A jawbreaker lies
Uncjewed on the ground, shattered
By the jaws of life
April 11, 2016
From “Jawbreaker Haiku” by Anonymous
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, haiku, humor, poetry, story |Leave a Comment
April 10, 2016
From “Poem of the Dead Hand” by Lucy Y. Shantell
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fantasy, fiction, goblins, Lucy Y. Shantell, story |Leave a Comment
In the palm of Nä Ti, the Dead Hand
Lies Rait Tirat, the Tomb of the Rebel
He who rebelled against It
Nyir Rvi, murderer of the Creator
Xon Vty, father of the Goblins
The father awaits his children
To give to them purpose anew
And to anoint them with right
And free them of their sins
April 9, 2016
From “The Last 36 Hours of Yekaterina Dmitrievna Dyatlova”
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, horror, mystery, science fiction, story |Leave a Comment
Once the transmission ended, Yekaterina made no further log entries. Based on biometric data, it appears that she systematically depressurized all the units of the station except for three: her quarters, the central corridor, and the arboretum.
The cherry trees in the arboretum were in full bloom, and Yekaterina apparently clipped all of their blossoms one by one over the course of the next 36 hours, stopping only to eat food stored in her quarters and to use the bathroom there. Once she was done, she laid out her EVA suit on the bed and filled it with flowers before closing and locking the faceplate.
What telemetry is available suggests that Yekaterina’s next action was to move through the station, pressurizing rooms ahead of her and depressurizing them behind. When she reached the main airlock, she overrode the safety mechanisms with a screwdriver and opened it.
To this day, no trace of her body ahs ever been found, and the reasons for her final actions remain a mystery.
April 8, 2016
From “Faith of the Old Orcs” by Lucy Y. Shantell
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: desert, fantasy, fiction, Lucy Y. Shantell, orcs, religion, story |Leave a Comment
The Orcs practiced a syncretic religion that was related to the worship of the Creator, as in the Sepulcher of the Creator, but also Muolih the Spreading Darkness, as in the Goblin and Dwarven faiths. Furthermore, many minor spirits were recognized, from ancestors to those posessing trees and streams, though the primary surviving codices note that they all emphasized the paramountcy of the gods of good and evil.
In Orcish, Muolih was called Tirat, the Rebel, while the Creator was called Nyir, which literally means “that which has created.” Their faith was, as a result, sometimes called Nyirtirat, literally “creator-rebel” but more accurately “the rebel and the rebelled against.” It’s important to note, though, that despite commonalities each Orc community and band had its own extremely local interpretation of faith and disagreements up to and including violence were all too common.
Naturally, this changed with the introduction of the Hamurabash by Hamur, which replaced the former religion with a set of ethical and atheistic strictures and emphasizing the memory of departed kin. The bashamalurs who succeeded Hamur were generally successful in eradicating all traces of the former Orcish religion with only a few isolated (and well-fortified) communities harboring so-called taiwa or apostates.
Even as Hamur’s successors agressively spread his message of atheism, equality, ancestral memory, and the militarization of society, there remain significant Orcish ruins in the high desert of the Lrira, predating the Hamurabash, and in many cases even the Sepulcher, deeply carved and embossed with the memory of the old faith.
April 6, 2016
From “A Place for the End of the World” by Dawn E. Lenza
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: ANZAC, apocalypse, Australia, end of the world, fiction, New Zealand, story |Leave a Comment
I’ve never read or seen The Quiet Earth or On the Beach, both of which have been books and movies.
But their message is nevertheless compelling: the last people on Earth, the last survivors of a physics experiment and a nuclear war respectively, living out their final days in ANZAC. Australia and New Zealand are in many ways an admirable locale for such: isolated yet temperate, distant yet with all the comforts of the First World.
They would be excellent places to live out an apocalypse, if apocalypse come.
So even though I’ve never been there, even though their cost of living is astronomical, even though, even though, even though…I am attracted to the romantic notion all the same. Places distant and safe, civilized and alien.
They seem like places I could live.
New Zealand especially. An isolated microcontinent, diverse in flora and fauna, as far away from Europe as one can get without booster rockets. If ever I fear an apocalypse, I feel like it’s as good a destination as any.
April 2, 2016
From “Five Problems with Social Media” by Andrew A. Sailer
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, rants, social media, story |Leave a Comment
Desperate Marketers
Everybody and their mom is on something social, which means that they are all also infested with self-promoters looking to make a buck. Whether ads, reposts, “signal boosts,” or desperate pleas to “like” the page of a small struggling business, you get the feeling that you’re the central cog in a money making machine that no one has quite figured out how to run. You are the “Part 2” in the “Part 1: Steal Underpants, Part 2: ???, Part 3: Profit” formula.
Poorly Researched Memes Ahoy!
People like clever things, and things that make them look smart or good or smartly good or goodly smart. Passing on the latest meme does this handsomely, and people like George Takei have built a personal brand out of it. But it also means that you have a constant, firehose-like stream of meme disgorged at you, and much of it is patenly false, misattributed, or easily slain by Snopes. Good luck trying to convince that girl you met at a party once in Phoenix that her rant about mind control flouride in the water is bunk, though!
Preaching to What You Think Is the Choir But Really About Half of Them are Atheists
I have three major social circles on social media: friends from family, friends from high school, and friends from college. They tend to be on the right, far right, and far left respectively, a stew of mutually incompatible political and social viewpoints. And yet they are all, all of them, always, spurting stuff that’s incredibly offensive to any dissenting viewpoint and acting surprised when the few people of another persuasion call them out on it. I’d say it’s the closest thing to genuine political dialogue I see anymore, except it usually gets little beyond the name-calling stage before unfriending is afoot.
Pressure to Like and Comment
“Why didn’t you like my slides of Tijuana?” says your aunt, or your friend, or your friend’s aunt. “Don’t you love me?”
Blazing Speed Plus Weighted Timelines Equals Uh-Oh
“Because you posted them ten minutes ago, Auntie Mae, and my timeline is weighted by an obscure algorithm with 11 secret herbs and spices that thinks it’s more important that I see the 110 cat videos and liked sponsored pages than my own flesh and blood.”
April 1, 2016
From “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum
Posted by alexp01 under April Fools, Excerpt | Tags: April Fools, fiction, Oz, scarecrows, story |Leave a Comment
She bade her friends good-bye, and again started along the road of yellow brick. When she had gone several miles she thought she would stop to rest, and so climbed to the top of the fence beside the road and sat down. There was a great cornfield beyond the fence, and not far away she saw a Scarecrow, placed high on a pole to keep the birds from the ripe corn.
Dorothy leaned her chin upon her hand and gazed thoughtfully at the Scarecrow. Its head was a small sack stuffed with straw, with eyes, nose, and mouth painted on it to represent a face. An old, pointed blue hat, that had belonged to some Munchkin, was perched on his head, and the rest of the figure was a blue suit of clothes, worn and faded, which had also been stuffed with straw. On the feet were some old boots with blue tops, such as every man wore in this country, and the figure was raised above the stalks of corn by means of the pole stuck up its back.
While Dorothy was looking earnestly into the queer, painted face of the Scarecrow, she was surprised to see one of the eyes slowly wink at her. She thought she must have been mistaken at first, for none of the scarecrows in Kansas ever wink; but presently the figure nodded its head to her in a friendly way. Then she climbed down from the fence and walked up to it, while Toto ran around the pole and barked.
“Good day,” said the Scarecrow, in a rather husky voice.
“Did you speak?” asked the girl, in wonder.
“Certainly,” answered the Scarecrow. “How do you do?”
“I’m pretty well, thank you,” replied Dorothy politely. “How do you do?”
“I’m not feeling well,” said the Scarecrow, with a smile, “for it is very tedious being perched up here night and day to scare away crows.”
“Can’t you get down?” asked Dorothy.
“No, for this pole is stuck up my back. If you will please take away the pole I shall be greatly obliged to you.”
Dorothy reached up both arms and lifted the figure off the pole, for, being stuffed with straw, it was quite light.
“Thank you very much,” said the Scarecrow, when he had been set down on the ground. “I feel like a new man.”
Dorothy was puzzled at this, for it sounded queer to hear a stuffed man speak, and to see him bow and walk along beside her.
“Who are you?” asked the Scarecrow when he had stretched himself and yawned. “And where are you going?”
“My name is Dorothy,” said the girl, “and I am going to the Emerald City, to ask the Great Oz to send me back to Kansas.”
“Where is the Emerald City?” he inquired. “And who is Oz?”
“Why, don’t you know?” she returned, in surprise.
“No, indeed. I don’t know anything. You see, I am stuffed, so I have no brains at all,” he answered sadly.
“Oh,” said Dorothy, “I’m awfully sorry for you.”
“Do you think,” he asked, “if I go to the Emerald City with you, that Oz would give me some brains?”
“I cannot tell,” she returned, “but you may come with me, if you like. If Oz will not give you any brains you will be no worse off than you are now.”
“That is true,” said the Scarecrow. “You see,” he continued confidentially, “I don’t mind my legs and arms and body being stuffed, because I cannot get hurt. If anyone treads on my toes or sticks a pin into me, it doesn’t matter, for I can’t feel it. But I do not want people to call me a fool, and if my head stays stuffed with straw instead of with brains, as yours is, how am I ever to know anything?”
“I understand how you feel,” said the little girl, who was truly sorry for him. “If you will come with me I’ll ask Oz to do all he can for you.”
“Thank you,” he answered gratefully.
They walked back to the road. Dorothy helped him over the fence, and they started along the path of yellow brick for the Emerald City.
March 31, 2016
From “A Vicious Sax Crime” by Mariana Brinson
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: fiction, humor, murder, puns, sax saxophone, story |Leave a Comment
The man lay dead on the floor of his apartment, lovingly polished brass in his hands. “Look at this,” said the responding officer, Detective Mullins. He pointed at the cause of death, a bullet that had shattered the mouthpiece of the instrument before entering the man’s skull. “Shot him right through the sax organ.”
“Yeah, hell of a way to go,” said his backup, Grabowski. “From the pose and everything, it looks like he was in the middle of sax when he died.”
“Is it a sax crime?” said Mullins. “Should we get forensics in here to sweep for sax fluids?”
“Well, from what I see in the database, he was a registered sax offender. Played loudly after midnight despite repeated complaints.” Officer Grabowski shook his head.
“Don’t they send you to jail if you get back into sax with mirrors?” said Mullins, looking at the full-length mirror before which the dead sax offender had been playing. “That sort of thing makes me sick.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” said Grabowski. “Maybe this sax maniac had it coming? Maybe we just look the other way at another scumbag sax offender.”
Mullins frowned. “You’re sure this won’t come back to bite us?” he said. “It seems pretty clear that the people upstairs got tired of all the noisy sax.”
“Well, if he had been put away for sax crimes years ago, maybe,” said Grabowski. “Time was they’d call you a sax offender just for being horn-o-saxual. But this guy, with his rap sheet, and his sax with mirrors? No, the world is better off without his kind.”
March 30, 2016
From “The Four Horsemen of the Pocked Lips” by Dr. Phyllis Graeme-Fujikawa
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: dentistry, dentists, fiction, humor, plaque, story |[3] Comments
A horrified squeal arose from the assemblage of dentists. For there, on the hill, silhouetted by the setting sun, were the Four Horsemen of the Pocked Lips. Straining at reins of floss and digging in spurs of shattered mirrors, they rode into the midst of their enemies with unleashed fury.
Plaque, weilding his calcified club that sticks fast to all things.
Decay, whose touch rots enamel into viscous and foul-smelling goo.
Halitosis, who leaves stench and the portent of death in its wake.
Stain, whose dark marks will never be removed, even with bleach.
March 29, 2016
From “Tree and Man Debate” by Anonymous
Posted by alexp01 under Excerpt | Tags: abstract, fiction, story, trees |Leave a Comment
And then Man said to Tree “But trees have not culture and they build not cities. A tree leaves nothing when it dies.”
Tree responded to Man: “Culture has in every instance led to death and misery, its achievements dwarfed by its toll. In no sense have trees culture, and for us that means we fell not our fellows.”
But then Man said: “What about the stranglers, the figs who creep and grow upon other trees, being parasites who kill?”
Replied Tree: “You speak of the process of intertwining another, of enveloping them as you grow together, and eventually, when they die, finding that they have left a hollow inside you? We count that as love, not murder.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 