Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
A friend who is a grandmother related a story about her latest granddaughter, Vera. As soon as she found the words, Vera announced that her name was Peaches and she would not answer to any other name.
That was two years ago. She’s now five. A young cat found his way to her side. Cat and human are with one another like snow and white. She calls him Butters. He’s nine months old.
The adventures of Peaches and Butters are just beginning.
The clouds spread like thick, gray frosting.
Then came the atmospheric cannon fire.
The cats arrived at my feet, leery of the sky barrage.
Then came rain, powering down the sky, sluicing down the streets,
followed by the smell, the petrichor of warm asphalt and cement,
grass and dirt, lingering in the afternoon’s fading embrace.
Finally, there was tentative Robin song, announcing,
The end.
Three green lights in a row! Wow. He was on a roll.
Grinning, he shook his head. It took so very little to make him happy these days.
We live in a divisive area. Few agree on anything. Just today, my house told me it was 105 degrees F, the car said it was 102, and Alexa said it was 100.
Time was sneaking toward six in the morning. He was lazing in bed, floating in the space between dreams and being awake, a cat beside him singing a purr. Open windows poured cool morning air over him, a solid reversal from the hundred degrees experienced hours earlier. Just as it seemed sleeping was seizing an edge, a loud grunt – snarl – snuffle sound sent him full awake. He and the cat sat up in panic-orchestrated synchronization, turning as one to look up at the window. After listening a moment more, he raised himself up and looked out the window.
A bear on the other side of the six-foot privacy fence a dozen feet away returned his gaze. As he mumbled, “Holy shit,” to himself, the bear, apparently bored, dropped out of view. Maybe out of sight, but definitely not out of mind.
He suggested that they take their books to the park and read under some trees.
“Too muggy out,” she answered.
“Muggy? It’s hot and dry.”
“It was muggy to me.”
He looked out the window. No clouds could be seen from east to west, north to south. “Alexa, what’s the current humidity?”
Fifteen percent, the machine answered.
One of them didn’t understand what muggy means, he thought.
A friend announced he was thinking of his age as the temperature and decided he would convert it from Fahrenheit to Celsius, which would make it him just 22 years old.
Michael Seidel, writer 