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@short-weird-stories
The tap on my shoulder is discreet. I turn and see a bearded man with a black sweater and a black beret. “We’ve been disappointed with how you’ve been performing as you lately, we’ve decided to replace you with your understudy.” He motions to a girl who looks like me but younger, more driven, more naive. She steps into the conversation I was having, her jokes are funnier. I follow the man through a door into a blinding white light.
theater fire
a pale horse through pale flames our once clasped hands now smoke and shade when behind the screens of memory a dirge begins to play for scenes that will not happen and words we will not say
January is such a dreary month - even the ghosts in my house become depressed. Their wails are a little sadder, they take a split second longer to disappear into the walls when I walk into a room. I leave a nightlight on for them, hoping to cheer them up.
“I’ve had 1,000 cups of the same bad coffee with you since you died”
Somewhere in rural Illinois there’s a small diner called Robin’s, a place with Rockwell paintings on the wall and a menu that has all your favorite food, if your favorite food is a burger and fries. Robin’s is built on a peculiar spot where time loops. It is always exactly as it was the first time you entered it. Your waiter, your food, even the people you came with and the conversation you have with them - all of these will be precisely the same. Even if those people are gone. The line for Robin’s usually stretches around the block and even sometimes over into the next town. If it’s your first time going, make sure you get everything right.
who am i for this client?
The other day I participated in a study at school where I had a mock business meeting entirely in virtual reality with another student. I was allowed to choose my avatar and my voice, and once I put the helmet on, that avatar was all my partner knew about me as we manipulated 3-D models and flipped through documents. I wonder if this will be the future, a world where identity is picked from a scroll bar, perhaps identities will be chosen to match narratives and marketability. I imagine in this future there will be no white collar crime more damning than revealing someone’s true face.
One of the most commonly accepted attributes of so-called “chosen ones” is that they always eventually answer their call to adventure. Chosen ones have a surprising lack of choice in their life. One day I would love to read the story of a young girl who, upon being given a golden sword from some lake-dwelling spirit, decides to hand the sword back. What if our chosen one doesn’t want to bring down a dark empire? Maybe she thinks there are other people better suited for that job and she’d rather be “Sarah, from the accounting department”.
Ever since my grandmother died, I’ve been worried about the imperfections of memory. On long drives, when my thoughts inevitably turn to her, I wonder how the memories have changed since the last time I flipped through them. Was that the shirt she was wearing when she taught me how to make Spanish rice? Was her hair still black or was it grey by then? Did she make that joke, or was it my uncle - or am I mixing my memories like two radio stations battling for control at the county line?
Perhaps none of it matters. Perhaps all that matters is that I still think of her on long drives, and on late nights, and each time I burn my Spanish rice.
Stories about mind-reading psychics always assume that thoughts are coherent, when really at any moment my brain is at least three voices at once, one telling me what I’m planning to do, one worrying that I’m going to fail, and one that won’t stop singing Bruno Mars. I don’t even like Bruno Mars.
silent horizons
It was only when we reached the fourth abandoned planet (cities and houses not yet claimed by nature, dinners still set on the table) that we realized the aliens hadn’t died, they were running. And when our own outposts stopped responding to our messages, we learned it wasn’t us that they were running from.
Let me introduce you to three of my friends: hallucigenia, opabinia, and wiwaxia. They’re all from the Cambrian explosion, the period of time around 500 million years ago when life was just starting and was still trying to figure out questions like “how should a mouth work?” and “legs?”
Hallucigenia was about an inch long (most life back then was tiny, they were only a few eras removed from being single celled after all) and it had sixteen clawed legs, hard spines coming out of its back, and a wicked tentacle neckbeard.
Opabinia was between two to three inches long and it had thirty fins along the side of its body, along with five mushroom shaped eyes on top of its head. By far though, its most interesting feature was its strange proboscis. Like a Dr. Moreau style mashup of an elephant and a lobster, the long nose terminated in a large claw that it used to grab prey and bring it to its backward facing mouth.
Finally, this is wiwaxia. This danger-artichoke was a two inch long armored slug-like creature with no head. In fact, its actual body was largely just its one massive foot.
I find these animals interesting for three main reasons. First, it’s incredibly fascinating to see all of the potential paths that life on earth could have taken. Imagine an ocean filled with elephant lobsters! Second, whenever I feel like my life is going nowhere and all my choices are the wrong ones, I like to think that I’m in in my phase where I’m still developing hallucigenias and wiwaxias, and not yet making awesome things like butterflies or velociraptors. Finally - it serves as a stark reminder that if we ever find alien life, there is a fantastic chance it will look like nothing we’ve ever seen before - it might look more like one of these creatures than a human being.
happy birthday, mr. irwin
You might have seen the big debate about whether the Berenstain Bears were once the Berenstein Bears. Enough people remember it being spelled “Berenstein” that some think it’s proof there are alternate universes, and perhaps we have switched from one to another. I hope it’s true. I hope we keep switching universes and we eventually end up in one where Steve Irwin is still alive.
memory fruit
If you ever find the emerald seed of a memory fruit, you must be careful. Whatever is on your mind if you plant the seed will determine the resulting tree. If you think of true love, the eventual fruit will be ember red and wine sweet, if you think of something you lost long ago, the fruit will be dawn pink and ice dry. Sad memories always leave fruit that are dark and beautifully sour. Everyone who eats the fruit will share the same memory you gave the seed, be deliberate in what you let them know. The tree will live exactly 100 years longer than you, until it disintegrates and leaves an emerald seed, ready for some new planter to begin the cycle anew.
odd jobs
After years of struggling to make it as an actress in LA, I tore a phone number off of a community board flyer. The slip said “don’t call us, we’ll call you” and as soon as it was in my hand, my cellphone started ringing. I was invited to a white warehouse on the east side of the dusty Los Angeles river, where a skinny man in a faded beret told me that I was perfect. Walking home that night, I found a membership card for the Dream Actors Guild in my purse. Now every night from 10 PM until sunrise (and sometimes in the middle of the day for particularly long naps), I slip into your dreams and I am a pale shadow monster, I am your fourth grade teacher, I am your sense of falling, I am your lover’s whisper and how it tastes like heartbreak. The pay isn’t great - but it beats waiting tables.
the time capsule
The other day I retrieved a time capsule that I had buried when I was 12. When I opened the slightly rusted metal cylinder, there was not a single item I recognized. Yes, it was my handwriting, but it referred to friends I never knew, siblings I never had. Even the house in the photographs (photographs where I stood smiling in the front yard) was a mystery to me. Every time I closed the time capsule and reopened it, the contents would be entirely new and different. The time capsule was a gateway to different versions of me. Some were better, some were happier, but not always.
Deadbeat
God sighed, abandoning Earth. It was a mistake to make the dominant species an omnivore. There were so many more planets to try, though, and it wasn’t worth the effort to flood this one again. Perhaps in a billion years, as their sun changed from yellow to red, it would be wise to revisit and see how they had done? God lied to himself and said she’d do exactly that, disappearing.
be the cryptid you wish to see in the woods
The best new invention of 2017 has to be the ability to add a seven-second delay to your own life. You can erase the things you immediately regret, just like an editor watching a live broadcast. It might make you a better driver. It will definitely make you more fun at parties.
