Shannon sat up, her eyes wide open. She wasn't sure if she was awake or asleep. She looked around the room (dirty socks, cat puke in one corner, empty Miller cans, a laundry basket filled with clean clothes) and wished it was all unfamiliar. She looked at the man next to her. His back was smooth and tanned. A tiny mole winked at her from his left shoulder blade. She wished he was a stranger.
Shannon lay back down. The pillow was damp with sweat, her sweat. Had she been dreaming or coming out of a fever?
"Where are you...
This is not what Steve had in mind when he signed up to test the virtual reality technology at work. Not at all. He thought it would be unicorns farting rainbows. But this was ridiculous.
The scenes were patterned after video games. Not because the team wasn't creative, but because that meant the testers didn't need to take the time to learn the rules of a new environment.
Steve had pulled Super Mario Bros. from the lot. Except there was a fatal flaw in the technology. Enemies didn't die, they just disappeared for a bit. Then they came back with...
"Quack quack quack!"
*Translation: OH NO! BP!
"Quack quack quack quack."
*Translation: I'll have to move to another pond now...
"Quack quack..."
*Translation: Stupid #$#@%$%$#^#$ humans.
"Quack quack quack..."
*Translation: Or maybe I'll just steal all their rubber duckies. See how they like losing something.
"QUAAAACKKK!"
*Translation: MWAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Mr Duckie went to become the Robin Hook of all ducks, stealing rubber duckies from all the human children and all the grownups who still like flotation toys. Right now he has a large organization, SOPWRD (Save Our Pond With Rubber Duckies) and has declared Ernie from Sesame Street as Duck Worlds...
The clock had stopped.
The clock had stopped at two minutes past eleven, but whether that was eleven this morning, last night, or three weeks ago, he wasn't sure. He rarely looked at the clock - it was just something that was there, on the wall, taking up space. Something that he would, no doubt, miss were it ever to be gone, but, because of the sameness of it, because of the reliability of its general shape being where it always was, it went unnoticed.
It was only the fly that was buzzing annoyingly around the room that caused him,...
It was a cold day in May when Saffy and Blaze visited the zoo. They weren't too keen, but the weather was adverse enough to prevent bikini clad beach visits.
Saffy perked up when she realised they zoo had lots of tigers in residence. They trailed around behind a school group. Twenty or so seven year olds trying to behave in a way that kept their friends entertained, yet the teachers happy. The zoo was better than being cooped up in a classroom anyway.
Blaze said, "come on Saff, let's hear what this keeper has to say," as the twenty-something...
"It worked!" He stood, startled by the sound of his own voice. What had worked?
Looking around, he wasn't quite sure if he should be more worried that he didn't know why he had said something he didn't understand, or about the fact that he was in a place he didn't recognise with no memory of having arrived there. A word caught his eye. Phone. He rolled it around his head. Yes. He could make a call. He should make a call. A number emerged from his growing consciousness. Should he be worried about that feeling of expansion, as though...
I know, I know, there's a million things I need to do. Every day, a million things. Check this, talk to him, to her. Don't forget to fill this out. Drive there, don't forget. Get it right the first time so you don't lose more time doing it twice. Or worse.
Only at the end of the day, is it legal to relax. Only when the world is on half-time, lunch break, dinner break, time out, penalty box.
The sun is one big green light for everyone. You can't stop when the world is go.
If I didn't want to...
The stories rarely stop when the party does.
He was not tall, or lean, but he was fashionable. He had the bushiest eyebrows, like tiny mink stoles pasted to his forehead, and a strange (but familiar) teetering gate to his walk as he meandered like a river through the empty park lawns.
"I hope I didn't insult her," the man worried to himself as he kicked an empty potato chip bag across the path. He spotted a bench looking out over the old friend, duck pond.
There our lonely man sat. Contemplating the emptiness of it all. No ducks, even....
"Peasants," he thought, and stuck his pitchfork into a square of hay.
"What do they know about building a good, angry mob?"
He hoisted the bale onto a workbench and began teasing handfuls of straw out, putting them in neat piles.
He came from a family of mob organizers and leaders. Three generations of good, strong men who knew how to lead a group of frothing townsfolk up mountain passes, across fields and to the front gates of witches, evil doctors and foreign-born ne'r do-wells.
The secret to a good mob was in staying organized. Make sure everybody's got something...
I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —
The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.
And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...