Category Archives: Light

April 12, 2013

In Your Dreams, Inc.

People are weird. Their thoughts are weird and their dreams are even weirder. I should know—it’s my job.

Have you ever had one of those dreams that made perfect sense, even after you woke up? It was like someone was writing a movie and playing it out in your brain while you slept. It had production value. Of course, the next night, it’s usually back to some jumble of nonsense about teddy bears, an ominous-looking toaster, and your Grade 4 teacher driving a taxi.

Imagine you could dream those cool, complicated dream every night—chasing bad guys, flying around like Superman, and still waking up fresh as spring breeze? You can now, thanks to In Your Dreams, Inc. It’s popular, let me tell you. The guy who founded it is a multi-billionaire now. Not that I see much of that though—I’m just an extra.

Source

* * *

“Brad, here’s the script for the Harper drug-bust scenario.” Heather hands me a single sheet of paper.

“What is he this time, the drug lord or the cop?” I ask.

“Actually, he’s the briefcase. They carry him in, open him up, then test the drugs. When the cops show up, he’s thrown into the evidence locker for a while, then ends up as Exhibit B in the trial. That’s when he wakes up. Hey, I got you a speaking part this time.”

I look at the script and find my name. “‘I gotta go pee”? What kind of a line is that?”

Heather shrugs. “He wanted to throw a subliminal hint into the dream somewhere. He says he always wakes up with his bladder almost exploding and he wants to start waking up before that point. Don’t worry; everybody starts at the bottom. You do a couple ‘I gotta go pee’ gigs, then move on to ‘you got the drugs?’ or ‘the giant lemon bounced that way.’ Before you know it, you’re the guy explaining to the dreamer how he’s the only one who can save the planet. Baby steps, Brad.”

An hour later, I’ve gotten through makeup and am on the sound stage with the rest of the actors. Abraham Lincoln is the drug lord this time. I’ve worked on a few Sammy Harper dreams before and for some reason Abraham Lincoln always shows up somewhere. I was a giant Raggedy Andy in a tea party dream of his and sure enough, Lincoln was the one serving the tea.

“Places, everyone!” the director Kyle Dresden shouts. “Sammy Harper just fell asleep. We’re live in twenty minutes.”

We always do dreams live, while beaming them remotely into the dreamer’s brain. There is a huge screen set up at one end of the stage that shows us exactly what the dreamer is experiencing. That’s essential since dreamers rarely stick to the script, even ones they’ve helped write themselves. We always have to keep an eye on it while we’re acting.

In this scenario, I’m one of the drug dealers. I’ve got a bazooka—which is insane—but that’s Sammy Harper for you. Other drug dealers have AK-47s, elephant guns, and one has a tiger on a leash.

The blue “Dream On” light goes on and we advance towards the middle of the room. Abraham Lincoln is in front, holding the briefcase. The director signals the giant marshmallow Peeps to start jumping around in the background. The theme song to “Cheers” starts playing.

The actor playing Lincoln-as-a-drug-lord puts the briefcase on the table and opens it. The other gang leader samples the drugs inside. I look up at the dream screen and see that in the dream, the briefcase has grown wings and is flying around the room. I knew Sammy Harper couldn’t be content to just lie there as a briefcase and let everyone else have the action. The briefcase in the dream has now sprouted arms and is firing a Tommy gun at us.

This is where improv takes over. We all keep an eye on the screen to see where the briefcase is firing and when it gets near us, we fall back as if we’re shot. The customer is always right, after all.

The dream briefcase fires in my direction and I drop to the ground, writhing as if shot. I’m about to full-on die when I realize that I haven’t said my line yet. The first line of my career and the dreamer goes off script and kills me. Not this time. I let out a dying scream. “I gotta go pee!”

* * *

It’s 6am and I stumble through the door of my apartment and fall onto the bed without even undressing. I just want some nice black-screen sleep. I used to like my dreams, but now, I don’t want to remember a thing. It’s too much like work.

Source

13 Comments | tags: Abraham Lincoln, actor, crime, dreams, drugs, fiction, funny, job, quirky, science fiction, Superman | posted in Light

April 10, 2013

The Rust Queen – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

The Rust Queen

My favorite teacher was Miss Ferrous, but we just called her Rusty. She had a tattoo that said “Rust Queen” on her arm.

We once took a class trip to the junkyard. We shot rats with a shotgun and Rusty showed us how thermite could burn through an engine block. We collected all the cool-looking scraps and dragged them back to school, where Rusty showed us how to weld. I made a scrap-racer and named it The Rust Queen, after her.

Even today, it sits on my porch, a tribute to the best kindergarten teacher a boy could ever have.

57 Comments | tags: fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, junkyard, kindergarten, rust, teacher, teaching, thermite, welding | posted in Light

April 4, 2013

Gutter – 33-Word Flash-Fiction

By David Stewart

Eric Alagan has a weekly micro-fiction challenge on his blog, Written Words Never Die. The prompt is a single word, this week’s word being “Gutter”. I decided to give it a go, and even tried emulating his signature style of presentation.

I’m convinced they do this, by the way. I will give an unspecified reward to anyone obtaining photographic evidence.

7 Comments | tags: ants, Eric Alagan, fiction, flash fiction, gutter, micro fiction, quirky | posted in Light

March 30, 2013

Conversations with Obstinacy

By David Stewart

“I can destroy the whole world.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s true. If I close my eyes, the world just disappears.

“Only for you.”

“But if I close my eyes, there is no one else. They disappear too.”

“You can still hear them.”

“Not if I put my fingers in my ears.”

“I could spank you. You’d feel that.”

“Then I’d move to a desert island. It would be me and only me, in my own little universe.”

“Just go clean your room like I asked you.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“It would take you five minutes.”

“Too late, I closed my eyes. There is no room anymore.”

Source

8 Comments | tags: children, cleaning, conversation, fiction, flash fiction, funny, obstinacy, room | posted in Light

March 29, 2013

Motivational Drill Sergeant Meets His Wife

By David Stewart

My dad, the Motivational Drill Sergeant, is hard to get to know. Still, we have our moments, when we bond. Sometimes he’s not even shouting at me.

We were out in the backyard, building ferret traps. We don’t have ferrets in our area, but my dad likes to be prepared. I was feeling bored, so I asked, “Hey, Motivational Drill Sergeant, how did you meet Mom?” I asked this because my dad hates personal questions and I figured it would get a rise out of him. You get him on a good enough rise and he’ll start ranting, which is wicked fun to watch. He once ranted about taxes, automatic transmission, Assyrians, the undead, and Hannah Montana, all in the space of ten minutes.

“Are you saying, Boy, that I have never told you the account of how I met your mother?” He always phrased things in a shouty sort of way, but his tone was casual. He had just finished yelling at a senator for an hour and that always put him in a good mood.

“No, sir,” I said.

“It was before you were born,” he said, and paused. I considered this rather obvious information and waited for him to continue.

“Your mother was a political activist. She was into politics like a badger is into a termite mound: is wasn’t really her thing, but since she was there, she thought she might as well try to take down the whole thing.

“She would call up members of congress in the middle of the night and say, ‘It’s 2am, do you know where your constituents are?’ She wouldn’t hang up until they told her the location of all of them. Then she’d call up the constituents and tell them their members of congress were spying on them and that they’d better elect another one. She still does that sometimes, if she’s bored.”

“Were you a political activist too?” I asked him.

“Are you crazy, Boy?” he shouted. “I hate politics. No, I’d go to rallies and shout at the protesters: tell them to wake up and don’t be so angry all the time. Better ways to change things than walking around, waving a bunch of fruity signs. Then I’d shout at the police and tell them to stop oppressing citizens and standing in the way of progress.”

“So, you yelled at everyone?”

“They all needed a good dose of the Truth,” he said, with a small nod. He stapled the last piece of barbed wire to the ferret cage he was working on, hooked up the battery, and picked up another one.

So many people to yell at.

“Anyway, I was at a rally in Washington D.C when I saw her. She was pretty. I noticed that about her. So I went up to her and said, ‘You call that a sign? I’ve made better signs while I was passed out drunk on the side of the road. If you allow me, Ma’am, I will take you out to dinner and instruct you on how to make a proper sign.’

“She said, ‘You call that a pick-up line? I’ve worked in sewers that didn’t stink half as bad.’

“‘That’s disgraceful!’ I replied. ‘A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be working in a filthy sewer.’

“‘So now you’re telling me where I should work?’ she asked. ‘Just because you think I’m pretty?’

“‘I tell it how I see it, Ma’am,’ I said. ‘And you being pretty is all I know about you so far. I cannot ascertain more without further reconnaissance.’

“At that point, she hit me with her sign. ‘Listen up, you chauvinistic pig of a stuffed shirt,’ she yelled. ‘I will rip your crew cut from your head and use it to scrub my toilet if you don’t back off right now! If a miserable worm like yourself has the gall to insult a woman like me, I will feed you to the sharks!’

“‘Will you marry me?’ I asked her. She hit me with her sign again.

“‘We’ll see,’ she said. We were married six months later.”

“Is that true?” I asked him.

“Are you calling me a liar, Boy?” he shouted. Then his tone softened. “Go ask your mother.”

(Read more Motivational Drill Sergeant stories here)

12 Comments | tags: father, ferrets, fiction, funny, love, marriage, Motivational Drill Sergeant, quirky, wife | posted in Light

March 18, 2013

Motivational Drill Sergeant

By David Stewart

I don’t know my father’s name, but I think it’s Gary. Everyone calls him Motivational Drill Sergeant—even me. I don’t know when he got the name, since he’s never been in the Army—actually I’ve never known him to ever have a job. He just sits around the house, brushing his crew cut, playing solitaire, and waiting for someone to come. Then he yells at them for a while, and they give him money and go away.

I was home one afternoon when there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a one-legged frog sitting on the doormat.

Source

“Is this the house of the Motivational Drill Sergeant?” it asked.

“Yes,” I said, quite unfazed. I’ve seen stranger things show up at our door. “How did you knock on the door?”

“I waited until some Girl Scouts came selling cookies. They knocked but then they saw me and ran away. I’m not well-liked, you know.” It lowered its head.

I gave up trying to talk to people—or animals—who come to see my father. “You want me to carry you in?” I asked.

“No, no, I’ve got it,” the frog said and set about trying to struggle over the threshold. After fifteen minutes of waiting, I gave it a boost and it pretended not to notice.

“Motivational Drill Sergeant! Someone here to see you!” I yelled. My father immediately appeared in the door of his office. He had been listening and waiting for me to call him.

“I see, I see!” he said. “Boy, go get my shaving kit.” He always calls me Boy. I don’t mind; it was better than those two weeks last summer when he kept calling me Girl, or those weird three days when I was Puffy McPastry.

I went and got his shaving kit from the bathroom. My father has the words SUCK IT UP tattooed on his upper lip. Whenever someone comes to see him, he shaves off his mustache to make the point. I gave him the shaving kit and he marched back into the bathroom.

“Right!” he said several minutes later, striding out. The words SUCK IT UP stood out clearly. “What’s the matter with you, frog?”

“I—”

“And how did you lose that leg?” My father was slowly getting his yell up. It took him a few minutes after playing solitaire for several days.

“I went to Paris on vacation,” the frog said. “Somebody ate it.”

“You are the sorriest excuse for a frog I have ever seen!” my father bellowed. “I’ve seen better frogs at the zoo gift shop—those plastic hollow ones with the squeaker in their mouths that you buy your kid, to piss off your wife. If you were in a not-sucking race with one of those, it would beat you hands-down.”

“But I—” the frog began again.

“Shut your fly-hole! You think you’re special? You think that all it’s going to take is for some dame to kiss you and you’ll turn into a prince? You are not a prince! You’re nothing but a measly, one-legged frog who needs to grow up. Now get out there and be the best one-legged frog you can be!”

I thought he had gone too far. The frog was crying now. “Thank you, Motivational Drill Sergeant,” it said at last. “Thank you so much.” It gave my father $500 and then hopped away, falling over the threshold and out onto the front step.

“That’s right,” my father said, pointing to his upper lip. “Suck it up.” Then he went back to playing solitaire.

12 Comments | tags: fiction, frog, funny, Motivational Drill Sergeant, quirky, suck it up | posted in Light

March 13, 2013

A Lily Look-Alike’s Lament – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

This Friday Fictioneers story includes dark humor and white flowers. On a side note, I dare you to say the title five times fast.

A Lily Look-alike’s Lament

I’m making this video to say that I quit. It’s too hard. I came to this planet to make friends and have adventures, but everyone mistakes me for a type of local flora known as a lil-lee. I hate it when they stick their noses in my mouths, inhale deeply and say “ahhh”. I’ve always been ashamed of my body odor. They put me next to dead people too.

I’m going to throw myself out this window as soon as I can get . . . it . . . open.

I guess I’ll just wait for someone to throw me away.

Too bad I’m immortal.

63 Comments | tags: aliens, dark humor, fantasy, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, lily, quirky, science fiction, suicide | posted in Light

February 27, 2013

Ichiban the Great – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

It’s time for another Friday Fictioneers. I asked my wife what genre to write and she said, “romance”. So this is about as close as I get to romance. This story is dedicated to her.

Ichiban The Great

I told my wife I married her for her car. She laughed and called me an idiot.

Ichiban, as we called it, was dirty-diaper brown and shivered like a Floridian doing the Iditarod if you got it over 70 MPH. We lost the front bumper to a deer; the back one to a malicious fire hydrant. The hubcaps all took their leave at high speeds on various country highways.

Finally, we lost the roof to a firefighter trainee who Jaws-Of-Lifed it off, mistaking ours for the practice car. We just laughed and kissed. We had our convertible, top permanently down.

87 Comments | tags: accident, car, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, ichiban, jaws of life, junk, quirky, wife | posted in Light

February 14, 2013

Recollections of an Elderly Dragon

By David Stewart

A few days ago, I sat down for a fireside chat with octocentarian dragon, Hargog the Destroyer. It wasn’t intended as a fireside chat, but he inadvertently set part of the coffee shop on fire. He can still knock them out when he wants to!

Interviewer: Thank you for meeting with me. It must be harder to get around these days. Congratulations on passing your 800^th birthday, by the way.

Hargog: Thank you. I try to stay active. I won’t win any races with jet planes, but I try to go out in the countryside twice a month at least. Just for some light ravaging. The Society helps me a lot when I don’t feel up to it.

I: The Society?

H: The Society for the Preservation Of Reptilian Kings, or SPORK for short. They bring me food every week: a couple of sheep, maybe a cow.

I: No maidens?

H: Come on, that’s not fair. No one can be blamed for the way they were raised, and that was just the culture back then. I swore off maidens a long time ago. It was a simpler time back then, but I know—the world changes.

I: Back in 1543, Yorker Magazine referred to you as “the Scourge of the Midlands” and “the Defiler of Nations.” Have your feelings on those titles changed at all?

H: Well, “Defiler of Nations” is a bit of a hyperbole. They weren’t that clean when I got there anyway, am I right? “Scourge of the Midlands” though—that’s a funny story. I was cruising around with my friend Grimlock, a silver drake, and we were comparing our tail snaps. We had just eaten a whole tavern and were preeettty tipsy. So Grimlock bets me a mountain of gold I can’t destroy the cottage up ahead with one whip of my tail. Bang! I nailed it, first time. So then he says “double or nothing on the castle on the hill.” We did that all night. It messed up the area pretty bad.

Courtesy of http://www.fanpop.com

I: I’m sorry to hear your father passed away 150 years ago. How was your relationship with him?

H: Well, he was a gold drake, and you know gold drakes. Always gotta be the best. He didn’t have time for a little green drake like me, what with plundering the whole known world and hoarding their treasures. He was a great one for hoarding and it’s not the sort of hobby a father and son can share. I moved out when I was 160 and we didn’t really didn’t talk after that. He didn’t even call when I destroyed Constantinople and ate ten thousand of its residents. He wasn’t really supportive that way.

I: Any regrets?

H: Well, no life is perfect, I suppose. I would have liked to see more of the world. I was born in Scotland and I used to travel all over Europe in my youth. I could have gone further—I even got an invitation from a lithe little Chinese dragon who asked me to come and hang out on top of her mystic mountain for a few centuries. But I was in kind of a ravage-plunder-hoard rut at the time. I’ve thought about her a lot in the last half millennium though. I think she finally went under the sea to hang out with the Dragon King.

I: What would you say your proudest moment was?

H: About 250 years ago, a fire demon woke up and started burning half of Poland—you probably heard about it. Anyway, I went to take care of him. It wasn’t just protecting the dragon monopoly on mayhem either—this thing was burning down whole towns and cities. I mean, where’s the ecology, right? I fought that thing for a month, at least. They can’t die—they’re immortal—but eventually he gave up and I banished him to Greenland to cool him off a a bit and think about what he’d done. I hear he’s posing as a Wendigo up there now, but at least he’s not hurting anyone.

I: So, any plans for the future?

H: I don’t know. After you pass 800, you start to slow down a little. I guess I’ll just try to stay active and not destroy the neighborhood when I go out to check the mail. I got a pamphlet for a tour that visits the sunken city of R’lyeh. Sounds like fun. We’ll see.

I: Thank you again for meeting with me, Hargog the Destroyer. It’s been a pleasure.

H: No problem. I appreciate that people still have some interest in me. You’d better leave first. I’d hate to step on you on the way out.

Found at dragonwallpapers10.net

* * * * *

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone. Here’s a picture my wife sent me today. She made it here, if you want to check it out. So, I pass it on to you as well. Have a great day.

4 Comments | tags: dragon, fantasy, fiction, interview, old age, quirky, reminiscences | posted in Light

February 13, 2013

The Wrong Tourist – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for choosing my picture for this week’s Friday Fictioneers. This was taken in Jeonju, South Korea. Pungnammun, the historic south gate of the city is in the background.

He nodded when I pointed to the gate and proffered my camera. I walked towards it . . . and turned to see him take off running.

He picked the wrong tourist.

I screamed like a berserker and tore after him. He was almost at the road, a patch of wet cement between us.

That Nikon was two weeks old.

I made a flying leap and grabbed his ankle, just before crashing into wet goo. He flailed frantically but I death-gripped him ten minutes til the cops came.

We made the evening news.

I hear they put up a statue to commemorate it.