Zombie Drabble #172 “Naomi”

She wouldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t blame her; no six-year-old should have to watch their next-door neighbor be ripped to pieces and eaten by a mob of zombies, while her father desperately tried to get the minivan started.

She was still crying when we got to the farm to pick up her grandparents. She was still crying when we got to grandpa’s cabin in the hills to hole up.

We tried comforting her, her mother held her, told her everything would be all right, it was no use. All she would say between sobs was, “But it was my Birthday!”

Zombie Drabble #171 “Cuckold”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anything you say, Roger. Fuck off,” she said through the door.

“Come on, Liz, open the door, they’re coming…”

“Get lost. Why don’t you hide from the zombies at that Puerto Rican whore’s apartment?”

“She… they got her, she’s dead. Please, Lizzy, I’m trying to save you. I’ve got the Range Rover and a shotgun.”

“Oh, fine. So let me get this straight: zombies ate the slut you were cheating on me with and now that she’s dead you want me back? Not even if you were the last man on Earth, Roger.”

Fantasy Drabble #116 “A Higher Duty”

Roscoe Jr. pushed his way through the flap and into the tent. From within the smoke and the stench, the manager regarded him with cold disinterest.

“I’m here to join up.”

“This ain’t the army kid. Can you do anything interesting?”

“I read minds.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the trick? Plant in the audience? Our last guy…”

“No, i mean: I read minds.”

The manager said flatly, “Can you read mine?”

Roscoe closed his eyes. When he made contact, he knew it was already too late, that when he opened his eyes he’d be looking down the barrel of a revolver.

Fantasy Drabble #115 “Love At First Sight”

She was, apparently, without even a reasonable instinct for fear. Midz-Aset watched her looking around, her eyes sparkling with torchlight reflecting from his vast and precious hoard. When she was closer than a living human had been to him in centuries, he whispered, “Why do you disturb my slumber, child?”

She was still conspicuously unconcerned. “I am Irie, daughter of the King.”

“The Crown Princess? Such a well-bred snack. But why have you come here?”

“Curiosity. My father fears you.”

Midz-Aset grinned. “He would be fool not to.”

“I do not fear you.” She reached out slowly, touched his nose.

Fantasy Drabble #114 “Indignity”

He was powerful, once. Kings would come to him on bended knee to prosper their wars. He would bless their heads, their armor, their swords, even their mounts, before they rode off to victory. Those that failed never asked for a refund. It was understood: if a Prince failed even given every advantage, he wasn’t meant to win.

Now it was the wizard who was brought low. He hadn’t been paid to cast a war spell in over a century. Now he sat in a basement shop waiting for superstitious slackers to pay him a pittance to bless their guitars.

Fantasy Drabble #113 “No Matter What I Do, I’m Still Hungry For You”

As she climbed up into the rig, he asked, “So where you headed, miss?”

“Wherever. Away from here.” She settled in, not at all nervous. Clearly she’d hitched before.

He’d heard that song before, knew the words by heart. “Things at home not going well?”

“It’s just hard. There’s never enough food.”

Earl nodded. “I hear that. Had to tighten my belt a time or two. Though,” he patted his belly and laughed, “not lately.”

She smiled, a wide-mouthed smile that showed her teeth: sharp, pointed, animal-like. “That’s all right. I like a man with some meat on his bones.”

Zombie Drabble #170 “Come Fly With Me”

“Sir?” She knocked again at the plastic door. “Sir? The seatbelt light is on, sir.”

“How long has he been in there?” one of the junior attendants whispered.

She whispered back, “An hour. Maybe more.” Then, louder, “Sir? Sir… I know you’re not feeling well, but you really can’t be in the lavatory when we land.”

There was no answer. “Should I get the Air Marshall?”

“Don’t bother. I saw him when he went in: he could barely stand up.”

“You don’t…” the junior started, then paused before completing the thought. “You don’t think he died in there, do you?”

Zombie Drabble #169 “She’s A Beauty”

Marla’s famous. She’s the only person any of us have ever heard about that got bit and lived. Oh, she got sick, she got real sick, just like everybody else. She sweated and turned white and went into that coma, you know. And nobody had ever come out of that alive, before Marla.

It’s because of Marla that we wait for the infection to take it’s course. Time was, they’d just put someone down as soon as they went into the coma. Now, we wait. Just in case. You never know. Oh, we tie ‘em real good. We’re not stupid.

Fantasy Drabble #112 “Your Cheatin’ Heart”

“Can I come in?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We could watch a video.”

“I’m tired.”

“Please? I used to climb up and come in your window all the time, remember? Come on, let me in.”

“The window’s open, Perry. You never used to wait until I invited you. I wonder why you can’t come in all by yourself.”

“I’m being respectful.”

“Sure you are. Hey, what’s with the scarf? And how was your date Saturday night with that gothy college girl, what was her name? The one you told Bruce you were sure would put out? How’d that go? Asshole.”

Fantasy Drabble #111 “Indoctrination”

He didn’t want to go to the well to get the water, but his mother insisted. She didn’t understand why he was scared. It was his job, he was old enough now. And so he walked out into the dark with the bucket.

Sure enough, up came the whisper from deep in the well. “Ion. Ion? Are you there?”

“No!” he cried, and clutched the bucket to his chest.

“Ion. Is it done yet? Are they dead?”

“No! I won’t do it!”

“Ion, make it easy for yourself: just poison the water. Here, lower the bucket and you’re halfway done.”

SF Drabble #163 “No Trespassing”

“So?”

“There’s a road grid, all right. Everything’s grown over, but it’s not all that dense. The road surface looks like interlocking squares of some kind of thick rubber. They could probably pull it up and relay it at will. Greene’s busy trying to reverse-engineer what the machine they used to move it would’ve looked like. Anyway, wherever the roads look like they’re going to converge, there’s a crater. No radiation though. Probably kinetic energy weapons… you know: rocks.”

“What?”

“Captain, I don’t think we’re the first to try to build a colony here. Only, somebody didn’t like the idea.”

SF Drabble #162 “Public Relations”

Okay, I know there are a lot of expectations vis-a-vis the whole ‘alien invasion’ thing, and I know that there’s a lot of anxiety, but it’s my job to reassure you that nobody’s going to be eating anybody, or enslaving anybody, or really anything like that. We’d prefer you to think of this whole thing more like a change of landlords. See, the bits of this planet you use are the bits that don’t interest us all that much; we’re going to be staying mostly to the deep water. So what say we try to get along, how about it?

Zombie Drabble #168 “True Romance”

When they were done, she rolled off him, gasping, laughing. “Fucking awesome.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.” She lit a cigarette, took a long drag, treasuring the warm heavy feeling in her lungs. “Want a hit? Don’t hotbox it.”

He took a drag, far more casually, handed it back. “You were never interested in me before. Why now? Because I saved you?”

“Ricky saved me.”

“I helped.”

“You sure did. But that’s not why, babe.”

“Then why?”

She drank in another hit from the cigarette, and answered, “Guess there’s just no reason not to now.”

“Have you fucked Ricky?”

“Please! He’s, like, gross.”

Zombie Drabble #167 “Nobody Likes A Quitter”

There were four of them, hanging from beams in the barn: the farmer; his wife; a second man, maybe a grown son or a farmhand; and a pre-teen girl, probably a daughter. With the dust in the air and the light coming in the tableau had an otherworldly look to it. The smell, however, was real enough.

He wouldn’t stay here, tonight. He’d search the house, but then he’d leave. Too much bad karma. All over the world people who desperately wanted to live were dying. He didn’t want to be reminded there were those willing to just give up.