walter

by nick nelson

walter went back to the womb king tut went back to the tomb box went back to the boom robin hood rented a room the sheriff was on the trail of a man who told a tale his name was prester john he was the child of the dawn there’s a house by the side of the road you can enter with a secret code in the basement a treasure is hid that belonged to billy the kid when the roll is called up yonder wise men will be left to ponder civilizations’s detritus what was all the fuss? who was walter? you ask he never wore a mask or a blue suit with a yellow tie in the sweet bye and bye but he took his lumps down in the dumps where the mermaids wear plastic and trip the light fantastic

chair

by dog e relaford

i woke up this morning with a feeling of despair it was time to get up and sit in my chair and look out the window all day long and scratch my knees and sing my song i was once a pirate bold an arctic explorer braving the cold an adventurer with a hundred names and a master of all tricks and games an angel with a flaming sword a barbarian who was never bored a conqueror with a heart of steel a condemned man eating a last meal a dog waiting outside a door an elephant wandering on the shore of an ocean with a billion waves washing over a trillion graves of my enemies in the cool breeze in the endless deep i go back to sleep to wake in the morning with a feeling of despair with my clothes piled neatly on my chair and my shoes under my bed in my head

a strange dream

by anonymous

last night i had the strangest dream. i dreamed that the imperial department of civil effectiveness had issued a directive that all men were to be eliminated. a date was set. but when the day came, not a single man was eliminated. every man in the empire had switched his identity to transwoman. a few weeks later, the department dropped the prefix “trans” from the term "transwoman". now everybody in the empire was a woman. and lived happily ever after.

spacious skies - 40. a room for the night

by american joe

part 40 of 40

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good evening. good evening. how can i help you? i would like to rent a room. for how long? i am not sure. i want to pay for one night. all right. how much will it be? can i see some i d first? i don’t have any i d. what do you mean, you don’t have any i d? i can pay a little extra. you mean you are from the bureau or the service. i really don’t have time for this. what might you have time for? if you do not want cash, i might be able to give you something more solid. i am as aware as you are that i am required to report your attempt at bribery. please excuse me while i make the call. hello. i am calling from the hideaway motel on highway 75-j, area 8915. an individual with no i d just came in here and tried to bribe me into renting him a room. i know you want to know about these things. what is your number and name? my number is 785-3297-854-j. my name is daniel boone. and your password? i sing a happy tune. thank you. i am looking you up. i see you are indeed licensed to run the hideaway motel in the location you describe. but your license is up in three months and five days. would you like to take the opportunity to renew it now?’ no thank you. is the individual whom you assert approached you there now? no, he is not. he left as soon as i started calling you. did you follow him to see what direction he was headed? i did not follow him but i could see he turned to the right where the parking lot is. where he went from there i could not see. i felt i had to call you right away. very commendable. wait there, an agent will be out to see you. i am not going anywhere. the end

spacious skies - 39. iggy

by american joe

part 39 of 40

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iggy axman held his phone to his ear. vince gray did not think iggy was actually listening to anything or anybody, but he kept his own counsel. as he had been doing for millions of years. iggy took the phone away from his ear and pointed it at vince. mister blue wants to see you. i work for al hodgkins now. that is neither here nor there. i think it would be a good idea if you saw mister blue. what do you guys think? two hulking figures emerged from the shadows and stood between vince and the sidewalk. mose jones and tank miller. they had worked for all the bosses in the world in their time and had been around the block and knew all the scores and then forgotten them. neither of them talked much. whatever you say, iggy, mose murmured, soft as a butterfly on a deserted beach with the tide gone out. let’s get it over with, vince told iggy. i knew you would be reasonable. the black car was parked on the corner. tank got in the left front seat with iggy beside him. mose motioned to vince to get in behind tank, then got in beside him. the left front seat was pushed so far back to accommodate tank that vince was almost pinned back to his own seat. they moved out. the streets were deserted. they passed the beach, also deserted, and got out on to the mostly abandoned highway that circled the town. nobody spoke. vince thought they might talk about nothing, about the fights or the horses or the ball games, but they did not. he thought they might comment on the fact that he, vince, did not talk or ask questions but they did not do that ether. the black car floated down the highway. next

spacious skies - 38. seersucker

by american joe

part 38 of 40

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you and will evans should get together, buddy barker said with a sad smile. it’s time for a change, vince gray agreed unenthusiastically. al hodgkins does not like that sort of thing, zena parfrey interjected. i guess we better start over from scratch. draw up a plan then, and leave it on my desk in the morning, buddy said to vince. what have i gotten myself into, vince gray wondered. he looked around. will evans. buddy barker, and zena parfrey were acting like nothing had happened. al hodgkins looked down at his knees. george tolliver kept munching on his supersized candy bar, and charlie robinson stared into space in the way that he had. i will catch you guys tomorrow, al hodgkins said, and got up and left. vince gray had put his whole future and all his grand plans to conquer the universe at risk, and nobody even cared. he decided he needed a drink. nodding to the others, he put his coat and hat on and started down the back stairs. he took the back stairs, because he knew iggy axman was still looking for him. when he got outside he remembered that all the bars were closed except from eight to midnight under the new crackdown by the new district attorney, fred o’rourke. shaking his head sadly, he absently walked around to the front of the building instead of continuing down the alleyway to where he could come out on main street. and ran straight into iggy axman. well, ain’t this a pleasant surprise, iggy axman greeted him with a big grin. can i help you, vince gray extemporized. i think we both know the answers to that one, don’t we, iggy axman chuckled unamiably. listen, i got a good thing going. it just came up. just came up in your head. no, al hodgkins has a special job for me. you can call him and ask him. i will do just that, iggy axman sneered, taking his phone out of the breast pocket of his white seersucker suit. next

spacious skies - 37. the crew

by american joe

part 37 of 40

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vince gray was just a guy. he had big dreams, but really he was just a guy. he was a soldier on a crew with four other guys - will evans, buddy barker, george tolliver, and charlie robinson, and one girl, zena parfrey. they were all just guys, and zena was just a girl - at least to all outward appearances. al hodgkins was the boss of the crew. what he said went. * the crew worked out of a back room on a back street on the outskirts of town. the word “work” might give a wrong impression. mostly they just waited around, because they did not know what they had been hired to do. when the time came, al hodgkins wpuld let them know. meanwhile, they were on call, under the eagle eye of al. they had all been down the road before - maybe charlie robinson not as much as the others - and knew the score. the score was zero to zero. none of them had phones on their persons, and there was no phone in the room - or so they had been told - and supposedly no phones at all in the building. theoretically, none of them even owned phones. if they wanted to call their aunts or mothers in russia or hawaii, they were supposed to use public phones if they could find one - and never talk on those phones about the job, even to say they had so far nothing to do on the job. there was a monitor in the room that played the same four movies over and over again. after the first few days nobody watched them except buddy barker, and he watched them with the sound off. george tolliver and charlie robinson carried on an endless conversation about their all time teams. it had begun the day they were first hired. will evans started it with george and george and charlie had kept it going. who’s on your all time team? my what? your all time team. all time team for what? football, basketball, what? no, no, like the dirty dozen or the magnificent seven, like that. you got to explain it to him, he hasn’t been around. right, see here’s the deal. we got to talking the other night about a team to fight the aliens. aliens? what aliens? when are we going to fight the aliens? i didn’t hear anything about aliens. no, we are just supposing. here, you explain it to him, you can explain it better than me. * al hodgkins tried to engage zena parfrey in conversation, but she did not seem vey interested in anything he had to say. will evans kept his own counsel, occasionally laughing out loud at something in his head. none of the others ever asked him what he was laughing at. vince gray also kept his own counsel, but without ever laughing or even smiling. next