PILE UP ON HIGHWAY FIVE

by Daniel Braum

Beneath Highway 5 and the thousands of cars speeding by, the insubstantial hatchling cracked out of its insubstantial egg and floated up. It rose through the cars and the oblivious humans driving them. And if they could see the hatchling they would think it looked like some sort of giant jellyfish.

The hatchling rose higher and at the cloud line rendezvoused with an elder.

“Welcome,” the elder said. “It is time to feed.”

The elder wrapped one of its tentacles around the hatchling and dipped it down into the steam of traffic. When it found a weak human, it grabbed its life force, ripping its energy out of the body which slumped over in the back seat.

The hatchling reveled in its first meal.

“All of this. All for us.”

“You must only take the weak. The dying,” the elder said.

“Why?” said the hatchling. “It is so easy. So potent.”

It dipped its tentacles into the flow of traffic.

“When you die the spirits of those you’ve taken will be waiting for you. Thus we only take the weak.”

“What a foolish notion,” the hatchling said and ripped the lives from a dozen drivers and gorged on them.

Cars screeched and crashed causing a chain reaction and pile up.

The hatchling rose into the air and the elder followed. It wrapped its tentacles around the young one, this time not in instruction.

“My time is almost over. But yours is finished. Soon we shall both know who was right.”

The elder squelched the life from the hatchling and followed it into death.

– END –

Zoli Finds His Anima

by SaraG

Zoli liked to hang around psychiatrists’ waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks. Neurosis was his game and he was good at it, but he hadn’t counted on full-blown crazy.

“I’m telling you, I can’t date you. I’m here to find my animus,” the girl said. Her name was Padme? Pardoma? Ah, yes, Pandora.

Zoli wondered whether he should forsake Jungian practices altogether, but the paramythological interpretations were so convenient. Arguments could always be derailed away from his practical failings and into the terrain of the symbolic and abstract. Besides, sex with Freudians was kinkier than he cared for.

“I can be your animus, honey. For you, I can be anything you want,” he said.

The girl chuckled, shaking her head. “The animus isn’t a guy,” she said. “It’s the male aspect present in the collective subconscious of women”–she sounded like she was quoting something– “You should get in contact with your anima, honey, you might become less of a jerk.”

Zoli opened his mouth to proclaim himself innocent of jerkitude, but the woman scuttled closer on the bench and pressed his head against her chest. The proximity of the boob shocked him into silence.

“I’m opening your chakras,” the girl announced, caressing Zoli’s hair. “You have a beautiful anima, you simply need to let it out.”

The door of the office opened and the girl stood up, stepped in and left Zoli alone in the waiting room.

As soon as Zoli stepped out of the office, he noticed something was different. He turned heads. The women who looked at him weren’t prettier than the ones he usually attracted, but they seemed sharper, more together. Their eyes were everywhere. They held doors open for him.

The combination of gallantry and insult confused him.

He looked down at his body, fearing something drastic had happened to his sexual differentiation, but nothing had changed, as far as he could see. He was still a guy and he sighed with relief.

Suddenly, a knight appeared out of nowhere. Her hair flew in the wind, framing her face over her full-body armour. She shone like a diamond against the asphalt and skyscrapers. Without a word, she lifted Zoli up on her white horse and took him away.

End