SF Drabble #28 “Had Some Work Done”

I was remembering the sales associate’s voice, the practiced ease of his pitch, as the anesthetic took hold. More than human, he said. A better you, he promised. Satisfaction or your money back, he guaranteed. At twenty million North American Dollars, plus surgical fees, I’ll hold him to it.

I never lost consciousness. The doctors yammered on about soccer scores as they worked in my head, my arms, my spine.

I’m not supposed to experiment with the telekinesis until I’m fully healed, but the telepathy is already working well: the night nurse thinks I’m attractive for a man my age…

Fantasy Drabble #5 “The Witching Hour”

I think those three girls that moved into 3B are a coven. Well, part of one anyhow. I know, I always think everybody’s a witch, but this time I’m really sure.

People are always knocking on their door after eleven at night and then leaving before one in the morning. There’s always chanting. Sometimes I’ll hear a rumbling, or the sound of a hurricane even if it’s calm outside. And the smells…

I would say something to the super, but he’s not the most discrete guy in the world, and I don’t really want to get turned into a newt.

SF Drabble #27 “It’s a long way down.”

These buildings are eight hundred meters from penthouse to foundation. The lowest levels aren’t even used anymore, because the streets have been abandoned except for the criminals and wastrels living off the grid. If you ride the lifts down to the lowest lobbies, you’re still ten stories above ground level and the stairwells leading further down are sealed.

In some buildings, there are balconies that low. Teenagers with too much time on their hands sometimes have flashmob parties where they throw anything that’s not nailed down at anyone they see below.

Security usually puts a stop to it fairly quickly.

Zombie Drabble #56 “Inheritance”

I kept a diary of the end of the world.

Every chance I got, I would write what was happening. While walking, while hiding. By moonlight on a hundred rooftops when the others were sleeping.

I kept it in a plastic sandwich bag. There’s a whole entry about how there won’t be any more plastic sandwich bags.

The next entry is about your grandfather getting bitten, and the entry after that is about our having to shoot him in the head when he turned.

Now that I’m dying, I’m giving it to you. Keep it in the plastic sandwich bag.

Zombie Drabble #55 “On The Road Again”

The radio kept us alive. When they told us to board up and hunker down, we did it. When they told us to break and run, head for the hills, we did it. We gathered the supplies they listed, the weapons they suggested, ate the food they recommended. The music they played kept our spirits up.

We were listening when they said to find shelter now and listed the zip codes. We found a basement, rode it out. You could see the mushroom clouds from Chicago and Milwaukee from where we were.

We scrounged comfortable shoes, and walked into Kansas.

SF Drabble #26 “And Then There Was One”

At first I thought I was going crazy. The noises against the hull, the weird lines on the sand… I thought they were just my mind playing tricks. Scans never picked up anything, and the atmosphere out there is highly toxic.

But now I’m certain. Whatever it is tried to get through the airlock outer door during the last sandstorm. There are gouges in the titanium alloy. What could have done that?

I can’t take off until the others come back with the mining crawler, but they’re not answering hails and they’re already overdue. I’ll give them eight more hours.

Fantasy Drabble #4 “Dear Supernatural Penthouse”

“Oh come on. Let me see,” he said, pleading.

“It’s not going to happen, mister.”

“Please?”

“It’s inappropriate even to ask.” She crossed her shimmering, translucent arms as she floated in the doorway.

“Why?”

“You’re a child. And I’m a lady.”

“I’m seventeen, and you’re a ghost. And isn’t it ‘inappropriate’ for you to always be in here anyway?”

“You know I’m tied to this bedroom by the circumstances of my death…”

“Sure. But what about me? What about my needs?”

She looked disapprovingly at him, then sighed. “Maybe just once.” Her ectoplasmic fingers went tentatively to her shoulder straps.

“Standards”

The Author lurched into the publishing offices out of breath, sweaty, clothes torn, stumbling at the receptionist’s desk like a human avalanche. Once there, he leaned on it heavily, for support.

The receptionist knew him from his book jacket photo, the same one four novels in a row. “You’re older than I thought. Also, you’re late.”

“Sorry,” he gasped, “but I barely made it here at all!”

“And what was the problem?” She asked without looking at him, in a tone that signified she had absolutely no interest in the answer.

“I was attacked by werewolves. Gang kids, four of them. Morphed right in front of me. Look at these gouges!” The Author put down his manuscript and lifted up his tattered shirt to show streaks of torn skin welling with dark blood. “I barely made it out of that alley alive!”

The receptionist sighed. “I’m sorry, but we don’t accept genre fiction.”

SF Drabble #25 “While the Getting is Good”

Rocinante is broken down again. We set down on this rock, and she gasped and shuddered and quit. Haven’t been able to get main power since, and it’s four days now. Joe’s been working on it, but he’s having to machine new parts, and he’s still not entirely sure what’s wrong.

We’ve got plenty of oxygen and the protein cultures are healthy, so we’ve got some time. But if the old girl isn’t working by the time that Navy boat comes by, we’re going to abandon her here on the surface of Ganymede. Better than being marooned for a year.

Fantasy Drabble #3 “Planar Travel”

It’s a dream, clearly. It’s been a dream for quite some time now. Sometimes I think I must have had a stroke, or an aneurism, or something like that, something that damages the brain, and I’m in a coma. All of this is my brain spinning it’s wheels while a machine serves as my heart and lungs.

The elves took me in immediately. It’s as if they knew I was coming, were ready for me, sent for me. I’ve learned their language. The detail of it all is so clear, crisp…

Sometimes I think it can’t possibly be a dream.

Zombie Drabble #54 “Judgment Day”

You know what? I’m glad it happened. Somebody’s got to say it, and it might as well be me. I mean it too.

People earned it. With their misogynistic hip hop and their reality shows and their trendy clothes and their Starbucks twice a day and their synergistic marketing for comic book franchise action movies. They deserved it. They were zombies already.

Now, I don’t know what the world is going to look like when this is all over, but I’ll bet you anything, assuming I survive, that no one will care what club Lindsay Lohan went to last night.

SF Drabble #24 “Opilio Season”

I’m not a racist or anything, I just wish you could tell the Others apart from us.

I hired this greenhorn to work the deck. Good worker, good attitude, didn’t mind the cold, wet, long hours. Always clean shaven, but I didn’t really give that much thought.

On our way to set another string of pots, we saw a pair of humpbacks close aboard. The greenhorn looks at ‘em, strips off his vest, his coat, his pants, everything, and dives over the side. Changed into some sort of fish thing before he hit the water. Now I’m short a deckhand.