Tag Archives: aliens

March 24, 2013

Slumming on the Ceiling – Visual Fiction

Taken in Daejeon, South Korea

Drunk. Bum. Loser. Deadbeat.

Freddie had heard them all and much worse as he sat in his underpass and watched people go by. He had a battered cardboard box in front of him with a few coins in it. Occasionally, more would be thrown in, but not usually. If the police chased him out, he waited until they walked away and then went back.

Thursday night had started as a good night. He had been able to buy a bottle of cheap liquor and had found a new blanket in a donation box. Half the bottle was gone when he suddenly began to feel lighter. Light began to filter in through the stairwells, increasing until it became as bright as day.

This is it, he thought. The angels, the angels are coming for me at last. One too many brown bag comforts, I suppose.

Freddie rose off the floor, floating up until he hit the ceiling. His perspective shifted and he found that the ceiling was now down for him, while the floor was above him. He sat in surprise and watched his handful of coins disappear into a light fixture. He tried to get them but burned his hand. It didn’t seem like he was dead.

With a shrug, he took a swig from the bottle and laid down on the ceiling. Freddie was used to life handing him surprises. Might as well make the best of it.

~*~

This is an alternate perspective on a couple of other stories I did, called What is it? and Why it’s bad to destroy the Earth.

11 Comments | tags: aliens, bum, fiction, homeless, Korea, photograph, science fiction, underpass, visual fiction | posted in Visual Fiction

March 16, 2013

The Killing Type (Part 2 of 2)

By David Stewart

A few days ago, I posted a call for song suggestions. The idea was like my Open Prompts stories, except that I would use quotes from song lyrics in my story. Thank you to the people who gave me suggestions. They are, in the order they commented:

Arjun Bagga: Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Family Tradition”

Miles Rost: Alphaville’s “Dance With Me”

starlight: Patrick Park’s “Blackbird through the Dark”

Michelle Proulx: Jack Johnson’s “Bubble Toes”

The Bumble Files: Amanda Palmer’s “The Killing Type” (Also, obviously, the inspiration for the title)

I have linked the quotations from the songs to the place in the Youtube videos where they appear. This is Part 2 of the story, so you can read Part 1 here.

The Killing Type: Part 2

Source

Cassandra looked over at Doug and saw the fierce delight in his eyes. He was staring at the squig-squill, like a gladiator staring down his doomed opponent in the ring.

“Come on, let’s just go,” Cassandra said, reaching out for his hand. He shook it away.

“Hold on, you gotta watch this.” Doug darted forward and held the knife in front of the squig-squill. The creature lashed out at the blade. A small splash of pale pink blood landed on the ground and it pulled back with a roar of pain.

“Hilarious, isn’t it?” Doug said, with a laugh. “It’ll keep attacking and hurting itself, it’s so stupid.”

“Doug, come on. Let’s go,” Cassandra said. She tugged on his arm, trying again to pull him back to the rover.

“Fine, let’s go,” he said at last. He darted forward again and stabbed the long knife through the squig-squill’s throat. The creature fell back and Doug stepped on its chest. Even with the thin atmosphere, Cassandra heard the crunch of breaking bones.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” she cried.

“What do you care? They’re just pests. I’m not going to leave it alive after I’ve found it.”

“But it didn’t attack us. It was just defending its home. How did you get in this condition, Doug? You weren’t like this four years ago.”

“It’s easy for you to say, Cassandra, living in Coventry in the middle of an empty plain. We fight these things every day up in the mountains. They hide in the mines, they ambush the transports. We wiped out a lot of them before we started digging, but still they keep coming back, again and again. We need to wipe this planet clean, and then there will be peace. Stay here a minute.” Doug stepped over the body of the squig-squill and disappeared behind the bushes.

“Where are you going?” she asked. He didn’t answer.

Cassandra followed him through the bushes. In front of them, the ravine came to an abrupt end and was covered with a screen of woven plants. Doug ripped it aside, revealing what looked like a pile of fur, until a head raised out of it, hissing and snarling.

Doug kicked the pile apart and a handful of scrawny younglings tumbled out of it. A female had been covering them with her body. The female attacked Doug’s legs with its teeth, but they had no effect against the metal shin guards built into his suit. He kicked it off and stepped on one of the younglings, slowly crushing it into the ground.

“Stop it!” Cassandra screamed. “Let’s just go. Please, Doug!”

“This is a mercy killing, Cassandra,” he said. “These ones are dead anyway. If the female goes to get them food, they’ll freeze and if she doesn’t, they’ll starve. She won’t go, so they’ll all die slowly together. It’s a foregone conclusion anyway, so might as well get into it, right?” He gave her a grin as he moved from youngling to youngling. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch-crunch-crunch. “My jellyfish dance, Cassandra. No rhythm, so but I’ve got some deadly moves. Come dance.”

“You monster!” she shouted. It wasn’t just the killing; it was the look of joy on his face as he crushed the little creatures under his heavy boots.

He stopped smiling and looked hurt. “Geez, it was just a joke. Sorry.” Crunch. “It’s got to be done—I was just putting a good face on it.” Crunch.

“Would you just stop!” she shouted, so loud he put his hand up to his ear in pain. The female was crawling back towards him and he stepped away from it.

“What do you want, Cassandra? We can’t live on this planet in peace with these things, and if they’re going to attack us, someone has to stop them. And I’m good at it. I saw you when you were dancing, with that look of joy on your face, oblivious to the rest of the world. You know that desire that burns a hole you’ll never fill with anything else. You have dancing and I have hunting. You’re the dancing type; I guess I’m the killing type.”

She looked into his face and saw with horror that he was right. He had become a killer, and he loved it. He turned around. “Go back and wait at the rover. I’m just going to take care of this last one.” He held up the knife and took a step towards the female squig-squill.

Cassandra ran at him and shoved him to the side. Doug tried to step to the side to maintain his balance, but he tripped on a rock and fell face down. His scream of pain reverberated inside her helmet. She ran to him and pulled him over and gasped when she saw the knife sticking out of his chest.

“Doug, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Killer,” he whispered, and for a moment, she saw his familiar, teasing grin touch the corners of his mouth before the life went out of his eyes.

Cassandra stayed kneeling for a moment until she remembered the squig-squill behind her. She jumped up, but it was nowhere near her. It was picking up the crushed little bodies that were scattered around the dell and arranging them by the rock wall. Then, as she watched, it made its way out through the bushes and lay down, covering the body of the dead squig-squill with its own.

Cassandra pushed the button on the com, trying to keep the tears out of her voice. Still, her voice quavered when she spoke. “Akash, come get me. There’s been an accident.”

* * *

Coventry Outpost was a storm of rumors, but all anyone knew for sure was that Doug Rankin, the son of Camellia Outpost’s commander, was dead. Cassandra sat in her room, confined there by her father while they sorted things out. After an hour, her parents came in. Her mother sat down and hugged her tightly.

“This is a horrible tragedy,” her father said, “but I think we’ve found a way for some good to come from it. Here is what you are going to tell everyone: you were walking with Doug when you were attacked by a group of squig-squills. He tried to defend you and killed a lot of them, but then several hit him from behind and he fell, accidentally stabbing himself with his knife. Akash is willing to testify that he was worried about you and came to find you, arriving just in time to scare them off.”

“What good could come from that?” Cassandra asked softly. She felt as if all the energy was drained out of her. The world was a more confusing place than it had been, just hours before.

“You pushed him and he died,” her mother said. “Some people might consider that manslaughter, and that could even carry the death penalty if Rankin pushes for it. He is inconsolable. But there were no witnesses; there’s no reason we should even go through that.”

“Plus, now I’ll have a pretext to start hunting them again,” her father said. “The commander seems to think that since they’re not attacking us at the moment, we have to maintain some sort of truce with them. But their numbers are just increasing and some day there may be enough to attack Coventry itself. Remember the Magnolia.”

“No, I’m not going to tell them that,” Cassandra said. “I’m not going to let you hunt them. I saw them, Dad. They’re intelligent, and it would be wrong.”

“You would throw away everything because of them?” Her father’s voice was full of disgust and disbelief. “You would possibly even die for those things—our mortal enemy?”

“I’m not a killer, Dad,” Cassandra said. “I’m sorry. I guess I broke the family tradition.”

8 Comments | tags: aliens, Alphaville, Amanda Palmer, dancing, fiction, Hank Williams, Jack Johnson, killing, mountains, music, Open Prompts, other worlds, Patrick Park, planet, science fiction | posted in Dusk

March 15, 2013

The Killing Type (Part 1 of 2)

By David Stewart

Arjun Bagga: Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Family Tradition”

Miles Rost: Alphaville’s “Dance With Me”

starlight: Patrick Park’s “Blackbird through the Dark”

Michelle Proulx: Jack Johnson’s “Bubble Toes”

The Bumble Files: Amanda Palmer’s “The Killing Type” (Also, obviously, the inspiration for the title)

I have linked the quotations from the songs to the place in the Youtube videos where they appear. The story is about 2500 words, so I split it into two parts. The second part will be posted tomorrow.

The Killing Type: Part 1

He finally found her, dancing alone in the stardust dawn underneath the crystal roof of the power station. She was twirling and pirouetting with utter abandon, her eyes closed and her feet splashing through the oil and waste water on the floor.

“Cassandra,” he said at last, hating to break the spell of her dancing.

Cassandra stopped and looked up, then her eyes widened. “Doug? Is that really you?” She flitted up to the steel ladder and gave him a hug. “Stars, you got tall in a hurry. When did you get here?”

“An hour ago, maybe,” he said, grinning. “It took me most of that time to find you. What are you doing here, in this filth?”

“It’s the only place I can be alone and still see the stars,” Cassandra said. “I don’t want to dance where people can see me. I was born in Coventry Outpost but still, the close quarters, always being near everyone else—it gets to me.”

“But at what price?” Doug asked. He indicated her bare feet that were covered with tar balls and scars.

“It’s worth it,” she said and suddenly laughed. “Tell me what’s happening with you. I haven’t seen you in four years.”

“It’s a great life out there on the frontier. I’m working with my father to expand Camellia Outpost. We just built the smelter and factory.” He paused. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she said. She took his hand. “Hey, do you want to dance with me?”

“I’m not really the dancing type. I’ve got no rhythm.”

“Bah! I remember you. You’re slow and graceful, like a jellyfish. When you move like a jellyfish, rhythm don’t mean nothing.”

“Jellyfish are deadly too, though,” Doug said. “Hey, I know what we can do. Have you ever killed a squig-squill before?”

“What?”

“I’ve gotten really good at it—you gotta be out where I live. I can hit one with an air rifle at 50 meters. You wanna try?”

Cassandra looked up into his eager, expectant face and let go of his hand. “I’m really not the killing type,” she said.

He nodded. “Okay, okay. But let’s go find some anyway, just to look at. Have you ever seen one?”

“Only in pictures.” Cassandra had seen lots of pictures of squig-squill bodies that had been killed back when she was a baby. They looked like limp bags of fur with claws sticking out of them. Her father was head of patrols and boasted about killing hundreds of them. These days, though, the outpost commander forbade them from hunting squig-squills unless they passed the outer perimeter of the outpost.

“You gotta see one up close,” Doug said. “I’ve gotten really good at finding their nests. So, you wanna?”

“Isn’t it dangerous? What about the Magnolia?” The very first manned mission to Asteria had been attacked and annihilated by squig-squills, back when Cassandra’s parents were children on Earth. The legend lived on, though, and every child in Coventry had to memorize the names of the ten astronauts killed.

“That was back when we didn’t know how to deal with them. Trust me; there’s no danger at all.” Doug gave her a reassuring smile.

“It’s pretty far to walk, though,” she persisted. “The outer perimeter is 5 km out and there aren’t any squig-squills within that.”

“Listen,” Doug said, as if he were imparting a secret, “I’ve got a rover.” His eyes were shining. “It’s the first one we’ve built at the factory. That’s how I got here; I drove it and my dad drove a transport.” He caught up her hand and squeezed it. “I know that before I left, we used to be just good friends—”

“More than just friends,” Cassandra said, smiling.

“We would have been, if I hadn’t had to leave.” He suddenly leaned in and kissed her. It felt good and she would have kept kissing him, but he straightened up with an impish grin.

“Fine, go show me a squig-squill,” she said and he hugged her again. Cassandra wiped off her feet, put her boots back on and then led the way out to the vehicle dock.

The commander of Coventry Outpost was hosting a banquet in honor of Doug’s father, Commander Frederick Rankin, and almost the entire population of Coventry Outpost was squeezed into the main dome. The only person Cassandra and Doug met on the way out was Akash, the guard at the airlock gate.

“I just heard over the com that they’re looking for you two, you know,” he said, giving them a knowing smile.

“They can’t be looking very hard,” Doug said.

“No, they’re not,” Akash said, “and they probably think you’re off somewhere, catching up. Which I guess you are.” He pushed the button to open the airlock. “Don’t go far, and stay on the com.”

“Yessir,” Doug said with a salute. He gunned the engine and the rover sped out over barren plain.

Source

For Cassandra—sitting behind Doug with her arms around his waist—the feeling of speed and openness was heavenly. She was only able to leave the outpost every 20 days or so, and that was just to walk around the perimeter and check the instruments. Red dirt and sand covered all the land as far as she could see. Asteria’s blazing sun was just over the horizon and the light sparkled and flashed in the upper atmosphere. Above them, tethered lightdomes hung in the upper atmosphere, gathering energy and providing the outpost with its communications. Through the lightdomes shining in the sky, the last of the night’s stars burned in the midnight blue expanse.

Doug drove them out past the perimeter and up into the foothills of the rocky spine that led from Coventry to Camellia, 200 km away. Small, scrubby plants began to appear among the rocks, interspersed with icy pools.

They came to a ravine cut in the rocks and Doug stopped the rover. “This is the kind of place you’d find them in,” he said.

Source

Cassandra heard his voice through the speaker in her helmet. He pointed to a white smear on the rocks, about a foot off the ground. “Look there. They leave those around a lot too. To mark their territory or something.”

Doug took Cassandra’s hand and led her towards the ravine. The light of the sun was blocked by the rocks and the ravine was in deep gloom.

“Is this safe?” she asked. “How will we know where they are?” She noticed that he had drawn a long knife and was holding it in front of him. “What’s that for?”

“The males are aggressive. Best not to take chances.”

Before they could take another step, Cassandra heard a high-pitched roar. It sounded faint and far-off in the thin air. A squig-squill burst out of the bushes, blocking their path. This looked nothing like the limps bundles of fur she had seen in pictures. Its small, misshapen head was stretched out on a thin neck and flicked back and forth, mouth open and menacing. It moved its clawed limbs in circles in front of it, but did not attack.

(to be concluded, here)

9 Comments | tags: aliens, Alphaville, Amanda Palmer, dancing, fiction, Hank Williams Jr., Jack Johnson, killing, mountains, music, Open Prompts, other worlds, Patrick Park, planet, science fiction | posted in Dusk

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

January 7, 2013

Why it’s bad to destroy the earth

By David Stewart

At the end of the previous story, the planet Earth was left stuck in the headlight of a Galacto-class Starhopper. This was not an ideal situation, by anyone’s standards. The planet had stopped spinning and so one side was being blasted with the light of a thousand suns, while the other side languished in the inky darkness of deep space. It was safe to say that no one was happy.

Many people were still alive, however. Against all probability, the atmosphere was hanging onto the planet like a leech. People huddled in their houses as the most horrendous and random weather erupted all over the globe. Torrential rains, followed by howling winds, snowstorms, hailstorms, and a whole Zeus-tantrum of lightning afflicted every country. And yet still, in America, mail carriers fought their way along their routes, grimly muttering under their breath, “Neither snow nor rain nor planetary destruction…”

On a much larger scale of existence, Groxhhelin the Prosaic and his cousin, Bob the Normally Unpronounceable were sneaking the Galacto-class Starhopper back into Groxhhelin’s father’s space hanger. Joyriding a vehicle that could use a solar system as a go-kart track was exhilarating unless you got caught. Then it was suicidal, and not in a quick, painless way either. Groxhhelin probably would not have even dared if he had known the sort of mood his father was in.

Groxhhelin’s father was called Blyz the Round and Furious and he was both of those attributes to an astonishing degree. At the moment when Groxhhelin and his cousin Bob were quietly locking the door to the space hanger, Blyz was screaming and storming around his laboratory like a jilted tornado. There was a glitch in his system—there had to be. He had looked through the Ultra-scope but the planet that he was studying was not there. The readout said it was the right place, but . . . no planet. Empty space greeted his gaze. Blyz the Round and Furious did not like setbacks. And just as he always did when he needed someone to vent at, he called his son.

Groxhhelin and Bob came into the lab a few minutes later. If Blyz had not been so preoccupied, he would have seen immediately that the two boys were trying to hide something.

“What’s up, Dad?” Groxhhelin asked.

“The planet I’m studying isn’t where it’s supposed to be,” Blyz said. “Now, juggle.” He tossed several beakers and a microscope to his son. Groxhhelin was an expert juggler and anytime Blyz felt sad or just brain-smashingly angry, he got Groxhhelin to juggle for him. It was his regular form of therapy.

“We hit some planets today,” Bob said. Groxhhelin kicked him, but it was too late. Blyz was glowering at them.

“What do you mean, you hit planets? Did you take the Starhopper out?”

“Yes,” Bob said before Groxhhelin could stop him.

“I told you never to touch that!” Blyz screamed. He started opening drawers, cupboards, and cages all around the room.

“Aw, come on, Dad. I don’t want to get sweaty,” Groxhhelin said, but it was too late. Blyz started tossing things at him: an office chair, a rabid weasel, a lit Bunsen burner, and a handful of sand, just for good measure.

“Now, where did you go in the Starhopper? Did you go near system 4302.2?”

Groxhhelin was sweaty and panting, trying to keep everything in the air and unharmed. “I . . . I don’t know really, but—okay, okay, we went there,” he added quickly as Blyz lit a welding torch and got ready to throw it towards him. “We hit a couple planets and had to use their sun as fuel to get back. Sorry.”

Up went the welding torch and a half dozen pieces of lab furniture. Blyz accidentally threw in a jar of Evapo-Rub as well. It hit the flame of the welding torch, melted and sprayed all over, causing the other objects Groxhhelin was juggling to be pulled out of existence in a sudden thunderclap. There was a sudden, awkward silence.

“It cracked the headlight,” Bob said from underneath the workbench where he was cowering. “It might still be in there.”

“It’d better be, for your sake,” Blyz said.

Several minutes later, the three of them were in the hover-cart, floating in front of the huge headlight of the Starhopper. There was a hole in the middle of the light and something dark inside.

“It’s so small,” Bob said. “I could use it as a soccer ball.”

“I’ve been studying this planet for twenty years,” Blyz said. “It has something amazing and utterly unique in the universe. We need to be extremely careful getting it out. Go get that bucket over there.”

“What is so special about this planet?” Bob asked. He got the bucket and held it for Blyz.

“These people eat a lot and have thousands of different kinds of food,” Blyz said. “Now, carefully.” He reached in and pulled out the planet Earth as gingerly as he could. His finger smashed Mount Everest down to a small hill and his other palm crushed the entire Amazon rainforest. He set the planet down into the bucket.

“But we have hundreds of different foods too,” Groxhhelin said.

“No, your mother just puts it in different colored bowls and tells you it’s different,” Blyz said. “In reality, we have three foods: regular gruel, extra calorie gruel, and gruel-light, for when we’re just feeling peckish. People on this little planet though . . . I’ve been studying them for years and barely know anything about their foods. We could learn so much from them. I’ll show you what I mean.”

They walked back to the lab and Blyz pulled a round flat thing out of a side compartment. “This is what is called pizza,” he said.

Bob took a bite of it. “It’s just gruel.”

“But it’s flat gruel,” Blyz said. “And round. Anyway, this is just my first attempt. We need to get this planet back into space before it dies.”

“We used up their sun,” Bob said, in case anyone had forgotten. He was absentmindedly dribbling the Earth back and forth with his feet. Blyz hit him on the head with a microscope.

Groxhhelin and Bob were given the task of putting the much-abused planet back into space, preferably in a place where the inhabitants would not all instantly freeze or burn to death. It was not that Blyz trusted them in the least, but more that he was deathly afraid of going out into space. So, after several hours of detailing every grotesque punishment he would inflict on them if they failed, he wished them luck and sent them out.

Blyz had selected a system that had a similar sized sun and room for another planet. Groxhhelin drove the Starhopper (with permission this time) out and carefully maneuvered Earth into place.

“It’s not spinning,” Bob said. “Should it be spinning?”

“Hold on, I’m still fine-tuning it.” Groxhhelin had his tongue out, a sure sign he was concentrating. He reached out with a robotic arm, grabbed a continental shelf and gave the planet a spin.

“Now it’s going too fast. Every day will be five seconds long,” Bob said.

Groxhhelin punched him for being annoying and they had a bit of a tussle for a while, but eventually they got it pretty well sorted out and headed for home, buzzing a few black holes on the way.

* * *

Miraculously, there were still some survivors on Earth and they did not freeze or burn up in their new location. It truly was a whole new world though. All the stars were different and astronomers got right to work making up new constellations and thinking up names for the nearby planets.

As well, since Groxhhelin never got it totally right, every day now had 35 hours in it, which was perfect for all the people who complained that there were never enough hours in the day. Earth’s productivity went through the roof, as did its party culture, which could now party for fifteen hours straight every night. The year turned out to be about 1000 days long now as well. This meant that the life expectancy was now about 30 of the new years, but it took three times longer to get there. People now started school at two, got married around ten and retired around twenty. Senior citizens could say they were still young, even as they hobbled around with walkers and talked about the good old days of a decade before. And so everyone (at least the survivors) were happy.

On a side note, Blyz never did figure out how to make any actual different foods, but he did write a cookbook called 1001 ways to Disguise Gruel. And so, he too was relatively less furious.

17 Comments | tags: aliens, apocalypse, Earth, fiction, funny, quirky, science fiction | posted in Light

January 3, 2013

Victory – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

Another story for the Friday Fictioneers. Check out other people’s ideas.

The shells burst in a glorious scintillation of color and the exultant roar of a victor. The world rejoiced.

“Those fireworks are alien signal flares, you know,” Trey said. “They’re not that different from us. Don’t do it, Mike.”

“They killed 200 million people,” Heather said. “Kill it, quick.”

Mike stood over the wounded alien, rifle steady.

“The war is over now. It’d be murder,” Trey said.

“But it’s not human.”

“It’s intelligent, though.”

“We need to kill them all.”

“We need to forgive them.”

Mike wished he didn’t have to decide. But he was the one holding the gun.

32 Comments | tags: aliens, dilemma, fiction, fireworks, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, science fiction, victory | posted in Dusk

December 24, 2012

What is it? – A Visual Prompt

By David Stewart

This story comes from a picture and prompt from my friend Sharmishtha Basu. Here’s her take on the story, along with another friend’s. The part in italics is the original prompt.

Drawn by Sharmishtha Basu

He was lying flat on his back, watching the stars in the open sky.

How he loved these small escapades to the woods! Every necessity was packed in his backpack: a small tent in case it rained, a sleeping bag, and lots of mosquito repellant.

There was no sign of rain and a pleasant breeze was blowing, stirring the leaves of the trees and the grass on which he was lying.

The moon was peeking at him from behind scanty clouds. He fell asleep….

A strange flash of light woke him up, and at first he thought that the moon was coming down on him…

It was not the moon. The pale light grew and grew until it was as bright as the sun. He could not look away. It continued to grow until it the whole sky was glowing. Still it grew, impossibly large, filling the night with a pale brilliance. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, he thought, but I think I’m going to die.

He felt himself getting lighter and to his amazement, he lifted off the ground. Rocks and twigs rose as well and there was a great rustling in the trees as the branches rose on their own, pulled towards the heavens. Gravity abandoned him and suddenly he was falling up into the sky. He fell faster and faster and the earth fell right behind him, straight up into that now-blinding light that filled the sky from horizon to horizon.

Crack!

Groxhhelin the Prosaic checked the screen of his Galacto-class Starhopper. “We hit another planet,” he said to his cousin, Bob the Normally Unpronounceable. “It cracked the headlight. There seems to be tons of planets in this area.”

“There were, at least,” Bob said. “Hey, pick up that star over there and throw it in the tank, would you? We’re going to need some more fuel if we’re going to make it back home.”

11 Comments | tags: aliens, apocalypse, fiction, flash fiction, mystery, quirky, science fiction, Sharmishtha Basu | posted in Light

June 11, 2012

Mayor Jim

By David Stewart

I don’t know anyone in our town who can pronounce our mayor’s last name. The sign by his office reads Jim Mxyhunlln. When I first saw it, I thought the printer had had a stroke and smashed his head on the keyboard. The thing is, our mayor is an alien, and I don’t mean he’s from Europe. Not that I know where he’s from, but he has baby-blue skin, four arms and a long jagged tongue. He’s a really nice guy though.

I’m proud of our town for being open and multi-cultural in its public officials and I don’t have any complaints whatsoever about Mayor Jim. The only reason I’m writing this is that our town’s in a wee bit of trouble. Well, it’s more like an interstellar war and in case there’s nothing left here next week but glowing ash, I thought it would be good to let someone out there know what was going on.

Mayor Jim, God bless him, arrived in town one day and almost immediately opened up a deli. He didn’t get much business at first, because people didn’t really know what to think of him and they weren’t sure what was in the pepperoni. But after a while he kind of grew on everyone. He had this nice little way of looking at you that just made you want to go into his shop and buy twelve pounds of bratwurst and a wheel of Gorgonzola cheese, and then vote for him for mayor. Which is weird, because at that point he wasn’t even running.

Good old Jim made such an impression on everyone that soon people were just lining up in front of his shop to buy things at his deli. He once ran out of supplies and it still didn’t matter. They must have liked Jim pretty well, since they’d just go up, put money on the counter and then walk away. He really knew how to touch people’s hearts and minds.

This went on for about a year or so until the time came for the mayoral elections. The guy before Jim was Mayor Harold Harper, who had been the mayor here for as long as I could remember. He ran again, but after Jim announced his candidacy, there wasn’t much doubt as to who would win. It was a landslide, to say the least. I think even Mayor Harper voted for Jim.

Our little town held a parade for the newly-elected Mayor Jim the very next day, we were all so happy to have him leading us. There was a bit of a shock the next week when Mayor Jim started appointing his new town council. For one thing, everyone was under the impression that the town councilors were elected, but Jim said no, and that was good enough for us. It sure was an interesting crowd that started showing up and moving into the Town Hall offices. The town clerk was a spiky little guy that smelled a bit like feet. The director of the Housing Committee was a floating cloud of metallic dust and the director of the War Committee (who knew?) looked like a cross between a wombat and a bad day.

Not that anyone was complaining, of course. We were just enthralled by the whole group of them and especially by Mayor Jim. For one thing, he wiped out unemployment in the town in one stroke. Mayor Jim selected everyone without a job to build, and then work in, his massive factory. After a while, we experienced something that Mayor Jim called “negative unemployment” which sounded pretty good. Turns out that it meant a lot of other businesses were closed to free up people to work in the factory. I even worked there for a while. I’m not sure what the pay was like but the morale was sky-high and there was as much free pepperoni as you could eat.

We never did find out what the factory produced because the first thing we made was a machine that put all the pieces together at the end of the line. Whatever it was though, it made someone somewhere pretty mad. The whole town was woken up one night by a massive boom that shook the houses. The next day the factory was gone, with nothing left but a smoking hole and tiny scraps of processed meat.

Mayor Jim got down to business after that and we were glad to see that he was fighting for our town. Lots of big weapons and a whole legion of grey-skinned guards appeared out of nowhere, but they helped me sleep easier at night, knowing that Mayor Jim had our backs. In the evenings, we’d go up on the roof and watch the laser beams arcing up into space. Every so often there would be a bloom of orange fire and we’d all cheer, because we knew that there was one less bad guy to attack our town. Even when the laser gun accidentally shot down a satellite and knocked out our TV, we didn’t mind.

That’s what life has been like here lately. There’s a lot of talk about “hyper-radioactive dispersion” which is a little troubling although Mayor Jim assures us there are suits that can stop it. He and the town council wear them everywhere and I breathe easier knowing they are safe.

Seriously, I don’t know where we would be without Mayor Jim. He’s such a talented guy and he cares about each and every one of his citizens. I know because he can read our thoughts and he tells us every night. He knows I’m writing this, of course, but I’m sure that’s fine with him, because he’s just that kind of guy.

If you read this message, just remember there’s no need to intervene or come anywhere near our little beleaguered town. Mayor Jim has everything here under control.