Category Archives: short story

Sharing Stories of the Plaguepocalypse

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[I’m recycling this from a Figment competition that I once entered–and lost.]

Day 100, Post-Apocalypse

Day 100, Post-Apocalypse

JB and I worked tediously to find and repair damaged insulation on the main from the solar farm down to our bunker. Breaks or cracks in the insulation meant lost energy that we could not afford, but we had to bury the cheap cable available to us because the Mojave sun degraded it too rapidly otherwise. Burying the line invited a whole new problem because burrowing critters then began to gnaw on it. Whenever there was a power drop, two of our trio had to come out and do line maintenance.  Output should have been at its maximum given it was mid-day during the hottest time of year, but, instead, we were experiencing a sixty percent drop in power.

We wore white from head to toe except for a slit in our ninja-like masks where sunglasses covered the unclothed region and protected our eyes from the harsh rays and glints.  This had always been a harsh land, but changes experienced in recent decades made it far hotter.  I sucked a mouthful of water from the bladder that lay next to my body under my baggy white clothes. The water was hot, like a freshly brewed cup of tea—sans the tea.

“Son-of-a…, sweat is stinging my eyes,”  JB said as he removed his sunglasses, and blotted his eyes with his sleeve.

“Put the shades back on. We can’t have you getting burned retinas,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, if I go blind who’ll come out here with you to dig up line?” JB’s reply dripped sarcasm.

“Exactly, now you’re getting it,” I said.

JB wiped his eyes once more, and then put the glasses back on. Without the shades, the surroundings looked like the Mars of old movies – cast in a reddish hue.

“I think I’ve got it,” JB called out.

“Looks like it,” I replied, leaning over to look in JB’s newly-excavated hole.

A mole rat skeleton had its teeth buried in the insulation.

After removing the rodent, patching the insulation, and putting the sand back, JB and I walked back to the hatch of our bunker.

JB crouched over the opening. He touched the metal lip of the hatch and immediately yanked his hand away while screaming an expletive. The gloves were not thick; they were for keeping the sun off the skin while holding in as little heat as possible.

JB called down the shaft, “Brit!”

“What ‘cha want,”  Brittany replied.

“How’s our power level, we pulled a fried mole rat off the line,” I asked.

“Yum!…,  The power is back to normal,”  She called back.

I followed JB down the long ladder into the bunker. I pulled the hot hatch closed behind me and secured it against some unlikely foe.

“We need to protect that line somehow,” I said

“I’m just glad we didn’t have to hump out to the transmitter. The last time it broke down I was loopy with dehydration by the time I got back. You sure this is the only place for us to live?” JB said.

Brit came in with two cups of water and handed them to JB and myself.  She said, “I’ve got the loop broadcasting again and the receivers are turned up loud.”

“If you can come up with someplace else where we can tap into the energy necessary to keep broadcasting, I’m all ears,” I responded.

“That’s just it. We’ve been broadcasting all this time, and we’re not getting any reply,”  JB said.

“We also don’t know whether this climate is responsible for our good fortune,” I said.

JB had no response.

“Good fortune? Oh, my, I feel like such a princess.” Brit said curtseying with her fingertips bunched up and wrists kinked as if she were holding up a skirt.

“I mean being alive,” I clarified.

There was a silence.

Brit spoke up, “Remember people?… I love you guys, but I’d give anything to meet a stranger. Remember the last time you saw a crowd of strangers.”

 

I did, indeed, remember.

I was planning on going to Union Station to get out the Los Angeles. Before I left my apartment, I saw a news story showing the train station among all the other avenues of disembarkation that were thronged with people.  The streets outside the station were flooded with a throbbing, undulating mass of humanity. As in the mosh-pit of a rock concert, there were two primary classes of people: those who were screaming and those who were suffocating. Mixed in among these were glassy-eyed souls who had the good sense to realize they were the walking dead, and to behave accordingly.  There were images from packed train-less platforms, and the grandiose cavernous waiting area.

I packed my gear and donned boots so as to be prepared to hike out of town if necessary. It proved to be a wise move, because I when I arrived at the train station the wall of humanity was impenetrable.

I hated crowds. Crowds were noisy, hot, and chaotic.  My hatred of crowds saved my life. Nature has its weird ways. I had once read about ants that could take down a fully grown cow. They did this by covering the animal benignly, and then, upon a release of a pheromone from the ants on the creature’s head, they all stung at once. This malady, a hemorrhagic fever of some sort, was similarly impossibly intelligent and geared toward wiping out the entire species. It seemed to know when its victims were within a crowd, by what mechanism I cannot imagine, and it would then send them into sneezing and coughing fits that propelled droplets of virulent blood in a fine mist to those all around.

Now I missed crowds, because they were a sign that one’s species wouldn’t die with oneself.

JB and Brit had taken to telling each other their own last crowd stories, which we’d heard before. We’d heard all of each other’s stories.

Well there was one story that I kept for myself. It was the story of the day before I met up with Brit and JB. It was my nadir.

I had been hiking east from the city. My path merged with the I-40 corridor, and it was the most horrific day of my life. I’d always been an avid hiker and had spent long periods on my own before, but these times of solitude were without signs of humanity. As I came upon I-40, there were people all around -in cars and on the ground, but they were all stiff and had rivulets of brown or red running from their noses, mouths, ears, eyes, and presumably the unseen orifices.

When I saw a monastery on a hillside, I thought I was saved.  Surely the isolated monks or nuns were safe and would help out a weary uninfected traveler? I found an old stone church that was post and beam on the inside. Anyway, my hope faded when I found the pews had been used as hospital beds, and all, patient and caretaker alike, were bled out. The only signs of life were rats on the floor, weeds in the mortar joints, and birds in the rafters. That was my moment of greatest loneliness, for if God had abandoned his own house, what hope was there for me.

BOOK REVIEW: Steel and Other Stories by Richard Matheson

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Steel: And Other StoriesSteel: And Other Stories by Richard Matheson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Steel and Other Stories is a collection of 15 short stories from the author of I am Legend. Thirteen of the fifteen stories are from the 50’s, and motifs of that time are common (e.g. Cold War phobia, the Western, etc.)

1.)The title story, Steel, is about android boxers. Viewers of the movie Real Steel, which was loosely based on this story, will find the story not much like the film. In the film the boxers are robots, but in the story they are androids. For those readers who aren’t sci-fi geeks, the difference is that androids look and move like humans. There is more on the line in the final fight in the story than in the film.

2.) Fit the Crime is about a cantankerous old poet on his deathbed. It’s a humorous story and will be enjoyed by those who love language play.

3.) The Wedding is about a superstitious groom who gets on his bride’s last nerve.

4.) The Conqueror is the sole Western in the collection. It features gunfights and a final line revelation.

5.) Dear Diary is a very short sci-fi piece that is written in the form of three diary entries: one in 1954, one in 3954, and one at an undesignated date presumed to be later than the second entry. In typical Mathesonian style, the third entry, only a partial sentence, turns expectations on end.

6.) In Descent two couples are preparing to move underground to survive nuclear holocaust. Confronted with the decision of dying above ground or living a subterranean life, one of the men opts for the former. This creates a dilemma for the man’s wife.

7.) In The Doll That Does Everything two parents of a horrid child contemplate whether the lifelike doll they buy their child really can do everything.

8.) The Traveler is about scholars who go back in time, cloaked, to observe biblical history first hand.

9.) When Day is Dun is about the last man alive, but, unlike I am Legend, the apocalypse is of nuclear annihilation.

10.) Splendid Source is one of the most famous stories in the collection. It’s about a search for the point of origin of ribald jokes. Viewers of Family Guy will recognize its depiction in an episode of that series.

11.) Lemmings is one of the shortest pieces in the collection. It imagines humanity walking one after another into the sea.

12.) In The Edge a man finds that people he doesn’t know know him. This begs the question of whether he has a doppelgänger or he’s lost his mind.

13.) In A Visit to Santa Claus a man reconsiders a contract on his wife’s life that is to be executed on a visit to the mall to see Santa.

14.) In Dr. Morton’s Folly a dentist gets an after-hours emergency case.

15.) In The Window of Time A man travels back in time 68 years by mysterious circumstance, walking familiar territory in transformed in time.

Matheson is a master story craftsman, and this collection is an interesting mix of stories from various genres–some humorous and some dark.

View all my reviews

How to Kill a Rogue Yard Gnome, Part 2

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[Don't overthink the symbolism]Attribution: loannes.baptista

[Don’t overthink the symbolism]
Attribution: loannes.baptista

[Part I can be read here.]

Five nights ago, as the sun sank below the horizon and the glow of vibrant colors faded, we three were visited by a fourth from our world. It was the Hargo Chetti. Like us, he had a long flowing beard and a pointy hat, but, unlike us, his face was twisted into a menacing glower. His shell was monotone brown, it was just a temporary husk pulled together from the earth for our meeting. There was no point in a permanent shell; Master Hargo couldn’t stay in the world of humans for long. (Humans thought of the gnome’s shell as the gnome, but to us it was just a container for our noncorporeal selves.)  It’s the scowl. The shell must reflect the gnome’s nature, and no one wants a scowling gnome in their garden. Well, there may be demented people who would like such a gnome, but those people are already beyond our assistance.

In gnomish, a language that doesn’t register in human hearing organs, Hargo said, “I come bearing orders from the Council. They want you to be more active in your man’s dream state.”

I was impressed by Hargo’s ability to project his voice to us, given our wide spacing. We three can only communicate in close proximity, or in the man’s dream state. I was less pleased with the content of his message. I bristled in my response, “I assure you that we are intervening when necessary to keep the man’s dream world from falling into darkness.”

Hargo huffed, “The Council’s orders go beyond maintaining the status quo.”

I said, “We’ve seen nothing suggesting the man needs an injection of cheer into his dream state. Surely, you’ve read our reports.”

Hargo replied, “The Council, which I needn’t remind you has more vision and wisdom than a mere worker gnome, isn’t requesting an injection of good cheer. They desire shadow-mares.” Shadowmares were like nightmares but the ones that cannot be remembered in the waking state. Humans imagine that a nightmare that they can’t remember is inconsequential and has no impact on their waking lives. They are wrong.

Furk, one of my peers, just said, “Yes.” Furk was bored. He thought three gnomes for one man was excessive, particularly when that one man wasn’t important. I suspect because one of the neighborhood cats liked to wee on his shell, Furk had soured on our assignment. Though correlation not being causation, I couldn’t eliminate the possibility that the cats peed on him because he was such a jerk.

I was momentarily speechless. Hookl was also speechless, but that was his usual state.

After a long pause, I said, “I would like confirmation that this is the will of the Council.”

Hargo’s scowl seemed to tighten. Icily, he said, “Are you calling me a liar?”

I felt a shudder rise up through me, but still managed to reply, “No. I just think such a rare and unusual order demands great care.”

“You have your orders.” Hargo said, and then his shell collapsed into a pile of dirt, which was then caught up in the breeze and spread over the lawn. By morning there would be no trace of him.

I didn’t trust the Hargo Chetti. He looked like Santa, sans the jolly. What screams lie more than a scowling Santa. Yet, he is our only point of contact with gnome world while we are on assignment. I’ve always thought that was a weakness in our system.

As Furk began to plan and Hookl resumed being Hooklish (which is to say disinterested), I strained to propel my shell toward the driveway. I moved as swiftly as I could, but it was still a pace that would make a turtle proud by comparison.

A few hours later, I noticed lights stretching down the road toward the drive, the twin beams — with the car— decelerated. The car swung into the drive nearly crushing my shell. Had the shell been crushed, I would have been evicted back to our home world. Gnomes required a shell. I wasn’t powerful enough to summon a shell from the dirt, like Hargo had, not even for a short time. My plan had been to get onto the driveway and block access to the garage. In retrospect, it was not a well-thought plan, but it was the only warning I could give the man in his waking state. Once he went to sleep, it might be too late.

The man seemed to take note of my changed position, but he didn’t return my shell to its original position. He just shrugged and walked into the house.

I wanted to persuade Furk to hold off on obeying the order for now. Silently screaming gnomish across the lawn wouldn’t work, I didn’t have Hargo’s power of projection. The distance between us was too great.

I would have to subvert Furk in the man’s dream state. It would be difficult; Furk would have a plan by now, and I would have to improvise, injecting characters into the dream as needed to counter the shadowmare. In the dream state, I wouldn’t look dwarfish – unless that was called for. I could morph into any character that I could imagine. If you’ve ever had a dream and seen a face that looks totally unfamiliar, you’ve had a gnome dream. If you aren’t sure if you were the lead character in your dream, a gnome has probably been monkeying around in your noggin.

*

Four nights ago, I convened a meeting to the side yard. I wanted to be out of sight. Humans often won’t miss a gnome if it’s gone, but seeing three cavorting draws undue attention. I migrated across in front of the house, a two bedroom ranch, and nudged Hookl, who was positioned midway between my usual position and Furk’s. We then proceeded to meet up with Furk. This would put me at a disadvantage. Moving the gnome shell by force of consciousness is exhausting, and if I had to battle it out with Furk in the man’s dream state that night I would be weaker than usual.

For Furk, who was positioned near the corner of the house, the journey to the side yard and back would short. This was probably why he agreed.

I said, “As you well know, I want to hold off on initiating shadowmares.”

Furk said, “An order has been given by the Council. It may be unusual, but I’m sure they have a good reason, and it is not ours to challenge.”

Hookl said nothing.

I replied, “Maybe they do, and if they confirm their order I will comply. But this is serious, and if there is not an explicit order from the Council, then it is high crime against the Gnome Code of Conduct. You know what shadowmares can do to humans after a time. The humans might not consciously recognize the effects, but we know them well.”

Furk retorted, “If the Council didn’t give the order, then the Hargo Chetti is a liar. Are you prepared to make that accusation, because I’m not?”

Hookl said nothing.

I said, “I’m not calling anyone a liar. I’m just saying this is an extremely rare order and since there is only one gnome linking the Council to us, the possibility for miscommunication exists. If it were a less risky order it might not justify my concern. What if the man does something disastrous because of our mental mischief?” I was lying. I did think Hargo was a liar, but saying that would serve nothing.

Furk said, “It’s like Hargo said, you can’t see the whole picture.”

Before we could even begin our retreat back to our proper positions, we heard the car slow and turn into the drive. There was no use in moving now.

I said, “The man is home. Furk, it is clear that we will not be able to persuade each other. I want to hear where Hookl stands, and we will decide by majority.”

Hookl was not happy to be put in the role of tie-breaker. Making decisions was not his strong suit. “Gee, I’ll get back with you tomorrow.”

We three were well-attuned to the man’s brainwaves. We knew when he went into the house. We all knew that he noticed we were missing. We knew when he was about to come back outside with his flashlight. Soon he was shining the light on us. His forehead was crinkled and his lips pursed. It was an expression of puzzlement. He was trying to figure out how we had gotten into the side yard.

*

Three nights ago, one of us was ejected from this world. As darkness fell, in the feeble light, I approached Hookl to inquire about how he intended to vote. I had no intention of reconvening the group. Furk could come to us if he wanted. He did so.

Hookl said, “I mean, I don’t think we should be hasty. We should take our time, and figure things out. Rushing now won’t help any…” He just went on like that, noncommittally, for some time.

It must have sounded to Furk like Hookl was siding with me because Furk kept migrating, pushing into Hookl’s side. I don’t know if Furk just wanted to persuasively intimidate Hookl, or if his intentions were more nefarious. At any rate, there is a slope to the land in the front yard, and many loose rocks. This contributed to Hookl’s shell begining to tip; Furk did not let up. There was nothing I could do but watch as Hookl’s shell tipped.

There was a hole in the bottom of Hookl’s shell from the manufacturing process. It didn’t matter as long as the hole was sitting on the ground. If the shell tipped over, Hookl could maintain himself inside as long as there was only on hole in the container. It was the same principle as a bucket being inverted and pushed down into water. The bucket captures air inside. Add a second hole, and the water plunges in to push the air out. When Hookl’s shell tipped, its shoulder landed on a rock and the ceramic cracked. In a whoosh, Hookl was ejected and forced back to our world, to our dimension.

There would be at least one more night of battling it out with Furk

*

Two nights ago, my fight with Furk continued beyond the dream state and into the physical world. It ended with a gnome sumo match, and Furk was sent home much as Hookl had been.

I didn’t know how long it would be before someone showed up, Hargo or someone on the Council’s behalf. If I was right, and Hargo had gone rogue, it might be never. He might cut his losses.

I began to rest easy in the belief that I could protect this man’s dream state. And then the putz put a baseball bat through the side of my head.

TO BE CONCLUDED

How to Kill a Rogue Yard Gnome, Part 1

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Attribution: Colibri1968

Attribution: Colibri1968 (Is this gnome too sexy?)

Five nights ago, coming home at days end, nosing my car into the drive, I startled. Where my headlights should have roamed over a patch of bare grass, instead the light glared off of the white beard and ruddy cheeks of one of my three lawn gnomes. I braked and swung the wheel hard to avoid grazing the gnome with my bumper. I could have sworn that gnome was always much closer to the house.

Somebody must have moved it.

By the light of the next morning, a ring of flattened, brown grass confirmed my suspicions from the previous night. I had no time to consider who might have moved the gnome.

No harm, no foul.  

*

Four nights ago, coming home, the gnome was not at the edge of the drive where it had been. I assumed that whoever had moved it put it back where they found it. But it wasn’t there either.

Rummaging through a drawer of loose tools and hardware, I grabbed a flashlight. I went through the front yard, swinging the beam of light in wide arcs, intent on finding the missing gnome. It was then that I noticed that the others were missing. I was considering whether it was worth calling the cops for the theft of a few cheap yard gnomes when I turned and my light reflected off something white in the side yard.

I rounded the corner cautiously, not wanting to piss myself if some prankster youths jumped out from my shrubs. There were no youths, just the three errant gnomes. The trio faced into the center of a circle as if they were conversants at a cocktail party. I looked around, in case this prank was being caught on some sort of candid camera. Not that I would be able to see the conspirators in the darkness, for I didn’t want to go shining my light into the neighboring properties. So I shrugged and went back in the house leaving the gnomes to their silent cabal.

The next morning, the gnomes were back in what— as far as I could tell— were their original positions.

*

Three nights ago, I came home hoping the prankster had gotten it all out of his system. But when my headlights washed over the front lawn, I gulped. One of the gnomes lie on his back. The other two stood gazing into each other’s eyes, one at the downed gnome’s feet and one at his head.

This is getting to be enough already, I’d thought.

Given the ominous tone of the latest prank, I didn’t venture outside to reset the gnomes that night. I had a largely sleepless night, wondering if this was more than a prank, if it was some sort of dire message. I put my sleepless night to good use devising my plan.

In the morning I found that two of the gnomes were back in their original positions and the third was missing altogether. That sealed it. I would move forward with my plan.

*

Two nights ago, I came home later than usual, having stopped at an electronics store to buy a video camera with night vision and a tripod. You’ll not be surprised to learn that one of the two remaining gnomes was smashed to shards while the other stood casually at its feet.

Anger now trumped fear, and I was prepared to catch the culprit in the act. Without turning on the light in the front room in order to avoid alerting my tormentor, I set up the tripod. In my bedroom, where nobody could observe me, I made sure the camera worked. I recorded the cat yawning and played it back. I cut the lights and made sure the night vision worked. I confirmed that I had sufficient memory for the entire night. Returning to the front room, I trained the camera on the gnome and gnome remnants. I checked and double-checked the power, memory, and the settings. Confident that all was set to capture the ne’er-do-well, I retired to bed for a sound night’s rest.

The next morning, I strode into the front room. I could see through my front window that the gnomes, broken and whole, were both gone from where they had lain, and that the camera’s red light was still showing recording in progress. I stopped the camera, confident I had captured the scallywag on video. I would call the police, and I would have the evidence I needed.

I pressed “play” and watched the green grainy video. There was nothing but stillness and the occasional branch trembling in the wind. In the interest of getting to work on time, I fast forwarded. When I was at eight times (8X) speed, I noticed there was and impression of movement, an inexplicable gradual shift of the standing gnome. The gnome shards also seemed to become faint, as if they were dissolving. I thought my eyes were playing tricks. At 32X speed, the standing gnome migrated itself out of the frame while the shards seemed to dissolve into thin air. No person or animal — other than a common squirrel– ever entered the frame.

Leaving the house that morning, hoping that the evil was now at an end, I was shocked to see that the remaining gnome hadn’t liberated itself from my property. It was right where I had set it years before. Unsettled and convinced that something wicked had taken up residence in my front yard. I grabbed an aluminum baseball bat from my garage and I swung hard into the gnome’s ear. The head flew off, revealing its hollow core. I must have looked like a madman to my neighbors as they went to work, gawking at me as I smashed the gnome to shards and then the shards to dust.

So you must be wondering why this is Part 1 and why there is further writing below. I just told you how to kill a rogue yard gnome. Did I?

*

Last night I came home to find a gnome sitting indignantly in the place of the gnome I had smashed that morning. It looked very much like the one that I had dashed to smithereens eleven hours before; except that instead of a big, beaming smile, its face was a scowl.

TO BE CONTINUED

SHORT STORY REVIEW: Tenth of December by George Saunders

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10thDecI’ve been reading the Best American Short Stories of 2012. Within this anthology is a story called Tenth of December by George Saunders; it’s also the title and concluding story of Saunders’s most recent collection.

This story interweaves two arcs, one of a boy and the other an old man. It’s this contrast between a man just starting life and another nearing its end that’s the focal point for the story. The lives of these two are brought together during a tragic winter event that leaves the reader uncertain as to whether either, both, or neither of the two will survive.

Saunders’s style is sparse, not in the manner of Hemingway but in a way that happily and freely abandons the sentence as the essential basic unit of writing –as opposed to occasionally letting phrases shine. The author also forgoes the traditional approach to noting dialogue. However, like Cormac McCarthy, Saunders makes himself clearly understood nevertheless.

Saunders displays a great sense of humor in this work. This is particularly noted as we are shown the boy at play during the piece’s introduction. I cracked up when it’s mentioned in boy’s internal monologue that he invented a martial art called Toi Foi, A.k.a. “Deadly forearms.”

The author masterfully captures the varied voice of boy and old man. The contrast between the playful youth and the reflective elder is a powerful commentary on the cycle of life.