Entertaining you in one hundred words or less

“The Search”

Under the microscope, Sofi examines the Paramecium:  life inside a matter of microns.  The single cell zigzags across the slide, breaths, ingests, metabolizes and eventually births a twin.  A tiny, motile miracle.

Through the telescope, Sofi studies galaxies that spiral, and nebulae named after spiders.  The stars are grains of sand on a cosmic beach:  too many to imagine, too immense to fathom.

Curiosity carries her forward, an exploration of existence both grand and small.  Like a child’s first foray into the forest, Sofi’s experiment is without boundary, her wonder without limit. 

“Late for Work”

Bill’s clock beeped. 6:45. Whap! Snooze.

6:55. Whap! “I don’t wanna work, I just want to bang on my drum...” Oops, wrong button. Whap!

7:05. Yawn. Snooze.

7:15. Ughhh.

7:25. Uh-oh. Thirty-five minutes to get dressed and beat two bridges.

Bill rushed out the door half-dressed. He weaved through traffic like taxis in Rome. Speed limit signs went by in a blurry dream.

A green light? Go faster.

Yellow? Faster still.

Red? Proceed with caution.

Then sirens.

“Damn!”

$196.

And so, like every other day, Bill was late for work.

That night he took a hammer to his snooze alarm.

“Rainchild”

She is both mothercloud and rainchild.  Each rainchild is part of a god, a god whose body is a part of creation.  The vast ocean holds her heart, the sky her spirit.  Her cycle of reincarnation shifts one form to the next, moving her shape from snow-white infancy into springtime childhood, to finally rest in the eternal ocean.  Always, she longs for the freedom of those forgotten waves.  Yet the sungod banishes her, upward, to perch on her mountain prison.  There she waits, locked in ice, for the summer fairies to dance her frozen crystal legs back into the stream. 

“Meditation”

Jakob sat still for an hour.  He didn't feel any different.

He tried two hours, then three.  Life became a calm, clear river, yet
he wasn't satisfied.  To be a perfect being--that's what Jakob wanted.

So he sat, in stubborn rigidness, for ten straight hours.  Exhausted,
his eyes opened to a table of Englishmen drinking tea.

“Welcome to our perfect place.”

“What,” Jakob ventured, “do you all do?”

“We sit.  We drink.  We speak kindly about our Queen.”

“Why?”

With that word he fell back into his basement suite, feeling less
than perfect, and happily so.

“Cookie Monster”

When the cookie with a chocolate chip happy face spoke to Trevor, he wasn't fazed.

“Don't eat me!”

Chomp. 

“Ouch!  I bring a message.”

“I'm listening.”  Chomp.

“Om-eht-mey-moth.”

“Oh--sorry.”

Trevor rearranged the chocolate chips, using the nose to rebuild its half-eaten mouth.  “Better?”

“Hardly.  If you eat me, the Cosmic Cookie People will destroy Earth.  The choice is yours!”

The words gripped Trevor's soul.  Great power carried great responsibility.  And yet, never had he tasted anything so delicious.  In surreal slow-motion, he helplessly ate the rest.

The first colossal chocolate chip to fall from the sky flattened his house.

“Rain”

Colours of rainbow beckon the sun.

Pearls on grass:  soft food for green blades.

Foil to famine, fear to fire.

Sun shield, mountain mane, river rapture.

Quenching the parched, broth of every cell.

The lost child of a nebulous womb whose mourning breaks the sky.

The flood in the plains that overflows leaf and bough. 

Lucid fluid on the freeway that twists tires into tragedy.

“Closed”

“Spineless jellyfish!” Sheryl snapped.  “That’s what you are, Ben.”

That night, she acted like nothing had happened. 

Ben relished the fresh wound.  He held it close, the way a child both resents and covets a hidden hurt.  In the dark, nourished by sullen spite, his black seed sprouted.

And so, with time, he learned to revile everything about Sheryl.

She hugged him.  What a dreadful choke hold.

She cleared behind the couch.  Always judging him for being messy.

She said “I love you.”  He heard “You should be grateful.”

In studious silence, Ben seethed, waiting a lifetime for a forgotten apology. 

“Last Stop”

The bus driver looked back at Tim.

“Bad dreams?”

Crushed robin’s eggs and smeared embryonic yolk.  That’s all Tim saw.  He frowned.

“It’s rush-hour.  Where is everyone?”

The driver grinned a baleful grin.  “Got off at the good stops.  But we’re going to the end.  Didn’t you know?  You’re dead.  Had a heart attack six stops back.”

“Heart attack?”

“Quite painless.  Not fair, really.  You should have left that bird’s nest alone.”

“Bird’s nest?”  At a friend’s dare, Tim had flattened the tiny blue eggs beneath his shoe.  “I was ten!”

“Old enough.”

Flame licked at the windows.

“Family Reunion”

Dave didn’t recognize the young woman walking up his sister’s driveway.  By the hook of her nose and square jaw, definitely a Ryerson.

He shook her hand.  “I’m Dave.”

She acted aloof, eying him warily.  “Jasmine.”

“How are you connected?”

“Gloria is my aunt.  I found out about the reunion from her, just a few days ago.”

“My sis?  Strange.  Oh—here’s my better half.  Vanessa, this is Jasmine.”

Jasmine smiled sweetly.  “A pleasure, I’m sure.  But we’re not related.”

Dave scratched his hooked nose.  “I’m confused.  What does that make me?”

“My father.  Nice to meet you.”

“Shooting Star”

Juno burst into Earth’s atmosphere, a stone bullet igniting the night sky.  She travelled halfway across the universe to burn up in a brief white flash. 

A shooting star, they called her.  A nice way to speak of the dying.

But she was no star.  A shell of iron, and heart of nickel.  Still, 187 wishes were called her way.  Juno granted none.

Perhaps, if someone called her by her true name, she would reconsider.  But they were too late.  Her flaming body, reduced to a bitter kernel, fell forgotten onto Earth, that most disciplined child of the sun.