101 Words

The police questioning stretched on through the night. I wasn’t a key witness. I had been in the washroom and only heard the shots. Hear them still.

I left the restaurant alone and stood shivering on the sidewalk while the EMTs loaded the dead into vans. The wounded had already been ambulanced away, my dinner companions among them.

Years later, we decided to go for brunch at the same location. It was now a café with a sidewalk patio, wheelchair friendly. We could have eaten at the hotel, but this place was popular and only three blocks east into old town.

Everyone scooped up their drink when Neptune slapped his penis down the length of the bar. We gaped as he licked tourists’ nipples wet enough for temporary tattoos to stick. We—consenting adults in that public place—wondered who might be given private audience with the sea monster.

That was last night. This morning, in the shock-white emergency room with my overripe blueberry ankle, I caught eyes with Neptune again. No sunburned breast in his hands, but a fevered toddler and worry-eyed wife still in her house dress. No nod; no wink. Our sacred pact with deity: reverence here, silence now.

The big tech companies’ AI was now sophisticated enough to predict crimes before they happened, all with a simple retina scan. Babies were screened and sorted at birth, implanted with identification chips. The defective ones were sent off to rehabilitation camps never to be seen again, their parents’ memories cleansed of any recollections of birth by the government.

But somehow our son was missed. Presumably a bureaucratic mix-up. Now he roams the streets in a world without police, a felony looking for the right time and place to happen. Finally, his angry knock at our door. We are ready for anything.

Her son is eight years old. She and his dad have driven two hours to retrieve him from his first sleepover camp. He lasted one night. She sits in the back seat with him, holding his hand, certain she has scarred him for life.

“I ate some grass,” he says.

“You did?” she says. “When? Why?”

“It didn’t matter to them that I was homesick but if I was really sick, they would definitely call you.”

She squeezes his hand. Silently, she praises his creative problem solving, always on the lookout herself for ways to convince others her sadness is real.

Derek awoke in a room that wasn’t the room he had gone to bed in. He thought at first he must somehow have been hospitalized. But the room was much too cold.

Getting to his feet, he stood naked in black socks and wingtips. A suit and other clothing lay abandoned on a nearby table.

Bemused, he parted what he thought were floor length window curtains and found himself before a gathering of flushed faces.

“To Derek!” they shouted, raising their glasses high.

Peeved but resigned, Derek blew them kisses, bowed graciously and, closing the curtains, finished dressing for the occasion.

“Michelle, you’re pitching next inning,” said the softball coach. “Go warm up.”

Michelle put on her glove and stepped behind the dugout.

“I can catch for her,” offered Lisa’s dad.

“Thanks, Jerry,” said Coach. “Gloves are by the bench.”

“Nah, won’t need one. She’s just fifth grade.” Jerry hitched up his belt. He strode behind the dugout and squatted about 35 feet from the little pitcher. The ball was bigger than her hand.

Two pitches later, Jerry reached for a glove with crimson hands. He resumed his squat.

Michelle struck out the side. Jerry held two ice-cold sodas while he watched.