The Man in the Manikin

Once upon a time in a city called Cincinnati, there was a woman named Wendi. Wendi was an avid shoper and often found herself at the North Hamton Shopping Plaza. One day while shopping for summer clothes she noticed something that she had never noticed before. It was the most beautiful manikin she had ever seen. It was wear a tacky striped shirt and green shorts. It was also wearing a pair of pink loafers. Wendi couldn’t help but stare at him. She was quite embarrassed when she noticed a teen-aged couple a few isles over who seemed to be watching and talking about her. She walked to the other side of the store for a while then slowly drifted back to the beautiful manikin.

He had a surprised expression frozen on his face. Wendi imagined that he didn’t always have that expression and that one day, just after closing, a female employee noticing how attractive he was, kissed him on the cheek before leaving for night. Yes. That’s why he has that expression on his face, Wendi affirmed.

She started to come back to the strip mall every other day. She always found herself looking up at the beautiful manikin in the tacky pink loafers. She knew that there was only one thing she could do. It wouldn’t be easy and she would probably never be able to come back to the North Hampton strip mall again, but that couldn’t be helped. She had to have him. She had to see him standing by the window in her apartment, surprised to see whatever cars or birds were skittering about outside. She asked to speak to the manager.

It had been a pricey and embarrassing exchange, but it had been worth it. Wendi dragged the manikin up the stairs to her apartment. By the time she made it to her floor she had almost forgotten the way the store employees had stared at her from the doorway as she shoved the manikin into her car and buckled his seat belt. He leaned against her shoulder as she unlocked the door.

The first thing she wanted to do was get rid of those terrible pink loafers. Clutching the manikin’s ancle with one hand and a loafer with the other, Wendi began to remove the offending footwear. She had just removed the second shoe when she noticed a slight twitch of the manikin’s big toe. She sprang across onto the sofa on the other side of her apartment without touching the ground. The stiff plastic luster that had defined the manikin’s face had left. He was breathing gently. Wendi stared, terrified and disbelieving. The man who was once a manikin looked around, confused but no longer surprised.

“What? Whe… I…” The manikin looked directly at Wendi. “I’m sorry, who are you and how did I get… that strange man.”

“You mean how did you get here from the strip mall?” Wendi asked.

“Wha? Strip mall? Do you have anything to drink, I’m really thirsty?

“Sure.”

And they lived happily ever after.

Rubicon

Every time I close my eyes, I find myself standing on a pinnacle in a strange void surrounded by swirling energy.

I have never had a true dream in my life because this is the only one that I ever experience at night. I don’t really even know how it feels to have my eyes closed because when I close them it feels like they are still open. When they are closed I am still seeing, vividly, lucidly, another world.

The void does not always look the same. It is constantly in flux. At times it seems that I am standing on the pinnacle in the midst of a great nebula. At other times the void is aflame. It is blue, green, fuchsia, violet, silver, black. Sometimes the void looks truly empty.

I have grown tired of my daylight life. I hate it. As I sit here in this room, this office, this building, surrounded by all of these wretched, unhappy people. I close my eyes and find myself on my pinnacle, my spire. It is raining upwards, blue and black all around me. I am going to jump into the abyss.

I don’t know what will happen. During my thirty-three years of life I have always resisted the temptation to take this plunge. The thought of doing so has always reeked of wrongness and inevitability. I may die, I am forced to concede. Stranger yet, casting myself off of this rock may inexplicably end existence, oblivion there after. Perhaps, on the other hand, if I jump, nothing will happen at all. Maybe I will open my eyes and find myself right back in this room. Maybe when I try to jump I won’t be able to. The tendrils of some invisible force may anchor me to the rock. The possibilities seem endless. Will this be my end or something else entirely?

Here I go…

vacation

I stayed at this hotel in Canada last week. They don’t have very tight regulation on genetic modification apparently. The hotel was decorated by genetically modified organisms.

All of the plants on the premises were bio-luminescent. It was awesome and beautiful. There is nothing quite like swimming in a pool that is lit entirely by glowing bushes.

The plants in the rooms were electrically charged. Have you ever plugged your laptop or shaver into a shrubbery before? I promise you, it is a memorable experience.

There were also a number of cats on the premises with glowing stripes and eyes. They added an alien jungle aesthetic to the environment. I believe one cat may even have been spliced with squid genes so that it could change the color of its skin and essentially cloak itself, a Cheshire cat if you will.

Perhaps hotels with creatures like these will be legalized in the states soon. One can only hope, right?

Planet Polus

Planet Polus has the strongest magnetic field discovered to date. The field is so strong in fact that some plant like organisms are able to derive all of their energy from it. There are some communities of synthetic organisms on the planets surface as well, almost completely carbon-less creatures.

However, the organisms that dominate the Polus are far more similar to humans that they are to the most intelligent of the planet’s synthetic organisms, although many of the microbes that make it possible for them to live are indeed synthetic. They call themselvesVelfore. They derive all of their energy from organic matter. They look insectile from a human perspective but are really more like marsupials than insects upon closer examination. They have build large underground cities which use the planet’s magnetic field for power. Within the average Velforian city their are mass transit systems, residential/commercial districts with almost self sustained economies, large residences as the Velfore are far more communal than humans, tower farms that use artificial light to feed plants, party districts, and  finally an underground lake.

There is trouble on planet Polus. A colony of hardhearted humans have arrived on the planet’s surface. They do not share the same sustainable practices as their softhearted cousins do. If the Velfore are not expedient in dealing with the new arrivals both the water supply and the fragile but powerful magnetic field may be at risk.

The Velfore are not warlike people although there are a number of very bloody episodes recorded in their history. As such, they attempt to solve the environmental concern diplomatically. The hard-hearts are not cooperative. They mock the long skinny Velfore and their simple ways. The Velfore kidnap one of the humans and show it one of their cities. The human is moved and apologizes for its actions but is unable to convince its comrades to reform their environmental practices. The human lives with the Velfore for a number of years and becomes a soft-heart, in most ways at least. Understanding that Polus is on the brink of environmental disaster, it seeks out weapons with which to destroy its kin.

There is a family of synthetic creatures on Polus known as Voltron. You may remember a popular anime that is named after these creatures. They live off of the magnetic currents and collect metals for nutrition. There is only one strand of Voltron that is intelligent. The other species have simply evolved survival mechanisms. Although each species lives separately, there are rumors that when it is deemed necessary they will work with each other to achieve common goals.

Now despite what one might expect, most synthetic organisms have cells just as carbon based life tends to. Voltron, to the naked eye, do not look particularly different from carbon based lifeforms. It is the way that these life forms process energy that sets them apart. There are six major Voltron species. The soft-hard-human chooses these creatures to initiate an offensive. The intelligent strand of Voltron seem more like plants than animals. They root themselves in the ground like many sea animals on earth root themselves. The Intelligent Voltron, or Voltron Brains, pull up metallic nutrients from the ground and create tools for themselves as necessary. They only change location when the environment becomes particularly threatening. Other Voltron will often follow orders from Intelligent Voltron, as evolution has proven the decision to do so beneficial. Voltron communicate with each other by and large through chemical packages as bacteria do. They also use bio-luminescence.

Another major species of Voltron are fliers. They look a bit like kites, bats, and birds all in one. In stead of flapping wings however, they simply use the magnetic field to guide them. When many Voltron Kites gather, electricity often surges between them. When they are in danger they interlock, forming one large kite. Some thrive underwater.

Voltron Urchins are like porcupines, only harder. They often roll instead of walk. A herd of them can be very dangerous, particular when they are uphill from a perceived threat.

Voltron Snakes can be hundreds of feet long and thrive underground as well as underwater. They are as strong as trees.

Voltron Foxes are the only species of Voltron that refuses to obey orders from Voltron Brains. They are fast and possess excellent sensory preceptors. They look a bit like flying squirrels with pointy ears and huge legs. They have flat heads and blocky teeth because they eat rocks.

Voltron Bearcats are big and scary. They spit nasty chemicals and are the only species of Voltron that has developed a taste for organic life, even meat. There are not very many of them, but they are built like houses and live for centuries.

The human was able to convince the completely utilitarian Voltron Brains to help it attack the human colonists. All that it took was the promise of vast quantities of raw metallic nutrients. The war did not last very long. Unfortunately for the Velfore, the Voltron decided that the profits of war were so worthwhile that raiding Velforian cities would be a good use of time. That was the end of Peace on Polus for very very long time.

False Claims?

I once knew this family of Chrisitain Scientists, they were realy effing weird.

They had this thing that they used to do where they would get accident insurance, they would let “accidents” happen, they would collect, then they would heal whatever went wrong. I don’t know how they did it

So freaking weird.

They went to court over one of these cases for a really long time. The ruling was in their favor. The company said that if such and such an accident occured the family would be given money. It didn’t matter whether or not they needed the money.

Wack-ass miraculous healings. Mad-crazy-insane.

Zombie Armies

Hi. I’m Lance McFearson. I live on what used to be a large colony in the Xebes system. I am one of about 372 survivors of the Zombie wars. Here’s how they went down.

The first war started innocently enough. Some mad college student intern with one of those sleep studies found a way to control people while they sleepwalked and decided to exploit it  to make money then eventually to hold off the police once he was discovered.

The next war was gruesome. It started with what looked like an accident but what turned out in fact to be an evil corporation attempting to make money off of a vaccine. This wasn’t an original idea of course, but it was a potentially profitable one. Luckily anti viral technology isn’t what it was back in the twenty-first.

After all that, things started to get more complex. Some nano-bots escaped from a laboratory somewhere, became sentient, then started animating corpses in an attempt to make communication. Now of course everybody started freaking out when their dead family members started showing up, particularly because the last time that happened they had probably tried to eat them. Pretty much everybody thought this zombies were hostile. After killing enough of them, the nano-bots who were by and large unharmed by whatever we did to those corpses began to think that this was just the way we communicated. They started to mimic our violence. Things got really bad until Dr. Verrilenti examined the nano-bots and opened up real communication with them.

The last thing though, the thing that almost wiped us out was this. Some crazy fundamentalist cult took some nano-bots and screwed up their programming. So now there is an army of good zombies and an army of bad zombies fighting each other and using whatever human collateral there may be to increase their respective advantages. The bad bots were even willing to take over the minds of living humans. Luckily the fighting is dying down now.

Tiny Spaces

Sometimes you wake up in that little room. It isn’t always the same room, but somehow it is the same room. If you’re lucky you can at least stand up strait or sit down, but usually you can’t do either. Somehow there is always a little light but it doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere. The lets you see just how bleak your situation is. There are never any portals, no hope of escape, only cold hard brick wall all around. You are bound to go through an entire range of emotions before it is over. Fear is the most prevalent, but by no means does it hold a monopoly. Before it’s over, you will have bloody knuckles and a soar throat and tears on your face and a hole in your chest where you used to keep your hopes and your faith. You used to have dreams that you hoped for or believed in. Not any more. When you are in this place, you can’t stand to dream. you can’t stand to think of all of the things you will never, no never, know again. You hate closing your eyes and seeing the sky. You hate seeing smiling faces.

Moon Shine

There was once a man named Helio Borsen. The sun shined out of his ass. I do not mean this figuratively as in Helio was full of himself. I mean this literally.

Helio was born with a blazing beacon shining out from betwixt his buns. His parents named him in jest after the ancient sun god.

Helio always had to wear really dark and really thick underpants in order to conceal his anal luminescence. However, on one occasion in middle school, Helio got pants-ed. His unfortunate perpetrator unwittingly attacked from behind and consequently, nearly went blind. The awkwardness vampire was present that day. It left invigorated.

In his junior year of high school, Helio went drinking for the first time. He drank more than he meant to. When another car cut of his friends and himself, he mooned the adjacent vehicles operator. Said driver, unable to see anything at all, swerved shortly after. The other car flipped and exploded. Helio was horrified by what he had done and vowed never to moon another person again.

He would eventually break the vow upon being fired. His boss would sue, and for the first time, the question of super human ability would be brought to the supreme court. Could a person’s freakish innate abilities be classified as dangerous weapons. The X-Men comic books were frequently cited for reference. The court ruled that intent determined whether a person’s body could be classified as a dangerous weapon. Helio was convicted of assalt (ass-alt) with a dangerous, but not deadly, weapon.

He spent a few months in jail. Nobody dared to attempt subduing Helio in the traditional manner. Nobody wanted to risk losing something important.

Upon Helio’s parole, he was asked to wear a special device and his backside. If he were convicted of moon shine assalt again, he would be forced to wear the device at all times.

Helio found it difficult to find work and eventually conceded to receive pay as a test subject for a weapons developer. He made the weapons developing corporation a lot more money than they ever made him.

Wind Wizard

It was an ordinary class field trip, a hike through the mountains for biology and history. Little Benji was horsing around with little Nola, on a small trail near the top of a waterfall. Little Nola accidentally made Benji lose his footing. Benji fell.

Benji woke up in a hospital bed. His parents were there. The nurse said that he was the first person in the county to survive a fall from that high up.

That night, Benji dreams of the water fall. He dreams that the reason why he lived was because the air around him cradled him like a pair of gentle arms.

Two years later, Benji attempts to beat Brock Lee (his parents had a horrible sense of humor) at a swing jumping competition. The entire class is gathered around the swing set. Tammy Turnly is taking measurements with measuring tape.

Brock jumps first. He almost makes it all the way to the pavement. The children gasp in awe. Benji ignores the sea of murmurs and attempts to concentrate. He lets himself relax completely. His entire being becomes the ebbing force of the swing as it moves down and back and up. His hair is a fiery black flurry around his face.

He flings himself into the air. The air feels like water to him and it propels him upwards and outwards, over Brock Lee’s boggled face, past the four square lines, and onto the basketball court. Benji can hear the cheering children and can feel them running up to him, but he is preoccupied. He has latched onto something incredible and he doesn’t want to lose it. It feels like that moment during a dream when you realize you are dreaming. You know that if you can just hold on to that knowledge you will be all powerful in that sleeping world. But it is hard to hold onto, easy to forget.

Benji runs toward the wall ball wall. He comes at it from an angle, jumps, feels his feet scrape against it as he gains momentum, jumps off of the top corner with all of his might and glides into the wind. Benji flies.

Benji spends every hour of every day of every week of every month of the next year mastering his abilities. He learns run with incredible speed. He learns to control pressure and temperature. He learns how to hold solid forms with nothing but thick air. Benji becomes a master of wind energy. He powers entire cities. He travels the world. Benji is the wind wizard.

An Unfortunate Disposition

Kalfax Kasovitch lived a long and impossible life. This was due in part to the strained relationships that she had with her grandparents who were incredibly racist. Kalfax often sent them post cards of herself kissing black people. They did not send $50 checks on her birthday.

However, Kalfax’s life was really impossible because her small intestine was also a brain. Luckily it did not have direct control over her body. Nevertheless, it was psychically linked with her own mind and had no qualms about giving her the worst indigestion ever if she did meet its many demands.

The brain intestine loved naked mole rats. Every few months it would demand that another one be acquired. If Kalfax refused, her bowels would know the brain intestine’s wrath. In the wake of such fury, Kalfax could only prey that she wouldn’t find herself with the runs.

The brain intestine also loved Dustin Hoffman. Years of Kalfax’s life were spent in pursuit of DH. During periods of self-determination on Kalfax’s part, the brain intestine silently protested in the form of stinky elevators and awkwardly interrupted conversations. By awkwardly interrupted, I mean interrupted by audible farts. The brain intestine showed no mercy when it couldn’t get its way. Even sex was not sacred to it. Eruptuous gasses turned many lover’s faces into twisted turnips. Collateral damage in the war between Kalfax and her entrails.

Kalfax once told her brain intestine that Dustin Hoffman wasn’t even the greatest actor in the universe and that naked mole rats weren’t even fit to be worn as socks for frog people. The next time Kalfax entered a public bus. Everyone in it was smoked out by lethal levels of methane. There were two casualties. Kalfax was arrested for terrorism and manslaughter. However, because no evidence could be found linking her to the chemical agent that filled the bus that day, she was released.

There was only one murder that she committed on purpose. A man once told her that he thought that she was just a crazy person with really bad gas. He died slowly at her hands and was found in a bookstore with raw fish on his person. Personally, I don’t blame her. If your life sucks that much, of course you’re going to kill the ruck sack who tries to tell you it’s just in your head.

The day of the murder, the wife of this man was with a wealthy software baron on Ivory Drive. The software baron discovered that she was married while they watched the evening news together. A creepy man in a cape watched their following conversation from the window until the police arrived.

Kalfax saw the same creepy man from time to time in elevators. He was the only one who ever seemed to think that it was funny when gas was passed. She would see him disappear in a dance club one evening as he passed under a black light, except for his eyeballs and teeth.

She would never learn what the creepy man was really was.