Jives
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2006
- Messages
- 77
Here's my first story, "fluffy" and fun, with mistakes galore.
Spring Cleaning
By Jon St. Ives
I’d always meant to get around to buying a gun, but now it was too late. LeeAnn came running into the living room. Her face was flushed and she had that darting, fire-in-the-eyes look that she usually only got when the water heater had exploded. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but LeeAnn was a level-headed girl and never got this upset unless something serious was happening. The last time I had seen her this upset, our previous cat had been put to sleep while I was at work.
“Aliens have landed! They’re everywhere! What’re we going to do?” She said, with a very feminine hand-clasped gesture over her heart.
Now, when someone says something that off-the-wall, there are really only two answers you can give. The first one is the obvious, “Yeah right, and their leader is Michael Jackson.” But I had long since learned not to be flippant around Leeann if I didn’t want to eat frozen pizza for a week. So that only left the option of taking her seriously, although I still wondered what was really going on.
Calm down, they haven’t nuked anything yet have they?” I asked.
“No, but there’s been fighting all over town! Kathy called me on the cell phone, they‘re on her street too!” She replied and as if to punctuate her point, I heard two sharp reports from outside the house that I instantly recognized as gunfire.
A wave of fear washed over me. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream and I felt shaky all over. Suddenly, with the sound of that gunfire, I realized that it was entirely possible that something dangerous was actually happening.
“Did you lock the door behind you? “ I asked. She replied that she had, I tried to think of what I could do to keep us safe, but I didn’t have enough information on what was actually going. I sent her to the bedroom with a butcher knife and she rounded up the cat as she went.
I peeked out through the living room curtains into the street outside. It was a dead-end street, in a small mountain town in the remote foothills of the mountains. It was three hundred miles in any direction to a big city. Neither twisters, Earthquakes, tidal waves, terrorists, nor volcanoes had ever come as close as a thousand miles to our home. We’d gotten used to the fact that we were completely secure in our isolation.
That comfortable feeling evaporated like glass cleaner on a hot summer window as I saw the massive vehicle that was moving slowly up our street. It was all chrome plated and shiny and although it looked much like a tank, although I couldn’t see any wheels or treads underneath it. Antennae and unmistakable gun barrels poked out from all sides and the machine must have stood at least two stories off the ground. Yet for all its size, it barely made any noise at all as it glided slowly up the street.
It came to a halt in front of my house, stood motionless for a moment, and then the side of the machine opened and a number of occupants came out and fell smartly into formation. They were wearing something similar black wetsuits and had helmets covering their heads. In addition, they all shimmered slightly, as if heat were coming off their bodies.
One of them walked out and lifted off his helmet. He looked just like a man. He had a square jaw, and blonde hair. His features were somewhat Nordic and he had a short blonde beard. I breathed a sigh of relief. This was no otherworldly menace, this was just some guys from the military showing off a new gadget or maybe some kind of reality-television stunt. Still, I had heard gunfire, so I watched carefully to see what would happen next.
The leader adjusted a headset and then spoke calmly into it. His voice was deep and assuring, the sound seemed to come from within the room with me.
“Good afternoon. I am the section leader for the task force assigned to your street. Additional units are in every street of your town, and all the cities of your world. Please come out of your houses so that I may speak to you. Please do not resist or take aggressive action towards us, we have come to help you, but we cannot tolerate violence.”
The size of the force he alluded to boggled my imagination, but looking at the vehicle they arrived in, I was beginning to wonder if it could possibly be true. The man went on.
“Mr. And Mrs. Brogan, please come out. Also Mr. and Mrs. St. John. You are the leaders of this neighborhood and if you will please come out, I’m sure everyone else will feel safe enough to come out too.”
I was startled to hear my name. Leeann had heard it too, and she came running in from the bedroom, holding the butcher knife out in front of her. Even our cat was picking up on the emotion and sat under the table with it’s ears laid back.
“Did you hear that?” She whispered. “They know our names!”
“I heard him! Be careful with that!” The butcher knife was getting uncomfortably close to my side.
“This has to be some kind of joke.” I told her. “I’ll go out and see what’s up, you stay here and if anything bad happens, run out the back and head cross country to your brother’s house.” Although I still had my doubts, I always think in worst-case scenario mode. If this was a joke, then fine and dandy and I’d be a good sport and maybe get a prize from the producers. If it wasn’t a joke, Leeann’s brother was a paranoid gun-fanatic who had a house like a military compound and more firepower than our local National Guard Unit.
I gave Leeann a quick reassuring hug, and straightening up my back, I opened the door and strolled slowly outside, mimicking a calm reserve that I certainly wasn’t feeling. Next door, I saw Jim Brogan doing the same. Jim and I were both ex-military and best friends. He had been a communications expert with the NSA and I had been an instructor pilot for the Air Force.
I stopped and looked at the gleaming tank for a moment, and then turned to my right and walked slowly over to Jim’s yard, purposely ignoring the tank and it’s crew. I wasn’t sure what was up, but I knew I wanted Jim by my side before I faced it.
I walked up to Jim and shook his hand.
“Friends of yours, Jim?”
“I kind of thought they were your friends, since they obviously have money, Rick.”
“ Nope, never saw them before. Maybe it’s some of my ex-students back for revenge for flunking them.”
‘Well if it is, just back down, Rick. I don’t like the look of that vehicle of theirs.” Jim gestured offhandedly towards the hulking metal behemoth.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Let’s go see what they want.”
Jim and I walked slowly and casually towards the mirror-finished mass. The leader stood quietly, with a smile on his face and his hands at his sides.
“You still got that little pistol your wife gave you Jim?” I asked under my breath as we slowly closed the distance to the tank.
“Yep. It’s right here under my shirt.” he replied softly.
“Good.” I had noticed that all the soldiers standing at attention were carrying long, thin black sticks that resembled a blind man’s cane. The way they were holding them left no doubt that they were weapons.
“But let’s talk first. If worst comes to worst, shoot the leader, then the guys on the left, I’ll try for the guys on the right.” I was seriously hoping that it wouldn’t come to that since not only was I not armed, all of the men looked younger and more fit than I. I still knew some nasty tricks from my Air Force training, but it had been years since I’d had to use them.
We approached the leader side by side and stopped about three feet in front of him. He smiled jovially and said, “Good Morning, gentlemen! I am very pleased to finally meet you.” He held out his hand, but neither of us made any move to shake it.
“Ah, no formalities then? As I expected. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Ansjk of the Tracarian Fleet. To answer your first questions, I can speak your language because I have been studying you and your culture for over a century while we traveled here. Our scouts prepared remarkably detailed reports for each unit. I know every person on your street and their occupations and personalities.”
Truthfully, that was more than I knew. I knew Jim and his wife, and Old Harold who lived across the street, but lots of families had moved out and new ones had moved in all up and down the street. I hadn’t kept track of them all. I glanced at Jim. He was regarding the Captain with a hard set expression. He caught me looking at him and raised one eyebrow.
“To answer you next question, “What am I doing here,?” It is simply this: I am here to clean your planet and to do this I must enlist your help.”
The Captain stopped talking and let that idea sink in for a minute. When nobody spoke for a protracted pause, I finally spoke up.
“You forgot about questions number three and four.” I said evenly. “Question three, how do you expect us to believe you’re from another planet when you are so obviously human and four, even if I believed you, what makes you think I’d help you out?”
“Those are both excellent questions, Mr. St. John and I can see why the scouts picked you as the contact on this street. As to the form you now see, I’m afraid it isn’t real. I am projecting this image to your brain and you are accepting it easily, since it is the form you expect to see. My true form is not so very different from this projected one. It, too, is carbon based and bipedal, but I’m afraid you would find it too startling and it would make communication much more difficult for us.” Captain Ansjk grinned broadly as if he was viewing the possible reactions to his true form in his mind’s eye.
“And as for helping us, of course I know you care about the planet you live on. You were raised in the mountains and spent a lot of time hiking and camping when you were younger, yet you no longer do any of that kind of thing. I suggest that it is because of the pollution and destruction of the land that you have withdrawn to your living room. I am here to solve that problem for your entire race and all of you will help me accomplish this.”
That statement took me slightly aback, since it implied quite a knowledge of my personal history. Yet it was completely true. I had been more and more disgusted and disillusioned as I had grown older and seen once beautiful vistas turned into illegal dumping sites. Proud canyon walls bore the scars of graffiti and even my quiet little neighborhood had taken on a trashy appearance due to the newcomers who had no respect for others and didn’t care for their surroundings.
“That may be true, but it’s a pretty bold statement to say that everyone will help you. Besides the fact that most of us don’t seem to care about nature,” I replied bitterly, and we care even less for hard work on another’s behalf.”
“I second that motion. I have enough to do without busting my gut after work on some otherworldly clean-up squad.” Jim chimed in.
“All non essential services will be suspended for the duration of our clean-up.”, the Captain replied still smiling widely. “Only workers with jobs that are necessary to continue civilization and emergency services will continue to work. All others will be involved with the operation.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. It brought up images of forced labor and concentration camps to my mind. But before I could protest, Old Harold came running out of his house from across the street, yelling something I couldn‘t make out. Harold was a very old veteran and apparently this incident had triggered something in the dim corners of his mind.
I could see he was carrying something and in an instant I recognized it as a shotgun. He leveled it at the Captain as he advanced. His voice was strident and full of hate as he called out, “ I know you! You’ve come back for me, eh? I left you in the jungles, but here you are, back with a shiny new machine! Well here I am! Come and get me!”
Before anyone could react, he let loose with both barrels. I dove to the ground as buckshot zipped by my ear so close it ruffled my hair. Jim did the same, but the Captain merely smiled sadly and stood his ground. I couldn’t believe that Harold had missed him from that range. Harold reloaded and came on again, as he fired the second time I watched to see that the shot seemed to stop just short of the Captain’s body and fall harmlessly to the ground. That solved the mystery of the heat distortions. The Captain was surrounded by a force screen.
“I’m terribly sorry to have to do this, Mr. Johnson.” He motioned to one of his men who stepped forward and sighted along the black cane at poor Harold. A thin yellow beam reached out, and lightly touched Harold. There was a flash of light and a small rushing sound of air, and then nothing. Harold was gone as if he’d never existed.
Then the soldier turned his weapon on Harold’s house, where I knew his wife was lying in bed, an invalid. In a second… the house was gone! Not just the house I noticed. Every single man-made thing on Harold’s lot was missing. No sidewalks, no patio, no foundation, not even the sprinklers in the yard remained. Nothing was left but a bare dirt lot with a small patch of grass.
“Murderer!” I yelled and turned to spring at the Captain. I saw that Jim already had his gun out and was aiming at the Captains’ head.
“That was very unfortunate,” the Captain stated in a matter of fact way. “Yet our research suggested that something like this might be necessary due to your level of development. Now, I dearly hope you have understood the lesson here. We control forces far beyond your science’s capabilities. If you cooperate, you have my word we will never use them again. If you do not, we will carry on without you. I suggest everyone go back to their houses and get some rest. We will start at 7:00 tomorrow morning.”
He then turned and strolled up the ramp which closed behind him. I looked at Jim with my jaw wide open. He just shrugged his shoulders and put the gun down at his side.
(to be continued)
Spring Cleaning
By Jon St. Ives
I’d always meant to get around to buying a gun, but now it was too late. LeeAnn came running into the living room. Her face was flushed and she had that darting, fire-in-the-eyes look that she usually only got when the water heater had exploded. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but LeeAnn was a level-headed girl and never got this upset unless something serious was happening. The last time I had seen her this upset, our previous cat had been put to sleep while I was at work.
“Aliens have landed! They’re everywhere! What’re we going to do?” She said, with a very feminine hand-clasped gesture over her heart.
Now, when someone says something that off-the-wall, there are really only two answers you can give. The first one is the obvious, “Yeah right, and their leader is Michael Jackson.” But I had long since learned not to be flippant around Leeann if I didn’t want to eat frozen pizza for a week. So that only left the option of taking her seriously, although I still wondered what was really going on.
Calm down, they haven’t nuked anything yet have they?” I asked.
“No, but there’s been fighting all over town! Kathy called me on the cell phone, they‘re on her street too!” She replied and as if to punctuate her point, I heard two sharp reports from outside the house that I instantly recognized as gunfire.
A wave of fear washed over me. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream and I felt shaky all over. Suddenly, with the sound of that gunfire, I realized that it was entirely possible that something dangerous was actually happening.
“Did you lock the door behind you? “ I asked. She replied that she had, I tried to think of what I could do to keep us safe, but I didn’t have enough information on what was actually going. I sent her to the bedroom with a butcher knife and she rounded up the cat as she went.
I peeked out through the living room curtains into the street outside. It was a dead-end street, in a small mountain town in the remote foothills of the mountains. It was three hundred miles in any direction to a big city. Neither twisters, Earthquakes, tidal waves, terrorists, nor volcanoes had ever come as close as a thousand miles to our home. We’d gotten used to the fact that we were completely secure in our isolation.
That comfortable feeling evaporated like glass cleaner on a hot summer window as I saw the massive vehicle that was moving slowly up our street. It was all chrome plated and shiny and although it looked much like a tank, although I couldn’t see any wheels or treads underneath it. Antennae and unmistakable gun barrels poked out from all sides and the machine must have stood at least two stories off the ground. Yet for all its size, it barely made any noise at all as it glided slowly up the street.
It came to a halt in front of my house, stood motionless for a moment, and then the side of the machine opened and a number of occupants came out and fell smartly into formation. They were wearing something similar black wetsuits and had helmets covering their heads. In addition, they all shimmered slightly, as if heat were coming off their bodies.
One of them walked out and lifted off his helmet. He looked just like a man. He had a square jaw, and blonde hair. His features were somewhat Nordic and he had a short blonde beard. I breathed a sigh of relief. This was no otherworldly menace, this was just some guys from the military showing off a new gadget or maybe some kind of reality-television stunt. Still, I had heard gunfire, so I watched carefully to see what would happen next.
The leader adjusted a headset and then spoke calmly into it. His voice was deep and assuring, the sound seemed to come from within the room with me.
“Good afternoon. I am the section leader for the task force assigned to your street. Additional units are in every street of your town, and all the cities of your world. Please come out of your houses so that I may speak to you. Please do not resist or take aggressive action towards us, we have come to help you, but we cannot tolerate violence.”
The size of the force he alluded to boggled my imagination, but looking at the vehicle they arrived in, I was beginning to wonder if it could possibly be true. The man went on.
“Mr. And Mrs. Brogan, please come out. Also Mr. and Mrs. St. John. You are the leaders of this neighborhood and if you will please come out, I’m sure everyone else will feel safe enough to come out too.”
I was startled to hear my name. Leeann had heard it too, and she came running in from the bedroom, holding the butcher knife out in front of her. Even our cat was picking up on the emotion and sat under the table with it’s ears laid back.
“Did you hear that?” She whispered. “They know our names!”
“I heard him! Be careful with that!” The butcher knife was getting uncomfortably close to my side.
“This has to be some kind of joke.” I told her. “I’ll go out and see what’s up, you stay here and if anything bad happens, run out the back and head cross country to your brother’s house.” Although I still had my doubts, I always think in worst-case scenario mode. If this was a joke, then fine and dandy and I’d be a good sport and maybe get a prize from the producers. If it wasn’t a joke, Leeann’s brother was a paranoid gun-fanatic who had a house like a military compound and more firepower than our local National Guard Unit.
I gave Leeann a quick reassuring hug, and straightening up my back, I opened the door and strolled slowly outside, mimicking a calm reserve that I certainly wasn’t feeling. Next door, I saw Jim Brogan doing the same. Jim and I were both ex-military and best friends. He had been a communications expert with the NSA and I had been an instructor pilot for the Air Force.
I stopped and looked at the gleaming tank for a moment, and then turned to my right and walked slowly over to Jim’s yard, purposely ignoring the tank and it’s crew. I wasn’t sure what was up, but I knew I wanted Jim by my side before I faced it.
I walked up to Jim and shook his hand.
“Friends of yours, Jim?”
“I kind of thought they were your friends, since they obviously have money, Rick.”
“ Nope, never saw them before. Maybe it’s some of my ex-students back for revenge for flunking them.”
‘Well if it is, just back down, Rick. I don’t like the look of that vehicle of theirs.” Jim gestured offhandedly towards the hulking metal behemoth.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Let’s go see what they want.”
Jim and I walked slowly and casually towards the mirror-finished mass. The leader stood quietly, with a smile on his face and his hands at his sides.
“You still got that little pistol your wife gave you Jim?” I asked under my breath as we slowly closed the distance to the tank.
“Yep. It’s right here under my shirt.” he replied softly.
“Good.” I had noticed that all the soldiers standing at attention were carrying long, thin black sticks that resembled a blind man’s cane. The way they were holding them left no doubt that they were weapons.
“But let’s talk first. If worst comes to worst, shoot the leader, then the guys on the left, I’ll try for the guys on the right.” I was seriously hoping that it wouldn’t come to that since not only was I not armed, all of the men looked younger and more fit than I. I still knew some nasty tricks from my Air Force training, but it had been years since I’d had to use them.
We approached the leader side by side and stopped about three feet in front of him. He smiled jovially and said, “Good Morning, gentlemen! I am very pleased to finally meet you.” He held out his hand, but neither of us made any move to shake it.
“Ah, no formalities then? As I expected. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Ansjk of the Tracarian Fleet. To answer your first questions, I can speak your language because I have been studying you and your culture for over a century while we traveled here. Our scouts prepared remarkably detailed reports for each unit. I know every person on your street and their occupations and personalities.”
Truthfully, that was more than I knew. I knew Jim and his wife, and Old Harold who lived across the street, but lots of families had moved out and new ones had moved in all up and down the street. I hadn’t kept track of them all. I glanced at Jim. He was regarding the Captain with a hard set expression. He caught me looking at him and raised one eyebrow.
“To answer you next question, “What am I doing here,?” It is simply this: I am here to clean your planet and to do this I must enlist your help.”
The Captain stopped talking and let that idea sink in for a minute. When nobody spoke for a protracted pause, I finally spoke up.
“You forgot about questions number three and four.” I said evenly. “Question three, how do you expect us to believe you’re from another planet when you are so obviously human and four, even if I believed you, what makes you think I’d help you out?”
“Those are both excellent questions, Mr. St. John and I can see why the scouts picked you as the contact on this street. As to the form you now see, I’m afraid it isn’t real. I am projecting this image to your brain and you are accepting it easily, since it is the form you expect to see. My true form is not so very different from this projected one. It, too, is carbon based and bipedal, but I’m afraid you would find it too startling and it would make communication much more difficult for us.” Captain Ansjk grinned broadly as if he was viewing the possible reactions to his true form in his mind’s eye.
“And as for helping us, of course I know you care about the planet you live on. You were raised in the mountains and spent a lot of time hiking and camping when you were younger, yet you no longer do any of that kind of thing. I suggest that it is because of the pollution and destruction of the land that you have withdrawn to your living room. I am here to solve that problem for your entire race and all of you will help me accomplish this.”
That statement took me slightly aback, since it implied quite a knowledge of my personal history. Yet it was completely true. I had been more and more disgusted and disillusioned as I had grown older and seen once beautiful vistas turned into illegal dumping sites. Proud canyon walls bore the scars of graffiti and even my quiet little neighborhood had taken on a trashy appearance due to the newcomers who had no respect for others and didn’t care for their surroundings.
“That may be true, but it’s a pretty bold statement to say that everyone will help you. Besides the fact that most of us don’t seem to care about nature,” I replied bitterly, and we care even less for hard work on another’s behalf.”
“I second that motion. I have enough to do without busting my gut after work on some otherworldly clean-up squad.” Jim chimed in.
“All non essential services will be suspended for the duration of our clean-up.”, the Captain replied still smiling widely. “Only workers with jobs that are necessary to continue civilization and emergency services will continue to work. All others will be involved with the operation.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. It brought up images of forced labor and concentration camps to my mind. But before I could protest, Old Harold came running out of his house from across the street, yelling something I couldn‘t make out. Harold was a very old veteran and apparently this incident had triggered something in the dim corners of his mind.
I could see he was carrying something and in an instant I recognized it as a shotgun. He leveled it at the Captain as he advanced. His voice was strident and full of hate as he called out, “ I know you! You’ve come back for me, eh? I left you in the jungles, but here you are, back with a shiny new machine! Well here I am! Come and get me!”
Before anyone could react, he let loose with both barrels. I dove to the ground as buckshot zipped by my ear so close it ruffled my hair. Jim did the same, but the Captain merely smiled sadly and stood his ground. I couldn’t believe that Harold had missed him from that range. Harold reloaded and came on again, as he fired the second time I watched to see that the shot seemed to stop just short of the Captain’s body and fall harmlessly to the ground. That solved the mystery of the heat distortions. The Captain was surrounded by a force screen.
“I’m terribly sorry to have to do this, Mr. Johnson.” He motioned to one of his men who stepped forward and sighted along the black cane at poor Harold. A thin yellow beam reached out, and lightly touched Harold. There was a flash of light and a small rushing sound of air, and then nothing. Harold was gone as if he’d never existed.
Then the soldier turned his weapon on Harold’s house, where I knew his wife was lying in bed, an invalid. In a second… the house was gone! Not just the house I noticed. Every single man-made thing on Harold’s lot was missing. No sidewalks, no patio, no foundation, not even the sprinklers in the yard remained. Nothing was left but a bare dirt lot with a small patch of grass.
“Murderer!” I yelled and turned to spring at the Captain. I saw that Jim already had his gun out and was aiming at the Captains’ head.
“That was very unfortunate,” the Captain stated in a matter of fact way. “Yet our research suggested that something like this might be necessary due to your level of development. Now, I dearly hope you have understood the lesson here. We control forces far beyond your science’s capabilities. If you cooperate, you have my word we will never use them again. If you do not, we will carry on without you. I suggest everyone go back to their houses and get some rest. We will start at 7:00 tomorrow morning.”
He then turned and strolled up the ramp which closed behind him. I looked at Jim with my jaw wide open. He just shrugged his shoulders and put the gun down at his side.
(to be continued)
