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.

Not Alone

The smell assaulted me before I turned the corner: browned butter, salt, yeasty bread. And there it was: Wetzel's Pretzels, between the frozen yogurt place and the cell phone store. A line of three people stopped me from walking right up and ordering. It gave me time to think. Mall pretzels smell great. The memory of them is fantastic, a rolled-up mish-mash of all the best soft pretzels I've ever eaten. But mall pretzels taste terrible. They're spongy bread, oversaturated with cheap butter, spottily sprinkled with salt.

I stared at the storefront, bored teenager at the counter and bored middle-aged woman at the ovens, and willed someone else to join the line before it ran down. Anyone, please to jump on that bullet, to give me an excuse to walk away, escape the lure of a delicious memory, and avoid disappointment. No luck.

"One original, please."

Lukewarm, soaked in butter to conceal poor bread, and undersalted. I ate half it walking through the mall, every bite a fresh disappointment. Three storefronts away, I threw what was left in the trash.

Curiosity and something familiar in the corner of my eye made me look. The trash was full of half-eaten pretzels.

Operation Lightning Bolt

Major Ketvertis listened to reports from the radio operators around him, marking his map of the city and issuing quiet orders to his troops. In his war room, the chatter of distant gunfire sounded like a TV battlefield with the sound turned down. The volume spiked and then quieted as a lieutenant entered and stood at a fidgety attention. Ketvertis snapped off a quick salute. "Yes, lieutenant?"

"The opposing force, sir. I... I think they're from Udija."

"Of course they are, lieutenant. We made up Udija for this war game."

"I know, but... the people assigned to be subversives and invaders... they're not speaking Lithuanian."

Ketvertis narrowed his eyes. "They'd better not be speaking Russian."

"No, sir, I speak Russian, and they're not."

"Are you telling me someone made up a language for the war game?"

The lieutenant looked around. "All I know is they're speaking a language we don't understand, and it's unnerving everyone."

A radio operator turned. "Sir, the opposing force just fielded tanks."

"They aren't supposed to have tanks for this exercise!" Major Ketvertis' face grew red.

"Reports of tanks with the Udijan flag on," said another operator.

"Maybe General Vasinas gave them tanks to surprise me," he mumbled. "But a language?"

A nearby explosion shook the building. "My God," he shouted, "what's going on out there?" Ketvertis stormed out of the building. The street was red with the light of fires glaring off clouds of smoke hanging over the city. Gunfire strobed against those same banks of smoke. "What is going on?" he cried.

"Sir," said the lieutenant, "I think Udija is invading." He looked up into the sky where a military plane streaked overhead. "And they're winning."