Package

 

According to tracking, the package was supposed to be delivered today, which was great, because she needed it today.

The only problem was her mail was delivered to a PO box in a completely different town and county, for security reasons (long boring story). Nothing got delivered to the house, not ever.

So, fetching the mail was a 60-mile round trip, which was normally not a big deal, but not something she really had time for today.

She sighed, showered, grabbed her car keys, and opened the door to leave, tripping over something and almost falling.

It was the package.

 

New Neighbor

 

It appeared out of nowhere, overnight, a pile of brush with an opening as perfect as a store-bought doghouse.

About 4-feet high and a good 12-feet in diameter, she definitely would have noticed it…if it had been there before, since it was not far from her house and less than 20 feet into the forest.

Standing there, wondering what to do about it, suddenly the entire thing started to quiver, and a screeching came from inside, repeating and getting louder…then silence.

“Well,” she thought to herself. “That sounds like Mind Your Fucking Business to me”, so she did just that.

Regret

 

“I can always come back for it” he thought to himself as he got into the car.

Little did he know that he would never get the chance.

He drove all morning and afternoon, stopping only for gas, and when the sun had long gone, he started looking for a hotel.

Absentmindedly watching the news, he caught a glimpse of what looked very much like his house, now hundreds of miles away.

Or more exactly, what was left of his house, because most of it was gone.

The explosion had been so immense, he knew he’d never see it again.

House Fire

 

The house was on fire, and the firefighters were desperately working to save the babies.

The firefighters on one side had formed a relay brigade to lift the babies trapped inside out of the windows, down the ladders, and to the safety of the crew on the ground.

The crew on the ground kept the relay going around to the other side of the house, where they’d been told that the only safe place for the babies was inside.

No one had time to wonder why the house was never emptied of babies.

They just doggedly kept the relay going.

Time Travel

 

She parked across the street from the little red brick house and stared at it, letting memories wash over her.

She heard her grandmother cooking in the small eat-in kitchen, a little frazzled as always and cussing under her breath every so often. Everything always tasted great.

In the basement, her grandfather had his workshop tucked into a corner, and he puttered around down there, mainly to avoid his frazzled, cussing wife while she cooked.

Ivy grew on the brick, and there was a Redbud tree her grandmother had planted back in the ‘50’s that somehow survived the Wisconsin winters.

House

 

The house was enormous; more of a castle, really, and it perched on the highest hill in the area.

Abandoned, it kept its history secret, surrounded by a 12-foot iron fence with spiky things at the top, and the gate was padlocked with a medieval chain.

The teens were determined to investigate, and they shimmied up a tree next to the fence and dropped down from an overhanging branch.

Only then did they realize their shortsightedness as they silently stared up at the branch none of them could reach.

Surprising there was no cell service on top of that hill.

 

Barber

 

“Never use a female barber” is something he’d been told all his life, but he had no idea why. He’d been going to Shelley since high school, and she was a great barber.

He was called out of town on an unexpected business trip, and he needed a trim, so he just used the barber the hotel recommended.

When he walked into Shelley’s shop again, she said, “Well. You don’t look like it’s been two months since your last haircut.”

He laughed and told her what had happened, and she laughed with him.

He never saw that straight razor coming.

Procrastination

 

The word mocked her, in capital letters on her to-do list for the day.

PORCH

The enclosed porch was unnavigable with boxes and feed sacks that’d just been tossed out there “to deal with later”.

Today was later.

It was hot. Muggy and hot, but she’d done enough whining and procrastinating.

Sighing with self-pity, she dove into the mess.

The boxes were the worst of it, and she broke them down, stacking them in a bigger box.

Then all the folded bags were stacked into an empty bag.

Finally, she swept the floor, finished.

It had taken her 15 minutes.

Career Day

It was career assessment day, and the kids were excited to see “what they would be when they grew up”.

This was back in the olden times; the 1900’s.

They filled out the questionnaire and the teacher compiled the results and announced them to the class.

Not surprisingly, the boys were on track to becoming doctors, lawyers, construction workers or businessmen, and the girls were conveniently future nurses, teachers, or secretaries.

Except one girl, who the teacher gave a side-eye to as she introduced their future lumberjack.

That girl lived in the forest when she grew up, just in case. 

Welcome to Texas

 

The two young women sat at the bar, exchanging fears about their new state. They’d both transferred in from states in the northern part of the country, so Texas held a lot of horrors they were not used to.

“Tornadoes!” said the first woman. “And hurricanes!”

“Venomous snakes!” said the other one.

They both agreed that fire ants were of the devil, as were scorpions.

The old man sitting next to them chuckled, and said, “Ya’ll ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”

With a twinkle in his eyes, he uttered the three words that made their blood run cold.

“Annual Tarantula Migration.”

Lasagna

 

He had a hankering for lasagna, and he had a recipe that was just the right size for one person.

He’d checked his ingredients. He had noodles, tomato sauce, eggs, and parmesan cheese. All he needed was mozzarella and ricotta from the store.

Assembling the dish, he stopped in horror with a container in mid-air.

What he’d thought was a container of parmesan cheese was…not parmesan cheese.

Slowly backing away from the mixing bowl, he put the container of sawdust and mealworms back into the fridge.

He sighed in relief that he lived alone.

Except for his spider, of course.

New Job

 

It was her first day as the receptionist at a vet clinic.

She had experience and knew the computer system, and phone etiquette, but one thing worried her.

Every person who walked in with a pet, her trainer sent away to a different clinic, saying, “I’m sorry. We don’t do that here.”

It was puzzling, because they were common requests: vaccinations, nail trims, mild ailments.

At lunch, her trainer gave her a tour of the clinic. There were no kennels or surgery. They turned a corner and saw the tanks lining the wall.

She was working for a fish doctor.

Freezing

 It was freezing.

Not just uncomfortably cold, but the entire world had been flash-frozen in an instant.

The only sound was crackling ice as everything and everyone tried to move, to escape, to go…where?

There was nowhere that wasn’t frozen.

They looked at each other, less than six feet apart but an eternity away, only able to move their eyes behind frost-encrusted lashes.

With a Herculean effort, he said, “I love you”, his words literally hanging in the air. A frozen tear formed in her eye, and she whispered, “I love you, too.”

The words shattered like icicles and disappeared

Light

 

It was storming and the electricity went out.

She lit the oil lamp in the dining room and told her husband and son to light the ones in the bedrooms.

The stove was propane, so finishing dinner would not be a problem.

Her son called from his room, “Mom! I’m having trouble lighting my lamp” and she told him, “Just hang on- I’ll do it after dinner.”

They ate by the light of the oil lamp, then she said, “OK. Time to get you some light!” and the electricity came back on.

Her family would never doubt she’d done it.

Thump in the Night

 

The thumping on the front porch was persistent, but he wasn’t worried. It was his dog scratching her collar. He couldn’t hear her tags, but the tv was on, so that didn’t alarm him.

The cat stared at the door, her eyes little slits between twitching ears and whiskers. Her tail tapped out a tiny alarm on the rug.

The thumping continued, but now there was a bark…at the back door. Just one bark, but it was filled with urgency. He let the dog in, and all three stared at the front door, listening to the thumping on the porch.

Donkey

 

The receptionist looked out the window and saw the Vet and male vet tech trying to pull the donkey into the stocks for his exam.

It was a small creature, but still stronger than the two men combined, and they were about wore out and very pissed off.

She went outside and casually asked what the problem was.

They glared at her and pointed at the belligerent equine.

She took the lead rope and wrapped it around the donkey’s butt, so she was pulling and pushing at the same time.

The donkey walked pretty as you please into the stocks.

 

Bees

 

The house was full of bees.

In the beginning, there had just been a few, buzzing from room to room, looking for a way out, so they’d caught them up in jars and released them outside.

After a few days, it became alarming. There were bees in every room, climbing up the windows and zooming erratically this way and that.

When there were hundreds of bees, the people ran out of the house and slammed the door behind them.

They watched in mute horror and fascination as the bees literally piled up at the windows, a living, swarming tidal wave.

Reality

 

Going to sleep at night was always a challenge.

He could easily accomplish the physical part of sleep, but he just never knew where he would be when he woke up.

His life consisted of three different realities, and he was in his twenties before he realized most people had one reality, and that’s it.

There were months he spent in the same place, and then he’d wake up somewhere else. Maybe for a day, maybe for months.

No one ever mentioned his absences, which was weird, and why he’d assumed his life was normal.

He sighed and dozed off.

Pocketknives

 No one appreciates great marketing.

There were hundreds of pocketknives in the estate, and it was getting ridiculous figuring out lots to group them in for the auction.

She approached her boss and said she had a creative and challenging idea for all these knives.

He steeled himself for the worst and asked what her idea was.

“What if we put them all in a barrel, and label it that they can have all they can grab with one hand for $20?”

“That doesn’t sound very challenging…”

“We open them all before putting them in the barrel!”

He said no.

Vacation

 

It was the most beautiful place she’d ever been.

The scenery and architecture, but also the people, who were kind and gracious, even to annoying touristas.

And cost of living was incredible. At home, she was lower lower middle class, but here, she’d be comfortably upper middle class working less hours.

Serving tables was a universal trade, and she spoke English, which would be a plus.

Her friends were incredulous. How could she think about living here where everyone was so…poor?

They thought she was joking.

But when they boarded the plane to go home, she was not with them.

Oysters

 

“The world is your oyster!”

People had been telling her that her entire life.

Born into money, she got anything she wanted.

But even as a small child, she saw others who were not as fortunate, and a lot of the time, she asked for things to be given to others.

As she grew up, her parents tried to steer her into “suitable” futures involving endowments and other ways of giving that were one-step removed from hardships and drudgery.

To their horror, she dove into humanitarian efforts feet first and in person.

She’d tried to tell them.

She hated oysters.

 

Experience

 

“Make sure you keep stirring it, so it doesn’t boil over” his mother told him as she left the room.

He looked after her in teenaged disgust. He knew what he was doing.

He stirred the pot for a long time. At least 10 minutes. For sure over a minute. Long enough that he knew he could get his phone right quick.

He went to his bedroom, picked up his phone, and replied to some messages. It only took a second.

There was a cascade of bubbles coming from the kitchen, and his mother’s eyes glared at him over them.

Last Bus

 

They’d missed the last bus, and now they’d have to walk.

Pleasant and quaint in the daytime, the centuries-old neighborhood with narrow, cobbled streets was something else after dark.

The night was for the dangerous, the desperate, and the foolish, and they pretended to look dangerous, all the while knowing they were just desperately foolish.

They made it through the cobbled maze, avoiding eye contact with the disturbing things lurking in the shadows.

All that was left was to cross under the bridge. They took each other’s hand.

Perched on the underside of the bridge, the pterodactyl-sized mosquitoes waited silently.