In a foreign land (Union of Vermont Socialist Repbulics?), we travel by foot and by river boat and by rail. We have taken the train to this more obscure part of the countryside, Dad trying to find and connect with an old friend. We will know the house when we see it: the rustic-looking cottage […]
My cohorts of left behind to tend to the convenience store on my own. The guy that usually runs the store said that he was locking the doors behind him, pulling the roll-cage and all that… So I go about my business inside, taking notes, reading, etc. I ignore the clamoring outside because he had […]
We follow the tree line that hugs the sand, ducking up into the trees briefly and at intervals, checking to see what is on the other side. We are looking for things that we have lost. Our belongings are scattered. The landscape seems so familiar. But every time we look past the forest veil to […]
A large nomadic pack of apocalypse survivors. We are gypsies in Conestoga wagons beaten from the discarded panels of long dead cars. We are an odd cross-section of time though. Roman Senators and Times Square hookers, Robin Hood’s Merry Men and steampower ironworks barons. Our leaders slowly pick each other off in some tourney of […]
My dad is supervising me as I clip my toenails. The toenails (especially on the big toe) are especially long and especially thick. The clippers are tiny. He makes small-talk with me as I attack each foot. It’s a little distracting and a couple of times I nearly cut deep into my toe.
We work all night. We dig ditches and tunnels, pitch tents, put up lean-tos and shanties, stretch out tarps… Anything to protect ourselves. There is some scuffling over what exactly is the best approach. But there isn’t time enough to come up with a perfect plan. Just a good one. And we barely make it […]
High fantasy sword-and-sorcery setting. Real elves vs. orcs shit. The city has been overthrown by some men in the covert employ of the orc hordes. They have manipulated the city’s High Priest into helping them gain entry, influence, and (ultimately) control. The High Priest comes onto the stage as the generals and orc chieftains give […]
Dark but not unlit. Endless corridors. Like a morgue or a bomb shelter. Or Cold War era NORAD style command centers. This is not a mine. Labyrinthine. There is a perceptible symmetry to the corridors but no obvious way to navigate them; not to their center nor to the edge that leads out again. There […]
We’re in some kind of classroom. There have been a series of presentations, people getting up and making remarks on this or that article, people giving a show-and-tell demo of some object. We settle into some of the desks in one corner of this large classroom. The session is wrapping up, right? And we are […]
We have organized food drive at the office. A bunch of folks have made minimum commitments to bring in a certain volume (or weight) of various non-perishables. Cereal, canned goods, rice and couscous mixes, etc. We are doing well in this task and are ready to make up the miscellaneous plastic-wrapped baskets that we will […]