Little Girl Blue

ou have a choice,” Rebecca growled, shoving the laser pistol firmly into Mr. Bennett’s crotch. “You get in the freezer with the others, or I burn off your dick.”

“B-but why?” he whimpered. “You’ve always been such a loyal employee… Why are you doing this?”

“Because you’ve got something I need!” she said. “Now move!”

“I guess I never really knew you at all.” Frightened, Mr. Bennett stepped into the large, walk-in freezer. His other employees were already inside, huddled tightly together for warmth. Rebecca slammed the door, melting the door handle with a blast from her laser pistol. She ran down the hall to the warehouse, her long hair trailing behind her like red streamers on a child’s bicycle.

Bennett’s Imports specialized in anything and everything unusual. The freezer was filled with immense, lab-grown steaks, cloned from preserved dinosaur DNA. But it was the warehouse that held the really rare finds. Metal from the Roswell UFO crash. Eggs from the Loch Ness Monster. Enough pieces of the True Cross to build an ark. And there, at the far end of the warehouse, the real prize: the blue girl.

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The Last Thing You Can Lose

ick McKinney’s black van rolled slowly down Eleventh Street, coming to a stop about six blocks from his destination. It had taken almost thirteen hours of driving to get here, in San Francisco, from his home in Seattle. It was a very long drive, but it would be worth it. If everything went well, he would have a quarter of a million dollars by the weekend.

Rick climbed out of the van and started walking. Silhouetted against the setting sun was the Westinghouse Building, a fifty-story, eight-hour-a-day prison for the middleclass. The top six floors were home to the Goddard Corporation, a medical research outfit. They were developing some startling new uses for stem cells. It would be several weeks before they went to the patent office with their discoveries. Until then, everything was up for grabs. That is, if you could get inside.

He stopped a block away, out of range of the Westinghouse security cameras. He leaned against a telephone poll and waited for it to get dark. He strolled down an alley and took off all his clothes.

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Invasion of The Borings

f you’re going to get him back,” Captain Colossus said, “you’re going to need forty-three cereal box tops.”

Ronnie was horrified; that was nearly his entire collection! “That can’t be right. Check again.”

Captain Colossus, a ten-inch-tall space robot, checked again. It took him some time to reenter the numbers in the calculator. He could hold a laser gun and do a karate chop, but he just didn’t have the manual dexterity for this sort of thing. With a mighty heave, he lifted the calculator so Ronnie could see. “I’m afraid it still comes out forty-three. …And it gets worse. Shipping and handling for the magic kit will empty your piggy bank.”

Ronnie chewed a fingertip and considered his plan. There was no telling exactly what he would need. If he didn’t have exactly the right tools, his best friend could be gone forever. “Let’s do it.”

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In My Blood

he fish was golden brown, long and slender, like a loaf of French bread with eyes. Relaxing for a moment, the fish let the water carry it downstream. If the fish had been slightly more intelligent, it might have avoided the pulsating, green mass of particles floating in the water. But it didn’t. It wasn’t even smart by fish standards. The particles rushed at the fish, forcing themselves in its mouth and gills. Within moments, the parasite overwhelmed its central nervous system.

A sound came from the sky, something like a thousand florescent lights buzzing at once. The fish gaped in awe at the enormous, silver wedge floating above the river.

Hello! What’s your name?

The ship let down its net, stripping the river of fish. Like a feather caught in the wind, it floated gently back into the sky and began the journey back to earth.

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The Gaping Void

he nurse pushed Catrina Holdaway’s wheelchair slowly out the door. Her husband, Paul, lifted her gently out of the chair and eased her into their tiny, steel blue car.

“How are you feeling, Cat?” he asked. Cat shifted in her seat and moaned. “Sorry,” Paul said regretfully. “Stupid question. How should you feel, after all you went through? Well, don’t worry. We’ll stop at the pharmacy on the way home. The doctor prescribed some painkillers and something to help you sleep. In a few more days, you’ll be just fine. Until then, I’ll stay home from work and help you out. Whatever you need. Just get better, OK?”

“Ugh.” Cat closed her eyes, in too much pain to speak.

Three weeks later, Paul and Cat sat in their living room, watching the news. Their small, black projection unit buzzed quietly. It was an older model that couldn’t create a hologram much wider than six feet.

The image of a bubbly, redheaded reporter was describing the aftermath of an earthquake. She was new to television, and hadn’t learned to act properly upset by natural disasters. “And in other news,” she said, “A local woman has received the world’s first wholly artificial digestive system.”

“Do you want to hear this?” Paul asked his wife. “I could turn it off…”

“No, leave it on. I want to see what they say about me.”

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Frozen

ears later, he still thought about her every day. Not about the conversations they had, or the feel of her skin, or even the afternoon in the library, alone and reading poetry. One moment overwhelmed all the others. One instant, one image, as still and as permanent as a mountain. Winter, late at night. He was leaving the cafeteria, walking back to his dorm room, and he noticed her standing across the street. She was wearing a fuzzy, white jacket and earrings like ornaments from a tiny Christmas tree. She was standing under the streetlight, smiling up at the falling snow. The memory stayed with him, long after he had forgotten everything else. The conversations, how they met, even her name was lost to time and decay. But the image of her, laughing under that streetlight, dancing in the falling snow, was engraved in his memory forever.

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Building Einstein-Rosen bridges and other dangerous things to do in your garage

n those days, I lived near these farmer’s fields. There was a chicken hawk that lived in the area. I saw him early most mornings, circling lazily in the sky. I loved to watch it; it just seemed so peaceful, beautiful, just hanging up there.

One winter, after the first big snowfall, I went out into my back yard to get the shovel. Somehow, back in the spring, it had found its way to the tool shed. Trudging through the knee-deep snow, I came across some white feathers on the ground. The chicken hawk was sitting up in my half-dead oak tree. It had killed a sparrow, and it was ripping out its feathers, one by one. Finally, the sparrow’s belly was bare. I watched, fascinated, as the chicken hawk devour the sparrow’s insides. It was ugly, but I couldn’t look away. To this day, I associate the images of the hawk, both beautiful and grotesque, with Selina. But then, I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Arthur’s Rewind

he moon rose high over the Nevada desert. The light danced across the water in an enormous swimming pool shaped like Texas. Beyond the pool were three tennis courts and a twelve car garage. Past the garage was a four-story guesthouse. Past the guesthouse was a storage building containing three boats and a small airplane. To the right of the guesthouse was the simply colossal main house, the home of one of the world’s richest men.

Inside the house, scattered among the twenty bathrooms and thirty-five bedrooms, were a bowling alley, a sixty-seat movie theater, a fully equipped gym and sauna, and a large, double staircase. Up the staircase was the master bedroom, and in the bed was Arthur Westinghouse. Dying.

Alone in the dark, Arthur talked to himself. “Well, Arthur, it’s been a good ride. Seventy years of the best that life has to offer, and you didn’t have to work for one damn cent. And now, cancer. I wonder if it will end this way the next time?”

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Art and Artifice

ictor Langret graduated from highschool, signed a few yearbooks, wished his friends a good summer, and went home to kill himself. He spent an hour struggling with a length of rope before he realized he had no idea how to tie a hangman’s noose. After a quick trip to the library for a book on knots, he sat on his bed, testing his handiwork.

“This looks like it will hold me,” he thought. “Now I just… Shit. How am I supposed to hang myself without any damn rafters?”

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A Kind of Magnet

Whirrrrrrr-thunk!

Whirrrrrrr-thunk!

The clock flashed 4:00 AM. After two hours, the sound still hadn’t stopped. “What the hell is he building in there? Why now?” Dustin Cole shoved his head under his pillow, but he could still hear the grinding, crashing noise coming from the house next door. “Damn that man. I think my baseball bat and I need to have a talk with Mr… what the hell is his name?”

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