Plugs

Kat Beyer’s Cabal story “A Change In Government” has been nominated for a BSFA award for best short fiction.

Jason Fischer has a story appearing in Jack Dann’s new anthology Dreaming Again.

Luc Reid writes about the psychology of habits at The Willpower Engine. His new eBook is Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories.

Edd Vick’s latest story, “The Corsair and the Lady” may be found in Talebones #37.

Archive for the ‘Ratters’ Category

Dive

Monday, January 31st, 2011

Dear editor:

Your blog doesn’t have the guts to print this.   Aliens are menacing our streets.  They’re invading our borders, making love to our women, and taking our jobs.  The time to act is now.

The aliens first arrived in an iridescent bubble, freely crossing Earth’s atmospheric border–our first mistake.  That’s what my friend Mustafa told me.  He said they shook hands with the president–our second mistake.  Anyone, that I know who likes them, has been brainwashed.  If they even brush your skin, they skim your mind and learn what pleases you.  Everybody knows what they do to anuses.  If we’d just patrol or, better yet, shut down our borders, we wouldn’t have this problem.

Second, women are falling head over heels for these guys.  I mean, come on, they look like rodents with their big black eyes, long snouts, white fur coats that make them look like doctors or mad scientists, and long, whip-like metallic tails, which can slice open a can of sardines or batter innocent young children when no one’s observing.  Who could fall in love with that?  But women do.  One lady was walking hand-in-hand with an alien near Times Square.  When he stopped to buy hot dogs from a vendor, I asked why she was with him.  She shot me a disgusted look (me a fellow human being while the alien she loved).  She said he kept creeps like me away.  I asked Mustafa if he’d gotten any since the aliens arrived.  He said no.  I hadn’t either.

Third and most important, they’re putting us out of work.  I have friends, now unemployed, who worked as sewage divers.  Lounging in the Baptist Shelter, they said aliens have swarmed the industry.  They’ve taken over animal-insemination businesses and major political offices.  Reporters tell us aliens only do the jobs that nobody wants, but have they asked the people who became unemployed?  The kicker is that politicians made it so only properly licensed individuals can dumpster dive.  That’s my trade.  Neither Mustafa nor I live legally, crouching fearfully in fragrant dumpsters as aliens in patrol cars siren passed.  Why is it that all licensed divers look like rodents?

So who’s next?  Today, it’s the dumpster divers, tomorrow the trash collectors.  When will it be your job?  The world is in dire straits.  If we don’t act soon, we may be destined for the compost pile of extinction… or worse.

Signed,

Dumpster Dave

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