Category: fiction

The Rationale

“I had to kill him,” he said with a calm voice.

“Assassinate,” a Secret Service agent said.

He smiled. “Assassinate, kill. Funny how we decorate our killing terms. War is acceptable for killing, but terrorism, murder, and assassination are not, even though it’s all about killing. The differences are the who and why, and sanctions. Well, I killed him — excuse me.”

His smile developed a humorous tint previously absent. “I mean, I assassinated him because he was a threat to me and my family. He scared us. The way he spoke on television, the way he sounded, the things he said, all of it, he sounded insane, and it was scary when he started talking about nukes, and using nukes. I don’t want a nuclear war. I don’t think anyone does except crazy people. Like him. And the thing is, as a crazy person, he’s the one that can order us, our country, to use our nuclear weapons to attack another country. But the thing is, we don’t what would have happened then. It would have been like opening Pandora’s box, except Pandora’s box is filled with nuclear and biological weapons, war and terrorists.

“So it was simple. I had to kill him to protect me and my family, and our way of life. It’s funny, but I think he would approve.”

1

New Boy

The words weren’t what he wanted to hear. “Your son was in a terrible accident,” the doctor said. “Steven has suffered extensive injuries.”

He stared at the woman, Indian and young, attempting to assess her abilities. Beside him, his wife was hiccuping with sobs. New tears ran down her face. He didn’t know where they came from. He was certain she was cried dry, but no, here were more.

“I’m afraid we’re declaring him medically challenged,” the doctor said next.

That drew his attention.

The doctor said, “I have no choice, Mister Ryan. Your insurance dictates it.”

“What’s that mean?” he said, as his wife echoed, “Medically challenged?”

“Well, to be crude, Mister Ryan, Missus Ryan,” the doctor said, “and use a coarse analogy, if your son was a car, he’d be declared totaled, because it’s cheaper to write him off and give you a check to have him remade.”

Words exploded. He was talking. His wife was talking. The doctor was backtracking and attempting to explain and placate.

It didn’t seem like he heard anything, not even himself. He was saying, “My son is not a fucking car, my son is not a fucking car.” He didn’t know what was coming out.

Then he and his wife were holding one another, shaking and crying, a scene in the hospital. He held her warmth and tried pouring strength into her, but his strength was evaporating.

The doctor said, “It’s not as you think.”

He couldn’t believe she said that. He said, “What?”

Reacting with a speed she’d never exhibited before, his wife lunged for the doctor. Catching her, he held onto her. Her body felt like steel. She dragged him forward. She was saying something, but tear-filled and high-pitched, he couldn’t understand her.

“Heather, Heather,” he said. “Calm down, calm down.”

A foot shorter than him and fifty pounds lighter, Heather dragged him forward. He was forced to lift her until her feet were off the ground. That was the only way to stop her.

“Let me go,” Heather said, “let me go.”

Security showed up.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ryan said.

The doctor waved security away. A young nurse beside the doctor held a folder out. The nurse looked Indian, too. Were there no white people in medicine any more?

The doctor said, “This package explains everything. You can contest your insurance company and keep your son alive, but unfortunately, not in this hospital. He will need to be moved to another facility. In the meantime, if we harvest his organs, you can make more than enough money to pay off the expected costs, and your policy permits you to keep all the profits.”

“You are sick,” he said. He put his wife down, but held onto her. “You’re all sick.”

“And if you start right away, your son can be done here in five days.”

His wife fell still. “Five days?” Heather said.

He let go of her. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

“You will be able to take your son home in five days,” the doctor said.

“That doesn’t explain anything,” he said. “What’s it mean?”

“It’s explained in these package we’ve prepared for you,” the doctor said.

“I’m asking you,” Ryan said. “What’s it mean?”

The doctor sighed. “It means we’ll grow you a fresh boy, Mister Ryan. He will look and act exactly like your son, Steve. He will be a new boy, for all purposes, but he will be Steve’s age.”

“Like a clone?” Heather said.

“Yes, basically,” the doctor said. “He will have Steve’s knowledge and memories, of course, and the skill levels, talents, and abilities that he exhibited before, but he will have a new body.”

“How?” Ryan said.

“He’s been monitored his entire life, and we have his DNA map,” the doctor said. “So we will grow it. Steven’s teachers have faithfully filled out all required quarterly reports, with videos, and all his test results. You’re lucky that your son is in such a good school system. We also have all his social media records. So we can fully analyze all aspects of his personality and life.”

As he was thinking about what the doctor was saying, and what it meant, his wife said, “Can you…change things?”

“Changes are possible,” the doctor said. “They’re extra, of course, and it depends on what you have in mind.”

“Well, he was always a little slow,” Heather said, with a glance at her husband.

“And can we make him taller?” he said. “Steve’s always been one of the shortest kids in his class. It’d be nice if he was a few inches taller.”

“Of course.” The doctor made a gesture. The nurse made a call. A man in a suit appeared. He was white.

“This is Gary,” the doctor said.

“Hi, Mister Ryan,” Gary boomed, putting his hand out. As Ryan and Gary vigorously shook, Gary said, “I’m sorry about your loss,” and the doctor said, “Gary is a medical sales technician. He’ll walk you through your options and costs.”

As Gary shook hands with Heather, Ryan said, “Thank you, doctor.”

Smiling, the doctor said, “You’re welcome.” She walked away as Gary said, “Let’s go to somewhere quiet. There’s a Starbucks in the hospital. Would you like some coffee or tea?”

“I’d love some coffee,” Ryan said. “It’s been a long night.” His eyes were bright.

A new son. A new boy.

Science was fucking amazing.

1

In the Wings

She waited, not moving, listening for her cue as time moved forward. She was still outside, hanging on against the churning energy within her.

“If people saw inside me,” she said to herself, “they would see raging seas with towering, thundering waves and almost continual lightning and thunder. If people saw inside me, they would be awed. Many would be afraid. But those who knew, who were stronger — ”

The countdown shunted her thinking aside. She listened as the ball dropped. Then, as they shouted, “Happy New Year,” she strutted out, the first female year ever, passing the poor old year as he shuffled out, bent and wrinkled, bearded and male, off to the Home of the Old Years. She would be there in one year — the first female there, too — but one year was a lot of time.

Time enough to make some changes, fix some wrongs, and establish some new rights.

0

Peace On Earth

He was dubious, but —

He’d been doubtful about the whole thing for months, seven months, when he thought about it. The dream had only been once a week then, but he’d begun to have it every night, ever fucking night. He’d hunted for its meaning on the Internet. He couldn’t find that, but then, popup ads advertising the dream-catcher showed up on his computer. What was it…? What was the dream catcher…?

After realizing it was a spider, he’d avoided thinking about it, but the damn dream seemed to be creeping into his waking hours. Something needed to be done. So he clicked on an ad…and followed the instructions….

He’d bought the spider and brought it home. Black, with neon blue stripes, it didn’t look like any spider he’d seen before. That scared him. It could be poisonous. It looked menacing. Its shiny black body was as wide as a penny. Its legs, mechanically slender and perfect, tripled its diameter.

The spider moved around the jar. The sound its legs made against the glass seemed amplified. Hearing it, he felt his scrotum grow tight with tension and his heartbeat increase. As he sipped wine and watched, the spider settled directly opposite of him. Its eyes faced him. Drawing its legs in close, it crouched down.

It’s watching me, he thought.

To test it, he got up and moved to the other side of the table.

The spider walked in parallel to him. When he stopped, the spider stopped.

His resolve splintering, he shivered. He’d bought the spider to catch his dream. He wanted to know what it meant, and make it stop, but —

He had to use it. He’d paid a hundred dollars in silver for the spider. He was not a wasteful person. One hundred dollars was an extravagance. He could buy two or three pairs of shoes for one hundred dollars.

Several glasses of wine became a bottle, which became two. The alcohol helped restore his determination. He picked up the jar.

The spider watched….

With shaking hands and dry lips, he unscrewed the lid and placed the jar on its side on the table. “Here you go,” he said in a voice he barely heard himself, a voice slurred with alcohol. “Do your thing.”

The spider scurried out.

Stopping, it looked at him.

“I don’t want to know,” he said to the spider. “Just do what you’re supposed to do.”

The spider raised two front legs and rubbed them together.

Thinking he heard a high, sustained note, he hurried from the room.

He left the light on, though. Just…in case.

Later, the wine’s influence and warm house relaxed him. He fell asleep in his recliner while watching “A Christmas Story” on the living room television.

Later, he awoke. He was drooling. The television was on but made no sound. He heard…scratching.

He looked up.

The television’s ambient blue light lit the spider above him. It was spinning a web. Stopping as he watched, the spider lowered itself until it came down on the bridge of his nose. He wanted to jerk away, scream, or get up and run, but he was paralyzed.

Sweat dribbled down his neck. The spider moved. Each spidery step made him shiver and shudder. He lost sight of it, but felt it go across his forehead. Pausing at his temple, the spider turned and trekked down the side of his head.

The spider reached his ear opening. It stopped. He held his breath. After a moment, the spider entered his ear.

He thought he’d hear or feel its steps, but it was like the spider had disappeared. Waiting for something to happen, he reflected, this was how they’d told him it would be. Nothing was left to do but sleep and dream, and then wait for the spider to tell him what the dream meant.

Maybe then, he would have peace.

1

The Price Is Right

It’s that time, again, and he was not feeling it. Registering his soul never felt right, but it was required, so that others could bid on it. He feared that this time, someone might name the right price.

0

Boxes

Empty wine boxes littered the floor. It was a sign of the times.

It dismayed him. Where were the boxes of beer and boxes of coffee drinks?

Inspiration seized them. He would create them. And he’d sell them in his own establishment. He’d call it Boxes. It would look like a boxcar on the outside. The chairs and tables would resemble boxes.

People would come in and order boxes of food and drink. He imagined the orders. “Give me a box of onion rings, with a box of soda pop.” His burgers would be square, so they’d look like boxes, and be named for boxes. “Give me a Boxtop with a box of IPA.” His place would be decorated with takes on boxes – like a pair of sixes on dice. “Boxcars!” Boxing Day would be celebrated with big discounts.

Excitement growing, he turned to rush out. His feet tangled with several empty wine boxes. Tripping, he slammed his head into the door frame. Passed out, he bled out on the cold floor before anyone found him.

The young paramedic who responded to the call said, “He’s done. Let’s box him.”

It was crude, but he would have approved.

0

Wednesday’s Bumper Sticker

I’m curious about the genesis of this one. Makes you speculate, though….

 

Having secured the windows, and alone in his house, he opened the secret compartment that held his coffee stash. Breathing deeply of the smell released, he gasped with delight. It’d been two days, and he needed a cuppa.

Pounding on the door kicked his heartbeat into a gallop. Closing the compartment, he waved away the smell. Thinking more clearly, he turned on the exhaust fan.

They pounded again. As he said, “Coming, just a minute,” a woman on the other said side,  “Caffeine police. Open the door, or we’re kicking it in.”

The day he’d feared had arrived.

1

Prove It

The first thing he thought of, after recognizing where he was, and what he was doing, was the Rolling Stones song, “Get Off of My Cloud.” Not really correct. Does correctness have degrees? Sure, they give partial credit to partially correct answers. Yes, but not in this situation. So, he corrected, not correct. He wasn’t on a cloud. He was on a contrail, as he’d learned they were called, a chemtrail, as others called them in the second half of his life.

Poisonous air vapors, they were. Surrounded by blue sky, he was walking on them. As he didn’t know how he’d reached them (nor how he could be walking on them), he believed he was dreaming. How high was he? Well, very high. He’d read that commercial aircraft generally fly over thirty thousand feet in the U.S. He assumed he was in U.S. air space, although nothing supported that assumption.

Physically, then, he wasn’t doing this, couldn’t be doing this, unless it was a dream or virtual reality. There was no way he could otherwise be surviving so comfortably at such an altitude. At this altitude, if it’s over thirty thousand feet, he was higher than Mount Everest. The air would be too thin for normal breathing, he was breathing normally, he ascertained with tests. At that altitude, the temperature would be forty-nine degrees below zero, or worse. He wasn’t dressed for that kind of cold.

But here he was, in his Lee jeans, knit shirt, Nikes, and Columbia Wear fleece, striding along without issue. Which presented the idea that maybe these contrails were far lower than they should be. That was absurd, of course; that’s not how they worked. Nevertheless, he stopped walking, turned, and looked over the side.

Big, big mistake.

He’d been able to see mountain tops and distant horizons of clustered buildings and farmland when walking along. But now, looking down, he found a true sense of his altitude, and it freaked him out. He was so freaked out, he should awaken at any moment now.

He waited.

Nothing changed. He looked back and forth along his contrail. It stretched on for a long distance. He could do three things now. One, step off the contrail and see what happens. Two, follow the contrail and see if it led anywhere. Three, he could stand there and do nothing until the contrail faded away.

0

Rapport

The dark-haired feral girl’s name was Courtney, a tidbit discovered via computers when she stormed into his office.

“I should have a computer, too,” she said. An edge of angry tears quivered in her tone. “I have friends. I miss people. That’s not just your computer. It belongs to both of us.” She smirked. A tear rolled down her face. She wiped it off. “We’re both pets.”

This was a change. He’d seen her three times since her arrival. Once when he was eating, she stamped in and started going through the cupboards and refrigerator. The second time, he saw her prowling the cage’s perimeter. Guessing she was looking for a way out, he watched her a bit. When boredom crept in, he drifted away.

The third sighting was a little later. Cleaning in the kitchen, he looked out and saw her trying to shimmy up a cage bar. Idiot, he thought.

“Of course, you’re right,” he said, standing, trying to be reasonable, friendly, and diplomatic. “My name is Thomas, by the way.” He put out his hand.

She pushed past him to the laptop – his laptop. “Whatever,” she said.

Je-sus. “Do you need help with anything?”

Stopping everything, she said, “It’s a computer,” as if that answered and explained everything.

She typed in her name. Courtney. 

“Your name is Courtney?” he said.

“No, that’s my alias,” she said. Swinging around, she said, “Do you mind? Can I have some privacy?”

“Yes. Of course.”

This set up the constant battle. She was always on the computer, getting on the computer, or asking him to get on the computer. He liked his computer time . Now he had to share it with her. Courtney.

He knew he was being irrational and selfish. Didn’t matter. He used the network for porn, games, and searching for news. His friends weren’t on Facebook. All those accounts for the relationships built through the years were listed as inactive. Many emails bounced back. None of his friends tweeted back to him.

Must be something the aliens are doing, he figured. The aliens were damn cunning.

Like the language thing. He was pleased his owner (God, he hated to think of that) had learned his name was Thomas. He remembered, though, the aliens were using a device to speak the languages of Earth when they arrived. That included English. Where were those devices now? Apparently people authorized to have human pets were not allowed to openly communicate with them. Bet it’s worries over the Stockholm Syndrome, he figured.

They didn’t want the masters and their pets to develop a rapport.

****

Previous Pet stories

Pet

His House

His Name

Her

0

Her

Noises awoke Thomas.

He was a little embarrassed by that. He’d been pleased to find “Unforgiven” on the streaming offerings. This dovetailed with his recent thinking that being an alien’s pet wasn’t that much different from being retired. There were some restrictions, like he wasn’t allowed to travel, and he missed his coffee shop and going to the movies and concerts, but on the other hand, he had no money worries, and his health seemed better than it had in years.

Yes, there were no people around, but he’d never been a people person, as the phrase had been popularized. People seemed like energy vampires, draining him of some essential, personal essence. The trend had grown worse as he’d aged. They seemed so shrill, and had such flawed thinking and expressed it poorly. That trend developed a new practice for him of avoiding people. So the lack of people now was…not…bad.

Bottom line, this life wasn’t that bad. He’d decided to enjoy it.

So he’d broken open a bottle of California red wine, found some Colby cheese and crackers from the supplies they’d given him, and watched “Unforgiven,” in the middle of the day. And he’d fallen asleep, right when William Munny was coming into town after Little Bill because Little Bill had killed Ned Logan. In other words, close to the end.

The movie was over. Now, there was this. Noises.

The noises were coming from above. Disconcerting. He’d never heard anything like them. He went out into his yard to investigate.

What he saw was two of the grey-green aliens with yellow eyes. His master — or mistress, if the alien was female — or should he bother with such sexist distinctions? — was standing to one side. “Thomas,” she said.

Thomas nodded, and waved. “Hello.”

She and the others made the noises that Thomas had indexed as laughing.

She held up her hand. In it was a female.

A young one, by appearances. Perhaps a teenager. He wasn’t competent when guessing others’ ages.

“Oh, no,” Thomas said. Understanding was rising. They were removing the top to deliver a new person to his set. The new person was a female.

Yes, on the cusps of that understanding, the top was raised, and a small, white girl was hand-delivered to the yard not far from him.

“No,” Thomas said. “No. I’m gay.”

Laughing and talking, the aliens returned the top to the cage. Fucking alien morons. 

Thomas looked at the newcomer. She looked as angry as a feral cat.

This was going to be fun.

1

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