101 Words

Jamie was sitting in her black Nissan scanning the area. The blond man walked out of the bar holding the hand of a petite redhead. They were both laughing and smoking their cigarettes. He was probably smoking Kent, the usual. She looked like the kind of girl that loved to have a good time. You know, the one who lives for today.

Jamie wondered how he would react if he saw her standing there. If he would realize, she has been following him for the past two weeks. She didn’t want to get back together. But she missed him. A lot!

I repaired a birdhouse and built two new ones (with modern plumbing and art deco furniture). I was obviously going to have to up the rent. That’s when the nightmares started. I was a school teacher in a small town and was being watched by crows. It all seemed familiar. Finally, as the birdhouses became vacant, I took them down and burned them in a pyre.

Months later I was fighting with my insurance adjuster over the drapes in my home. The fire might have been revenge, but my insurance company was decidedly crueler than an aggrieved bird could ever be!

Ned Right never said much, a quiet genius who had discovered how to use dark matter to fold space for faster than light travel.

Staring out the window of his top floor office at Applied Warp, the somber genius contemplated the possibilities of extraterrestrials, “Is anyone out There?”

A statue, Ned watched a silvery, otherworldly, flying saucer settle silently; landing next to his old pickup truck. Three tiny gray aliens with briefcases emerged.

Ned’s intercom buzzed, his secretary announcing, “Some funny little fellows claiming to be attorneys with Klatu, Barada, and Nikto are here to talk to you about patent infringement…”

Sometimes, I’d overshoot my mark and pass out about eleven or so. But, if I set my alarm for one and drank for a couple more hours, I wouldn’t wake up at five craving booze. Whenever I started drinking again at five, there was no way on earth I was making it to work.

If made sure I passed out around three nice and loaded, I could get enough in to keep me knocked out till morning, when I’d only have time for an eye-opener or two before running off to whatever shitty job I wasn’t yet fired from that week.

“Any hope,” Alibaba and Aladdin asked the scientist, “of finding the path toward our universe?”

They were startled as they were totally confused by their sudden migration from another universe!

“Our spacecraft had a collision with the surface of this universe which created a wormhole into the universe’s surface and allowed to enter some particles of another universe along with you,” the scientist explained.

Alibaba clutched the door, ”Khool ja sim sim,” Aladdin took a metal pot and looked for his Jin, (the giant) but their tricks failed.

“A Zeppelin will send you back to your world,” scientist assured them confidently.

Unwanted words spill from his lips. My fingers press hard against my glass. If he looks carefully, he’ll see my fingernails drained of colour. But I know he won’t notice. He looks away. And that’s when I realize. He’s not going. He’s already gone.

The glass slips from my hand splintering at my feet. He shakes his head. It’s me apologising. He’ll clear up he insists. The shards glimmer their finale in the late sun. Swept aside there’s little trace. He asks me what I’ll do. I’ll be okay, I say.

He leaves. I breathe in the agony. And I choke.

Mobile Manors sat on a bluff above the Sacramento River. Manuel Jones was 6’6” with a barrel chest, but nimble as a cat. He sipped coffee on his trailer porch, watching the brightening dawn materialize his cherry 1965 Mustang.

A wrecker parked behind the Mustang. The driver jumped out, hooked the Mustang, pulled a lever and it rose five feet. Manuel leaped down from the porch and started strangling the repo man.

“You the owner?” he gasped.

Manuel said yeah.

The repo man said he was a freelance, and he needed a bodyguard. He told his boss Manuel was never home.