Category Archives: Uncategorized

February 11, 2016

Daffodil Steaks

By David Stewart

Frankie’s makes the best daffodil steaks. I go down there Sundays and get a 16-ouncer.

“That’s murder, you know,” a guy nearby said as I finished my meal, wiping canary-colored juice from my lips.

“Hey, I’m eating here.”

“They have feelings. All flowers do. I hear them cry at night, mourning their lost brothers.”

Wordlessly I got up and paid by retinal scan, winking to add a tip.

As I drove home past fields of towering daffodils, I rolled down my window. Maybe it was the wind, but I thought I heard weeping.

I rolled the window quickly back up.

43 Comments | tags: daffodil, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, genetic engineering, science-fiction, steak, weird | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized

February 6, 2016

Ralph Owl and Eleanor “Pussy-cat” McGrint set sail in a beautiful pea-green 80-foot yacht. They left from Dover because that’s where Ralph’s investment firm was based and he needed to catch up on emails before they left.

“Hey El, where’s the honey?” Ralph called from the yacht’s kitchen. It was an 80-foot yacht so of course Eleanor didn’t hear him. He found her on deck. “Where’s the honey, El?”

“Who cares about honey?”

“We’re on this stupid boat for a year and a day,” Ralph said. “You really want to spend the whole trip with no honey?”

“Why are we starting off arguing about bleeding honey?” Eleanor shouted. She threw a fiver at him. “Get some flown in.”

That night in the Channel, the stars were out in a beautiful panoply of natural wonder, the universe on display above them. Ralph got out his guitar and started to play.

“I’ve got a headache. I’m going to bed,” Eleanor said. Ralph punched the railing in frustration and threw the guitar overboard.

After a while, Ralph went to the intercom and entered in the code for the bedroom. “Why are you so unhappy? I’ve bought you everything you could ever want?”

There was no answer.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a while. “I’m not trying to be a jerk. I love you. Really.”

A minute later, Eleanor stepped out on deck. She was wearing a white dress that glowed in the moonlight. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “Start again?”

He went to her and they danced.

They danced by the light of the moon.

The Original Inspiration

35 Comments | tags: 1%, Alastair's Photo Fiction, Dover, fiction, flash fiction, Owl and the Pussycat, yacht | posted in Light, Uncategorized

February 5, 2016

Couching Your Bets

By David Stewart

The inspiration for this story.

Source

Couching Your Bets

“Hi, I’m looking for a divan,” I told the receptionist at the casino.

“I can have him paged,” she said, slightly uncertainly.

“It’s not a he, it’s an it,” I said. She looked blank. “How about a Chesterfield? A futon?”

“Are . . . they guests here?” she asked, taking a shot, like a drunk sniper on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

“They’re pieces of furniture,” I said. “My furniture, in fact.” I was struggling to keep the conversation afloat in the tar-like morass of her incomprehension. “They rebelled and came here to Vegas.”

The receptionist was almost audibly praying for me to go away so I left her desk and wandered further into the casino. There were high stools at the slots, easy chairs in the lounge, and long, wooden benches outside for the smokers. But no couches.

“It was all because of the slip covers,” I shouted at a floor attendant five minutes later over the brassy jangle of the slot machines. I had explained my search and he was keeping up better than the receptionist had. “They hate slip covers, you see. They say they like to breathe.”

“They say?”

“Well, not really, but they left a note,” I said. “The futon wrote it, since of course the Chesterfield’s writing is crap. The divan was apparently feeling lucky, and you know how divans are.” The attendant nodded and chuckled knowingly in a way that made me think he wasn’t paying the least amount of attention.

“Have you seen them?” I asked.

He actually seemed to think for a moment. “Did you have a chaise lounge? Because I saw a red chaise lounge come through here a couple hours ago. It blew about ten grand in twenty minutes.”

“I’ve never had a chaise lounge,” I said, thinking that I’d also never had ten grand.

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” he said.

I wandered the Strip for hours, showing pictures and asking people. Finally, a cop said he’d seen some pieces of furniture go into a wedding chapel. I went in to find the shocking news, memorialized by a Polaroid picture tacked to the Just Married! bulletin board: my futon had just gotten married to a loveseat.

“Their cushions reeked of bourbon,” the clerk said. “I’ve never seen sofas so soused since that Saturnalia in Sears.”

I left in a rage and spent the rest of the night wandering around getting more and more desperate. Finally, as dawn was bleeding through the neon noon, I found the whole collection in an alley behind a strip club.

“Come with me right now or I’m going to IKEA,” I said, my voice as calm and steady as an executioner’s sword. They came quietly.

When I got home I spent a fortune getting them clean. I also found that the loveseat had tagged along, so I put it in the den by itself. The futon started to look forlorn, so I stuck them together, even though it messed up the layout of the room.

It wasn’t until I found $45,000 in casino chips in the cushions of the Chesterfield that things started to look up. Also, a few months later I went into the den to find several brand new ottomans ranged around the room, so that was a bonus too.

8 Comments | tags: casino, Chesterfield, couch, divan, fiction, funny, futon, gambling, humor, Las Vegas, loveseat | posted in Light, Uncategorized

February 3, 2016

The Marsh Garden Thief

By David Stewart

Pat stepped outside and saw a figure yanking up handfuls of rushes from the marsh garden.

“Those’re mine, you know.”

The figure whirled. “I’m hungry, okay?”

“How about some real food?”

“Sure.”

“I’m Pat.”

“Shannon.”

They walked to the house. The supper smells greeted them at the door like a spouse’s kiss.

They ate in silence, Shannon wolfing down the food.

“Do you have a place to stay?” Pat asked.

“No.”

“You can stay here.”

“You got an extra bed?”

“I’ll take the floor.”

Shannon’s face was night sky of distrust, but still a tiny star of hope shone through.

34 Comments | tags: fiction, Friday Fictioneers, garden, hospitality, marsh, marsh garden, thief | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized

February 2, 2016

I Just Caucused in Iowa

By David Stewart

If you’re an American, you’re probably sick of hearing about the Iowa caucuses already, and if you’re not American, you might have some idea of what is going on. It is the very first step in that long, tortuous road to electing the American president, and it’s also somewhat of a quadrennial sideshow.

Iowa-Dem-Caucus-Logo_F

As a rule, I’m not particularly active in politics. Actually, I have only voted twice in my life: once in Canada and once in the United States and I have always been proudly independent. But when you are in Iowa in an election year, you got to join in on the fun. So last night I attended my very first caucus.

I went to the Democratic one in order to caucus for Bernie Sanders. I don’t usually talk about politics because it can be so divisive so if you’re not a Bernie fan, let’s stay friends. Still, even though I don’t agree with him 100% on everything, I agree with his ideas a lot more than the other candidates, he is very intelligent, and he really cares about people.

Anyway, back to last night. Here’s what happened. The doors closed at 7:00, so I went up to the campus around 6:30 and filled out the paperwork. Our township was the biggest of the ones there, so they put us in our own room and we had our own caucus. The first thing they did was to elect a permanent chair and secretary for the local political party. Not many people wanted to do it, but they found a couple people to do it. Then it was time for the main event.

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The first thing they did was count the people in the room. This is important since if any candidate has less than 15% support in a caucus, they are not considered viable. There were 86 people there so every candidate needed 13 people to be viable. Then we all got up and walked to one corner: one for Hillary Clinton, one for Bernie Sanders, one for Martin O’Malley, and one for undecided.

As it turns out, Fayette is a very Bernie place, probably because of the university. The Bernie corner spilled over into the Martin O’Malley corner, which was okay, since he didn’t have any supporters there. There were about 4 undecided people there. I think it would be fun to be undecided, since then everyone tries to be your friend and have you come to their side.

Counting off Bernie supporters.

We counted off and found that there were about 55 people there for Bernie. Then the mixing up part began. I think most of the undecideds came over to Bernie, and there were cheers when one of them did. Bernie’s camp might have lost one or two to Hillary, I’m not sure. I am very curious why someone would change their support that easily. There was no shouting or arguing. I was wondering if there would be some on the Republican side, with so many candidates, but in those they just do a secret ballot.

Bernie supporters on the left, Hillary supporters on the far right.

Our township could nominate 12 delegates to the county convention, so we counted off and found that Bernie had gotten 8 of them and Hillary had gotten 4. Then we needed to elect who the delegates would actually be.

People waiting around while the delegates information was written down.

Apparently, most people don’t have much interest in getting up at 8:30 on a Saturday morning to go to the courthouse for a rubber-stamp convention. At least, it was hard to get 8 people to volunteer to do it. I said I would do it, just for the experience, so on March 12, I am going to the county courthouse to be a delegate for Bernie Sanders. From there, our county will elect delegates for the state convention, who will then elect those for the national convention in Philadelphia. I doubt they pay our way though.

And that was it, except it was not it for the caucus. Next, they had to elect members to various committees to take care of the convention, including the rather oddly named “committee on committees” who apparently made sure everything else worked okay.

Last was what they called the “Bubbling Up” time. This is where people suggested planks for the party’s platform, which would go on to the various conventions to be voted on again. All of them passed, although not all unanimously. Here is what people suggested:

Term limits for Congress
Getting money out of politics, including overturning the Citizen’s United ruling and having publicly funded elections.
Rolling back mental health cuts in the state
Getting a national single-payer healthcare system like Veterans Affairs has
Getting the ability to move 401(k) money to local banks (this was one man’s idea and it narrowly passed, although no one else seemed very enthusiastic about it)
Labeling foods that are GMOs (I actually was the only one to vote against this one. It’s not that I’m against specific labeling, but it’s more complicated than the way they were framing it and it seemed the person who suggested it muddled several issues together. Actually, my “no” in the totally quiet room kind of slipped out).
Getting more funding for K-12 education in the state
Setting a livable minimum wage

All in all, it was an interesting experience. Even though the caucuses were closely scrutinized by the media and the whole country, it also had such a small-town feel, hanging out and talking with people from the town. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the chance to do it again, but I’m glad I was a part of it.

caucus

10 Comments | tags: Bernie Sanders, caucus, Democratic, elections, Fayette, Iowa, Iowa caucus | posted in Uncategorized

January 23, 2016

The Office Zebra

By David Stewart

I love my job a lot, but it has been a hard last couple of weeks there. I never write about my job. Not directly, at least.

[*]

The Office Zebra^TM

I sat next to the smoking wreckage of my cubicle and took a sip of coffee. No one blamed me for what happened; I knew that. I did have a lot of work on my hands; everyone knew that.

Looking back, there was no real way to avoid it, but I still had that faint feeling like I should have known.

Clearly I should have gone into studying tardigrades. At least they were tiny and nearly indestructible. But no, I had to study zebras. Zebras were definitely not tiny and, looking around at the assortment of black and white striped flesh that was strewn liberally around the remains of my cubicle, I could say with some certainty that they were not indestructible.

The reason I studied zebras was that our former CEO had been crazy about zebras, and so all the researchers went whole hog into zebras. Unfortunately, it turned out that the CEO had been literally crazy about zebras, a fact we all discovered when they hauled him off, raving about how the next president was going to be a zebra and he knew because he’d already voted for it. Suddenly, there were a lot of us with advanced degrees in zebras (including the highly dubious PhZ) looking sheepishly around, wondering how to make ourselves profitable.

“I’ve got a great idea,” my co-worker Adrian said.

“What?” I asked.

“Promise you won’t steal it.”

“I promise.”

“Zebra flight attendants,” he said proudly, like a 3-year-old showing off his indecipherable finger paint smears.

“That is literally the worst idea I have ever heard,” I said. He ran off crying.

I didn’t tell him my idea, because it was actually good. My grand idea was to make a zebra that would work in an office setting. Your average zebra has no business being anywhere near an office, so clearly this was going to involve genetic engineering and maybe something more.

One night a bottle of vodka and I laid out my plan. The Office Zebra^TM was going to have a stapler for a mouth, the ability to recycle paper by eating it, and maybe a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in its back. Honestly, I quickly ran out of ideas for what a zebra could actually do in an office. Luckily the vodka had some ideas. About halfway through the bottle, the pencil drawn diagram of the Office Zebra^TM had really come to life. It had a different stamp on each of its hooves, you could pull on its tail to dispense hot coffee, and its eyes shot lasers, for some reason. The next morning, when the vodka could no longer give suggestions, I got rid of the coffee dispenser and laser eyes.

The lab started work right away. After a few focus group meetings, they decided to give the zebra a larynx and the instinctual ability to say “Good job!” at random times. It also pulled a small cart with snacks and coffee (no unfortunately placed dispenser, luckily).

“What are you working on?” Adrian asked one day.

“I’ve got something in the works,” I said coolly.

“Me too,” he said, smugly. “It’s going to blow your socks off.” He strode off, still looking back smugly at me and promptly walked into a door.

The lab really came through, I must say. Six months later, I went down there to find a zebra that not only stapled my papers and brought me snacks and coffee, but also stamped my parking ticket and brayed a rather indistinct “Good job!” at me. It was not its fault that it said it just as I was coming out of the bathroom.

The next step was that step which every R&D person dreads; field testing, or in my case, office testing. I decided to bring it to my cubicle and see how it fared. It arrived the next day and I led it proudly it through the halls as my co-workers all gaped. Adrian was nowhere to be seen, unfortunately.

I started with the stapler. I fed paper into its mouth but it just ignored it or bit the paper in half. I tried the stamps on its hooves, but they didn’t seem to work. Even the Wi-Fi wasn’t on. I went to copy room to get some scrap paper to feed it when I ran into Adrian in the hall.

“Hey, have you seen my Kamikazebra^TM?” he asked.

“What?”

“My Kamikazebra^TM. Hey, why are your eyes widening in dawning horror?” It was about then that a distant boom from the direction of my cubicle answered his question.

All zebra projects were quickly cancelled. Apparently, when no one can tell a stapler from a bomb, it’s a bad thing. Adrian got in trouble for bringing his Kamikazebra^TM to the office. I didn’t get in trouble, they just made me clean up what was left of my cubicle.

I wasn’t in any hurry. I took another sip of coffee, appreciating the thin silver linings. I didn’t have to check my email today. The air smelled vaguely of barbecue. Adrian had gotten in trouble.

Things would work out somehow. They always did.

12 Comments | tags: explosives, funny, humor, office, Office Zebra, quirky, research and development, work, zebra | posted in Light, Uncategorized

January 21, 2016

Ex Nihilo

By David Stewart

Ex Nihilo

I idly hit a key and light explodes in the void. With a chord, whole galaxies form, their spiral arms blazing. I sit and pound out a vast unfurling creation, major geography meeting minor civilizations as the strains of death and rebirth crescendo.

I falter and the worlds fade. People are standing around dumbstruck, and I wonder if they have seen, really seen, what I have.

My mother hurries up. “I’m sorry,” she says, to the onlookers. “He wandered away.”

I hold her hand and we leave the store, the worlds still lurking in that machine, waiting to be found.

25 Comments | tags: child, creation, ex nihilo, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Piano, prodigy | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized

January 18, 2016

House Trap: The True Confession of a Fictional Reality Show Star

By David Stewart

Source

Reality shows audiences had become so jaded that they were not interested in watching unless there was the possibility that someone could die onscreen in front of them. Of course, people still lined up to be on the shows, because fame and fortune with the chance of grisly death is still fame and fortune. I was one of them. I’d like to say I did it to raise money for cancer or to feed the starving children of Baluchistan or something but really, I just did it for the money.

A million bucks for 8 hours of work, if you could call it that. Tell me you wouldn’t be tempted.

The show I was on was called House Trap. The premise was that the contestant goes about their daily lives but there is a fatal trap hidden somewhere in the house. The audience keeps watching because the person could die at any moment. Maybe there’s a bomb in the butter or the shower shoots acid or there is a trapdoor that drops into a vat of alligators when the front door is opened. The person moves around the house in a panic and the audiences cheers for him to stay alive, or sometimes, to not stay alive. If the person stays alive for the whole day, he gets the million dollars. If not, it goes to the charity of his choice.

My episode was the fifth in the season. The idea was that I was just going about my daily business but according to the script (and yes, there was a script), I started by cleaning out the garage, then baking cookies, then polishing my collection of antique swords. Just like a normal day, right?

“Don’t worry,” the director said. “The trap is real and it can kill you but we’ll tell you where it is ahead of time so you won’t just stumble into it.” That sounded great but the day of shooting came and I still didn’t know. I asked the director.

“Ask Jack,” he said.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Okay, places everyone!” The next thing I knew, I was pushed inside the house by myself and filming began.

The contract specifically said that once cameras started rolling, there were no re-shoots. If I called it quits, not only would I not get the million dollars but I would have to pay a similar amount to the studio for loss of income. And now I was stuck in a house with a deadly trap and no idea where it was.

I looked at my watch: 8:30am. Just eight and a half hours to go until I was a millionaire and home free. I was pretty sure the trap wasn’t in the first two activities, at least. They needed enough footage to fill an hour show. The previous season, a contestant had died accidentally in the first five minutes. Most of that show was interviews shot previously. Not great TV.

I went to the garage and saw the pile of boxes stacked up precarious just in front of a wood chipper. It looked like it hadn’t been used for ages, but I saw the red LED on the lower panel and knew it could start at any moment.

Skipping the first activity (hey, what were they going to do, sue me?) I went into the kitchen. It was silent and I realized that I didn’t hear the fridge running. I peeked behind it, and sure enough, it wasn’t plugged in. So that meant that either it wasn’t a real fridge or else there was something else inside it. I put my ear to the door and thought I heard some movement inside. That creeped me out.

I wanted to open the fridge really quickly and then shut it, but that was stupid. It could be electrified, could be a bomb, could be anything. Finally, I went and got some rope and with nails hammered into strategic places, I spent an hour rigging up a system where I could pull on a rope from the across the room and open the fridge door, then shut it again by pulling on another. I pushed the couch out and ducked behind it. This was definitely off script, but I figured it would be more interesting than watching me bake cookies.

I pulled the door open with a yank of the rope in my right hand, then slammed it right away with the other rope. Something dropped to the floor and to my horror, I heard a faint skittering sound. I looked up and saw a creature coming towards me like a miniature tank. It was an ant, but a bigger one than I had ever seen. It wasn’t alone either. About fifty had dropped out and were scurrying around, razor-like pincers flashing furiously.

I squashed the one that had charged me but then another one climbed up the back of my leg and bit me. It was like getting stabbed, really. I screamed and pulled it off, running into the other room for safety. My leg was actually bleeding a little and I could not imagine what would have happened if I had just yanked the fridge open and stood there while a wave of ravenous bugs had attacked me.

It took me another hour or so to hunt down the rest of the escaped ants and send them to buggy hell. I still had half the day left and I didn’t feel like playing by the rules any more.

First, I found duct tape and taped the fridge shut. Then I dragged it to the garage door and spent another hour fashioning up a funnel out of sheets and blankets and attaching it to the fridge door. Then I moved the wood chipper to the other end and turned it on. I took the duct tape off and the fridge door came open, right into the funnel, sending a wave of homicidal ants into the whirring steel blades.

The garage instantly became an entomological Jackson Pollock work, a myrmicine Texas chainsaw massacre. A very gory, satisfying mess, in other words. I turned off the wood chipper, shut the garage door and spent the rest of the time polishing the antique swords.

It turns out that my episode was the highest rated in the history of the show. They even changed the title of the show to House Trap: MacGyver Edition, where the contestants got paid double if they found the trap and disarmed it in some creative way.

I didn’t get paid any more though. They did let me keep the wood chipper though.

4 Comments | tags: danger, driver ants, fiction, house trap, quirky, reality show | posted in Light, Uncategorized

January 13, 2016

The Gate

By David Stewart

The Gate

“Passports.”

Gripping my young son’s hand, I hand the border guard the envelope, the colorful bills inside arranged like a rainbow of freedom. He peeks inside, then regards me for what seems like years. I start to sweat.

“Wait here.”

He leaves, with the precious envelope. That rainbow represents years of soul-numbing toil. I stare at the gate in front of us. I have dreamed about it so often.

Finally, he returns. “How many are with you?”

“Four.”

Slowly, he opens the envelope and removes half the money. He hands it back to me and winks.

And we are free.

36 Comments | tags: board crossing, bribe, fiction, flash fiction, freedom, Friday Fictioneers | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized

January 6, 2016

Fit for a King

By David Stewart

Fit for a King

The approaching rumble made the fine crystal tinkle. The party guests looked towards the window, wondering what new extravagance would appear.

“And finally, your Majesty, a gift from the sultan of Brunei,” the master of ceremonies said as a sleek white nose came into view, “a Bombardier Global 8000! He wishes you an excellent birthday, and many more to come.”

The guests all looked to see the king’s reaction. The small figure on the throne was not looking out the window. He was playing with a box that had recently held a $50,000 diamond-studded teddy bear. “Vroom! Vroom!” he said.