Blog Archives
A Century Of Better and Worse and Worse and Worse, by Diane Arrelle
Jeanine woke.
Took a deep breath, then sighed.
Another morning and no death to greet her yet again. She turned to stare at Harvey, snoring and snuffling. Occasionally he’d grunt too and kick his legs
She sighed again, a sigh tinged with sadness, mixed with regret. No sign of death there either.
“Window clear,” she commanded and watched the darkened glass grow light and then transparent. The smog swirled against the large pane and she wondered if she’d ever get to see the sun as more than just a pale circle working its way through the pollutants.
Squinting, Jeanine tried to make out the shadow of the building next door, then closed her eyes and thought back to when she’d been a kid. She’d moved around back then, played outside. She went to school, shopped at the mall, even snuck off to the beach with her friends to sit in the sun and get tan. They never worried about skin cancer or cataracts. Worry was for the aged.
She nodded in silence. Life had been good once.
“Unit on,” she called and added, “News.”
An image filled the entire wall and the commentator droned.
“Global Warming, reality or hoax, to be reviewed by congress this week.”
She glanced at the small box she still insisted on calling a PC, but now it was so much more. All her precious memories were stored there along with everything else that made up her life, their life. Ninety-eight years of marriage, almost a century of being with one man, of being two instead of one.
“Inflation runs amok for the 125th year in a row, ”
She tried to stretch but her joints hurt too much. She was 118 years old and felt every one of those years.
“Hamster Flu threatens millions in underdeveloped countries.”
“It is predicted that there will be landmark 175,000 happy couples celebrating their 100th anniversary this year.”
Jeanine grimaced and looked at Harvey. “I don’t know,” she mumbled and fingered the pillow she’d absently been hugging to her chest. “It doesn’t seem natural that just because we live longer we have to stay married for more than ninety percent of our lives.”
Harvey snorted in his sleep and rolled over to lie face up.
“Not natural at all,” she said and jammed the pillow tightly over his face.
“Homicide rate for senior citizens on the rise,” the voice continued to recite the headlines as Harvey struggled in vain.
~~~
Diane Arrelle, the pen name of South Jersey writer Dina Leacock, has been writing for more than 20 years and has sold almost 200 short stories and has two published books, Just A Drop In The Cup, a collection of short-short stories and Elements Of The Short Story, How to Write a Selling Story. She is proud to be one of the founding members as well as the second president of the Garden State Horror Writers and is also a past president of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. When not writing, she is a director of a municipal senior citizen center. She lives with her husband, sometimes her sons and of course her cat on the edge of the Pine Barrens in Southern New Jersey (home of the Jersey Devil). You can visit her at dinaleacock.com
Issue #14: Alien Tech
The thought of life existing on worlds other than our own, out there in the asteroid-filled expanses of deep space is a fun one for writers. One thing we like to think about is: what kind of tools or machines would aliens use in their day-to-day lives? This is what I asked for from authors for this issue: write about some of the technology employed by off-world sentient races. I got some interesting and fun stories in for this one. There’s an android. And alien potato chips!
As I said to my friend Rexodigis 9.5 from the planet of the Squid People: “Is that a particle gun in your tentacle sling, or are you just happy to see me?”
ANNOUNCEMENT: The Shinigami Stories: Reaping the Harvest of Souls issue will be a contest issue! One lucky author will win a prize for best story ($15). Two-runners up will receive $10 and $5, respectively for second and third place. I’m a broke-ass college student, but I’m also an author, and I know what it’s like to not get paid for your hard work. It’s been awhile since I could afford to do a contest issue, so I’m glad I’m able to do one again. Unlike the last issue, which was a reader’s poll, I may want to have judges for this one. Not myself. Please email me if you are interested in judging the contest at were.traveler@gmail.com. As I’m making this issue a contest issue, I’m changing some rules for the submissions. See the Calls for Submissions page for details.
Now back to your regularly scheduled reading!
Issue #14: Alien Tech
The Purple Gumdrop, by Michael A. Kechula (flash)
Aftermath, by Stephen Sottong (short story)
Readme.txt, by Mathias Jansson (poem)
Not Too Bad, by Lisa Hawkridge (micro-fiction)
Downfall, by Elizabeth Prybylski (short story)
The Crystal Chamber, by Maria Kelly (drabble)
The Purple Gumdrop, by Michael A. Kechula
This story was first published in May 2005 in Apollo’s Lyre Magazine.
~~
“What the hell happened to the house?” Joe yelled.
Shaking badly, Marge said, “A big, purple thing fell from the sky and hit it while I was making a tuna casserole. It made a big bang. The whole house shook. Scared me to death.”
“Why didn’t you call 911?”
“The phone’s dead.”
Looking toward the back yard, Joe said, “I don’t’ see anything.”
“That because it bounced off the roof, hit the ground, and fell into the ravine out back.
“Did you say it was purple?”
“Yeah. Looks like a big, purple gumdrop.”
Joe grabbed a shotgun.
“Be careful,” Marge said. “It might be a weapon of mass destruction. My mother would get mad if I got nuked.”
“Nobody’s gonna drop bombs in the middle of nowhere. They’ll do it in the city. That’s why we moved outta there.”
“I wish we’d never left,” she said. “I told you something bad would happen if we moved out of my mom’s house to live in the mountains. Even my mom warned you, and she’s always right. We must have told you ten-thousand times.”
“Stop nagging,” Joe yelled. “Since we moved, you’ve almost busted my eardrums with your constant belly aching. Oh, what’s the use! Wait here, while I check the back.”
Once outside, Joe noticed purple, walnut-sized orbs scattered around the yard. They were warm and sticky. Smelling one, he could have sworn it was made of sugar. A quick taste proved him right. What kind of thing falls out of the sky and drops sugar balls on my property?
Looking over the edge of the ravine, he saw a purple, gumdrop-shaped object, about two stories high. It was loaded with sugar balls.
Climbing down the ravine to inspect the object, Joe heard a hiss. He watched in fascination as a door opened. He nearly freaked when a four-legged, three-armed alien stepped out. Pointing the shotgun with shaking hands, Joe yelled, “Get-em-up.”
The alien fell to the ground, lay on his back, and pushed his legs upward.
“Raise your hands, not your legs.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you did it that way here. I guess I’m not on Mars.”
“Far from it. Move away from your…uh…purple gumdrop.”
“It’s not a gumdrop. It’s a potato chip.”
Joe wasn’t up to arguing semantics. Especially with such a nerdy looking alien. Joe noticed a pen-filled, ink-stained shirt pocket, four pants bottoms that barely brushed the tops of white anklets, and eye glasses held together by duct tape.
“Where exactly am I?” the nerd asked.
“Earth.”
“You sure? I didn’t know Earth was populated. I was trying to reach your moon. We’re having a contest in my engineering class. Each student built a spacecraft, and launched it using massive rubber bands. Whoever goes farthest, wins. Look, I need to get back. I have final exams in two days.
“You ain’t gong nowhere until you pay to fix my house.”
“It does look pretty bad. Will a check for 10,000 MPUs do it?”
“What the hell is MPUs?” Joe yelled.
“Martian pecuniary units.”
“I want greenbacks, Pal.”
“I don’t know what greenbacks are. If we’d known beings were here, we could’ve set up diplomatic contacts, mail service, interplanetary money exchanges. Look, I just want to get back home. I have a back up engine for lift-offs. But I need some Mercury to generate enough power. My mercury cell smashed when I hit your house.”
“I’ll call the space agency,” Joe said. “They can handle your problem.”
A quick call to NASA got Joe nowhere.
“It’s a government holiday,” the operator said. “Nobody’s here. Did you say he was a Martian?”
“Yes. With four legs, three arms, and two noses.”
“I’ll switch you to the Area 51 operator. I know they’ll send somebody over real fast. They haven’t done an alien autopsy since Roswell. I know they’re itching to do another. I’m ringing them now.”
Joe slammed the phone down. Right away they wanna use scalpels. I don’t wanna see this poor slob getting chopped to pieces on an autopsy table.
“You gotta get outta here,” Joe said. “Unless you wanna be turned into pet food. What do you need to make your engine work?”
“Mercury.”
“I have a thermometer with a some mercury inside,” Joe said.
“That’s not enough.”
Joe thought about the ton of canned tuna his wife kept on hand to make her daily tuna surprises. He ran to the house, and returned with two big plastic bags filled to the brim.
“Use this for your engine,” Joe said. “Tuna fish. They say it’s loaded with mercury.”
Joe’s two hands, plus the alien’s six, quickly opened the cans. The alien ran inside the purple potato chip and dumped three cans into the engine. The engine sputtered and belched black smoke. When all the cans were poured in, the engine purred.
Joe was a glad he’d thought of the tuna. Especially when he heard helicopters in the distance.
“Hey, you better get outta here fast. Otherwise, you’re gonna miss your exams, permanently.”
“Help me gather the purple balls,” the alien said. “They’re heat tiles. I gotta put them back onto my purple potato chip, before I can take off.”
While helping to stick sugar balls back onto the craft’s exterior, Joe asked, “What are Martian woman like?”
“They’re a worthless lot. They hand-feed us, bathe us, brush our hair, do our nails. Their homemade gourmet cooking and pastries are ridiculously fancy. They offer pleasure every hour, any way we want.”
“Sounds awful,” Joe said, smiling. “Do you have mothers-in-law?”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing worth mentioning. Hey, can I go to Mars with you?”
“Great idea. You can prove that I made it all the way to Earth.”
Joe jumped aboard the purple potato chip. Marge ran outside when she heard the engine’s roar.
During lift off, Joe waved goodbye to Marge and tried to bean her with empty tuna cans.
~~
Michael A. Kechula’s flash and micro-fiction tales have been published by 150 magazines and 50 anthologies in 8 countries. He’s won 1st prize in 12 writing contests and 2nd prize in 8 others. He’s authored 5 books of flash and micro-fiction tales, including a book that teaches how to write flash fiction. See his publisher’s site at: http://www.booksforabuck.com/ to read a free story or chapter in all of his books.
Readme.txt, by Mathias Jansson
I am an Android
I could not sleep
I tried to count electric sheep
but after 20 years
and billions of sheep
I still could not sleep
From the net
I installed an app
so I could count
cows, horses and pigs
But something went wrong
it was all a trap
a malicious code
corrupted my system
I am stuck in an endless loop
in a fragmented world
filled with errors
and glitches
I am an Android
and I think I am dreaming…
Beginning dump of physical memory.
sleep, deep, sheep
beep, beep, beep…
sleep, deep, sheep
beep, beep, beep…
install#dot.mstroy.f://all.exe.ddos
slave, dark, shark
format, format, format
format, format, format
format, format, format…..
~~
Mathias Jansson is a Swedish art critic and horror poet. He has been published in magazines as The Horror Zine, Dark Eclipse, Schlock and The Sirens Call. He has also contributed to over 50 different horror anthologies from publishers as Horrified Press, James Ward Kirk Fiction, Source Point Press, Thirteen Press, etc. Homepage: http://mathiasjansson72.blogspot.se/ Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathias-Jansson/e/B00BTDBYBQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_4?qid=1366806658&sr=8-4
Not Too Bad, by Lisa Hawkridge
“What did you do that for, Ricky?” Oolo asked, accent lilting in a way that only mouth tentacles trying to produce English phonemes could.
Ricky scowled. “Those bastards insulted your entire species!”
Oolo’s chin tentacles flicked up involuntarily. “Just like a human to take offence to that. Did you know that Lars called the inter-plans and they voice pinged him?”
Ricky bit his lip. “Yeah, well…”
There was an explosion behind them and the ship they were meeting the traders on exploded.
Oolo’s chin tentacles pulled upward fully. “Mechanical malfunction. Too bad the inter-plans won’t have any evidence of what happened.”
Ricky grinned. “You sneaky bastard.” His grin faded slightly. “You realize that means we’re suck on this planet now, right?”
Oolo’s chin tentacles dropped slightly, and Oolo stepped forward, wrapping said chin tentacles around Ricky’s chin in the best approximation of the romantic intertwining of chin tentacles possible with someone who didn’t have any.
“Somehow, I don’t think it will be too bad.”
~~
Lisa Hawkridge is a young woman living in Massachusetts who’s been published in short story anthologies by Seventh Star Press. She almost exclusively writes speculative fiction, but is trying to get some erotica, speculative and otherwise published under the name Mary Falconcliff. She enjoys sweets and music and all the good things in life and endeavors to have a pet snake someday. She can be found on tumblr at www.lmdhawk.tumblr.com
The Crystal Chamber, by Maria Kelly
This story was first published in December, 2010 in the Drabble edition of Luna Station Quarterly.
~~
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.
~~
Maria Kelly works as a writing tutor at a local community college and attends another university in the hopes getting either an MFA in Creative Writing or an MA in Literature. Or both. She is a published author with many weird-ass stories and poems to her credit. She’s also the owner/publisher/editor of this messed-up little e-zine you are reading. You can read more of her thoughts on her blog at Maria Kelly, Author, follow her on Twitter at @mkelly317, or friend her on Facebook at either her personal page or her author page. You can also follow The Were-Traveler on Twitter at @TheWereTraveler or on our Facebook page.
Bounce, by Denny E. Marshall
Bands are a species like none other in the universe. Every week there are jumping events called Bounce Back. Then twice a year, they hold championships. Kleng is ready for the big day.
He removes his clothes and puts on a bouncing uniform, a swimsuit type garment. He boards the ship. Once it reaches an altitude of six thousand feet, he jumps out without a chute. When he hits the ground, he bounces back up into the air a shade more than twenty feet. Not enough to win. The mostly rubber alien gets up. He will try again next time.
~~
Denny E. Marshall has had art, poetry and fiction published. Some recent credits include poetry at Kalkion and Aphelion, art at UFO Gigolo and Mystic Nebula and fiction at Black Petals Magazine. He does have a website with some previously published works. The web address for the website is www.dennymarshall.com.