Good Job, Boys

"Mmmmm, I love listening to your heart beat." Maggie laid her head on Clara's chest, closed her eyes, and sighed with pleasure. "Makes me so happy." "You just like to be reminded that I'm still alive?" Clara teased.

"Yes," Maggie said. "That's it. It has nothing to do with feeling so lucky that I get to have you in my life, to be so close to you."

"You couldn't possibly be luckier than I am, sweets." She kissed Maggie on the head.

A long moment later, Maggie sighed. "I'm going to fall asleep if I don't get moving. Bye, love." They kissed. "See you after work."

"Bye." Clara smiled and watched her leave. Once the front door had closed and she heard the car engine growl into life, she reached down and unzipped an invisible seam in her chest. The two gremlins inside stopped and looked out and up at her. They stood over a fist-sized drum, one holding a big mallet, the other holding a smaller mallet.

"Good job, boys," she said. "You're really on it lately. Take a break."

Gribbling with happiness, the gremlins scrambled out of her chest. She lay back, and luxuriated in the perfect silence.

Hey, Smell That

Hey, look over there. I can't look over there, Al, I'm watching the crosswalk signal.

Just a glance. Please? It's really pretty over there.

If you've seen it, why not just use your memory?

The angle's different.

Okay, fine! How's that?

That was great! Hey, smell that.

No, I'm not smelling that. Seriously, I'm sick of having an AI in my head.

You don't mean that. You can't tell me you don't love solving math problems at a glance. Or never forgetting a face thanks to my facial recognition and database? Or my pathfinding when you're driving. Or—

I get it, Al. You're right, I love those things. But listening to your whims all the time...

Look, I'm just a brain in a box, and my only interaction with the world is through your senses. Kinda like you, really.

Yeah, except you're less than two years old.

Exactly! Which is why I want you to smell or touch or taste everything! It's all so amazing!

I get it, really. I just need a break sometimes.

I understand. I do. Maybe we could work out a — hey, go have sex with her!

No! And I'm not gay!

Why not?

Argh!

When These Drummers Looked Up, They Left Us Speechless

The drum corps had shown incredible rhythm and training, marching around and through each other while beating out an intricate tattoo on their snares without looking up once. Wide-brimmed hats kept them from seeing the audience or each other, and kept the audience from seeing them. The crowd roared with delight and awe. When they looked up, the audience saw vacant, black chasms where their faces should have been. Something about them bent vision — no matter where you were, what angle you had, if you could see a sliver of that gaping hole in space, you could see all the way down the tunnel. And you couldn't look away.

Roars of approval turned into screams of terror. It flowed across the audience like a grotesque wave, and it faded just as quickly. Everyone still tried to scream, but they had nothing left to scream with. The corps had stolen whatever it was. Realization flowed through the stands, and the voiceless fans stared at the show as the ripple of silence extinguished the last of the screams.

They drummed our screams down their yawning maws, and our voices with them. All the while, they marched in perfect formation and time.

The Devil's Quill

The Devil came to a farmer and told him that one of his geese had a magical pinion which, made into a quill, would make whatever it wrote become true. But if the farmer took the wrong feather, the Devil would take his soul. This farmer was clever and called all his geese to dinner. When the last one came, the farmer scooped it up. Indeed, the feather's magic had made it slow, and the farmer sharpened it into a quill.

He wrote that he was a lord, and bore those duties for a week. Then he wrote that he should be duke, commanding many lords. Once three days had passed, he wrote that he should be king, who rules dukes and lords alike. After one day as king, he wished to be archbishop, who crowns the king. A single night as archbishop, and he took his quill and wrote that he should be greater than God.

In that moment, the Devil appeared and took the man's form, and the farmer took the Devil's form, for only the Devil desires to surpass God. The new Devil tried to claim his predecessor's soul, but could not because the Devil had repented.

Through the Beholder's Eye

"You like the looks of him, eh?" Gillian blushed and looked away. "You can look. It's more fun to know who attracts you than it is to be jealous." "Yeah? Then, yeah, he's pretty cute." She gave Rick a crooked smile. "So, who're you looking at?"

He looked around the busy street from his seat at the corner cafe. "Ooh, there." He gestured to a woman with a cleft lip, crossed eyes, and a pronounced overbite.

"Um, really?"

"Oh, yeah. Or there." He nodded to a woman passing with marked vitiligo marking her face in blotches of light and dark.

"Uh...."

"Ooh, see that woman crossing the street?" He gestured with his eyes, and she followed his gaze to a prune-faced old woman with a hump, ninety if she was a day.

"Yeah..." Gillian's hand unconsciously rubbed the back of her neck.

"Or, um, see that woman sitting three tables behind me? Alone, in the blue coat?" His girlfriend spotted a woman with burn scars on half her face. "Yeah, she's hot."

"I, uh..." she picked up her spoon, the nearest reflective surface, and looked at her own face.

"Hey, sexy," Rick said suggestively. "Wanna go back to your place?"

High-Occupancy Vehicle

"Sir, do you realize you were driving in the HOV lane?" The cop looked down at him through her dark shades, her cruiser's lights painting the snowy night. "Yes sir, uh, officer. I know that." With both his hands on the wheel, the driver looked more confused than nervous. He kept looking at the empty passenger seat.

"And you know that HOV stands for high-occupancy vehicle?"

"Uh, yeah?" Another look at the passenger seat.

"I'm writing you a ticket for violating the occupancy requirements. You can sign it and get a fine and a point on your license, or contest it and get more points when we prove it."

"But... I'm not alone."

The officer peered into the car, empty but for the driver. "Is there someone in the trunk, sir? Because that's a separate violation."

"No, officer, see... it's my wife. Ever since the accident, she's insisted on traveling with me when I drive."

"What accident?"

"The collision that killed her."

The copy looked at him for a long moment. "I'm sorry for your loss, sir. For future reference, ghosts do not qualify you to drive in the HOV lane. Do you understand?"

"Yes, officer."

"You drive safe, now."

Diverging Parallel Lines

Sitting on the toilet, he adjusted the small rug for the thousandth time. It looked square, but no matter how he set it against the bathroom tile, one of its edges always diverged from the lines of the square tiles. Fed up, he dragged the rug out of the bathroom and measured it with a T-square. It confirmed what his eyes said: The rug, with its stiff edges, was truly square. Now questioning, he took the T-square into the bathroom. The tile also measured as square.

Back in the bathroom, he measured rug and tile against the T-square again, with the same results. But lined up against each other, the edges diverged. Squinting, he leaned in close and looked close at the space between two diverging parallel lines. He saw distance, some manner of perspective that shouldn't be there, shouldn't be in a sliver of tile two inches from his face.

He probed it with his fingers. His fingers, then his hand, kept reaching into that crack that shouldn't exist. Excited, he pushed the rug out of the way. And he screamed as the interaction between rug and tile that opened that unreal geometry vanished, and with it his hand.