No. 250

“That’s just terrible,” Miranda told the TV. A commercial break had jogged her attention and she shook her head. She couldn’t believe she’d just spent fifteen minutes of her life watching a show with so few redeemable qualities.

She looked for the remote control, and remembered why she hadn’t simply changed the channel in the first place. She searched everywhere and, when it didn’t turn up between the cushions, she had to change tactics. She got down on her hands and knees with a flashlight and peered underneath the seat. There was the prize, fallen between the back of the couch and the wall.

“Come here,” she said as she dragged the sofa aside so she could reach the remote. As she leaned down to pick it up she noticed something was out of place. The corner of the carpet was not flush with the floor.

Miranda studied it for a moment. Then, tentatively, she began to pull at the tab. The carpet rose up without a hitch. It had not been fastened down. Miranda kept dragging it back until she felt it catch. Then she lay the flap down and saw what was underneath.

A loose sheet of plywood had been used to support the floor and, when Miranda pushed it away, it revealed an antique safe.

“Well isn’t this interesting,” she said as she knelt down to examine it.

No. 249

Randy Webber finished his lunch, then leapt off the dock into the lake to join his friends.

He didn’t have a chance to swim very far before a girl appeared beside him.

“Hi, Randy, you’re not going to like this, but I’m going to have to cite you,” said the girl.

“What?” said Randy. He was confused.

“I’m going to have to give you a ticket,” said the girl, who appeared to be floating effortlessly in the water.

“Are you the police?” asked Randy. He looked her up and down and she didn’t certainly wasn’t wearing a uniform. She wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, either. Her clothes seemed soft, and a little bit shiny.

“No. I’m a – well, never mind what I am. I’m here to write you up for not waiting an hour after you ate before swimming,” she told him.

Randy laughed. “That’s not even a thing. Are you staying around here for spring break?”

She was taken aback. “It is very much ‘a thing’. And I’m not going to get my wings if you don’t cooperate.”

Randy stopped moving ahead and began to tread water. “Wings?”

The girl rolled her eyes and shrugged. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Well, yes. I’m in training. To be a proper fairy. We don’t get to start out at teeth, or with lost boys. We aren’t even allowed the dust until we’ve been on the job for two years.”

Randy looked at her suspiciously. “No kidding?” he wondered. “And your job is to lurk around waiting for people to eat and then swim?”

“I most certainly do not ‘lurk’!” she sputtered. “But, basically, yes.”

“How come you’re not small?”

“People don’t like getting fined, do they? If I was small, you would have considered squashing me like a bug.”

“I would have shooed you away, probably,” Randy admitted. His arms were beginning to tire, and he stroked slowly back toward the dock.

She came right along with him. “Look, can I just get this over with? If I don’t meet my quota I’ll have to go back to stealing socks, and I worked really hard to get out of there,” she said assertively, but with a smile.

By this time, Randy was beginning to take a shine to his new companion. He wasn’t sure if he believed her story, but he was free tonight, and she seemed nice. Maybe he had a chance if he played along. “Ok. What do I need to do in this scenario?” he agreed.

“The fine is based on the amount of time you waited. The less time, the more you owe.”

“Uh-huh,” said Randy. “And where do I pay?”

“Oh,” she laughed. “You don’t pay with money.”

“I don’t?”

“Of course not! What would we do with money?” she scoffed.

“Then what?”

“Since you only waited 48 seconds after you swallowed your last bite, that puts you into the top category,” she explained. “You’ll need to perform five acts of goodwill.”

“Like being nice to people or something?” he asked.

“Goodwill, yes,” she confirmed. She tore a piece of paper off of a pad that had appeared out of nowhere. “Here you go.”

Randy accepted it, reading the checked boxes carefully. He squinted at the line with her signature, but couldn’t make it out. There seemed to be an “i” with a heart-dot, though.

“That’s all!” she told him cheerfully.

“Thanks, I guess.”

She was about to leave when he spoke up again. “Hey, two things. First, can I get your name? And second, do you think it would count as goodwill if I helped you with your quota by luring some of my friends into the water after dinner?”

No. 248

The sun rose over the desert hideaway of the Whiskey Bandit.

Anna-Lee Hailey pulled her hat down over her eyes and rolled closer to the embers of last-night’s fire. The bright sky would not warm for several hours yet.

“Whiskey, get up,” urged Anna-Lee’s partner. “We’re on the timetable.”

“Oh, hush, Juliet. You know as well as I do that Sheriff Winston stays late in town on Thursdays,” countered a still sleepy Anna-Lee. “And Ettie? Remember what I said about calling me Whiskey.”

She stretched as she sat up slowly to survey the sparse camp. Things had been moved since last night. “You’ve been busy,” she told Juliet.

“Sure. I figured with you sleeping the day away, I’d take the opportunity to spruce this place up a little. What do you think?”

Anna-Lee rolled her eyes at Juliet’s so-called improvements. “You know, if you weren’t the fastest gun around, I’d probably have ditched you back in Tucson.”

Juliet laughed. “I thought you were the brains of this operation, and yet there you are, too slow to have made that call.”

“Uh-huh,” Anna-Lee grunted. “As the leader of this gang, it is my duty to inform you that coffee will have to be made.”

Before Juliet could reply, the third member of the crew rode up from the mouth of the canyon that sheltered the outlaws.

“Whiskey,” said Lewis Goodman, “Bad news. Winston’s changed his schedule. We’ve only got until noon if we want the make this job count.”

“Alright, Lew. Get back to the ridge and keep an eye out. Ettie and I will be along just as soon as I can find my pants. Seems she’s been housekeeping.”

Goodman quickly did as he was told. Anna-Lee sighed, and turned to Juliet. “Just what is it about ‘only call me Whiskey during the heists’ don’t you two understand?

No. 247

“I can see there’s something out there, I just can’t reach it,” Bubbles told Flash.

Both fish were swimming lazily around their bowl with little else to do but engage each other in conversation. It was an unspoken rule that whoever “won” their daily debate got to sleep in the sunken galleon that night.

“This is our world,” said Flash. “Do you ever remember being anyplace else?”

Bubbles thought for a moment. “No.”

“This is our world,” said Flash. “Do you ever remember being anyplace else?”

“You just asked me that,” said Bubbles.

“Yeah, ok. Just checking,” said Flash.

“Oh, I get it. Making sure my memory is still good. Tricky,” Bubbles said while rolling his bulbous eyes. “But all that aside, don’t you ever wonder if this is all there is?” he continued, waving his fin at the plastic plant and the small colorful beads at the bottom of their home. “And what is the blur that feeds us?”

“I dunno,” Flash admitted. “I never thought about it before. All I know is that I put my head out of the water once and I got dizzy. Maybe I’m not the best source of information about where the food comes from.”

Bubbles swam a fast lap around the perimeter of the bowl. “I win!” he declared. “I convinced you that there’s someplace else!”

“Hang on a minute,” said Flash testily. “That’s not what you said. And we never really got down to deciding what the question was.”

“I thought I was pretty clear,” Bubbles replied.

“You weren’t.”

“Fine, Mr. Grumbles, what’s the topic?”

Flash got all the way up to the glass wall and pressed his fishy lips against it while considering the problem. Finally, the topic came to him. He chose his words carefully. “Assuming there is a wider universe beyond the bowl, just what is our place in it?”

No. 246

Then

“There are dragons in the hills,” said the old man. “They’ll keep to themselves in the summer, but in the winters they come down. That’s when they’re hungry.”

Six young children sat around the man, listening to every word of his stories.  One of them, however, didn’t agree with the content. “That’s not true,” he said. “Dragon’s aren’t real.”

The old man’s face darkened. “You say that, boy, only because you’ve never seen one. They’re real, and, if you don’t believe, then they’re especially dangerous.”

At that moment, a woman arrived in the room. She’d heard the old man’s warning from around the corner. “Mr. Spero,” she said, speaking to the old man. “What are you telling these children? Dragons aren’t part of the town history. We never discussed this when you asked to speak here.”

Spero stood, defiant. “Little Miss, if a man can’t come to the museum and tell the youngsters something that will save their lives, I don’t know why you have these talks.”

The woman put her hands on her hips. “Mr. Spero, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Then, turning to the children who were still watching every move the adults made, she continued. “Don’t listen to Mr. Spero. I’m sorry he’s been scaring you. There’s really no such thing as dragons. If you come with me, now, I can show you some very interesting rocks from the town’s mining days.”

“Watch out!” said Mr. Spero as the children all got up and filed out the door. Then he gathered his coat and hat and left out the side entrance.

Now

Donald Douglas pulled into town after a long day’s drive. He tried to remember the last time he’d been here. Once, as a kid, while on vacation, his mom had left him to listen to some crank at the local museum talk about monsters or something in the hills. He smiled at the memory. That had been a good trip. The curator had given all the children credit at the gift shop because the old coot might have frightened them.

Donald got out of his truck to check into his hotel for the night. He hoped to get to sleep soon. The next morning would be an early start as he hit the road to stay ahead of the snow that was forecast to roll in.

He looked up at the bluffs towering over Main Street. “Dragons!” he scoffed aloud. That’s what the man had said all those years ago.

No. 245

Cynthia Newquist played the last note of her performance, then without recognizing the audience, she rose and fled the stage. She did not even notice the curtains fall behind her. “Somebody get me a piece of paper!” she shouted.

She made it to a small table that was set up at the side of the stage. A fellow musician who had been waiting in the wings managed to find her the sheet she was calling for.

Cynthia snatched it from his hand and began to scribble furiously.

“What are you doing?” the provider asked.

She cut him off without looking up. “Shh! Busy!”

Fifteen minutes later, she stopped writing and collapsed against the wall, seemingly exhausted.

Other performers had started to mingle around her. One of them knelt beside Cynthia to make sure she was alright.

Some whispered words passed between Cynthia and her new acquaintance. The others began to murmur amongst themselves. Finally, somebody in the back broke the hushed atmosphere.

“What was all that about?”

The outburst seemed to startle Cynthia. Blinking heavily, she rose to her feet. She returned to the table and picked up the mysterious note. Now she took a bold tone.

“When I was out there playing, I had a wonderful idea. I realized something. I needed to rush back here to get it all down.”

“And?” was the reply from the crowd.

Cynthia held up the paper. “It’s a song, of course. It’s the perfect song.”

No. 244

Powell Shultz was a tiny, wasted figure in the middle of a king-sized bed. His voice, though, was still strong.  

“I don’t want those doughnuts. What have I told you about sprinkles? Get rid of them,” he chastised the maid who brought him breakfast.

“Yes, sir,” she nodded, removing the offending box from his sight. Just yesterday he’d informed her than nothing in the world made him happier than sprinkles. But maybe he’d changed his mind and spoken to another one of the help. He had several assistants, butlers, and maids surrounding him on any given day.

“When do the sales numbers come in?” she could hear him calling from the bedroom. Shultz was the head of TomorrowTech, and all the company decisions still crossed the hardwood floor of his bedroom before implementation. She’d heard that he’d made his fortune on some equipment that the government had immediately bought and then classified blacker than black.

She heard yet another outburst from his sanctum. “Where are my doughnuts? That girl took them.” She didn’t like the sound of that and she did something that she never thought she’d do.

She crossed Mr. Shultz. Opening one of the many anonymous doors in the great hallway, she stepped inside with her box of treats and raised the lid. Then, one by one, she ate every single doughnut, just to spite her employer. Only after she was finished did she take note of the contents of the room. She’d never been in here before.

All the walls were covered in unmarked switches, gears, and readouts. A large, rectangle platform jutted up from the middle of the floor. The surface of the strange projection seemed to shimmer, like oil on water. She reached out to touch it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a sharp, familiar voice told her. She turned, and was shocked to see Mr. Shultz standing in the doorway. “It’s not quite finished yet, my dear,” he said as he cracked his ancient knuckles.