Category: fiction

Fiction: Lunch Break

Posted on by bryon

Lisandro hadn’t seen a cockroach for a couple of hours, but he knew they were still around. Soon, they would be all that was around.

He chided himself for being so pessimistic. Other life forms still wandered the surface of the warm, wet planet and swam in its seas and flew in its skies. They would adapt and survive and evolve. Perhaps the planet’s next sentient race would take better care of it.

And although he did not realize it as he died, Lisandro was the last human on Earth.

Hovering in and out of the Earth’s plane of existence, a formless Being took back the last spark of life It had deposited on Earth and became whole again for the first time in many millennia.

The Being that had been every human ever to live reflected on Its multitude of experiences. It thought about the lives and loves and losses of the nearly 200 billion individuals it had been. About how some parts of itself warred against other parts. How some parts were bold and others timid. How some parts created and other parts destroyed.

Long, long ago the Being had realized that It was being changed by Its human experiences — that even as increasing numbers went out, the sparks that returned had mutated ever so slightly. The changes had been subtle at first, and by the time the Being thought to worry those experiences within demanded that humanity be allowed to continue. And so it did, one lifespark of the Being at a time.

Now it was over.

“Are you finished?” another Being asked.

“With being human … it seems so,” Being One replied. “But I’m not sure what to think about what I have known and felt when so much of me was human.”

If Being Two had had a body and lungs it would have sighed. “Think while we travel. We only stopped here to indulge your silly, antiquated fascination with eating, remember?”

Being One remembered. “Only by being corporeal could I enjoy all that this beautiful planet had to offer as food.”

“And all the humans you were eventually ruined it,” Being Two said.

Being One paused. “Yes… I don’t understand why I let that happen.”

“Let’s go. You can ponder all you want while we catch up with the others.” And Being Two moved in time and space and material plane away from the Earth.

Being One regarded the planet It had dominated only too well, and was sad as It left.

The apples were especially good, It thought.

Fiction: Freckled

Posted on by bryon

Mandy stood by her mother at the kitchen sink. Her mother was clucking almost as much as one of the nearly ninety hens on the farm.

“Here’s another freckled egg,” Muriel said. “Put it in with the others for your Aunt Anna.”

Mandy took the egg from her mother and dried it. Before placing it in the little basket meant for her aunt, she held and pondered it, looking at the dark red spots that mottled the light brown shell.

“Why do you give the freckled eggs to Aunt Anna and Uncle Eddy?”

Mandy noted her mother’s tiny pause; it happened more and more when Uncle Eddy’s name was mentioned. “Because your aunt grew up on this farm with your daddy and knows there ain’t nothing wrong with a freckled egg. City-bred people will think it’s bad and won’t buy it.”

The kitchen door banged shut as Mandy’s father came in. “That’s right,” Billy told his daughter. “Same reason we can’t sell you,” he said.

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Fiction: Plea

Posted on by bryon

“Work harder or die!” the foreman shouted, waving his well-used pistol. “There are plenty more where you came from. And you three over there — yes, you! You’re on half rations because you’re behind everyone else.”

All heads in the dark factory turned quickly back to the line and weary, gnarled hands tried to work more quickly.

“We’ll die in this place,” one whispered to another.

“Maybe not,” his friend said. “I managed to get some help in the print shop. Even as we work, our plea is going out into the world.”

*

Bob threw his head back and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Vicky asked.

Bob handed her the tiny slip of paper and she read it to the group at the table.

“ ‘Help! I’m being held prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory.’ ”

Fiction: Cliffside

Posted on by bryon

Ardelia, yellow rose in hand, walked slowly toward the precipice. Her silken dress trailed carelessly through the thinning grass and pointed to the manor house behind her.

She stopped near the edge and looked over. She shifted a couple of feet to the left and was satisfied. This was the spot.

Ardelia gazed across the lush valley so far below and away from her. This was land her marriage to Cedric had added to the family’s fortune only two years earlier. She literally could not see to the other side of the holding, not even from her great height.

She looked down again at the cruel crags that would tear at a person’s limbs en route to the creek below. She took a long moment to peer down into the chasm, to make certain she was doing the right thing. Then she resigned herself to it.

A quick underhanded toss and the rose flew upward ever so briefly before turning and falling toward the bottom.

A waste of a perfectly good rose, she huffed to herself. But this little ritual was expected of her on the anniversary of Cedric’s death and she couldn’t very well return to the manor house with the flower.

Ardelia watched the rose take nearly the same path as her husband had when she pushed him over the edge; that moment of victory had cost little more effort than it had taken to throw the flower. When it was out of sight she turned and strode back home. There was a tenant’s foreclosure to see to and she was eager to get at it.

Fiction: No Respect

Posted on by bryon

“Here is a live satellite image of Hurricane Maera,” newscaster Tim Milloud said. “You can see how huge it is as it approaches the Florida peninsula. This monster is pushing the limits of what it means to be a Category 5 storm.”

“It certainly is, Tim,” said his colleague, Ellora Colonomous. “Hurricane Maera has shredded the Caribbean and the death toll is expected to be nothing short of horrific. The evacuation of Florida and all of America’s southern coastal regions is still ongoing and many people say they are headed as far inland as Iowa to try to escape Maera’s wrath.”

“We’ve still got a crew in Miami,” Milloud said. “Let’s go to Arlin Armon for a live report. Arlin?”

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Fiction: Recording the Will

Posted on by bryon

The attorney set the laptop down on the swing-arm table and moved it to face the old man in the hospital bed. He nodded, and the old man looked into the camera.

“I, F. Mordecai Hauser, being of sound mind and failing body, do here record my last will and testament. My attorney, Danvers Adams, is present and will make himself known when I’m finished.

“Smaller and special bequests have been previously made. This is for my family.

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Fiction: On the Old Campground

Posted on by bryon

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I never should have suggested a camping vacation. I’m to blame for everything,” Nathan said.

“Even though that’s true,” Emily said, “you don’t need to play the martyr.”

“Just taking all the credit that’s rightfully mine. I thought this would be fun, like the camping trips my family used to take when I was a kid.”

“You’ve told me about them, endlessly, and if I have to hear one more time about how your mother was the key to making them so wonderful, I will never speak to either of you again.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Try me.”

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Fiction: Last Call

Posted on by bryon

Arnold put a bullet in each of the six chambers.

“Talk about overkill,” he muttered, and made himself chuckle.

He took a last look around his apartment, at the peeling wallpaper in the living room, the leaking faucet dripping on a stack of dishes in the kitchen, the worn carpeting, the old furniture that wouldn’t last long enough to become antique – and it wasn’t his to sell if it did make it that far.

He looked at the stack of bills he had permitted to accumulate on the corner table. They weren’t even all his bills; the previous tenant’s overdue notices were still arriving even after four years.

Arnold looked at the phone. The service had been cut off, but he remembered the last time he had used it. That memory brought him right back to the gun in his hand and the main reason for its being there.

Last words, he thought. I should say something, even though no one is here to listen.

He thought for a couple of moments but nothing interesting came to mind. He finally settled on, “The hell with it,” and raised the gun to his mouth.

The telephone rang.

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Fiction: Correspondence

Posted on by bryon

Welby —

So deucedly sorry to do this to you, rushing off like a fox with hounds baying aft, but you know how I am.

You have told me you’ve paid the last of my gambling debts you intend to, and I admit you’ve been more than generous in that area. And you fixed that little misunderstanding between myself and the museum over that damaged painting — which I maintain I was not to be blamed for. Oh, and that jeweler’s concerns over the diamond brooch that somehow slipped into my pocket at his establishment. Along with various incidents at the club. But I sense I’ve come to the end of much of your kindness, and that’s only too easy to understand.

Thus, I am asking for nothing more than your forbearance as I toddle quietly and quickly away from London for some unknown length of time. Oh, and for the £100 I’ve liberated from the company safe for expenses. (No safe is safe from me, ha!)

But, you see, there’s a matter of the young woman I’ve been seeing — I believe I’ve introduced you to Beatrice — and her unborn child, which she insists upon a stack of Bibles is my doing. Now, it may be or it may not be, but she’s talking the most hideous rot about marriage and family. To be frank, it’s deeply unsettling.

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Fiction: Der Vampyr

Posted on by bryon

It was just after noon on a pleasant midsummer day that two American college students on vacation checked into the hostel in the picture-postcard Bavarian village.

After showing the young gentlemen their room, the hostel manager introduced them to the only other person staying there, a Spanish student named Pilar. The boys were smitten instantly and the young lady was thankful that neither knew more Spanish than he could pick up from a taco stand menu.

Herr Schnuckler gave the three a quick rundown of what little there was of historic and cultural interest in the area, and then he added an unusual caveat.

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