Zombie Drabble #104 “Lady In Waiting”

It’s been a year. I have supplies for another year, maybe even fourteen months if I really stretch things out, and that’s if I don’t go out to search for more canned food.

I don’t see the point, though: Oliver’s been gone four months now, and he was only supposed to be gone an hour. The Kroger is just down the block.

What am I staying alive to do? Who am I waiting for? I can’t repopulate the Earth all by myself. I could kill Oliver for leaving me alone, but I’m sure that’s been taken care of for me.

Zombie Drabble #103 “After Action Report”

We got the weapons off some dead army guys. National Guard, whatever.

It was a weird scene: there were normal zombie remains, there were dead soldiers who had clearly been partially eaten, and there were soldiers who had been bitten and then shot.

And then, there were the corpses of soldiers that had just been shot, no bite wounds that we could see. Most of the bodies we found in the area fell into that category.

The officers must have started shooting the wounded, and some of their men turned on them. It was probably one hell of a firefight.

Fantasy Drabble #53 “Troll”

He could see the children perfectly from his vantage point: the house and yard were not far from the edge of the forest, and it was surrounded only by a knee-high wall. Two girls and a boy, the boy still unsteady while walking erect.

He was not yet sure which were their bedroom windows. He would have to wait for nightfall, to see which lamps were doused first. It was possible the baby would sleep with the parents, but the older children…

When he was sure, he would steal his way in. They were healthy children; they would be delicious.

Fantasy Drabble #52 “The Road Not Taken”

Yanik the Wanderer first came to the village when I was only five. Young, handsome, he delighted all of us children with tales of terrible monsters and brave heroes. Later, he handed out sweets to distract us while he discussed business with our parents.

The second time he came to the village, I was a man just wed, with a newborn son of my own. Yanik did not look at all different.

Now, decades later, he is here again. He is still unchanged whereas I am old and wrinkled. Perhaps in my youth, I should have taken to the roads.

SF Drabble #85 “Bureaucracy”

“Please, you don’t understand…”

“You will not receive an exemption.”

“My homeworld is on the far side of your space, and I don’t have the fuel to go around…”

“We are aware of the location of your homeworld. Your fuel state is not within our area of responsibility. Unauthorized crossings of our border plane are.”

“If I…”

“If your ship crosses the border plane, it will be destroyed. Remain outside the indicated volume.”

“If your map is correct, and I go around, it will take longer than my projected lifespan!”

“Your projected lifespan is not within our area of responsibility…”

SF Drabble #84 “Interstellar Economics”

I woke to the same moon outside my window five mornings running, so I asked one of the Polixaci crew why the passenger ship was staying so long in one place.

“We need permission to go on to Ugol.”

“Permission?”

He clicked laughter. “We don’t control everything. There are politically independent volumes within our trading circuit. The Ugol are one such. We must buy permission.”

“Does it cost a lot?”

“What is ‘a lot’? The fees are significant.”

“Significant?'”

He clicked again. “At current exchange rates, we could buy Mars from your United Nations for less.”

“…It’s not for sale.”