with my mother admonishing me for not writing stories like I used to when I was younger. 

"I'll pick it up again, someday," I promised.

"You better or I'll kick your ass."

Every year, no matter where each of us happened to be, my mother would either visit me or call for my 'birthday' ritual, although the words would vary somewhat from year-to-year. This tradition carried on through a relocation to Texas (hers), a wedding (mine), a battle with kidney disease (hers), and the illness of a spouse (mine). 

Until 1999, when the ritual came to an end. Her veins shut down and she could no longer receive the dialysis treatments. The howling misery of it all was that I could not be with her as she departed from this life. She was in Texas; I was in Florida. My husband had just come home from his second hospital stay, and we were broke. 

I can't begin to describe the pain that exists in not being able to say a final goodbye to someone you love. Especially to your mother. There are no words that cut deep or raw enough for that kind of pain. That kind of void.

My mom was my best friend, confidante, drinking buddy, and number one resource for most of the dirty jokes of my adulthood. Plus, she was my mother. There is no way to fill such a void. Ever. 

I continue the ritual alone now.

On July 3rd, at 11:54 p.m., I lift my face to the heavens and say, "Why couldn't you wait six minutes?" 

#

This story is for my mother, Georgia (Georgie) Juanita Adkins. I love you and I miss you, mom. 

P.S. I'm writing again.

The Curse of the Little Green Hybrid

This story was published in 'Soft Whispers' anthology titled "Un-luck of the Irish" on March 17, 2010

My family lived on the hill behind the O'Riley farm (if you can call it that--a few acres of inferior soil that was barely fit to grow potatoes in).  We sort of looked out for their clan and my Da helped them when he could. 

He also helped himself to the attentions of Margaret O'Riley, the youngest girl. Their tryst caused quite a stir, for it wasn't often that our two races pitched woo. 

And so...I entered the scene. 

My name is Larry. I’m a leprechaun. 

Well, half-leprechaun, really. My uncle Morvay called me the "little green hybrid."

There's a legend, nasty as badly-brewed poteen that a witch put a hex on the O'Riley family. An upstart of a young woman tried to curse the witch. So, the witch cursed her. 

She wrote it in goat's blood, on the side of the girl's hovel, and the words have never worn away.

"The blood remains upon this wall

That ye might be a curse to all

Since you cursed me, with thy foul tongue

Let then on all thine flesh be hung

The power of death in all thine speech

Wheresoever ye tongues may reach."

The O'Riley's tried many times to remove it, even with fire, but to no avail.

So the wall was avoided. When additions to the house were made, they were constructed around the wall. 

 

It was said that the old witch refuses to die, but remains ever close, watching her curse in action. 

I first saw evidence of the curse when I was a wee lad. Uncle Pat, came to our house drunk after a night of carousing, and became angry when Da refused to let him in. 

"May the devil take ye, elfin bugger!" He pounded on the door. "And may ye shrivel up and die!"

"Yer witch-curse won't do for me!" Da yelled. "It's a man's curse and on'y on a man will it do!"

Da was right. 

Pat's curse rebounded. The next day, they found him in a ditch less than a mile from his house. It was difficult identifying him, though, desiccated as he was.

Afterwards, I began to wonder. Would the curse manifest itself in me since I was only half O'Riley? Would my leprechaun blood protect me and keep me from making terrible oaths? Was being a "little green hybrid" a good thing? 

I wanted to know. 

About that time my Aunt Esmerelda moved in with us. God, she was old. Positively prehistoric! 

She crept up on me behind the house while I was trying to hex a snail. 

"Do ye love the curse so much that ye seek to destroy innocent creatures with it?" she snapped. I spun around, shocked by her sudden appearance. 

"No...Aunty, I..." 

"What, then?" Her dark, brooding eyes flared. 

"I wanted to see if the curse skipped me, because I'm half..."

"Leprechaun?" she asked. I nodded. "Would ye be happy if it did?" 

I nodded again, "And relieved."

She smiled; a hideous, toothless grin that split her face like an old scar. "If ye don't want the curse, mind yer tongue. Don't say words in anger. Or even in jest."

"Have you ever been affected by the curse, Aunty?"

"Only once," she said. 

I decided to try an innocent curse on a person. Not entirely innocent, because a curse by its very nature is bad. 

For the target, I picked my mum. I watched her by the cook fire and thought: "Itch." Then: "Scratch," "Feel an itch," "May your skin prickle with the sudden urge to scratch yourself and then subside," and all other variations of "itch" and "scratch" that I could think of. Nothing happened. I felt relieved. When I turned around I saw Aunt Esmerelda in the corner, watching me. My face flushed hot and I fled the room, wondering if she knew what I'd been trying to do. But she couldn't read my mind. Could she?

Some years later, Da passed and Mum was forced to turn the tenant farm over to her brother, Peter. She decided to immigrate to America, and I was going with her. So was Aunt Esmerelda.

The voyage was dull, cramped, and cold. The Atlantic winds howled, but the ship rolled smoothly along the waves. There were other leprechauns on the vessel, though none of the non-Irish humans could see them because leprechauns have the gift of invisibility-at-will.

I took up with an Irish lad named Devon and together we sneaked onto the first-class decks and peered out at the waves. 

"We're gonna make good time in this tailwind," Devon said. 

"Aye. If we don't get hammered by the sea and go down to the deeps."  

Devon shook his head. "Nah. T'is the best ship ever built, don't ye know?"

"Bollocks! If she's a ship, she can go down and she probably will," I laughed. 

A sudden strong headwind whipped around as the breeze changed directions and a chill prickled the back of my neck. We turned to head back below to lower class and I saw her. 

Aunt Esmerelda, reclining in a lounge chair, was watching me scornfully with her hard, black eyes.

By now you may have guessed. Our voyage abruptly ended in the wee hours of the morn, amid screaming and ice-cold, watery death. But I don't look that old, you say? Trust me, I am. The blasted leprechaun blood in my veins has kept me youthful beyond endurance. Or maybe it is that final curse. I’ll get to that later.

Mum died that night. And Devon. And countless, innocent others. 

Esmerelda and I escaped on a lifeboat with as many of the Irish, human and leprechaun, that we could find. Some survivors would later complain that they saw boats adrift with few people in them. They probably couldn't see the leprechauns. 

I sat shivering in the boat with my head bowed. Sometimes, I would look at Esmerelda. She bored holes into me with her black, knowing eyes and grinned in that awful way.

Once we were aboard the Carpathia and counted among the living, I found the wireless op and sent a message to Peter, breaking the news about Mum and asking questions that I hoped wouldn't make him think I'd gone mad. 

We were living in a New York tenement when his return message reached me weeks later. He wrote of his sorrow at mum's death and confirmed my fears. I wasn't the first to suspect what I then knew to be true.

Now that I've told this much, do you believe it? You haven't even heard the worst. 

I burned the wire from Uncle Peter and tried to wipe all references from my mind so she wouldn't discover my treachery. 

After thinking long and hard, I discovered how to end the curse. It was a way as horrible as the curse itself, but it was the only way the carnage could finally be brought to an end. So, I lit a candle one day after Esmerelda had gone shopping, and made the first of many horrible utterances. 

A few weeks later, word reached us that Uncle Peter and his wife had died of consumption and that many others in the O'Riley family were also stricken and were not long for the world. Esmerelda frowned when I read these letters to her, but said nothing.

As for myself, I volunteered to help in the hospitals, caring for those suffering from tuberculosis and other dread diseases, like dysentery and influenza. 

Eventually, I received news that the last of my O'Riley kin had died in Ireland. The home was to be razed to plant corn. 

"Good luck," I said, putting down the letter. I meant it both about the razing and the corn. I hoped that both would be possible soon. 

"What are ye on about?" Esmerelda muttered. We were sitting at the kitchen table.

"Nothing," I said. I coughed and put my hand to my mouth. A drop of blood appeared on my palm. I gazed at it and smiled. 

"I'm the last," I said. Esmerelda didn't say anything."What happens to you when I die?" I asked her. 

"I'll die too," she replied. "At last." She smiled her toothless, evil grin. 

"Why the devil are you smiling then, witch?!"

"Because I'm cursed, too. Cursed to watch my own evil." She laid her hand on my arm.

"Of them all, you're the only one had the guts to end it."

I flinched, twisted out of her grasp. "I had to curse my own family to do it!"

"Yes. And I'm sorry for it."

I looked up at her in surprise. "You're sorry?"

"When the obituaries started coming, I knew what you were doing. I could've saved you the trouble, but I didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I removed the curse after the shipwreck. Those miserable souls; dying, screaming. It haunted me. I long for death now, and I'll die soon. But you don't have to." As she said this, she placed her bony hands over my chest, murmuring words in the old tongue. I felt the pain in my lungs disappear. My head began to spin and everything went black. 

When I came to, she was gone.

"You expect me to believe that crap?" the youth said. He ran his greedy hands along my 32 inch HDTV. 

"You said you'd buy it for two, if I told you my story."

"It's B.S.! You 'aint no half-breed leprechaun and you didn't sink the freaking Titanic. I'll give ya fifty bucks." 

I was down on my luck and soon to be evicted from my apartment if I didn't come up with some rent, which was why I was having the yard sale in the first place.

I reluctantly accepted the fifty and helped the punk load the TV into the backseat of his convertible. 

"Nice car," I said, making small talk. "Is it new?"

"Yeah..." He got into the drivers' seat. "It's a little green hybrid, just like you." He roared with laughter and slammed the door. "See ya around, Larry Leprechaun!"

He drove away. 

I watched the car speed down the street. "And may the road rise up to meet your greedy head."

I started to turn away, then grimaced as I heard the distant clamor of screeching tires,  shattering glass and fiberglass. 

The dawning horror overtook me that the curse, and its progenitor, still live.  Remembering her final curse, I grew cold with terror.

Somewhere she is watching...grinning. Forever, unless...

I hurried to my apartment and took my sharpest knife with a trembling hand. 

I grasped my tongue between my fingers...

Slim Pickings

We met at the local Dive and Dine, one of my favorite restaurant chains in the city. I'm sure it had a name, but my brain is a sieve when it comes to things like that. Names are overrated, anyway. Like the name of my date. I can't even remember that. She was drop-dead gorgeous, though. I remember that quite clearly. She was sleek and brown and fast. But God, aren't they all?

It was a blind date. Sammy from Home Tree set me up with her. I owe Sammy big time for all the blind dates he's arranged for me. Maybe one of them will go beyond the "Wham, Bam! Thank ya, ma'am" stage, but I doubt it. I just never seem to meet the right one. Or maybe I'm the one not right for them. Whatever. It all amounts to the same thing. We're just not made to be monogamous. God help me, I've tried.

The Dive and Dine is one big smörgåsbord with people crammed all around the buffet. I found my date near the top, which is not one of the better places for sampling the choicest dishes.

"Up here, love?" I asked as I took the empty space beside her that she'd been saving for me.

She sighed. "Yeah, I know. It's pretty slim pickings. But all the good spots were full up when I arrived."

I flashed her my best "I-Don't-Care-As-Long-As-You're-Dessert" smile and dug in to the feast before me. I ripped off a thin strip of a shoulder steak between my teeth and began chewing. I jerked my head toward the head of the buffet. "Care for one of the appetizers, bird? I see no one's got to those rare bits yet."

"No, thank you. You can have them." She said, pausing to return my "come-hither" look with one of her own. Oh, yeah, I thought to myself, there will be some good loving tonight.

I strolled up to the top and plucked them out, one by one, and journeyed back to my lady love's side.

"Sure you don't want one of these little treats? Blue ones are the tastiest, in my opinion. At least regarding humans."

"No, really. I don't care much for eyeballs," she said.

That's where I left her: sex, or no sex.

No self-respecting vulture ever says that they don't like eyeballs.