First Alley Left

Baby shower, first alley left. He barely caught the words as he drove past the hand-scrawled sign, but he looped around the block to look again. It hadn't changed, so he parked and went to see. Looking down the alley in question, confetti lay in scattered bunches leading between the dingy walls, back doors, and waste bins. He followed the trail to a cluster of sickly, half-deflated balloons hanging from a corner strung with soiled streamers. Stepping around the corner, he saw her. Sitting at a child's table, she was slight with stringy, dirty blond hair, a faded and torn dress, and a belly near to bursting.

"I didn't think anyone would come!" She threw her arms around him. He almost pulled away, but she seemed so earnest. "Please sit! We have Oreos!" She gestured him to a child-sized seat across from hers.

Part of him screamed to run and leave the crazy far behind him. He stayed. The woman was sweet and intelligent and promised to name the child after him. He promised to visit, and meant it.

A girl named Rupert would be strange, but she would never have been ordinary. He was looking forward to meeting her.

This Is What Happens

Larry reached the height of the pass and pulled down his scarf to feel the cold air on his face. His breath condensed as he stood in the snow and looked across Europe, laid out before him like an ancient map. Smiling, he pulled his scarf back up and kept walking. When he sat for lunch, he found someone else coming up a different trail. They got to talking and shared their food and drink, including a drop of whiskey from one to the other and a spot of rum in the other direction. Without ever discussing the matter, they walked on together. They traveled sometimes in silence, other times talking about family, work, retirement, love, life, and travel. Now and then their discussions turned into arguments, debates over various matters of political philosophy or practice. Each enjoyed the companionship immensely.

They traveled together for the remaining three days of the journey, and when their paths diverged in Zermatt, Larry said, "I don't think I'll ever forget this, Walt."

Walt agreed. "You see what happens, Larry?" Larry raised an eyebrow. "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps." They hugged and parted, never to meet again.

This story is inspired by this clip.

What Just Happened?

"Okay," said the giraffe, "what just happened?" She was standing with three other giraffes in the Target parking lot. "I have no fucking god-damn clue," said another.

"Jason?" said the first giraffe, incredulous.

"What?" snapped the second.

"If that's you, then..." She looked at a third giraffe. "Wilson?"

"WIIIIIILLLSSSOOOOOOONN!" mock-yelled Jason.

"Oh, give me a break," said the third giraffe.

"It's him," Jason said.

"Which means you're Tara?" She looked at the fourth giraffe.

"Yup," Tara said. "Now what, Padma?"

"I dunno. This is crazy. Any ideas? Wilson?"

"WIIIIIILLLSSSOOOOOOONN!" echoed Jason.

"Dammit, would you cut. It. OUT!" A bright red beam shot from Wilson's horn-like protuberances at Jason. Jason flinched, but his protuberances shimmered and the beam bent away from him.

"What the hell," murmured Tara. She looked at the line the beam had drawn through — not in, through — the Target.

"So," Padma said, "we have turned into super-powered giraffes. Now what?"

"We find whoever did this and make them turn us back," Jason said.

"Okay, so... hey. Was that castle there this morning?" Padmam gestured with her head at a gothic structure looming above the skyline in the distance.

"Sure wasn't," Wilson said.

"Let's check it out."

She Was the Best

She was seventeen, and she was the best. She'd only had the sign job for a week, but already she tossed, spun, and danced the advertisement for new real estate better than anyone else. Not only didn't she ever drop the sign, but her performance attracted more attention than the others'. She'd sneaked a look at the sales numbers, and they'd gone up twenty percent since she'd started. This concerned her. She didn't want to be doing this forever. She wouldn't be able to, for one thing. What if there wasn't anything else that she was this good at? She wanted to study botany, but what if she didn't take to the organic sciences the way she took to this? Could she really work at something where she was only okay? Would she be robbing the world of its finest sign dancer?

It wouldn't be forever. She promised herself this. For now, she needed this, the paycheck, the job. But the minute she didn't, the minute she was free to pursue something deeper, more important, she would go, even if she couldn't be the best, even if it was hard. Until then, she spun the sign.

She was the best.

An Amazing Cat

The boy held his cat tight to his chest. "He's an amazing cat," the boy said, "and he needs an amazing home." He peeked up at the woman standing over him. She smiled. "Can you tell me what's great about him?"

"He can run faster than a cheetah."

She crossed her arms. "Oh, yeah?"

"Um, once he protected me from three pit bulls. At the same time."

"Okay." She didn't sound impressed.

"If you let him go outside, he can find gold for you."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Um, and his, uh, if he licks you, it cures cancer."

"Well, that's great and all, but I'm not sure I'm the right person for this cat."

Tears beaded in the boy's eyes. "What if he loves a little boy very much, and the boy just can't keep him anymore because we have to move to a place that won't take animals, and maybe we could visit him sometimes?"

She knelt and stroked the fuzzy head. "Now that sounds like an amazing cat. One I could give a good home and love forever. One that could have friends over." He sniffled, and they petted the cat together. The cat remained indifferent.

Since the End

Each year, the Mentists sent a war party to the Prates, to force them not to darken the sky and take away the Bright altogether. The Bright was all that gave them light, shining dim through the clouds. Each year, some Mentists died in the battle, but their threat went heeded and the sky got no darker. One year, a charismatic Mentist gathered all the tribes. She declared that the time had come to wipe away the Prates for all time. Doing so, she said, would stop their great Ack Ack Trees and clear the skies.

She led them to the land of Ack Ack, where the Prates lived beneath the Trees. The war was brutal, for their enemy had sticks that called thunder. Many Mentists died. They thanked the Bright that the war was also short, for the Prates were sickly and dull, and fewer than the Mentists had believed. The war party returned home, more bloodied than any could remember, like in the stories of the Viron Wars, and the tribes celebrated. Victorious, the Mentists waited for the mists to fade and the Bright to come shining through.

They are still waiting, if they are there at all.

StarHub Bio #331: Mister Sir

Mister Sir began life as MR-SUR, or medical robot, surgery. Its mission was to preserve human life through application of its medical knowledge and skills. This directive made MR-SUR's experience during the great dieoff particularly painful. Despite its best efforts, the medical robot could not save humanity. It has few memories of the following years. These days, Mister Sir suspects it wiped that period from its memory due to trauma. When feeling maudlin, it acknowledges that it probably spent fruitless years operating on corpses.

Once it recovered somewhat, it found a new purpose: to renew the extinct human race. It hunted down scientific tomes on human reproduction, cloning, genetics. It recovered a large collection of related technology and made some new strides of its own — all theoretical, lacking subjects for its experiments.

When the Hirr occupied the formerly-human planet, Mister Sir knew its time was up. It concealed its trove of human technology and accepted the offer of safe deportation. It now works as a surgeon and general physician on StarHub. Mister Sir insists it hasn't given up on its dream of resurrecting humanity, and it asks all its patience for clues that may help with its lofty goal.