Category Archives: Writing

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge is another mashup of subgenres. (It should be noted that this is madness from which no good can come.) In particular, since I rolled a 20 and a 3, my story will be a story of shapeshifters and revenge. Good, I like revenge, you can get a lot of mileage out of that. (I hope.)

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

DOPPLEGÄNGER

I came into the bedroom and, as expected, found Grace to be sitting up in bed, nodding off, the television showing some forty-year-old rerun she had seen a hundred times. She stirred as I entered, but only to turn away from me, expressionless, and pull the sheets up over her.

I turned off the television as I walked past, circling the bed to where she lay. I knelt down next to the bed and looked at her as she feigned sleep.

“Grace, may I talk to you?”

Her eyelids flickered, betraying her attempt to ignore me. I reached over and gently took her hand where it was clutching at the covers. She did not resist or pull away, but neither was there any response to my touch.

“Grace, we need to talk, right now. It’s important. Please?”

With a heavy sigh, she opened her eyes and looked more or less in my direction. “What is it, Richard?”

“Grace, I’m sorry, but I can’t live like this anymore. I love you. We need to make some big changes and start right now.”

“Live like what? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. We never speak any more other than to exchange the most banal information. Bills, schedules, appointments, reminders. But we never talk about anything that matters. We never laugh. We never touch. We’ve become familiar strangers living under the same roof out of habit, too lazy to change.”

Grace was silent, her gaze vacant. Finally a tear started to slide down her nose toward the pillow.

“How did that happen?” she said. “We were happy; we used to care for one another. I’m not unhappy now. I’m not…anything now. I just am.”

“That’s right, we just are. We go through the motions, we play our parts, but we’re as much soulless zombies as the ones in the movies. But we don’t have to be like that. We can change back, we can recover our lives. I realized that tonight and I have to do it. I can’t keep going like this.”

“Have a nice life, Richard. Write if you get time, let me know how the Promised Land is.”

“No, Grace, you’re not going to do that. I want you to come with me. You were the one who always made me laugh, who wouldn’t take any shit, who would always keep me on my toes. I’m not going off on my own to find a new life, this isn’t some midlife crisis. I want you to do this with me.”

Grace stirred, lifting herself up on one elbow and finally looking at me. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Richard? Why this? Why now? What are you trying to prove?”

“I’m not trying to prove anything, other than my determination to claw myself out of this grave that we’ve dug for ourselves. Why now? Do you remember what we did when we visited Portland? I just saw something about that and it reminded me of how alive we were, how daring, how spontaneous. All of that’s gone now, all withered to dust and blown away. But I have suddenly realized that we can change things. We can save ourselves. We can re-learn how to be those people again. Don’t we have to try?”

“I remember Portland. I also remember being forty years younger, fifty pounds thinner, having three fewer kids, and not having any mortgage or reputation to keep in the community. That was then, this is now.”

“No! No, it’s not! If you could talk to those twenty-year-old versions of us, can you even imagine what they would think of us now? Is this what we dreamed of becoming then? Boring? Dull? How did we become responsible, dependable, and predictable old farts? We have a chance to save ourselves, we have to take it!”

Grace sighed, closed her eyes, and took a moment to compose herself. “Okay, what do I have to do to get you to shut up and leave me alone? What’s your plan for rediscovering our spontaneity?”

“Just like Portland. We got there and found a huge, naked bike ride happening and we joined in. It was bizarre, it was outrageous, it was silly, it was stupid, it was totally irresponsible – and it was fun, liberating, and a thrill. We were alive.”

“Right, I remember. We didn’t have bikes so we stripped and jogged along with the riders. Got it. And this means the plan for now is, what?”

“I’m going to go for a jog around the block naked. In five minutes. I want you to come with me.”

“You’ve lost it,” Grace said. “Your little choo-choo has gone chug, chug, chugging around the bend.”

“You used to think it was a good thing. Think about that for a second. I would argue that I’m getting my sanity back, not losing it.”

“By being the only fat, out of shape, pasty white sixty-year old running around nude in the middle of the night? You’re going to get yourself arrested. If the neighbors don’t call the cops, I will.”

“You won’t do that. The neighbors won’t see us. It’s late, they’re all as dull and bland and boring as we’ve become out here in suburbia. But we’re going to break free.”

Before she could respond, I stood and stripped off the grey sweats I was wearing, ending the discussion. I headed to the door, stopping to grab my sneakers and to toss a pair of hers onto the bed. As I got to the hallway door, I paused and looked back.

“Five minutes. Meet me by the front door.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said.

“Yes, I am, it’s one of my good qualities that I’ve forgotten about. You’re not dead yet, you’re just acting that way. Here’s your chance to come back from the dead. Five minutes.”

I turned and walked down the hallway, changing as I went. I went down the large stairway and turned right.

I came into the living room and, as expected, found Richard half asleep in his lounger, the television showing some useless baseball game that was just on for the white noise. He startled and sat up as I entered, his expression immediately both wary and curious.

I turned off the television as I walked past, stopping in front of him and tossing his sneakers down on the floor next to his chair.

“It’s time to not be dead any more, Richard. Get out of those ugly, grey sweats and put on your shoes, we’re going streaking.”

Richard was a bit startled and a lot grumpy. “Are you having a nervous breakdown, Grace, or have you started drinking again? How about you go and put some clothes on and we’ll see about getting you some help.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me that some adrenaline won’t cure. Remember adrenaline? Do you remember when you used to want to see me naked instead of sometimes accidentally seeing me naked? It’s time to get going again.”

“I don’t think I’m going anywhere except maybe to take you to the hospital. What the hell’s going on here, Grace?”

I put my hands on my hips and stood there for a moment, letting him get a good look at me. All of me. “What’s going on here is that I’m tired of living like a slug. We used to be wild and crazy kids, we used to be spontaneous, and we used to be risk takers. We used to be in love! I want all of that back. I’m starting now to escape from the quicksand, the slow death that’s dragging us down.”

“We’re still in love, Grace, I tell you that every day.”

“You say the words every day, by rote, the same way people reflexively say ‘how are you’ without caring about the answer or even expecting one. And I do the exact same thing to you every day. But now I’ve had an epiphany, I’ve seen a sign, I’ve had my big ‘ah-HAH’ moment, and I’ve decided I’m not going down without a fight. You’re coming with me because I realized I do still love you, really, honestly, and I can’t let us stay the people we’ve become.”

“Where am I going with you? Aren’t you a little underdressed?”

I stepped forward, leaned down, and put my hands on the arms of his chair, my face close to his, with my breasts dangling down in front of him. Instinct kicked in and he looked at them.

“Portland,” I said. “We were spontaneous, we were carefree, and we were daring. We are now so hidebound, dull, and bland that it’s going to take a major jolt to get us moving back toward the light, toward life. Right now, ten-thirty at night, we’re going streaking around the neighborhood.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, still ogling my nipples.

“Not kidding at all.” Upstairs, I could hear Grace stirring. “A rut’s just a grave with no ends and we’re in one hell of a rut. I’m getting out, starting right now. I’m begging you to come with me, like we did forty years ago. Act like something matters, anything at all. Or sit here and die slowly by yourself. I can’t do it anymore.”

I stood up and pointed toward the shoes. “Get your ass out of those shitty grey sweats and put on your shoes. I’m going to go get my shoes on. I’ll be back in a minute. It’s your move, Richard. Live with me or die alone.”

I turned on my heel and went briskly out and back up the stairs. Grace was just coming out of her bedroom, wearing only her birthday suit and her sneakers.

I trotted by her with a soft purr and a questioning “merrow,” brushing against her leg, but she was preoccupied and ignored me. I could hear Richard moving around downstairs as I made a jump onto the window ledge and out onto a sturdy tree branch there.

It felt good as I worked my way quickly down the tree to the ground and then started a brisk trot across the lawn, tail held high like an antenna. As I went by the front door I could hear Grace and Richard talking. Not shouting, not arguing, simply talking. That was good.

Working my way down the street through the bushes, I felt wonderful. I didn’t always succeed, but that made the successes all that much sweeter. The failures were usually those who were too far gone, too trapped by ennui to even realize how miserable they had become.

But sometimes I could make a difference. Sometimes the demigods of apathy, indifference, and passivity could have souls snatched from their grasp to be re-awakened, revived, and resurrected. Sometimes the living dead could save themselves. Sometimes they just needed a little push. I loved being the pusher, the catalyst for energy and fun and love in a world becoming grey and dull.

I nosed my way through the pet door into the kitchen. I stood to pick up two wine glasses and took an opened bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator. I walked into her office and, as expected, found Cathy hunched over her keyboard, trying to stay awake and focus as she wrote. She looked up as I walked in, her brows lifting in an unspoken question.

“That’s enough, my love. You’ve worked on this too late for too many nights. You’re way ahead of schedule so I’m going to make you an offer I’m begging you not to refuse.” I held up the wine glasses and dangled them.

“Pete, that’s sweet, I would love to, but you know I’ll…”

From outside, a wild hollering and whooping could be briefly heard echoing down the street. “What the hell is that?” Cathy asked.

I leaned over to the window and split open the mini blinds for a peek.

“If I didn’t know better I would swear it’s the Kaplans jogging naked. Who knew? Now, how about letting me take your mind off of that manuscript for one night? You shut down everything here and I’ll meet you in the bedroom in five minutes.”

“Maybe I can…”

“Five minutes. I’ll see you there.”

I left her office, went into the bedroom to deposit the wine and glasses on the dresser, then went looking for Pete.

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge is alcohol based. In particular, the title of our piece will be derived from some of the more odd and unusual cocktail names. I rolled a 6, which gives me “Monkey Gland.” Lucky me.

[Late note: This story may be almost completely incoherent, especially toward the end. Jet lag from the Vermont and New York trip is truly kicking my ass tonight. I’ve fallen asleep at the keyboard in a “micronap” a dozen times or more in the last ten minutes. This should be fun to re-read tomorrow morning when I’m awake. The good news is that I hit the word count target, at 1,479 words, even if many of the words are stupid and senseless ones.]

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

MONKEY GLAND

“Have you considered the possibility that this might be a really, really bad idea?” Cruz asked.

“Not really,” replied Graham. “We’re doing a science, searching for greater truths, teasing out the least likely details of the universe’s operating system. We now have in our hands the ability to conceive and carry out experiments that only a few years ago would have been inconceivable!”

“Your logic sucks almost as bad as your hyperbole. You’re sounding more like Frankenstein every minute.”

“Frankenstein’s biggest problem was that he was still thinking small compared to what we can do even in high school these days.”

“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.”

“Graham, stop sounding like a cheap bumper sticker and help me here. I’m getting to the tricky part.”

“Would ‘the tricky part’ be where you unleash a horror that makes the zombie apocalypse look like child’s play?”

“Exactly. Watch that timer. When it hits ten seconds, spritz one squirt of that solution into this incision. Then get ready with the glue. When the timer hits zero, I’ll insert the test material and you immediately close the incision. Got it?”

“Got it. I spray the blue goo, you insert the funky junk, I super glue the critter back together. What could go wrong?”

“Here we go. On three, two, one, spray! Good, get the glue. Here goes the insertion. Seal it!”

“Okay, now what do we do?” Graham asked.

“If it’s working, it should only be a matter of a few minutes before we start to see the effects,” Cruz said.

“Should I even ask what effect you’re looking for?”

“You’ll see it soon enough. Just be patient.”

Graham looked down at the extremely large snake on the operating table. “This might be a bad time to ask, but what are the possibilities of this effect being dangerous, as in ‘we’ve only got seconds to live’ dangerous?”

“Ridiculous. It will be harmless, it will prove that my theories are correct, and soon we’ll both be rich beyond our wildest dreams.”

“Why do I get the impression that your wildest dreams are much different than mine?”

“Look! See there on the monitor? It’s happening!”

“I don’t see anything.”

“If you look at the scales of the snake you can see the transformation taking place. It works!”

“I still don’t…” Graham paused, then gasped, his eyes flying wide open. “Jesus, Cruz, what did you do?”

“I found a way to induce the expression of a genetic trait from one species in a completely different species, even if the host species was previously completely incapable of expressing that trait.”

“In English, and slower this time?”

“I found a way to make a snake grow hair.”

There was a significant pause before Graham said, “I’ll go along with the possibility that you might not be completely delusional since I can see the hair growing on the snake. How do you plan to get rich off of this?”

“Do you have any idea how much men spend to cure baldness? If I can grow hair on a boa constrictor, I can grow hair on a middle-aged businessman with an inferiority complex.”

“Now the snake’s got something from another critter and it’s growing hair. What did you put in it and where did it come from?”

“We inserted a monkey gland into the snake, specifically the pituitary gland. In mammals, hair loss is caused by hypopituitarism, brought about by autoimmune thyroiditis. The snake, of course, has no pituitary gland at all, nor does it have hair follicles.”

“How does a monkey gland make a snake grow hair? Why wouldn’t there be hairy snakes every time one of them ate a chimpanzee?”

“First of all, a chimpanzee is an ape, not a monkey,” Cruz said. “Regardless, the secret is in the spray that you applied just before I inserted the sample. It acts as an interface between the old tissue and the new and accelerates the expression of the chosen trait.”

“When you say ‘the chosen trait,’ what do you mean?”

“In this case, I chose to express the hormones that cause hair growth on monkeys. I could have chosen to express other characteristics, such as growing hands, feet, or being warm blooded. I was trying to keep the experiment simple.”

“Simple. Thanks, that’s wonderful. By the way, that snake’s going to need a comb or a perm pretty quickly, it’s looking shaggy.”

“No experiment is without its unexpected consequences.”

“Did you expect to create an eight-foot long, furry boa constrictor that looks like the universe’s biggest caterpillar, or was that an unexpected consequence?”

“It was a possibility. We’ll figure out what to do with it. For right now, we have to keep this very quiet. I don’t want the secret stolen.”

“Right, because then everyone will want an anaconda with a full-body afro. By the way, where did you get a monkey’s pituitary gland?”

“Amazon, of course. You would be amazed what you can find there.”

“Right. I’ll respond to that later when I’m no longer in shock. What’s next?”

“Next,” Cruz said, “is the second phase of the experiment. We have to see if the technique works on humans.”

“So you’ve got FDA and NSG approval to be playing god in these mad scientist fantasies?”

“Not quite, but they’ll be supportive after I’ve proven my theory.”

“If you’re looking for volunteers to be your guinea pig, wait right here, I’ll go get some for you.”

“You shortsighted fool. Do you really think that I would allow anyone else to be center stage in this moment of triumph? I will continue a long tradition in bleeding edge science and I will perform the technique on myself next!”

“You’re going to make yourself hairy?”

“No, I’ll be trying something more spectacular still. Get the bottle labeled ‘eagle’ out of the refrigerator for me.”

“And who’s going to do this insertion on you?”

“Why, you are, of course,” Cruz said. “You saw me do the last one. I’ll show you where to make the incision, then you just have to squirt, insert, and seal.”

“If you want me to use a scalpel on you, you’re crazier than I thought, and that bar’s set pretty high at the moment.”

“I’ve had a tattoo put there. Just cut along the dotted line.”

“Okay, making the incision and starting the timer in three, two, one, go! There, the incision has been cut, right where you said to. I’m squirting blue goo. I’m inserting the sample. I’m sealing the incision. I’m running like hell in case you turn into some horrible monster.”

“Running will not be necessary,” Cruz said, taking off his shirt, “but you will have the unique opportunity to see in person one of the greatest accomplishments of human history. Behold!”

“What am I beholding again?”

“I will be the first human beings with wings, wings born of my own body. Soon there will be thousands of us and I will be their leader!”

“I’ll watch your back for the wings to start growing. It should be… Wait, did you put this bottle here?”

“What do you mean?” Cruz asked.

“This was supposed to be the eagle gland that I put into you, but that’s still over here, or at least that’s what the bottle is labeled.”

“Did you mess this up that badly?”

“It’s possible. I’m confused now. I don’t know which glands are which, eagle or monkey.”

“So you might have inserted into me… Oh, God!”

“I might have. We’ll see what happens, see if anything grows out. Let’s hope it’s wings.”

“I feel itchy all over. It feels like a hundred thousand bees are stinging me softly. What’s going on?”

“Did you ever see Lon Cheney in ‘The Wolfman’? That would be a good point of reference for you.”

“How bad is it?”

“It’s not that bad, if you like, for example, dogs or horses.”

“You put the monkey gland in me!”

“I must have, sorry. But you’ll be really warm in the winter without even needing a jacket.”

“Oh, God, this can’t get any worse,” Cruz wailed.

“Of course it can. For example, at the moment you still don’t have fleas, at least none that we know of.  Give it a day or two for them to move in. Then it will be worse.”

“Now I’ll never have fame or fortune, just humiliation and ridicule.”

“Don’t forget the fleas.”

“Huh?”

“The fleas. You’ll have humiliation, ridicule, and fleas.”

“You’ve got to help me! You’ve got to do something!”

“Here, put these on, and use this.”

“What are they?”

“They’re cat flea collars and a nit comb. Even after the fleas are gone, you’ll still have head lice.”

“Head lice?”

“Yeah, but all over your body, not just your head.”

“Do you know what I need right now?” Cruz asked.

“A good groomer?” Graham replied.

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge is back to a more “conventional” assignment for this week. Two lists, random number generator, get a title – go forthwith from there to spew 1,000 words or so with giddy abandon!

I rolled an 8 and a 16, which gives me “Bloody” and “Rider.” How hard can this be? More importantly, how creative and unconventional can I be? (Late note — it’s long, about 1,360 words, but while three editing passes tonight have polished it and cleaned up a lot, they haven’t shortened it much. And I really, really like it just as it is. So it’s not 1,000 words “or so”, unless by “or so” you mean plus or minus 35% to 40%. Tough, I like this one.)

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

THE BLOODY RIDERS

As bad as it is for me, I can only imagine how horrifying it is for everyone else, trapped helpless and powerless in their own heads, no control over their actions, screaming silently as they go insane. At least, I hope they went insane.

They used to say that reality was overrated. They had no idea.

In every science fiction story and movie, it was always the plucky underdog humans against the overwhelming evil enemy, with the clever monkey-spawn somehow finding a way to win in the end. “The War of the Worlds,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Independence Day,” every zombie movie ever made – they were all the same.

When the time came, we never got a chance to be plucky, scrappy, or even to die valiantly for a lost cause. It was over before anyone even knew there might be anything going on.

In a few short weeks, everyone changed. I don’t know if anyone even knew there was a problem. We no longer went to our jobs or schools, we no longer went to sporting events or concerts, we no longer did anything for entertainment or joy.

We no longer did anything.

Oh, we moved around. We breathed, ate, drank, saw, smelled, touched. We worked. We slaved endlessly. At least, our bodies did.

But we weren’t in charge of them. Our bodies had been hijacked, commandeered, each with our consciousness cast aside like useless gift wrap. We were at home, but there weren’t any lights on.

Our bodies had been turned into living, breathing, moving tools. We were worker ants, puppets, pulled by strings we couldn’t see, manipulated by masters we didn’t know existed.

The lucky ones died. Those too young, too old, handicapped, or injured, they were excess, useless. They had their bodies cast aside along with their souls. They simply stopped eating or drinking and waited to die.

The rest of us, each in our private solitary confinement, tried to figure out what was happening. I’m sure most of us tried to stop it, to fight it, to regain control from it, whatever “it” was. I don’t know if anyone was ever successful. I wasn’t.

Then everyone had a job, everyone was a cog in the machine, and everyone was a slave to their task. Before, that was a metaphor for the rat race we had created for ourselves. Now, it was the literal truth.

We eat. We drink. We relieve ourselves. We rest. We move. We function. We do not sleep. We do not talk to one another. We do not interact. We do not touch, except when our task requires it, and then it is not a human touch, but simply one fleshy meatbot coming into incidental contact with another fleshy meatbot.

I may be one of the very few who, through sheer luck, has an idea what might be happening and why. Not that I can stop it, slow it down, or get word of my knowledge out to the scrappy, plucky, human resistance fighters who never had a chance to start resisting.

Most of us are involved in simply keeping the machine of society functioning. Power plants have to be maintained. Oil and coal have to be mined, refined, and transported. Essential machinery has to be kept running. Food has to be grown, harvested, and transported.

It needs us alive and functioning. To work.

Anything non-essential stopped. Not destroyed, just abandoned. There was no hatred here of things human, no animosity toward our species, just a soulless obsession with function, aimed toward an unknown, unseen, and perhaps unknowable goal.

I was in the right place at the right time, if there can be any such thing in this unending, living hell. My meatsack body was one of the very first hijacked. Because of that, instead of simply slaving away at some menial but marginally necessary task, I found myself involuntarily walking up to the mountain summit where I worked, then working to build and maintain a thing.

I had no idea what this thing was. It hadn’t been there the day before. It might have been a plant, might have been a machine, maybe both.

As I kept it growing and feeding materials to it, helping it where I was commanded (by whom? or what?), I slowly started to see what it was doing.

High on the peak, buffeted by monstrous winds every second, it was growing something, expanding, developing ever larger and larger vats of fluid, atomizing and misting the finished product into the unrelenting wind, spreading something all around the world.

We were being infected.

It wasn’t the only thing doing this. It wasn’t just a factory, it was a control center, a brain, and connected to dozens or hundreds of others just like it. When I was brought near the center of the thing, deep inside where it had first started to grow, I knew it was talking to the others, working with them, a part of them and they a part of it. In the silence of my head, I could hear them.

One day one of the vats broke, split open like an overripe melon. The thousands of gallons of fluid inside spilled down the mountainside, staining it a dark crimson. I didn’t have any way of testing to see if it was human blood, but there wasn’t any doubt that it was.

In college I studied robotics. We talked about von Neumann machines, microscopic robots with infinitely intricate instructions, capable at first only of making copies of themselves, which would in turn make slightly more complicated versions, and so on.

Scatter properly designed von Neumann machines into the solar wind and let them fly out to the stars. In a hundred million years, a handful might find the right conditions to awaken them. After a million years and ten billion generations of growth, a single one could turn a barren planet of ice, minerals, and gas into a machine world capable of designing and building new von Neumann machines and scattering them into the solar wind. In a billion years you would fill the galaxy.

But what if you weren’t acting randomly? What if the world you wanted was full of life? Full of sentient creatures, just reaching for the stars, just hitting their stride after clawing their way out of the trees? Full of creatures who might soon discover other ways to travel between worlds and become a threat?

Starships might be mythical, expensive, captive to the limits of lightspeed. But there might be another way, a way to cheat Einstein, a way to walk between worlds – if you could build a gateway at the other end.

Why build a monstrously huge and complex gateway and send it across the light years? Why not send a single, tiny, incredibly complex machine and let it replicate. Let it grow. Let it learn.

Let it learn how the local inhabitants function, how their brains are wired, what their bodies are capable of and what they need to stay functional. Let it learn how to take over those bodies by building a different kind of machine, a virus-like speck that will replicate and latch onto the red cells in the bloodstream, riding them to every corner of the brain and body, finally reaching a point where it can short circuit the neural system and turn the remaining meatsack into a tool.

Use the slave bodies as tools to build your gateway. Use their industrial capacity to forge, manufacture, transport, and construct. Why waste time building a civilization when you can steal one?

When the gateway is done, your people can walk through to their new world, taking it from the now useless and disposable slaves.

I am one of the few who knows the fate of the human race, but I can’t stop it or change its course. For all the good it did, the effort to gain that knowledge has kept me sane, while everyone else has almost certainly abandoned a reality suddenly too cruel and horrible to imagine.

The gateway is beautiful.

I wonder what they will look like when they step through.