Another Bank Robbery

He lifted the gun into Maria's vision, and her hand hit the silent alarm by reflex. The gun continued upward until it pointed at the man's own temple. His eyes looked determined. Awareness of the gun rippled outward, until everyone was watching, including two security guards with weapons drawn. "Fill a bag with money and give it to me, or I will shoot myself." Maria desperately didn't want to answer him, but he was talking to her.

"I, I can't, I can't do that—"

"This is a robbery. Fill a bag with money and hand it to me." He looked around, his gun pointing at his head the entire time. "Tell them to put down their guns, or I shoot myself."

She thought she might sob. Instead, she raised her voice. "Put the guns down, or he shoots," she said.

"Put the gun down," one of the guards shouted.

"Just shoot him," someone shouted.

"He'll do it!" Maria shouted. The guards set down their guns. She looked up at his face. His eyes were wide. Scared.

She packed a bag with cash and gave it to him. Gun to his head, he left the bank, the crowd parting before him.

Death Rides on 27/32 Inch Treads

Hot air washed over me like the breath of a giant, fetid with the stench of burned diesel, as the bus missed me by inches. Brakes screeched and rubber burned as it clawed to a stop, swinging nearly ninety degrees to face me straight on again. Staring up into that driverless bus, I knew that the poets and artists were wrong. Death wasn't a black-robed skeleton with a scythe. Death was a fifteen-ton hunk of diesel-fueled steel and glass with a chrome-grille grin.

Its engine growled. I took a step back, and it inched forward. I feinted to the left, then broke to the right. The engine roared as it came after me. I cut toward it, hoping to get inside its turning radius. A beast that large, if I got past it I might make it to that hill. But it clipped me. I sprawled out across the pavement. The fall shredded my hands, but I could only feel the pain shooting up from my hip.

When I sat up, the bus was charging me. I couldn't think. It grew bigger and bigger like an oncoming train. So I accepted it. I dropped flat like a dead man, and Death passed over me, undercarriage missing my nose by a hair.

The screech of tearing metal ran through me like lightning. The demon bus had wrecked, and I was still alive. I limped out of there as fast as I could. It wasn't a game of chess, but it'd do.

A Bank Robbery

The note read, "My mouth is full of bees. Fill the briefcase with cash. No alarms." The teller looked up. The woman's cheeks did look rather... puffy. Not ballooned outward, like she was holding her breath, just... big. Like she'd been interrupted in the middle of chewing a big bite of steak.

He ran his finger under the counter to the silent alarm. He didn't push it, he only touched it, ran his fingers around the outside. Just to make sure he knew where it was.

She was looking at him. Her eyes flicked to her briefcase, now on the counter, then back to him. He wondered if there were really bees in her mouth. She couldn't possibly. They'd sting her a hundred times and she'd die or something. At least she'd scream, and they'd fly away. Or maybe they've all suffocated, and she's standing there with a mouth full of dead bees.

He wasn't sure which was worse. A mouth full of live, angry bees, or a mouth full of dead ones. Or someone crazy enough to make the threat, real or not.

The teller filled the suitcase. As she walked out of the bank, he sighed in relief.

Factory Order

The first warning was when I opened my apartment door and saw my deck of cards all neatly stacked. Normally I play half a game of fifty-two pickup when I leave. I checked the top two cards: ace and two of hearts. Factory order. Second warning: I heard the shower running. Pulling my gun, I slipped off my shoes and crept to the bathroom, socks silent on the hardwood floor. That's where I saw her.

She had the sort of curves that you need to hold onto. I wondered how the water cascading down her full breasts and the curve of her hips could bear to let go at the bottom. She beckoned, and I stepped into the shower with her.

Frigid water hit me like a slap in the face. I leave it that way, like the cards. Keeping my face blank, I looked at her. She couldn't feel the cold that had broken the spell, so I had a moment to see her leering smile, too-thin frame, and stringy hair. She embraced me, and I killed her with the wooden stake I keep behind the towel.

Vampires. They always think they're the first to try the shower trick.

Beneath the Flyway

When I was a boy, my father taught me how to identify the geese that flew overhead our coastal Maine home. Pointing up at the flyway, he said, "Those are Canada geese. They migrate north in the summer and south in the winter." "Those are snow geese," he told me. "They have two colors, white and grey."

"And those dark ones," he said, "are evil geese. They fly low so they can bring misery to humankind. You ever see them flying in, you come get me." I nodded solemnly as boys do when their fathers tell them solemn things.

One time I saw evil geese on migration and yelled for Dad. He ran out with the shotgun, firing into the air and shouting, "This is for Martha! Remember Martha, you bastards?" One fell into the woods, and I still remember how it honked at him, wounded but still full of malice, before he executed it.

I was still young then. When I returned from my first year of college, he was gone, a handful of dark feathers the only indication he hadn't simply walked away from his life.

His shotgun in hand, I swore I'd make the evil geese pay.

Gone Fishing 2

"Dad, d'you think I'll catch a cthulhu?" Father pulled the last cooler out of the trunk. "You can try, but I think you're more likely to catch some trout."

"No, I'll fish in the deepest holes and... I need some special bait."

"Maybe when we're not fly fishing, son."

For a couple hours, Father and Son fished up and down the river. The cooler was half full and Father had just cast his fly when his son called out.

"Just a second, son." He watched the drift.

"Dad!"

"What?" He pulled in his line and turned. The bait knife entered his belly with little resistance, and he looked down, unbelieving. "What..." he gasped, "...what are you doing? Son?"

"Special bait, Dad." He twisted the knife in a cruel horseshoe and his father stumbled back, clutching his entrails. People with grey, translucent skin appeared from the woods around them. "They told me this would make good bait."

The figures chanted while the boy brushed his father's blood across his hook and cast it upstream. In his last moments, the father watched a tentacle pull the hook beneath the river's surface, through a hole in space opening on a distant, many-angled city.

Gone Fishing

"Dad, d'you think I'll catch a cthulhu?" Father pulled the last cooler out of the trunk. "You can try, but I think you're more likely to catch some trout."

"No, I'll fish in the deepest holes and... can I bait with squid?"

"Maybe when we're not fly fishing, son."

For a couple hours, Father and Son fished up and down the river. The cooler was half full and Father had just cast his fly when his son called out.

"Just a second, son." He watched the drift.

"Dad!"

"What?" He pulled in his line and turned. A tentacle hung from his son's taut line. Following the tentacle down, he looked into a massive face of glistening squid flesh, behind it a distant, many-angled city, all under the unruffled stream.

"Can I keep it?"

Cloaked persons appeared from the woods around them. Translucent grey skin peeked from beneath their hoods. "Ummm, son," Father said, "I think this ought to be catch and release."

Son looked at him, then carefully unhooked the tentacle. It slithered back through the hole in space. For an instant, the alien face looked grateful, and then it and the impossible city vanished, leaving only the pebbly streambed.