Hero at Midnight
No one could remember who among them gave him the name Rooster; probably someone long gone by this point. A seventy percent casualty rate will leave one gaping hole in the communal memory. Everyone could remember why: yodeling and ukelele music in the pre-dawn hours was inexcusable by any measure. It had started after the battle for Hill 487. Most of Rooster's squad had been blown into pieces too small to put back together. Hence the coping mechanism. However, after two weeks of this crap, enough was enough, and Private Morlane drew the short stick: shut him...
Outnumbered.
I thought I should've won this contest, but I clearly couldn't think of any number larger than the theoretical 1st entry of the 2nd series of busy beaver numbers.
Okay, yeah, the 2nd number, obviously, but then I would have to rigorously define it, and I don't understand the math well enough for that.
"Good game"
"You admit defeat?"
"Yes, I admit defeat. Your knowledge of large numbers and advanced mathematics is clearly superior to mine."
" . . . aaaaaaand?"
" . . . and this is a clear fact even though I've spent 7 years of university...
"Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I think there's something underneath the bed."
Jacob sighed, rolling over and twisting the blankets in an infuriating fashion. "Anna, you're twenty-five years old. Don't you think you're a little old for this?" Of course, he would say that.
Anna twisted the blankets right back. Blankets were protection. Blankets were life. If she were covered with the blankets and Jacob were not, the rules dictated that Jacob would be eaten and Anna would be spared. Everyone knew that. But Jacob wouldn't let this go without a quarrel.
"Jesus, Anna! I'm cold! It's...
The wind blew across the plains, picking up clods of dirt as it ran past, and I gripped my son's shoulder, as if by some instinct. Soon the dust would blow through the cracks in our log cabin, and the kitchen -- the tiny corner we called the kitchen -- would soon fill with what looked for all the world like soot. That we could take. The ground and the wind had been trying to kill us for years. We were used to it. But lately we'd had to contend with spiders. Tarantulas. Tough sons of bitches that put their...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Her body was cold, hard like marble, but also soft -- like frozen meat. That's all she was now: meat. The light was gone, and I could not sleep curled up next to my dead sister.
I needed to sleep. It would be at least another day before we made it to the border, maybe even two before we hit the safe house. Sonia would start to stink by then. And I would lose my mind if I didn't sleep.
Still, her body next to mine reminded me that it was only...
This isn't right. I shouldn't have fled up here, among the scaffolding and girders. Only birds can stay perched up in these heights, gazing recreationally at the world so foreign to their own. They don't want me here, I don't belong.
I make no excuses for myself, but sometimes you just have to go. Something bursts in your head, that little reserve energy you were saving for an extra day suddenly gets injected full-force into your veins, and you take off. Sometimes it takes you to a cafe somewhere downtown. And sometimes it storms you up onto the hull of...
(To read Part 2, follow this link: http://sixminutestory.com/stories/somewhere-better-part-2.)
Gigantic.
The voice was gigantic, though how such powerful sound came out of such a small creature was beyond her.
The furry animal was sitting back on its haunches in the tall emerald grass, looking up at her as if anticipating something.
She shifted uneasily. "You said you call yourself Someone Good?" she said. "What kind of a name is that?"
"We name ourselves by our attributes," said the creature, in its gigantic voice, which seemed to be full of every meaningful thing. "We are good," it continued. And from behind her,...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley, along the trails left by the ancient Martians, to find the Temple of the Sun. It was buried, like so much else on Mars, in red sands over the course of millennia, but that meant nothing when you had a native to escort you to their ancestral home.
"So, how can we breathe here?" Pete asked the small, silver creature before him.
It sat in the biplane, strapped in, looking ridiculously small in the pilot's seat. "Air bubble," it replied, fiddling with the dials.
Pete had never flown in a biplane...
Well, it's not everyday that you actually get woken up by a ghost that you didn't believe in, but there it was (he?) - a fuzzy apparition perhaps imagined more than actually manifesting before your shimmering eyes in the night (shimmering to eyes as tinnitus is to ears) - and the thud of the door as it fell from it's hinges to the floor. It (he) was assumed to be the grumpy man who lived 89 years alone in the old house, leaving crates and crates of dusty homemade wine in the basement, bottled in old milk bottles stopped with...
I knew it would be two foggy to see the dock from the top of Crescent Hill but Grandfather had insisted, and so we went. It took nearly an hour by carriage but we had a grand old time. Millicent Hedgegrove was with us. I knew that she had been sweet on Grandfather but never really wanted to admit it. Mother and Father took turns laughing at the antics of Celeste and I and fussing at us for being too silly.
The carriage could only take us so far and then we had to climb the half mile up...