SHORT STORY: THE BOY AND THE CAR

He could only stand there and watch in horror as the car rolled forward. The was no one else in sight and the little boy wouldn't get out of the way in time. The car bumped up and down and the boy cried out for a few moments and then all was silent.

There was nothing he could do, nothing he could have done, and so he walked away. The empty car and broken boy were swallowed up in the night behind him. He couldn't remember how he got home. He just woke up in his bed the next morning, still dressed and dirty from the previous day.

There was nothing about it on the next days news. He wondered how long it would be before someone found out. Would they be able to trace him to the scene? His heart thumped in painfully in his chest and he skipped breakfast in the hopes of calming his knotted stomach.

Work was unbearable. People laughing, talking, working. All he could do was sit and stare at the screen. And then that night when he tried to fall asleep he kept seeing the little boys face, pleading with him to do something, to save him. The screaming still echoed in his mind.

The next day was the same. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep. His supervisor sent him home early to get some rest, thinking he was sick. That night he wrote down a confession but he was too sick now to deliver it. He'd have to wait until morning. For now, he let himself dry heave. Fighting would only prolong it. His heart pounded harder and it wasn't until midnight that his stomach stopped convulsing. And shortly after, his heart stopped hurting.

The next day his supervisor called to check in on him. No answer. The day after that the supervisor called again. No answer. On the third day with still no answer, the supervisor called the police. They found his body curled on the floor. He'd been dead for over two days. They found the confession he'd written but when they got to the place he described they found nothing there.

IMMOLATION: Chapter 25

“This is where her car was found,” The young officer said as he lead Judge Dervin through the parking lot. “We've talked with her friends and coworkers and have confirmed that she frequented the cafe, but...”

They stopped walking and Judge Dervin wiped the sweat from his brow. He never realized how hot Texas was. The officer's continued silence grew uncomfortable.

“But what?” Judge Dervin prompted.

“Your Honor, we've found some disturbing things in your daughters car.”

“Such as?”

The officer pulled out a pad of paper from his pocket and flipped through some pages until he reached the notes he was looking for.

“For one thing,” The officer said, his youthful face showing his discomfort with having to be the one to tell Judge Dervin, “We found plans to the nuclear reactor that was destroyed.”

“She was a nuclear physicist,” Judge Dervin said in defense of his missing daughter.

“Yes,” The officer said, turning to another set of notes, “And she'd marked the plans in exactly the same way that the reactor was destroyed. Your daughter went missing before the reactor was destroyed,” the officer continued, “So these plans couldn't have been a study on the accident.”

Judge Dervin nodded. “I'm sure she'll be able to explain all this once we find her,” He said. He didn't want to believe his daughter could have been a part of that disaster.

“That's not everything,” The officer said and Judge Dervin felt himself droop just a little bit more. “The plans were labeled as one of five.”

“You think there will be more nuclear plants destroyed?” Judge Dervin asked.

The officer shrugged. “We don't know what else they might be targeting,” He said. “We were hoping you'd be able to shed some light on this.”

Judge Dervin shook his head. “We haven't really spoke to one another in quite some time.”

The officer didn't respond to that. Instead he made a note of it on his notepad and resumed walking. Judge Dervin followed.

“The only other thing we found was a list of what we believe are code names for the members of this group.”

The officer handed Judge Dervin the list:

Green Tea, Tea Leaves, Leaves Early, Early Bird, Bird Feather, Feather Weight

“Early Bird,” Judge Dervin mused.

“Do you know who that is?” The officer perked up, ready to write down anything Judge Dervin said, “Is it your daughter?”

Judge Dervin held back his glare. “I am not convinced my daughter was involved with this group. In fact,” He went on, “I think she may have been trying to gatherer evidence against these people and they found out and stopped her before she could tell anyone.”

The officer said nothing but Judge Dervin knew by his expression that he wasn't convinced.

“But anyway,” Judge Dervin continued, “I seem to remember hearing someone referred to as Early Bird not too long ago. I just can't remember where I was or who said it.”

“Well, if you do, let us know,” the officer said and then walked back to the rest of the police leaving Judge Dervin alone with his thoughts.

“Please,” Judge Dervin muttered as he tried to hold back his emotions, “Please Samantha don't do this to me.”

POETRY: MY SON LAST NIGHT

Last night, while having dinner and watching Sherlock Holmes at my brothers house, my 2 year old son ended up watching his favorite show in the kitchen and we all had a good laugh at how cute he was.

Come and see my little boy

He's sitting in the kitchen

The tv on the wall is on

And he's enthralled in watching

He doesn't care the lights are off

His favorite show is on

He's sitting on his tiny chair

His socks and shoes all gone

A smattering of toys and food

Surround him on the floor

All forgotten as he views

This episode once more

It's not a habit to encourage

This mindless tv watching

But for now I must admit

How cute he looks this evening

 

SHORT STORY: HELLO BUS STOP, IT'S MICHAEL part 2

The fish were following him.

Shark Attacks On The Rise, the newspaper headline read and Michael quickened his pace, soon leaving the fish behind. There was a store not far from where he was that usually had some decent leavings in their dumpster and, since fresh baked bread was out of the question, Michael figured it was better than nothing.

“Hello,” Michael said to a bench as he passed by. He liked that bench. It didn't say much but it was very happy to let him sleep on it a few nights back.

“Watch out,” The bench replied.

Michael turned back to face front right as he stepped into a school of fish. Michael screamed out loud and dashed forward through the fish. A few of them touched him and he rubbed furiously at those spots, hoping their stench wouldn't stick and mark him for the sharks.

“Fish!” Michael whimpered, “Dirty, dirty fish.”

Thankfully, the fish didn't follow and Michael was soon digging merrily through the dumpster. The food he found wasn't terribly old, if a bit soggy. He tended not to think about why most things he found in dumpsters were soggy.

The alley was silent. Michael hadn't noticed it before since there usually wasn't much in the way of noise in most alleys. But now that he listened, even the birds had stopped singing. Michael looked around carefully. A pair of sharks hovered at the far end of the alley, looking at him. Michael backed away slowly so as not to attract any more attention to himself. The sharks didn't follow and Michael escaped back to the main sidewalk.

Michael's stomach was far from full but he could wait a couple of hours and then go back. The sharks should be gone by then. In the mean time he could go and chat with the bus stop. It wasn't far from where he was any way.

There were more fish swimming about now. They always increased in number as the day wore on. He hated that about them, though at least they weren't out when he was trying to sleep.

Michael rounded the final corner to the bus stop and his heart missed a few beats. The Bus stop was swarmed by fish. Surely it told only take a few minutes with that many fish to attract sharks. His only real friend was doomed.

No, not doomed, not if he could do something about it.

Michael charged the fish. He screamed and yelled. He cursed, using words he hadn't spoken for many years. He didn't like the way they tasted in his mouth. But if it saved the bus stop then it was worth any discomfort he experienced.

“What are you doing?” The bus stop asked.

“Where there's fish,” Michael said quickly between curses, “There's sharks.”

Some of the fish fled but most just hovered out of his reach. Michael smacked a couple of fish that were close by and kicked them when they hit the sidewalk.

“Stop it!” The bus stop cried in shock.

“I won't let them hurt you,” Michael screamed as his rage continued to build. “They're working with the sharks, can't you see?”

Michael continued smacking and kicking all the fish he could reach and at last the school began to disperse. Michael smiled but his triumph was short lived. As the school scattered and dispersed, he saw the two sharks from before coming towards him fast.

“No!” He cried and placed himself between the sharks and the bus stop.

“Just be still,” The bus stop prompted, “They'll leave you be if you don't draw attention to yourself.”

It was too late for that. Michael had flailed and screamed too much to hope to be ignored now and the sharks closed the distance between them quickly. They sunk their teeth into Michael, trying to pull him away from the bus stop. Michael clung onto the bus stop with all his strength but the sharks predatory instincts were too much for Michael's frail body.

“I'm sorry,” Michael wept as his grip slipped from the bus stop.

His friend was doomed.

“I'm sorry!” Michael cried even louder, still struggling against the sharks.

Miraculously, Michael's thrashing about jostled the two sharks into each other and he found himself free. The sharks were interested in him, for the moment. If he could lure them away perhaps they'd forget about his friend.

“Follow me,” Michael shouted and he began to run.

Sure enough, the sharks took the bait and pursued. Michael darted back and forth, avoiding their jaws. He was almost laughing when he moved to dart across the street. Unfortunately he didn't see the bus until it was too late.

Michael lied on the street for a time, the sharks circling him but not moving in for the kill. The school of fish that rode on the bus flowed out and formed a wide circle around him, watching him die. Michael saw, briefly, his old friend, once again surrounded by fish.

“I'm sorry,” Michael muttered. “I'm sorry.”

His vision grew dark.

IMMOLATION: Chapter 24

Matt needed to open another window. The dust was getting so thick in the air that he was having a hard time breathing without coughing. He pulled the cord for the blinds and they slid up, allowing even more sunlight to flood into the room and he opened the window. Immediately, the cross breeze blew the dust out of the room and Matt breathed easily at last. He turned back to the room. It looked good with all the natural lighting. The carpet even looked better, most of the stains were gone and those he hadn't been able to scrub out were faint in the sunlight. It had taken him the better part of the last week to clean his apartment but the results were worth the effort.

“I can't believe I lived like that for so long,” Matt said aloud to himself before returning to the filing cabinet he'd been working on before the dust overwhelmed him.

Even though the cabinet was designed to help organize, very little organization actually existed within its drawers.

“Midterm...midterm...final...” Matt muttered to himself as he placed each set of papers into their own respective piles. “Notes...doodles...Heat Machine!” Matt cried as he extracted a large collection of papers from the drawer. He rifled through the remainder of the drawer and pulled out a few other sheets of paper, adding them to the ones he already held, and then moved over to his desk.

A stack of papers, the largest in the room, sat on the middle of his desk and Matt added his newest found notes to the stack. Beside that stack of papers was a smaller, less yellowed with age, pile of papers. His cell phone sat on top of the smaller pile with a sticky note that read: follow up.

“I should call her,” Matt said but he returned to the cabinet rather than picking up his cell phone.

His search through the cabinet failed to reveal any more notes on the Heat Machine and Matt returned to his desk and began sorting through the large stack of papers. Every once in a while he glanced over to the smaller pile of papers and his cell phone with the note.

“I'll call her tomorrow,” Matt murmured and he continued sorting.

Unfortunately, the stack of notes didn't need that much sorting in the first place and within a few minutes he was finished. Matt glanced at the small stack again, he to hesitated, and then moved to the cabinet. Several little piles of paper surrounded it and Matt busied himself for several minutes placing them back into the cabinet in a more organized manner. Again, Matt found himself completing the task much faster than he anticipated and he looked back at the small stack on his desk.

“It's probably too late to call,” Matt said, but then noted the amount of sunlight streaming into his apartment and knew his argument held no weight. “Alright,” He said, “I'll call her.”

Matt crossed the room, picked up the phone, and began looking for her number. It was on the back of the sticky note. He started dialing but then paused.

“What am I going to say?”

Matt tried a few lines of opening dialogue but none of them sounded right and he felt more like an idiot than before just for trying to practice.

“It's just research,” He told himself, “It's not like I'm asking her out on a date.”

Matt finished dialing before he could stop himself again and paced while he waited for her to answer.

“One...” Matt counted as the phone rang. “Two...Three...”

A part of him hoped she wouldn't answer, that way he could just leave a message.

“Four—

“Hello?” Joan's voice said on the other side.

“Um, hi,” Matt said lamely and he rifled through the stack of notes, holding the phone between his ear and his shoulder.

“Hi,” Joan said, a hint of amusement in her voice, “Who is this?”

“Oh, right, this is Matt.”

“Matt who?” Joan asked and the papers Matt was shuffling fell through his fingers and onto the floor.

“Matt Wellis,” Matt said, “I took your measurements a week back.”

“What?” Joan, Matt could tell, was growing annoyed.

“I mean I measured you fire, remember? And then we went to the coffee shop for the interview,” Matt waited but Joan said nothing. “Any way, I have the results and I thought you would be interested in what I found.”

“Oh yeah,” Joan said, “I'm sorry. I'm just a bit distracted right now. I would love to see what you've found out.”

“Great,” Matt said and hoped he didn't sound too eager, “What time works for you?”

“This week's pretty busy, but this weekend should be fine,” She said.

“How about we do lunch again this Saturday?” Matt asked.

“That should be fine,” Joan replied and Matt quickly wrote it into his planner.

“And I was wondering if I could get some more readings some time,” Matt added before he lost his nerve.

“Um...” Joan considered for a few moments.

Matt held his breath.

“How about this,” Joan said, “Do you know the Pottery Barn?”

“Yeah,” He said, even though he didn't.

“Lets have our meeting there around noon and we can get two birds with one stone.”

“Sounds good,” Matt said and made a note to find what and where the Pottery Barn was, feeling great about how well the conversation was going.

“Great,” Joan said, “Oh, gotta go, my dates here. Bye.”

Joan hung up.

“Good for her,” He told himself, looking down at his planner and frowning as he read what he'd written on the following Saturday: date with Joan. “Not quite,” He said and scribbled out the word date and wrote research in its place. “I bet he's a jerk,” Matt said for no other reason than to make himself feel better. He smiled a wane smile and went back to organizing his old files.

POETRY: JOHNNY'S LAST GAME

Something didn't feel right,

As Johnny rounded third

His feet were hitting far to light

And soon he lifted like a bird

Spinning like a pinwheel,

His arms and legs a blur,

The UFO above, surreal

The crowd below a stir

“Help!” He cried to no avail

Grasping fists of air

The tractor beam would not derail

But to fall he did not dare

So high up but moving slower

That soon young Johnny found

The UFO was now much closer

Than that most beloved ground

A screeching wail, a shaft of light

A massive door was moving

The tractor beam that held him tight

Seemed now to become soothing

He drifted in so merrily

He failed to see his captors

He only noticed barely

The caged and harnessed raptors

When once he fell onto the floor

He came back to his senses

At the booming of the closing door

He finally saw the fences

His captors said, “Well, it's a start,”

“Would the human like some food?”

And Johnny found himself a part

Of the Intergalactic Zoo

SHORT STORY: HELLO BUS STOP, IT'S MICHAEL part 1

For Sale: Freedom

For information, please contact your local Congressman or Senator

That's what the headline said, at least. Or more precisely, that's what Michael read. He had no way of knowing what was really printed, short of asking someone else to read it to him. And he didn't much like asking people to read to him. Besides, the newspaper was much more fascinating this way.

He finished skimming an article about Shakespeare suing an author over story rights, and then got up off the park bench. As comfortable as it was to sit and read the paper, a school of fish were drawing closer, and where there were fish, there were sharks.

The bus stop was its usual self, complaining about whatever injustice it had most recently experienced. Today, it was spitting.

“..and they go, hacking up their green gray globs,” The bus stop told Michael, “And then they plaster them all over me. It's like they're hoping to someday form a mosaic on me.”

Michael nodded a sympathetic nod and tried his best to wipe off the offending masses. He knew about spitting too.

Michael liked the bus stop. It would talk to him and he liked that, even though it only ever complained. And what was more, he could talk to the bus stop when he;d had a hard go of it recently and it would listen and neither made judgments about what the other one said.

It's Time To Go, the headline of the newspaper read and Michael bid the bus stop good by. The morning was still young, an hour at least before breakfast.

Breakfast.

He looked back at the bus stop, growing smaller in the distance as he walked. He'd never told the bus stop about breakfast.

Why would he? He had no reason to, and he was sure the bus stop would have very little interest in the subject. Still, a pan fried egg beside some toast and hot cracked wheat...

Spittle dribbled warm and slick out the corner of his mouth and splatted wetly on the pavement.

“Sorry,” Michael apologized instantly to the sidewalk. “So sorry,” And he stooped down to wipe it up.

The sidewalk, for its part, said nothing in return and Michael took it for a very rude stretch of sidewalk indeed. Things should know when an apology was heart felt and should accept it gladly. It wasn't every day someone was courteous to the sidewalk.

Michael told all of this to the sidewalk, very kindly, but with no success in swaying the silent sidewalk. In the end he gave it up as a bad job. Years ago he would have yelled, taught it a lesson, perhaps spit and curse and kick a bit. He was younger then. Now he was older. That meant something to Michael.

Baking bread.

Michael sniffed. It was faint, perhaps imagined. He sniffed again. Thick butter loaves with split tops sprang into his mind. That bread made the best toast. Michael moved to follow the smell. There was a bakery around the corner somewhere. There had to be.

But the fish were back. He tried waving his arms wildly to scare them away. He'd already given them his park bench, why couldn't they let him have his toast? The fish fluttered but never very far and always regrouped and Michael was forced to retreat before sharks could arrive.

Some days Michael was brave and he would dash through the fish to get passed them. Not today. And even if he did muster the courage, at this point in time with all the flailing he'd done, sharks were sure to be closing in soon. He was a fool. Now he'll never get his toast.