"Group"

"Exposition sucks!" James shouted. "I want to get to the action!" He picked up his plastic chair and flung it across the room, sending it skittering across the checkerboard linoleum to drive home his point.

The circle of faces that turned toward him were a mix of shock and irritation, but at least the girl he was hoping to impress was smiling. He wasn't sure where he was going to sit after that, but he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be invited back to writing group anymore. Totally worth it.

"Summer Beauty"

Macy Cook was the picture of a Southern heiress: a beautiful young woman with an inheritance of cotton as far as she could see from her third-floor window. Her father had forbidden any men to come a’calling on her until she turned seventeen, but ever since her birthday it had been open season. There had been a steady stream of dashing young men from every plantation in the county all summer long.

Macy had turned down every one of them for one reason or another, until she found it was much more amusing just to string them along for a while instead of breaking their hearts outright. Except the ones with ugly teeth or knobbly knees, of course. They got shown the door right off.

How quickly would she take any one of them right down the aisle now? How different Summer Macy had been from the Macy of Fall? Ever since that Saturday night, everything had changed. Not even the boys with knobbly knees came to her door any longer. The gifts, the parties, the shy glances, the outright marriage proposals. They were all gone.

Even though the fire was weeks past, she still felt its sting on her skin. What was left for the pretty young girl now that she was pretty no more? A voice called her name to come down to dinner and she withdrew her beautiful face from the window, turning her scarred cheek on the world outside.

"Liars"

Of all the half truths and outright lies people tell, none are worse than the lies they tell themselves. When you are dishonest with another person, you know in your heart that you’re lying. But when you lie to yourself, you’re in on the deception. Unless someone tells you the truth, you may never even find out.

Justin’s moment of truth came when he caught his own reflection in his computer monitor.

“Did you get that subroutine finished?” asked Julie. She was the head of development, and like Justin, she was dead.

He shoved his chair back from his computer, gasping for air. He had to tell them. He had to let them know. “Julie,” he began, but she cut him off.

She put her hand on his back and said softly, “Did you take your pills?”

But he didn't take pills – he didn't need pills. He needed to get out. He needed to let them know. “We’re dead!” he screamed, running down the hall. “We’re all dead!”

Doug rolled his eyes. “Why doesn't Marty fire that guy? It’s the third time this week he’s had a freakout.”

“Marty’s on vacation,” said Julie. “I bet he will when he gets back.”

“Geez! How many vacation days does that guy get anyway?  Must be nice to be the boss.”

“Yeah, must be. Doug, can you finish writing that subroutine?”

Doug grunted and turned back to bang out a few more lines of code on his computer. If it weren't for him, they’d never finish anything on time. In the desk next to his, Liz was slumped over on her elbow. Drunk at work. Again. The place was a total disaster without Marty. When he got back, he was going to have to fire a lot of people.

At last, Justin stumbled back to his seat and got to work. He seemed calm again.

Julie asked him, “Did you get that subroutine finished?”

"Crackers"

Steve had gotten pretty good about clinging to the swinging perch without falling to the bottom of the cage. The bottom of the cage was the one place where he really –really – didn’t want to be. When the pounding footsteps came thundering down the hall, he knew what he had to do.

He flapped his glued-on feathers and gave a loud squawk, “Polly want a cracker!” he shouted in a high-pitched voice. He was rewarded with a foul-tasting and stale chunk of bread in his face, but it was worth it. Since he could eat almost nothing from the pail of bird seed, the occasional cracker was the only edible food he ever got.

His master laughed and went away happy and Steve breathed a sigh of relief. It was a good thing the giant was only five years old or else she might have already caught on to the fact that Earth birds are not nearly so large…or covered in so much skin.

The lock on the cage door was loosening up a little more each day, but his nightly work on it wasn’t coming along nearly fast enough for him. Lately, his master had been examining him more closely and had even tried to get him to fly about his enormous cage. Steve knew one thing for certain: if she insisted he lay an egg, he was in big trouble.

“Love and Light Years”

Mars longs for Venus. Swinging wide in his arc, he reaches out his powerful gravity, stretching ever further, reaching for her hand. She flashes a smile in return and reaches out for him too.

His heart leaps in its core. She is so beautiful! Shrouded in pale mystery, bright as the sun in his eyes, awash with golden clouds dancing around her head. He can practically touch her smooth surface and feel her warmth on his cold red skin.

And then. Then. Then, that no-account Earth comes between them! Every time, it’s the Earth, barging in with its thick clouds and sloshing seas, making eyes at his girl and blowing rings of smoke from volcanoes. If it weren’t for him, they could be together! If it weren’t for him, life would be perfect!

Mars was going to have to do something about that guy. And soon.

“Secret Weapon”

Pilot 227 didn’t have a name, only a number, but it liked to think of itself as “Jack”.  Or was it “Jill”? No matter. It flicked the only switch on the comm panel and said “Pilot 227 approaching target. All signs are good.”

To say the “signs were good” really meant it hadn’t crashed yet, but also hadn’t reached the target. Through the ship’s smoky canopy, nothing could be seen except for a reddish, murky gloom filled with oozing bubbles that made their way slowly up through the viscous slime. Jack and its squad-mates glided onward, following simple blinking lights on their piloting consoles.

It was just like the Committee to send them out with no instructions and poorly outfitted for combat. It was Jack’s first Infection Raid, but it had heard horror stories of ships exploding mid-flight and of huge casualty rates. Jack didn’t fancy being one of them.

All at once, an alarm sounded off to the right. An engine pod had flared out! Jack reached out one long tentacle and tried to give the pod’s lever a turn, but it was too far away and stuck fast. The ship started to veer off course, threatening to crash into another pilot. It slithered a second tentacle out and pulled with all its might. Finally, the lever gave way, the engine spun back to life, and the ship righted itself. That was too close.

The Committee had outfitted their ships with a secret “Infection device” and ordered them delivered, but that would be for nothing if Jack crashed before it arrived at its target! Then, without warning, the target appeared. It loomed out of the void like a great, black eye. It was a sphere, covered in tiny bumps. The alarm sounded to fire the weapon and Jack grinned through both mouths and hit the launch button. They’d never know what hit them.

Neither did Jack. With a rush of hot fluid and a burst of pressure disks, his ship flew apart and Jack was launched bodily through the slime toward the target. What in the world was this? Jack looked to its left and right and saw ships exploding all around and other pilots flying toward the target. There were thousands of them, screaming through the ooze and dissolving away in the poisonous stuff.

They were the secret weapons? They were the Infection devices? No one was going to return from this mission! They’d hit the target and be absorbed, if they didn’t disintegrate before impact. No wonder the Committee kept secrets from the pilots. They were on a suicide mission! Oh, the unfairness of it all! How could they do this to them? And why had no one ever warned the pilots of their fates? Come to think of it, where had all those horror stories come from anyway?

What the heck is up, you might ask? I am working a new job, having been missing one for a bit. That, as you may guess, can prove distracting. Working the job as well as any extra work I can find takes up way too much time and effort, but things are starting to settle down into a pleasantly predictable rut.

On that note, I've made some sluggish progress on the next "Dorothy" book, having written my way up to the start of Chapter 13 and I've decided on some plot elements. At the same time, I'm plagued by self-doubt and uncertainty about the project, so there's fun for ya. I have a hankering to do some more Flash Fiction, so that may help with the ol' funk.

Think fun thoughts. Think fun thoughts.