Main
Cheese
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
A change had come over my office. I pushed back my chair, or tried to. I looked down. The floor was made of Swiss cheese and my casters were stuck. This was unusual. I gingerly made my way to the door. The door jamb, and the wall, were also cheese. I took a nibble?it was Monterey Jack. “Oh no,” I thought, “it’s that stupid supervillain.”
I squelched my way to Jolene's office. It smelled intensely of Edam and something equally pungent, instead of that nice perfume she wears.
"Hey," she said, "I hope you brought your appetite."
I tasted her file cabinet: Gruyere. "Nice," I said. She wrinkled her nose.
"I don't care for it," she said.
Then I thought of something. “The weather forecast,” I said. “It’s supposed to top 90 by noon.” The time? 11:15. Our offices are on the 9thfloor.
The elevator shaft was empty. A couple of people were looking down. I guess the ceiling wouldn't hold the weight of the elevator after the shaft was chedderized. We would have to take the stairs.
There must have been 100 people in the stairwell. It was at least 100º in there already; the smell was almost overpowering. Our feet sank into the Velveeta stairs. We had to scoot the last two floors on our asses so we wouldn’t plunge right through. Outside, police held back a huge crowd.
-----
WHUMP! A glob of Muenster the size of a dumpster hit the sidewalk.
“I’ve been fondued,” Jolene screamed. She was covered head-to-toe. I peeled some cheese away from her eyes and looked up. I could see Got Cheese Man buzzing around, and a couple of media copters shooting 5 o’clock footage. The building was starting to come apart.
"Run" I shouted, but it was slow going in my sticky yellow galoshes. I looked for Jolene?she was in the arms of a policeman, being carried to the barricade.
-----
I don’t remember much after that. The top 5 floors of the building let go and I was brained by my own desk chair. As for GCM, it was in all the papers. Apparently the backwash from one of the copters knocked him into the collapsing building and his transmuter went off by accident. Anyone want a life-size Camembert statue of the world’s cheesiest supervillain?
The end
Catalyst
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
The day was warm and a dry breeze blew out of the west. A good day for making cash.
Cars found a pebble. His hands were full. He picked it up in his toes and put it in his pocket. After he let Tools off at the mirror garden, he hid behind a solar array and examined his find. It tasted siliceous, with a hint of manganese. It was smooth and cool, pleasing to touch, so he kept it, despite its condition of no value.
Tools knew Cars had found something while carrying her to the garden. After making sure that her latest crop of mirrors had sufficient nutrients and were growing well, she called Tracks.
"Honey, I have a job of mutual profit." Tracks was already shaking her head.
"Cash up front. Always cash up front. You know that."
Tools bit the side of her finger while she thought. "Two mirrors. You choose."
They settled on three, and Tracks was on the case. What did Cars find, and what was it worth?
Cars and Digs were sitting together on the bluff. The horizon was rising to meet the sun. Digs spat the pebble out and handed it back.
"It doesn't taste good and it's not nutritious. It is only a pebble."
"I have wondered," he replied, "does everything have to have measurable value?"
She pushed him down and straddled him. "Compare," she said.
He popped the pebble in his mouth.
Cars dropped Digs off at the landfill excavation and ran to the taxi stand.
"You're late!" Bossman shouted, his hair standing up in fury. "You're docked a day's pay." He leaned forward and sneered. "We gotta be faaaaiiiiir!"
"You know what? I don't think that IS fair. Also, I don't want to carry people all day. Let them walk." He dropped the pebble into Bossman's hand.
"So what is it?" Tools asked. Tracks shrugged.
"He gave it to Bossman. Bossman threw it in the dirt and I picked it up. But it's only a pebble."
"Did he do anything special while he had it?"
"No. Put the pebble in his mouth and had sex with Digs."
Tools looked at the pebble. She tasted it. "You got the wrong thing. Go look again."
"Keep your mirrors," said Tracks, "I've got work to do." She put the pebble in her pocket, running her thumb over it as she walked away.
The end
Take them bowling
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
"Why not take them bowling?"
"What? Grant, why would they want to go bowling? They can barely stand!"
"Everybody I know likes bowling."
"Everybody you know, except me, is in your bowling league. Of course they like bowling." She kissed him and ruffled his hair.
-----
The Kush looked like stereotypical representations of aliens from before Contact. Big heads, big eyes, little bodies. They came from a low-gravity planet. With new alien visitors arriving every week or two, escorting them had gone from enthralling to boring, and then to a chore avoided whenever possible. As the lowest on the totem pole at the Missouri Tourism Board, it was Melinda's job.
-----
"Museums. Have seen."
"But there are all kinds of museums. Art museums, natural history museums, museums of antique cars..."
"All kinds. Have seen. What else?"
It turned out that her visitors had seen or had no interest in plays, 3D theatrical recordings, natural wonders, rivers, the Arch, shopping malls, performance art, and NASCAR. Melinda rolled her eyes.
"What about bowling?"
-----
Samson tottered forward and dropped the ball. It rumbled slowly down the lane, veered to the right, and dropped into the gutter. The rest of the Kush cheered wildly, clapping and whistling. She realized why when the next alien struggled up to the lane, clinging to a motorized walker. Samson put a ball in its hands and it rolled the ball off the top of the walker. The ball rolled past the end of the gutter and into the next lane. The clapping and cheering was a little less vigorous this time. 60 minutes later, Samson was up for the last time. The Kush had yet to knock over a pin, but they really seemed to be enjoying themselves. They ate hotdogs and nachos, cheered themselves hoarse, and got high on Mountain Dew. They quieted down when Samson reached the lane. He took aim, slung his arm back, then forward, and released the ball. It rolled down the lane, dead center. Closer to the pins. Closer. It started turning to the right. It kissed the last pin as it disappeared over the lip. One, no, two pins were down. The crowd went wild.
-----
The Kush signed the trade deal. A few weeks later Melinda got a package in the mail. Inside, a miniature gold bowling pin, a photo of two small Kush, and a note. "We enjoy native mating ritual."
the end
Zoli Lends Himself Trouble
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
To celebrate our first anniversary, each of us here at the Cabal has come up with a story beginning with a line kindly provided to us by Jay Lake. Click the link at the bottom of the page to see how Alex and Dan have dealt with this Zoli person, and come back tomorrow to see what Edd Vick does...
Zoli liked to hang around psychiatrists' waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks. They would do just about anything for a little insincere praise. The only downside was that they bonded quickly and he was not interested in commitment. He got around that problem by dumping them in parallel worlds when they became tiresome.
Dr. Faro had a large waiting room. Zoli made eye contact with the brunette again over the top of his Field & Stream. She recrossed her legs, flashing an inviting view under her white cotton skirt. He got up, then slid into the seat next to her. "This seat taken?"
Everything was going fine until another brunette strode in the door.
"Hey baby, you got a sister?" he asked the one holding his hand.
"I'm not good enough for you?" She pulled away a little.
"Sure, but..."
The other woman (Brunette 2) stood in front of them, hands on her hips. "You! Here you are, picking up my twin in the waiting room, just like you did with me." She turned to the other woman. "Don't believe anything he says," she warned, "he showed me a great time for a few weeks until he got bored, then he dumped me in this universe. I guess he never thought his twin'd be running the same game over here." The woman sitting by Zoli (Brunette 1) took her hand out of his.
"Look baby, who you gonna believe? She's acting crazy, which is maybe okay because she's in a shrink's office, but you and me, we oughta go someplace else where we can be alone together." Brunette 1 stood up and took a step back. Zoli stood up too and held out an arm to plead with her. Then he dropped his arm. "You know what, that's okay. Plenty more girls out there, you know what I mean."
The door opened and two blondes came in. They looked like the doublemint girls. They made a beeline for Zoli, gave the two brunettes a once over, and then they grabbed his arms.
"You dumped my twin," one of them said, inclining her head at the other. "We've got a whole club going, and they want to meet you." Zoli gulped, and looked over at the brunettes.
"Can we join?" Brunette 1 asked.
The end
Doing Free Time
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Will opened the letter from Stupendous Stories. He had just sent "Revenge of the Kudzu-Eaters" two days ago, and here was the reply. "Dear Mr. Stockton. It is with profound regret that I write to inform you..." A rejection! Well, he'd revise the story and send it to Daring Tales. He was pondering "which" vs "that", when the phone rang.
"Hello."
"Hi Will, want to go to the movies?"
"Aw, Mary Ann, I'm in the middle of a story..."
"But I didn't see you at all last weekend. What's the new story about?"
"I'm revising Kudzu-Eaters."
"SS didn't like it? That story was great!"
"Thank you. Look, I'll call you when I get done. Promise."
A new story. He did have an idea about a sequel to the classic "Mole Men" tale.
"The black needle ships descended in their thousands, disgorging the sinuous bodies of the Mustelid Marine. Ambush predators by nature, they made the ideal guerrilla warriors...."
He quit working on "Attack of the Space Weasels" when he got too hungry to think.
10:30. Too late to call Mary Ann now. He assembled a turkey sandwich. Then he made a second one.
In the morning, he kept his eye on the mailbox. As soon as the postman arrived, Will was out there to get the mail.
Not counting junk mail and bills there was a letter from Stupendous Stories and one from Daring Tales.
The envelope from Daring Tales contained "Kudzu-Eaters" – which he had only put in the mail that morning. Stupendous Stories had accepted "...Space Weasels." He looked over at the computer, where the unfinished story showed on the screen.
"I wonder how it ends," he thought.
He reached for the phone. "Mary Ann? I've got some time tonight; still want to see that movie?" Before they left he jotted down a note: "write something about an empire in an underground lake."
The next day he received $350 payment for "Empire of Darkness," and another $275 for the sequel.
Will quickly settled into the practice of coming up with story ideas and collecting checks for the unwritten stories.
Three months later he was arrested for the murder of his wife Mary Ann.
"I haven't even married her," he protested.
"You will," Sheriff Sims said grimly.
The end
The Mad Scientist's Evil Twin
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
His brother started it. Fame and fortune weren't enough for Stephan. He had to rub it in Eldon's face every day by being gracious, magnanimous, and successful. Curing cancer, solving world hunger, inventing a practical matter transmitter, discovery after sickening discovery. Whatever Stephan did just added to his wealth and reputation. He got more girls. He even had a better name!
Eldon was not going to be a copycat. Being the second most famous scientist in a family just didn't cut it. He chose a darker path.
* * * * *
Eldon specialized in biochemistry and genetics. He started small, a new viral disease here, a rust that ruined the taste of sweet corn there. He wore black, cultivated a mustache and goatee, and found that this persona drew women to him like vultures to a sheep carcass. He smiled a lot, and stroked his beard. He married frequently, if not well, and spent a lot of time in the lab. His brother was never far from his mind.
* * * * *
Carol buzzed around him, angry reminder of another almost-successful experiment. Maybe next time he should try something more substantial, something with a bigger brain. Not a mantis or spider; something benign, harmless. Perhaps a grasshopper, or a katydid. That was it! He'd always liked that Steely Dan album.
Carol came to rest on one of the windowsill plants. As the green jaws closed she realized she'd chosen poorly. Her tiny struggles grew louder, then were muffled, silenced. To his first wife, a housefly was nothing more than a snack. The Venus fly trap rattled its leaves suggestively.
Eldon pressed a button on his desk.
"Ms. Collins? Would you assist me in an experiment?"
* * * * *
Eldon picked up on the second ring. "Stephan! So good to hear from you. I'm in the midst of a groundbreaking experiment, Stephan, so you'll just have to wait. Perhaps lunchtime on Friday, my treat. Yes, let's meet in my lab."
Eldon turned back toward the examination table, where Miss Collins rolled her eyes frantically above the duct tape. Eldon adjusted the controls on the somatic gene-therapy transformer.
"This won't hurt a bit."
* * * * *
Eldon slammed the cup down over the oddly deformed grasshopper. "Got you!" The grasshopper hopped weakly, bumping into the glass. He dumped it into the terrarium. The machine had performed perfectly on this last run. Friday he would use a cicada.
the end
Demon Dog Treats
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
(Sequel to "The Ham Sandwich of Destiny," by Kat Beyer)
At first Crystal thought the guy in the café was hitting on her, which distracted her from the funny taste of the sandwich. The guy seemed nice enough, if a little eccentric, dropping into the seat across from her and not even introducing himself. She got out fast, though, when he started babbling about sandwiches with souls!
By the time she got home she was sure the sandwich had been spoiled, but she had to walk Demon anyway.
"Hi Britney." Britney was walking a pair of shaggy squat dogs for Mrs. Nyimso.
"Morning Crystal," Britney giggled.
Britney had the most irritating laugh. She probably didn't even know the dogs she walked every day were the physical manifestations of tibetan spirit messengers. "May they eat her bowels," Crystal muttered, rubbing her cramping stomach. She left Demon in the apartment with a stern injunction to eat any shi dogs that might show up, but to leave the furniture alone. She'd have to run to make it to the botanica in time, and she was definitely feeling queasy. At a stoplight she saw a parade of translucent floating figures clad in saffron robes. They were crossing against the light. Could food poisoning cause that?
Madame was already raising the shutters when Crystal panted up to the door. "Crystal, good morning. I've got some concrete statuary in the van. I want you to set it out where the big Euphorbia used to be."
"Yes ma'am."
Crystal was already inside the van when she realized the statues were shi dogs. Why was Madame buying Chinese spirits for a Mexican magic shop? She jumped back, but one of the statues caught her ankle. She fell heavily, got off one good blast from the whistle around her neck, and concrete jaws closed on her wrist. She heard barking, rapidly growing louder, then the shi was yanked away from her arm. She screamed and doubled up around her ravaged wrist. As soon as she could, she began pushing the pain away. When she looked up Demon was chewing on concrete gravel and Madame was standing in front of her. "You will have to pay for the statues your dog ate." Crystal nodded. As doggie snacks the shi were kind of costly. The apartment door would be expensive, too.
"Now let's take a look at your injury."
When Madame touched Crystal's wrist she looked up sharply. "Are you pregnant?"
The end
Bargain
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Billy settled into the lounger and opened another beer. Darlene was gone. "We used to have fun Fridays," he muttered. "Where is that bitch anyway? No note, no nothin'…" He trailed off. He hadn't hit her any harder than usual this morning. It wasn't like she couldn't remember how he liked his eggs. She just made them runny to spite him. She should've done the shopping today and there was no food. "I work all day, and she does nothin'." She was definitely going to get it when she did come home.
Of course the TV was on the fritz too, and there wasn't anything to do but drink. He took a swig and made a face. It sure wasn't whiskey.
Behind him, beady eyes watched from the baseboard, where two adjacent pieces had not been properly nailed. Or perhaps the nails had worked loose as the house settled. No matter, little feet would put the small opening to good use. They'd accepted the saucer of milk and the bargain. Billy finished his beer and the observer froze while the man belched at great length, then reached down and drew another out of the bucket. He popped it open, and the sudden hiss coincided exactly with the fall of the net over his head.
"Gahhh!!" he screamed, and grabbed wildly at his face, for the net felt nasty, like coarse spider web. He reached for the arms of the recliner to lever himself to his feet and get away from the horrid stuff, but the arms weren't there. In fact, the recliner wasn't there either. He was sprawled on his back on the floor, foot resting on a huge, dewy metal cylinder, and the net covered his head and upper torso.
They jerked him to his feet and hustled him off to the baseboard. Belatedly, he recognized the giant cylinder. "My beer!" he wailed out of the darkness.
Inside the walls, Billy stumbled between his captors, who he somehow could not get a good look at, dodging real cobwebs and projecting nails. A giant cockroach regarded him silently, then scuttled off towards the now-deserted living room and the enticing scent of beer. They walked a long way, perhaps as far as the kitchen, and then Billy was shoved into an empty cat-food can. The lid was hammered down tightly. It was dark, but he heard movement, and smelled something musky.
"Darlene?" he quavered.
"No."
The end
Connected
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
A sticky note fluttered to the desk. A moment later they all let go. Jen got out a new pack, copied each note carefully (except last week's pet-reconstruction appointment), and stuck them on the monitor. Just as she put the last one up, the first slipped off with an almost audible sigh.
"Argh!" She went into the kitchen to make some tea. She pulled a cookbook off the shelf to browse for supper. The pages scattered. The cover peeled apart.
That was it. She couldn't take anymore. She flopped down in front of the trivision.
"... mutant strain attacks glues, including those commonly used in products for the home but there is no cause for..." she switched off. Another damn plague. Antibiotic resistant this, mutated nano that.
"Why couldn't there be a GOOD plague," she moaned.
The food-prep unit harrumphed. "There was the sentient appliance revolution..." The back panel fell off with a clatter, followed by silence.
The phone rang. It was her brother.
"Hello, Norman."
"Are you okay? I saw a story about the plague on the newsfeed here at the spaceport."
"Worry about yourself," she said. "Isn't there glue in the shuttle?" Outside, a vehicle rose from the spaceport.
Her brother's voice was tinny in her ear. "Apparently not because they are not grounding our flight. Listen, I've got to go. They're letting us launch early. I'll cube when I get there."
"Why are you taking off early?"
"Dunno, bye."
The connection was gone, but she said goodbye anyway, watching two more departures clear the tops of the intervening buildings. It seemed like they were launching more flights today than usual. A lot more.
The framework of her chair chose that moment to return to its component materials. She was enveloped in a dense white cloud. When she stopped coughing, she was lying on a sack of upholstery fabric partly filled with sawdust. She staggered to her feet and dusted herself off.
There was more noise of things falling in the kitchen, then the overhead light went out with a small "pop." She was feeling her way toward the door when the food-prep unit called.
"Jen? I'm cold."
The end
A Man Walks Into A Bar
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
A hunchback says "it seems a fellow with eight arms walks into a bar and..."
The guy with the slits interrupts him. "You don't start a story like that. You don't say 'it seems,' you just start right in talking. Like 'A fellow with eight arms takes a head off the guy next to him at the bar.'"
"Yeah, Kelly said that," agrees the fellow with the long neck. "He oughta know how to tell a story."
"But that ain't what happened," the hunchback protests, "the other guy didn't have any heads at all, and..."
"No head?!" A really thin guy glides over from a nearby table. His head is the widest part of him, because of the nose, and his expression says he couldn't imagine having a smaller head, much less no head. "That meant he didn't have no nose. How did he smell?"
Slits starts to answer, and the hunchback says "Now look, whose joke is this?" but that is as far as he gets. Just then someone comes in the door. He has a whole bunch of arms and is holding some kind of weapon in each hand. He starts shooting (which is completely illegal) and all the raconteurs dive for the floor. Octopus Boy is tearing the place up. The light fixture suspended from the ceiling partially explodes and the remains start spinning lazily, shedding sparks. Most of the surviving patrons are on the floor, some dripping fluids, and the smell of oxygen acceptors is harsh in the air. Suddenly there's a shout from the back of the room:
"Finish the joke! The guy with no heads! What does he do?!" This elicits a brief volley from the heavily armed character in the doorway. When it ends, the hunchback quavers from underneath a table.
"He smells as bad as ever."
Another volley, and the shooter speaks for the first time: "Who am I? Chopped liver?!
A different voice from the back of the room. "And the guy who walks into the bar? What happens to him?"
O. B. pauses to slap himself in the forehead.
The hunchback answers. "You fellows really ain't heard this one? He rubs his head and says 'ow!'"
Octopus Boy throws up several of his arms in disgust and just walks back out on the street.
The end
Request for Proposals
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
I have to start with some ancient history.
It began with medicine, of course. Our lives were extended from an average of 25 standard years to 50, 60, then a hundred, and then several hundred. Gradually, we stopped taking chances. Laws were passed to prevent activities society deemed dangerous. Then those too young to reproduce were forbidden all sorts of behaviors once typical of childhood. Remember rollerskates? I loved them once... The laws weren't the most insidious change. Soon we voluntarily stopped sliding down slopes, swimming in water, and eventually even going outdoors. Nanotechnology accelerated the process. You might think that replacing the human body with self replicating machines would have reversed our growing obsession with safety and preservation of our lives. After all, if you broke your neck skiing and you were a nanoman or nanowoman healing was a cinch. But we had already gone too far. We now had the potential to live for millennia. The old joke
Q: Do nanofolks live thousands of times as long as biological people?
A: Yes, but it doesn't feel like it.
wasn't funny anymore. It was true. People began obsessively calculating probabilities and avoiding anything whose probability was greater than this or greater than that. Soon, anything whose probability was measurable at all. Giving up pets was hard. I almost still miss my last cat. He was affectionate in a self-centered way, but when he died I could not risk replacing him. Finally, even sex became too dangerous. Progeny were all engendered in vitro. After a while, no one bothered with that. The drive to propagate had been replaced with the drive to prolong the self.
And that's why I'm contacting you now. I'm sitting here, inside my personal event horizon, having a radical thought. If I'm NOT the only one left, and I might be, maybe I should go out into the universe and try to find some other people. It's time for a new research program, one that I'm sure we can all get behind. See, we need to find a way out of this universe fast, before entropy snuffs it out. Because our black holes won't last forever. When they evaporate we will be gone. And I'm not ready. I've hardly had time to live!
The end
What are we going to do with Mary Ann?
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Mary Ann sat down at the dining room table. She waited for her father to say grace. He did not. He said "Mary Ann." She was so surprised that she dropped her fork.
"Yes father," she said demurely, eyes down.
"Mary Ann," he said again, "I hardly know how to say this. Have you been... talking to... that young habilis boy?"
Mary Ann's face turned red as her hair. Her brother giggled.
Her mother gasped. "They're animals! That's disgusting!" She jumped up from the table and ran out of the room. Soon she could be heard in the bathroom.
Mary Ann jerked her head up and glared straight at her father. "Pastor said two weeks ago that they are people just as much as we."
"That ape has more hair than your dog," her brother said, and laughed. "Does he use dog shampoo or people shampoo? Does he have to take walks twice a day? Do you pick..."
"William!" Her father said, "that is enough."
"If you must know," Mary Ann continued, "Peter is helping me with geometry homework. But he has asked me to the dance. And I said yes."
William started making ape noises.
"I'm trying to be understanding," her father said. "He's 3 feet tall and covered with as much hair as a retriever. He is as strong as a gorilla, as smart as a chimpanzee, and probably won't live past 40. Where did we go wrong?"
"Don't you see dad? You taught me to see people as people. You should be proud."
"Proud that my grandchildren will need to shave their entire bodies before they can go out in public?"
"No! Proud that they, or their children, will be accepted as equal, because you taught me that a man is a man, no matter what he looks like."
Her mother, standing in the doorway, turned white and disappeared again suddenly.
"Dad. Peter and I are friends." Mary Ann flicked a lock of hair off of her forehead.
Her father sighed deeply. "So. When are you going to invite him to dinner? Is he allergic to anything?
"Does he eat pork?"
The end
Toe Testing Time
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
The farm has done much better since we started growing baby heads. They'll grow anywhere, but more sunlight makes them grow faster. The plants set more fruit, and we can take the heads to market sooner. They spend less time in the babbling stage and Marie, well, that part drives her crazy. My favorite part is harvesting. They say the strangest things. Stuff like "midnight's noon/and noon midnight/bright flash of darkness comes." I write the good ones down. I figure I'll publish them, be famous someday.
One winter we nearly ran out of food. All we had left in the cellar were some heads rejected by the conglomerate the previous fall. We'd already put them in the back room, they made such a racket. You wouldn't believe the language they used when we dumped them into the hot water.
The end
The Clockwork Possum
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Davy went missing the day Mistress Williams ordered him to clean out the sewers. It's always the little things that change our lives. Part of his job description, she snapped, but he felt that he had not signed up for that. That was work for mindless robots, not for the likes of him. He had no belongings to pack, so he just took off as soon as she was out of sight. He ran at night. By day he waited, keeping a low profile: buried beneath dead leaves, in sand piles, under junked cars, played junk himself a few times. Had a tense moment in a salvage yard when the electromagnet got very close, but then the five o'clock whistle blew. Traveled the last hundred kilometers in some gigantic abandoned tunnels. They smelled bad and there were rats. Still, it wasn't long before he reached the outskirts of Old New New York. He slipped in to the bad part of town, hung around in the diesel bars and the magnet parlors, did a few magnets himself even. Eventually got in touch with the underground through a chip dealer in upper Queens. It felt like coming home. They had a place for him, they said.
"We need you," the first one said, "you're just what we're looking for."
"It's nice to be appreciated," Davy replied, "humans just don't understand."
"You are so right," the second one said. "We'll show you what it's really like."
*
"The brain is the most succulent organ," the first one said.
"Positronic!" The other agreed, and took another bite.
The end
You Don't Know Beans
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
So Jack walks into a bar and he says "I've got 5 beans. Who's with me?"
Nobody says anything at first. But then some guy says "lemme see 'em."
Jack shows him the beans and the guy says "You pay for these?"
"These ain't no ordinary beans," says Jack "these here are magic beans." He goes on like this, and pretty soon a few guys go with him.
*
The next morning we see this giant beanstalk coming out of the ground. Five trunks are braided and they're covered with throbbing veins that pump water up out of the earth. The dang thing shades half the town. Jack's mother says she doesn't know where he is.
So we wait a few days, but nothing happens except mushrooms are coming up everywhere and the corn isn't growing, what with dense shadow covering most of the arable land north of Jack's mother's house.
At first light on the seventh day we start in on the beanstalk. It's slow going. Then we get the idea of cutting through some of the vein-like things. Water spurts out like blood, and after a while the whole stalk kinda starts to deflate. We also mix up some salt water and squirt it up some of the tubes. Late in the evening a couple of things fall out of the sky. Some kid comes running up a few minutes later to tell us that bean pods 12 feet long are falling on the north side of town. One of them crashed right through the roof of the dentist's house. We gotta stop he says.
"No way," I tell him. "You tell Doc Wilson we'll be over to fix his roof after we're done here."
We keep going, and sometime after dark the thing starts to give. Longitudinal fibers are cracking like cannon shot and soon the noise is so steady we are half deaf. Maybe that's why, it already being dark and all, we don't realize at first when the stalk comes down.
The ground jumps and a tremendous cloud of dust explodes away from the stricken stalk. Things get quiet, and we feel pretty good until Jimmy the butcher, said "Where you figure it landed?" Don't really know what to say after that.
*
The beanstalk took out a good fifth of the town, but I still say it was a small price to pay. And we did get a few tons of beans out of it. But I do wonder what happened to Jack and the others, up above the sky.
The end
Menage à Trois
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
***Warning to readers: explicit sexual situations.***
"I am sick and tired," Soeren shouted, "of your damn dead sister watching us screw!"
Lorna wriggled, and smiled awkwardly. "But she's my twin. We always do everything together. Remember, when she was still alive...?" She caught Soeren's wrist and tried to pull him down, but he jerked his arm away. Then he scrambled off the bed and stomped out of the room. Lorna scowled at Laura, who appeared to be masturbating about 3 feet in the air in front of the closet. Ectoplasm was so close to transparent that details were very hard to see. Laura seemed to smile and shrugged.
"Don't give me that," Lorna hissed, jumping out of bed and pulling on a T-shirt to confront her sister's shade. "I shared him with you when you were alive, but he's mine now."
Laura stood up and rubbed her insubstantial hands slowly down her flanks. Then her expression changed, and she rushed at Lorna with arms outstretched and mouth open wide. Lorna felt a sudden chill and whirled around, but Laura was nowhere to be seen.
Lorna caught up with Soeren at the library. "What about here?" she whispered, "I don't think she can find us here." Over Soeren's shoulder she saw a black-clad librarian frowning at her and holding a finger to her lips.
"Are you crazy!?" he whispered back, "we can't be quiet enough. What about the park?"
Lorna sighed. "I don't know if that will work either." Laura was perched on top of one of the old card files, waving at her.
Sure enough, wherever they found for sex, Laura was there. Soeren just could not keep his mind on task, with his girlfriend's dead twin looking on.
"I just don't get it," Lorna said. "You were eager to have us together when we were both alive."
"That was different. She was thinking about sex, then. Now she almost seems to be trying to tell me something."
Lorna could not wait for an opportunity to confront Laura alone. "You want him to think I killed you," she whispered. "I can't believe you would do that to me!
"Anyway, bungee jumping was YOUR idea. You made a big deal about which bungee you got...omg! That was meant for ME and you screwed up.
"Were you that jealous?"
The end
Aliens Wrecked My Bike
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
I didn't see the wall. It was late, I was tired, and it was raining. I hit it hard, and it knocked me out. I came to with blood in my mouth and a pounding headache. My frame was bent and spokes stuck out from the front wheel like a punk haircut. Who builds a wall across the road in the middle of the night?! It hadn't been there after school.
Some of the bricks had been knocked out of the wall and I picked one up. I'm sorry, I screamed. The brick was hard but warm, with short fur, and it gave a little scared-puppy squirm. Then the whole wall came apart and all of the bricks were running for the woods, like beetles under a log when you pick it up. In a few moments the only visible evidence of the wall was my wrecked bike.
*
The next morning I had to walk. I looked everywhere, but I didn't see the aliens. At school no one said they'd seen any weird walls or furry bricks. I wasn't going to ask! Who wants to look crazy?
Saturday I did some exploring in the woods with my beagle, Roger. Roger sniffed around a lot, and he dug a pretty deep hole under an oak tree. Squirrels were dropping acorns everywhere. The acorns kept hitting us, but I couldn't see the squirrels. Every time an acorn hit Roger, he yelped. It seemed like the squirrels were aiming at us. I've heard they do that. Anyway, it was creeping me out, so we left.
Did you know there are hundreds of kinds of oak trees, but only a couple of kinds of squirrels? I broadened my search, and you know what? Weird things happen all the time. I don't know if any at of them are caused by the little furry aliens.
*
We're getting new neighbors soon, and maybe they have a kid. I hope so. I haven't seen them yet, but they're building a brick house. It's going up fast, and they only cut down the trees they had to, so it's like in the woods already, which is cool if there aren't too many squirrels. I'll go over soon and introduce myself.
I need some help: those aliens owe me a bike.
Marcie's Day
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Only the bulkhead now between Marcie and what remained of the rest of the crew, which had expanded to fill three quarters of the ship, and it oozing under doors, through vents, and through the tiniest holes.
Seventeen people she'd worked with for months, amalgamated as a malignant mass, a composite entity retaining no visible trace of humanity, its exterior a palimpsest of colors that shifted and transformed ceaselessly: vermilion, gold, a myriad shades of green and blue.
Why had Lon drunk the liquid they'd found in the stoppered flask? Yes, the characters they'd decoded had referred to a miracle cure, yes, he was facing a painful death from the infection he'd picked up on the abandoned station and yes, Federation medicine could do nothing for him, so perhaps he'd thought he had nothing to lose. Well.
The bulkhead creaked, forcing her back to the present, as a voice vibrated through the decking, calling her name.
*
She wrung her hands, stared wildly around the hold. Spacesuits: no; escape pod: ditto. She had nothing to work with, nothing, nada, zilch, etc. Suddenly her eye was drawn to the probability generator. How could she have forgotten? Dangerous, yes, but she'd nothing to lose either. She raced to the machine, removed the lock they had bolted down over the control panel. The bulkhead screamed and polychromatic gel flowed out around it and dripped in globs onto the floor. The scent of lemons mingled with chocolate (or was it burnt roast?). She grabbed the probability dial and gave it a strong twist. Wheels spun and clacked, lights flashed, and peripheral vision overwhelmed her sight. It was more distracting than being blind. She couldn't actually see anything, but she couldn't ignore anything either.
A moment later she could see again. She could see, but for some reason, she could not take a step. She looked down, then, at the glistening multicolored sausage that had been her legs; at the squirming polyps that were ballooning from her flesh like chewing gum bubbles, separating, and drifting away, tendrils waving au revoir, on the stiffening breeze; and at the roots that her fused limbs were sending out through the quivering ground at ever-increasing speed. She shook her head, smiled, and extended her arms, which burst into bud. She stood at the center of a rapidly Marcifying plain. It was going to be a good day.
The Mindbenders
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
"Don't think of it as a creepy aliens-take-over-humans thing." Rubin waved his arm at the rows of huge fetuses, each swollen-headed thing immersed in cloudy fluid and bottled and racked like wine.
Sara shuddered. "What else could it be? It's an organic computer, but these are real people. They have feelings, they're not just vat-grown tissue."
Rubin shook his head. "It's not like that. They're grown from skin cells. They have brains, but they don't have minds. Look at them. Those huge heads are stuffed with matrices of simple circuits. They cannot think independently; they don't have the complex neuronal interconnections of natural brains."
She forced herself to look closely at one. Its scrunched little face reminded her of a goblin, or of her mother, shortly before she died, when the Betelgeusian DNA was all through her body and her head was trying to reshape itself into something that surely could never really live. So, yeah, she was thinking creepy aliens. She shivered, and she was terribly afraid that one of the fetuses would open its eyes and stare at her accusingly.
She whirled to face Rubin. "Why did you bring me here?" Her jaw worked. Maybe he was in league with them, possessed by them. She darted for the exit. She took the stairs two at a time, expecting a particle beam in the back all the way, but just as she reached the top the door opened. Something stood there on a pillar of black pulsating tentacles, something with huge compound eyes in which she was reflected hundreds and hundreds of times. She screamed as it reached for her hand. She turned to run again, tripping, falling, landing headfirst.
*
She came to, her cheek painfully pressed into the metal grid flooring. The virus she had smuggled inside her lungs had done its work. Rubin lay beside her, unmoving. As far as she could see, hypercranial fetuses were thrashing their arms and writhing. Alarms were sounding and she heard running feet. The occupant of the nearest jug opened its eyes and looked right at her.
"The invaders," she said, "how do we defeat them?"
"Two plus two," it said, "equals four." It smiled seraphically.
Touch
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Darrell stumbled to the kitchen, desperately hoping there was coffee. There wasn't. In desolation he put some water in a coffee cup and raised it to his lips. He downed three swallows of aromatic nectar of the bean before he remembered he'd expected water. He set the cup down with shaking hands. He sniffed. Yes, this was that ambrosia Prometheus had given to man.
The special: grits, eggs, and bacon (or sausage). A dollar less than eggs and bacon alone. So even though he didn't eat grits, it was worth it. Today he asked for water instead of coffee.
"You flyin' this morning?" Rashika said, "why else you don't want coffee?"
"An experiment," he replied. When she turned away he took a sip. He gulped the rest so she wouldn't see the coffee. It was the perfect temperature.
"How was the experiment?"
"I'm makin' it."
Coke turned. Also, orange juice, milk, and vinegar, but not liquid paper. A shadow fell across him.
"Bored, Stevens? I can't think of a better reason for drinking liquid paper. And if you ARE bored," his boss continued, "I can find something for you."
Darrell hastily screwed the lid back on.
"Back to work and quit fooling around."
"Yes sir."
By the time the apartment door closed behind him that night, Darrell had drunk so much converted coffee his hands were shaking. He wanted water, but it seemed that wasn't going to happen. He started to examine the horse's teeth in earnest and came up with some hair-raising questions.
Just what would happen if he cut himself and absentmindedly sucked on it? If he watered the bushes and drank from the hose would the entire municipal water supply go mocha? What if he got seawater in his mouth at the beach? Was kissing too close to drinking? How long could he live without water?
He could drink broth, it turned out, if he did it with a spoon, so he didn't have to resort to intravenous fluids. The problem of kissing was only theoretical until he met Sara. Standing in line at the juice bar she struck up a conversation with him. One thing led to another. On the third date she grabbed him by the ears and took the kissing question out of his hands. She lived. She settled the ocean question by dunking him. Finally, he stopped at a drinking fountain and took the plunge. He had to know.
Egg Salad Surgery
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Ever since being struck by lightning the Mad Scientist had been plagued by the scent of egg salad. “Which wouldn't be so bad,” he muttered to himself, “if I didn't loathe egg salad.” To top it all off, after risking his life in the storm he hadn't been able to revive Igor after all. The hunchback made a really terrible zombie. (He had been kind of clumsy and slow of mind in life, and those things were not improved after death. In fact, it was said that only the sense of smell became more acute for zombies.) All of this made the stench of egg salad that much harder to take.
Do it yourself brain surgery on others was one thing, but the Mad Scientist had never tried it on himself before. His aim was to manipulate the nerves in the olfactory center so that egg salad smelled like, say, an avocado sushi roll. Or pepperoni and sausage pizza. It didn't really matter as long as it was a pleasant aroma. Using a waldo was too crude; he had to culture and then guide the evolution of surgical nanobots that would navigate the fluid surrounding and cushioning the nerves in his brain, snipping some connections and encouraging the growth of others. Fortunately, this was not difficult.
The nano-surgery complete, he unwrapped his nose. All that remained of his tiny army was a drop of milky fluid on a glass dish. He took a hesitant sniff – fried liver. He shuddered and stifled his gag reflex. What were the odds? The food he hated nearly as much as egg salad, and he was stuck with it day and night. Unless he wanted to launch another expedition into his brain.
"Oh man, this stinks!"
"Tell me about it, Master."
The end
Holiday
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
People don't go anywhere anymore. It used to be, grandad says, people worked hard for days and days before they had earned enough vacation time to actually go in their rooms and plug themselves in to a virtual national park or amusement park or water park or venusian tuber farm or something. Now we just go out behind the recycling center and stare at some weeds, or throw chunks of plastic at the vehicles on the Superway. If we want to go to an amusement park we have to actually pretend everything. You call that living?
I mean, what can you do with plastic, glaspex, and vegebord? Yesterday, Tim3 is standing on a bit of vegebord shouting "I am Chancellor of Trash!" or some sh*t and so Lefrim shoves him off and says she's Premier of Trash and waves a block of glaspex in the air. The new kid from Moon 13 pushes her off and says he's King of the Trash. Dorks!
If I was going to pretend something it would be way faster than that. I would be a unitank pilot, beneath cloud cover on a Chitin-occupied world during the Wars. We'd have to wipe out a Hive. We wouldn't get out alive. Or maybe....
It Began with the Rhinos
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Professor Zodiac didn't mean to reanimate the entire zoo cemetery. He merely needed a couple of dead rhinoceri.
The reanimation, fueled with the pulp of countless PETA tracts, went off without a hitch. At least until the elephants. They broke through the soil, spraying dirt clods everywhere, and posing against the sky.
"Did I order elephants?" The raised eyebrow. Chunk shook his head vehemently and hung his head. He had always loved circus elephants.
"No, Master."
But then the tapir, the jaguarundi, the koala and the meerkat, the gazelle and even the stately giraffe, broke free of the ground and began staggering about, milky-eyed and trembling. Professor Zodiac launched all of them, the hippopotamus, the red panda, the giant tortoise, and even the penguins against the Witch's stronghold.
The liches turned out to have capabilities that they could only have dreamed of in their former lives, if they could have dreamed of additional abilities. The hippos could tunnel through wet earth. Pocket gophers could teleport, although only into and out of pockets. The penguins could fly. They were like giant flying fish, whizzing over the walls of the Witch's castle, crashing through windows, or bouncing off embrasures when they tried to go through arrow slits. Soon, the professor was inside. He confronted the Witch in her audience chamber.
"I want what's rightfully mine," he said. "I need the potions from my laboratory."
"You mean MY laboratory," she snapped. "It was only your laboratory until I caught you performing late-night experiments with that leggy intern from the University. I have moved the facility to an isolated tower in the Arctic Ocean. The tower is too smooth and too tall for climbing, and is surrounded by hundreds of miles of sea ice. You will never get in. I'll be wearing the laboratory smock in the family from now on."
"But I have to finish her transformation," he protested. "Now she is neither fish nor fowl, when she could be both." The Witch snorted. "Should've thought of that while her pants were still on."
*
Eventually, the professor's army returned to the graveyard and he departed. Afterwards, he pulled his assistant aside.
"Chunk?"
"Yes, Master?"
"This is not the end."
"No, Master."
He leaned down to whisper in the hunchback's ear. "We can do this. I have a foolproof plan. But we'll need more penguins."
The Man With Two Thumbs
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
So this guy with two thumbs walks into a bar, and the bartender says "Hey! You can't bring those things in here!"
Well, the first thumb says this is discrimination and it starts talking about class-action lawsuits and picketing and late-night visits from the middle finger and pretty soon it gets cited for disorderly conduct and hauled off to jail.
Meanwhile, the second thumb waits behind the bar in an alley with a couple of cans of gasoline and a book of matches from The Nether Digit, a nightclub on the other side of town, not just a nightclub, but a toe club, a place where you can have any toes you want all night long, two at once, even, if you're surefooted enough, in those padded booths with the tasteful crimson and burgundy curtains. And while the thumb is waiting for the last patrons to leave the bar, shrouded menacingly in a grease-stained overcoat, a big shaggy dog trots up and eats it.
Street People
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
"Ow!" That hurt. The sun is just touching the façades on the west side of the street, and the crowds are still light. The first heel in the nose is the closest I'm gonna get to a cup of coffee this morning. Although I can hope someone will trip and spill some in my mouth.
"Excuse me. I didn't notice you." A high-pitched voice. Either a child or a woman.
"Are you blind?! The whole sidewalk is covered with us." Okay, that may have been a little harsh, especially if I'm talking to a child. Yep, I hear sniffling. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm just a little stressed. It's been 13 years since I had any coffee." Or anything else.
I guess the kid moved on. So now I'm feeling guilty, even as people walk all over me. Something light hits my cheek. A biscuit wrapper, from the scent. I can't reach it with my tongue. Traffic's picking up and more and more people step on me. I try not to make noise. Attention is usually bad. I eavesdrop. This is my only source of daytime amusement.
"I said 'Honey, you don't know.' He really thought I would, on the first..."
"...bell peppers. That should do it. Don't forget tonight..."
"...gonna eat all that? Cos if you're full..."
Crumbs.
Smell, taste, hearing, pain. I believe they disable vision because that would give us too much pleasure. Some think it's done out of kindness. Eyes are so vulnerable.
*
Night's better. Sometimes a lonely person will stop to chat, even feed me. One time, a woman let me suck her nipple. I think she was a whore, but hey, I take what I can get. She didn't come back.
Some of my night visitors are not so nice. They urinate in my mouth, smear dog poop on my nose, you get the idea. This kind of behavior is the reason we are put here. People are quite cruel, if not very inventive, and the State can pretend it doesn't know.
*
Once a month or so my ex-wife comes by. She doesn't feel sorry for me; she comes to abuse me. I didn't know that girl was under age. Or that she had a weak heart. Anyway, I'll be out in 12 years. Sharon may have moved several times by then, even changed her name, but I'll find her.
Advanced Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath IV: Citadel of the Ghoul®
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
His eyes are shut, but he's clicking faster now, he's in the zone, the trance engendered by playing a repetitive game well mastered. And now the veil parts and he sees the stair, sets foot on the topmost step, begins his descent.
Long time he climbs, ever downward amidst sepulchral gloom, and he can hear the chittering of the ghouls in the vast space below him. He is no longer aware of his hands, clicking the mouse, only of the dreamworld.
The air is colder here, and he puts his hands in his pockets, his breath forming evanescent puffs of white. At length he sees a glimmering in the red-litten mirk, but it does not seem to be the expected buttery yellow lamplight of the charcoal burners' village, where he will spend the night.
Disturbingly, the light flickers and, as he draws nearer, assumes a distinctly rosy hue. He smells smoke. In the village he finds the charcoal burners scattered, their huts charred. From the smell, some of the charcoal burners remain in the ruins of their dwellings. He searches, following the paths where survivors fled, trampling their gardens of rare black lilies in hasty flight. Under the eaves of the forest stands Hando, gracious host of previous visits to the dream lands.
"Are you all right, old friend? Who did this?" The traveler demands.
Hando shakes his head. "The ghouls, no longer satisfied with their habitual pungent fare, prey upon the living. My whole family." He cannot go on.
The traveler swears by the bones of his father, resting quietly beneath the groves of lemon trees near Lasturion the Enduring, on the far shore of the inner sea, that he will not rest until a terrible vengeance has been wreaked on the kingdom of the flesh eaters.
*
"Doctor, he was up here when the power... I called, but he didn't answer. He didn't answer." For a few moments she could not go on. "After a while I came upstairs. I found him slumped over the keyboard, his hand still clicking and moving the mouse. I tried to pry his hand off the horrid thing! I couldn't. I turned off the computer, but his hand still moves, and he will not wake."
Talk, Talk, Talk
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
A man found a strange metal house in the Bush. The door was hanging open and the house seemed deserted. He called, but no one answered. Eventually, curiosity made him step inside. When he did, he almost jumped right back out again, because the floor mat said "You are trespassing! Leave at once." But just then a picture on the wall said "Maybe he knows what happened to the Master. You stay right here!" The monster in the picture scowled right at the man standing in the doorway and he was afraid to run. "The Master! What have you done with him?" an urn on a table shouted. "I did nothing," the man protested, but his voice trailed off. He looked around the inside of the house and realized it was bigger than the outside. Almost nothing in it was familiar. He stepped in, drawn by glittering mystery. He ignored the chorus of questions and imprecations that came from every side. He leaned his spear against the wall to free his hands. "Hey! You scratched me," the wall brayed. He had just picked up a bottle the color of the sea and he dropped it. A pungent odor reached his nostrils, the ceiling screamed like a hare, and the floor mat shouted "Run! Nano-seed! Run!" This was too much -- the man took to his heels. "Goodbye to all this," the door mumbled dissolutely.
That Dream
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
The buildings, people, trash cans, everything, collapsing like the Twin Towers had, only instead of clouds of smoke and debris, these transformed into architectural outlines on pavement that became a smooth hard flat surface. Arnold was unchanged, but everything else had become diagrammatic, somehow embedded in the surface of the plane. Crap! He was in that dream again.
He looked down. He stood on a long row of squares about 6 feet on a side, a wide black ribbon to his left and on his right large rectangles and other polyhedra. Inside each were smaller rectangles (desks), brackets of various sizes that must be chairs and couches, and colorful moving ovoids. He stepped over the wall of the nearest building and approached one. It backed away, or at least he presumed that the surface facing him, fraught with invaginations and small protrusions, was the front. He backed it into a corner, then cautiously reached down and touched its middle. It rippled violently and darted past him, spun around a few times in the center of the room, and came to rest in the doorway. Arnold looked at his fingertip, where a damp red spot was drying.
*
Arnold glided through the doorway. He could see Saunders and The Chief in front of the conference table. Suddenly, their shapes ballooned and wavered like threads in a fast wind. Saunders had split into two... and so had The Chief. One of the two Saunders's disappeared and reappeared so close to Arnold he could smell shoe polish. Arnold shied away in alarm and slammed into the coat rack. F*ck! That dream again!
The chief disappeared: first one chief and then the other one. Saunders did the same a moment later. Arnold's pants were wet.
*
Arnold inhaled her scent, caressed the delicious mound of Charlene's belly as she slept. He pressed down slightly. His hand blurred, sank in; her skin closed around his wrist, a tight ring of flesh that rolled warmly up his arm as his hand passed through her muscles, her womb, their son's tiny skull... his arm snapped back into focus.
Arnold convulsed backwards out of bed, across the tiny bedroom, and through the shattering window, but he could clearly see:
Charlene jerking up off the bed,
her red fountain,
the scream distorting her face.
He plunging toward the street,
naked, his red
and dripping hand.
With A Grain of Salt
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Taffy had done 18 months for hijacking one of Peter Piper's trucks. Stole16 tons of pickled peppers (Why?! Who knows?). But Piper had a good alibi. He'd been home with his wife, eating pumpkin pie and playing cards with a couple of neighbors. So who killed a two-bit hood by ripping his throat out, dousing him with slime, and dumping him in Sir Reginald Thimble's flower bed? A similar murder in Dressmakers St. put me on the right track My client was a member of the notorious Tailor Gang At last everything was piecing itself together in my head.
*
Sir Reginald's front door was open. Running up the steps I slipped and landed hard. A trail of goo came up the drive and went through the door. I followed, and almost tripped over the butler. Crushed flat.
Three well-dressed victims had been smoking in a room off the main hall,.my client among them. Blood was everywhere. I stepped back out. A snail the size of a Volkswagen was coming up fast from the back of the house. I pulled a salt shaker out of my pocket and raised it high. The snail stopped in its trail.
"So it is down to me and it is down to you, Deadbolt," the snail gurgled. I was surprised to hear a mollusk quoting "The Princess Bride." Usually they go in for live theater when they seek entertainment.
"One question," I said. It dipped an eye stalk "Why? Did the Tailors pay you to hit the Welshman? And if they did, why start killing them? You're a pro, not a garden-variety psycho."
"You humanoids are all crooked. They put the hit on the little thief cos he was stupid enough to rip them off. Only an idiot steals from a syndicate."
"You won't get an argument from me," I said, "but what about the Tailors? Doing your civic duty?"
"Thread-biters didn't pay me." It sounded outraged. "I let that get out, that people can push in my eyestalks, and I won't be eating."
"Three square salads a day where you're going now," I said, "you can thank me later." Meanwhile, I had unscrewed the lid of the saltshaker. It would last until the cops got here with a couple of 5 pound sacks.
The end
References
"Taffy"
http://www.zelo.com/family/nursery/taffy.asp
"Peter Piper"
http://www.zelo.com/family/nursery/peterpiper.asp
"Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater"
http://www.zelo.com/family/nursery/peterpeter.asp
"The tailors and the snail"
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/a24-four-and-twenty-tailors.htm
What Do I Win?
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Ron showed the lid to the cashier at Quickie Mart.
"Win?"
"The contest!" He clicked the lid down on the counter and pushed it an inch or two towards the man.
The cashier picked it up, walked to the window, and stared at it for a long time. He put it back down in front of Ron. "It says 'all-expenses-paid worlds tour.'"
That was right, Ron knew, typo and all.
"But how do I get the world tour? Do I go to a website?"
The clerk pointed at some tiny print on the bottle cap. "You call that number." He gave the lid back and turned away.
*
"Hello." A pleasant contralto.
"I, um, I'm calling about,"
"The worlds tour! I'll set you up right now. When do you want to go?"
"Well, I, er, any time," Ron finished weakly.
"Fantastic! Thank you so much for calling, and have a great trip." She hung up.
*
That was the most surreal conversation he'd ever had, even stoned out of his mind. He turned, and was overwhelmed with the sensation of jamais vu, the unexpected feeling of unfamiliarity amid the familiar. Had the apartment been this untidy when he left this morning? He stepped over a pile of clothes and looked out the window. Holy shit! The lake was gone. No, it was covered with floating condos. But when had the condos been put in? His stomach was starting to feel a little queasy.
Someone walked out of the bathroom. He was short, paunchy, middle-aged, and wearing a towel.
"Hey..." Ron began.
"Gaah!" The man dropped his towel.
Ron stared at the man's forked penis, then stammered: "Are you a weresnake*."
"Funny, Zero. You're still trespassing. What you doing in my zÅn?" Then he slapped his forehead.
]
"Oh, right, 'the worlds tour.' Look, I don't need this today. Get out." He nodded toward the door.
"But..."
"Go!"
Ron opened the door and stepped out.
From the apartment behind him he heard the fat man with the Y-shaped penis say "Oh yeah, watch that first one."
The end
*Not making this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes#Reproduction.
Kutter Wields the Knife
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
He acted tough, but I knew he was a cream puff.
"So," I drawled, "what brings you here?"
"I heard Cook E. Kutter was the man to see for making cookies."
I inclined my head slightly.
"Word's been getting around," he continued, "that you've gone soft. That you let the Doughboy get away with murder."
"That's a damn lie!" I burst out, then struggled to regain control. "P. F. never touched that dame. Besides, he's a ticklish one to deal with. Yeah, I let him go ... he'd risen as far as he could. What's it to ya?" I leaned back with a creak and parked my feet on the desk, between last week's coffee and some bootleg recipes off the Internet.
All of a sudden he seemed a little nervous. He cleared his throat: "Well..."
"Cream gone sour?" I asked sympathetically, and poured us both glasses of whiskey. "Have a pick-me-up."
He waved it away. "No thanks," he said, "I'm trying to cut back. Listen. I want to make a batch of chocolate chip. Can you help?"
"Maybe. Do you have what it takes? Raw courage? Unyielding persistence? Butter? Flour? Chocolate chips?"
Oh, he had it all, but he was holding out on me. I could tell. Still, I played it cool.
"You want to know? I'll tell you.
"You'll need ingredients: butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, flour, salt, baking soda, and the chips. You need to mix them, and you've got to do it right.
"First the wet stuff, then the dry. The chips come last."
Oh, I told him sure enough. I gave him the whole story.
"Now it's your turn," I said, "give!"
"What do you mean?" He was all innocence, up to the elbows in creamed butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla. But I wasn't having it this time.
"You know what I mean." He wouldn't talk. I pounded on the desk, threatened, I admit it, but he simply stirred flour, salt, and soda into his creamed mixture. Finally I had had enough.
*
There was something on my face. I licked it off. Cream filling. Delicately, I parted his severed hemispheres, and there, nestled in the cream, I saw it. I KNEW he'd been holding out on me! I reached in and picked it up. I reverently wiped off the cream with my handkerchief, and popped it in my mouth. I love cherries.
Raise Your Hand if You Just Became a Vegan
by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
A well-constructed young woman barged into my office Monday morning, breathing hard after running up two flights of stairs. When she regained her composure she told me her great aunt had "drifted away from her moorings." Some time Sunday morning the old lady had started devouring livestock, not just raw, but still living. By day's end she was dead.
"What do you want me to do, Miss Clarendon?"
"Oh, Mr. Deadbolt," she replied, "Why did she eat those critters? The great aunt Sylvia I knew would never do such a thing. She might have been murdered. Maybe by a hypnotist."
*
"I'm sure you know why I have gathered you together," I began. "You are the relatives of the late Sylvia Clarendon. I was asked to investigate her death, to find out whether foul play was involved. I've checked into all of you carefully, as well as anyone who had business or social dealings with the deceased. I turned up nothing. Ms. Clarendon was universally liked, and was far from wealthy.
"I did partially solve the mystery. She really did take a double dose of several powerful prescription drugs last Friday night as she went to bed. Sunday morning she swallowed a common housefly, and then a spider in hopes that it would trap the fly. Because of the limited opportunities for web construction within her digestive tract, she chose a jumping spider, but of a perfectly respectable species. When the spider failed to return, Ms. Clarendon swallowed a small bird. Its mission was to retrieve the spider, but by 0900 hrs it had failed to do so. Her choice of a house sparrow, a seed eater, may have been part of the problem. There followed in rapid succession the following commandos: a rat, a cat, and a dog, all with rather obvious goals. Her motives of the afternoon are less certain. About 1320 she swallowed a goat, which might have been a bad choice considering the size of the dog it was supposed to subdue. Be that as it may, around 1500 hrs a cow followed the goat. This was a highly reliable operative named Bessie who had successfully completed similar missions in the past. At 1545 a cleaner named Dobbins was sent in, with what tragic results you all know.
"I have, as I said, worked out most of the details of the weekend's tragedy. However, one thing still puzzles me about the whole affair. I don't know why she swallowed the fly."
The end
Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Was_an_Old_Lady_Who_Swallowed_a_Fly