Stories by Jeffrey

  Joe woke up on the ground of a strange planet. The dirt under him was green, the sky was red, and the mountains in the distance appeared to be covered with black snow. He couldn’t really think about that. He had a pain in his stomach. He would have told the doctor on his spaceship that it was a nine out ten. Burning, stabbing, and radiating to the rest of his body. He tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but his pain level went to an eleven, so he collapsed back to the ground. The red of his blood mixing with the green of the ground made such an ugly color. He could smell his burned flesh. He heard some birds circling above him. Probably the local version of buzzards, he thought. He thought about his life, as you were supposed to do as you lay dying. He remembered his dad talking about being shot in WW3. He had given Joe the bullet, even putting it on a chain. That he now wore around his neck. He yanked it off and looked at it. He put it in his mouth and bit down. Doing ...

Joey couldn’t believe his luck. He got both things that he wanted on the December gift-giving day holiday. A dragon and a droid! His parents must really love him, whoever they were. He couldn’t wait to show them off to his friends at school, once the two-week snow school break ended. He should have been able to show them on the 3-D vid, but the stupid Norfolk power grid was down. Again. The back up solar powered battery could not generate enough power. It had just enough to keep the house warm and the food cold, until he needed to heat it up, too. He couldn’t do much with the droid, because the stupid thing needed to charge. But he could play with the dragon. He had had robo-pets before, but this would be his first live pet. The dragon made some noises in its cage. “Shit,” he thought. “What could that mean? Was it hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Did it need to go for a walk?” He looked around at all the packaging and wrapping paper he had thrown around that morning. “Didn’t it come wit...

  I can’t believe he would do that to me. Haven’t I been with him for forty years? Anything he wanted I did. Even that nasty stuff that I didn’t like. Like cleaning the toilets. Two beautiful children. And the other one that just looks okay. Now that they’re out of the house, he doesn’t need me anymore? Fuck him! No. Wait. I already stopped doing that. You know what? I’m still attractive. I’ll just find someone else. It’s his loss. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. For that matter, I don’t need a man. I can take care of myself. I’ll be free. Free to do whatever I want. But what do I want? I’ve been taking care of him and the kids for so long. What do I want? And who am I, if no longer a wife and mother? Well, I’m still a mother. Too bad all my children are gay. I won’t have any grandchildren. Maybe one of them will adopt. What did I want to do when I was a child? An astronaut? A fireman? A fashion model? I think those options are out. Maybe a teacher, or a nurse. After...

  Depression By Ironies Morse Jeff (A parody of “Ironic” by Alanis Morrisette)   An old man was very sick. He had lung cancer with a lot of pain. Living longer he could not entertain. He took an overdose. He went real quick.   [refrain] So, wasn’t that depression? Where’s the shrink?   [chorus] It’s your brain that just isn’t right. Take my advice: take your meds at night. There’s no free ride. You just have to fight. And do some work on your triggers.   Mr. Big Loser kept people at bay. He bought a shotgun and gave his things away. He wanted to end his life to stop the pain. And as the gun went off He thought, “Wait! Am I insane?”   [refrain] [chorus] [bridge] Well, grief has a cruel way of never leaving you. When you think it’s getting better, but it’s actually getting worse. And it has a nasty way of making you sad When you think that it has all improved But you end up a basket case. ...

  The sun was starting to set over the water to the west. I had hoped that I would be able to catch another wave, but these waves were too gnarly to ride in the dark. I hauled my board over to my woodie and strapped it on the roof. As I finished, I noticed a young woman standing nearby. She was wearing one of those new swimsuits called a bikini, which didn’t cover much. Stringy blonde hair outlined her oval face, with a small nose and mouth and two beautiful blue eyes. She might be just a girl, maybe 16, the same age that my daughter would’ve been.               She approached me cautiously. “I was watching you out there, Mister. You’re pretty good. Much better than the high school boys.”               I squinted at her. “I started surfing before they were even born.”

  It’s tough having magic powers nowadays. Even here in England. Even under the rule of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. In fact, it may be worse now than it ever was. If she’s beheading Catholics, I’m sure she would be fine throwing some witches into the pile. We used to tell stories of Merlin and King Arthur, but we’d best not tell those stories now. I felt hopeless for the longest time, but then I heard of a place called Stonehenge, where it was said, in hushed tones, some witches might be hiding out. Until I got there, I had to struggle to keep my magic under control.

  I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. She tripped while we were hiking one day and fell to the ground. When I helped her back up, the top of her forearm was on the ground, revealing the wires and electrical circuits underneath. I looked at the material on the ground, then her arm, her face. Her skin turned red. I stared for a moment, now wondering how a machine could do that. Her mouth turned up into an awkward smile. “Lucy! What the heck!” She covered her forearm with her other hand. “You were not supposed to see that.” Her Russian accent sounded a little more noticeable. She wriggled out of my grasp and bent to retrieve her fallen part. My legs buckled, and I fell to my knees. “Married almost 10 years! Were you ever going to tell me?” With a few clicks, she reattached the part, then looked at me, now with some concern. “I couldn’t tell you. We’re not allowed to tell anyone.” I gazed up at her. She was still as beautiful as the day she got of...

  How could I take over the world? I’m just a little kid. And why would I want to do that? The world right now is a horrible place. Well, when I take over the world, I’ll get rid of all the stupid people. They should just be killed. That alone would decrease the population enough that the rest of us could survive.   As far as curing poverty, just kill all the poor people, especially the unemployed. I guess we don’t need them. Disease? If you get sick, just die, thank you very much. So, clearly, I am the right person for the job. I’ll just have to kill all the people who say, “You can’t do that!”

  It was lonely being a shapeshifter. I hung out with the humans, but I couldn’t be intimate with them. Of course, there could be other shapeshifters around, but how could we find each other? If there were any others, they would be trying to blend in just like me. Who knew what would happen if someone found out? It was only a few years ago that they burned witches. Would they do the same to me? Otherwise, it wasn’t a bad life. Cutting down wheat during the day. Having a beer with the other guys before literally hitting the hay. They called me witty and intelligent. That meant nothing to me. After all, I was a professor of philosophy on my home world. Or, I had been. Before the revolution.

  I couldn’t believe it when my name was called at the annual meeting. I had never won anything before. Now I was going to go on a trip to some unknown place and even be on T.V. The others in the group seemed happy, but it didn’t seem that they were happy for me so much as happy that they had not been chosen. Maybe there was something about this adventure that I didn’t know about. I had only been there a week, after getting sent forward in time a hundred years. There were a lot of things about my new present that were different than my old present, but one interesting thing was that it appeared that technology hadn’t really made any advances. In fact, this time seemed more primitive than mine. And the level of poverty seemed much more than it had been a hundred years ago. I mean, people starved in my time, but only if they left their domes for too long. Eventually, I learned that the whole thing was a contest, where the last one living won the game. The people in my town bega...

  When Bob went to sleep that night, he didn’t realize that his life would be “flipped-turned upside down” as the Fresh Prince described it. It all started when his cell phone rang, waking him from a dream in which he was swimming in a pool of silver coins. As he rolled over to get his phone, he caught a glimpse of the clock. 12:01 am! Who could be calling me at this hour? He thought. He picked up his phone and pressed the answer button. “Hello?” His voice sounded as if acid had been poured on his vocal cords while he was asleep, which, as it happened, it had. The voice on the other end sounded almost as bad, except it was female. “Bob?” He swung his legs off the bed and sat up. “Sherry? What’s wrong?” He could hear her crying on the other end. “There’s a stray dog walking around outside the house, howling!” Bob stood up. “But you’re safe? Inside the house?” She sighed. “Yes, but it’s scary! It’s the biggest dog I’ve ever seen! With huge teeth and paws!” Bob sat back ...