SHEOLLA by Greg Lammers

Frank ran down the hallway past the family photos. The children, his wife, and Frank himself stared smiling out at him.

“Sheolla, want…”

He hit the living room at an impressive speed for a man his age and size. Plush carpet gave underfoot. He’d marveled at the texture many times over the previous 14 months. This morning Frank didn’t take the time to appreciate the high-quality flooring material.

“Sheolla, need…”

The front door was locked. Frank reached up on the shelf above his head on the wall to the right. In front of the brass ox figurine, one of his wife’s ancestors had gotten from God knows where was the key. He grabbed the key and fumbled putting it in the door while trying to look over his left shoulder. Did a shadow move out of the hallway?

“Sheolla, will…”

The sun hadn’t shown itself quite yet but its light lent a glow to the neighborhood. The front yard grass was heavy with dew. Frank sprinted across the yard toward his truck parked on the street next to the trash cans.

“Sheolla will have…”

Frank glanced around at his pursuer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his neighbor, Patrick, coffee cup in hand, step onto his porch and look back at Frank. Frank spun about wildly as a surge of nausea and raw power rose up out of his guts toward his head.

He could feel a strength not his own surging through his body as he vomited next to the azalea bush and began to pull his shirt off.

When the fire kicked him in the throat he threw his head back further then he’d thought possible and screamed into the suburban morning:

“Sheolla will have you!”

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story

THE HALLWAY DOOR by Greg Lammers

The door stood a few inches open in the hallway, directly across from the room he’d slept in as a child, midway between his parents’ bedroom and the entrance to the living room. He hadn’t seen it since he was young, not outside his dreams anyway. It’d always been in his head, he’d wondered if it’d been real. Now it was there in the hallway, just like it was then.

He remembered the first time he’d dreamed it, or lived it. He’d dreamed it hundreds, thousands of times since. The door was painted white, it had wood panels. It didn’t match the rest of the doors or trim in the house. This door came from a time before his parents’ house. This was a door that had blown with the dustbowl toward California, it was the door that young women sat behind waiting for letters from lovers, lovers in a sense of the word that hasn’t been used in a long time.

The door stood open, just a few inches, as it had the first time he saw it decades earlier, at the same angle it stood now, beckoning, taunting, “come in or close me, you know you’ll come in.”

It was right. He’d entered it that night decades ago, wearing his cattle brands patterned pajamas and carrying a painted plastic six-shooter and a rat-eared teddy bear for protection. He hadn’t shut it behind him.

The night was full of stars and the sounds of insects and night animals. Upon his crossing the threshold the light changed from dark night to twilight gray, purple and yellow, the sounds evened out to a low hum.

He’d gotten up the next morning and eaten cereal his Mom poured for him, like every day. Not long after, the six-shooter landed in a toy box never to be played with again, the bear passed to a younger cousin.

Moments turned into months and years. There were countless hours of twilight study, a series of magenta and indigo women. Each job glowed more golden than the last, and then returned to the same gray that had led him to look for a new position last time and the time before. There was work and fun, fulfillment and emptiness, and memories that slipped away, careful not to wake him, while he slept.

Now there was the job of cleaning out his parents’ house, the one he’d grown up in, so they could move somewhere smaller, easier to look after. Now there was the door in the hallway, one of the memories that hadn’t snuck off when he wasn’t looking.

He crossed the hall. He had no pistol, no bear. He opened the door and heard the night sounds and saw the black sky filled with stars.

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story

THE LAST PORCH by Greg Lammers

They sat on the porch floor, near her old crocheting chair, and rocked back and forth. Rachel was calmer now. Roy couldn’t say how long they’d been out there. For good or ill this night wore on forever.

He stroked her hair and sang. She laughed at his rendition of “Hot Blooded,” and even joined in on “The Joker.” When he ran out of songs he hummed aimlessly. She tensed up. He started in on stories.

Remember when that guy that looked like the actor, what was his name? Ewan McGregor, had grabbed her hand as they were leaving Joy’s Diner? Roy, fast as light, popped him one straight in the face.

That Ewan McGregor lookin’ guy was mad as hell, but he didn’t do nothing about it, just sat there glaring, rubbing his square chin. She’d laughed and laughed, doubled up in front of the gumball machine by the wood panel glass-topped counter.

The stories came faster; Rachel laughed with recognition and amusement. In between stories the laughter turned to sobs, and tearful apologies. Roy told her not to apologize this wasn’t her fault. This wasn’t nobody’s fault, except maybe the moon’s, or the devil’s.

It was twenty years ago next summer that she’d puked on Sheriff Noe. The sheriff always looked so nice, he took pride in his office and his appearance. But you pull over enough kids driving out of white oak ringed fields late at night, it’s only a matter of time before a pretty teenage girl throws up on your brand new shirt, sharp pressed khaki slacks, and your shiny black shoes.

She always laughed, a little embarrassed, when they talked about that, even after all this time. Now she was silent. He took it as a bad sign.

He pulled her away from his shoulder, held her head in both hands, and looked into her eyes. He saw the blood pumping, heard her moans as she sought to hold back the inevitable. He could feel her straining with the effort. God he wished he could help her, and himself.

She half screamed her last apology. She’d clung desperately to her mind, now she felt it give way. Heat washed through her head and then down her. There were no more words, no more past or future, or names or places.

She pinned him down, ripping through his old flannel shirt with speed and power that shocked him at first more than the pain. He attempted to defend himself without injuring her. Part of him knew his attacker was no longer Rachel. It was no use.

She slashed and tore his torso and bit into his face and neck. He thrashed, groaned, and screamed unintelligible things. He stopped moving and grew silent.

She knelt over him, devouring what was easy to get at. Then she stood and walked down the porch steps, across the windy yard, and onto the shoulderless two lane asphalt, instinctively turning toward town.

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story

TWO WILLS, ONE LOAF by Greg Lammers

She assured him, in her light mocking tone, that it was rising. But how could he tell? It looked to him like it was doing a whole lot of nothing. Not rising, not sinking, not twerking, nothing.

She sat on a stool, long legged, in the corner of the kitchen and laughed. Her laughter cut into him. It grew louder and sharper by the second. That laugh was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love and married her. But now that laughter, aimed at him from the corner of the room, was almost too much.

He focused on the loaf of peasant bread not rising in front of him. For fuck’s sake. He knew not to make these kinds of bets with her, to push her to use her powers for evil. But now it was too late. He’d made the bet. You buys the ticket and you takes the ride.

Two wizards faced off in a kitchen. One wizard focused her power on preventing bread from rising. The other used his will to make it rise. It would rise of its own accord eventually but it might not be in time. And if it didn’t he would have to pay. If she won he would have to do the dishes and take out the trash, again, like an ordinary human with his meaty hands.

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story

IT SEEMS TO HAVE SEEPED INTO THE BASEMENT by Greg Lammers

The old textbooks had plenty to say about infectious diseases. There was a lot to learn about viruses and bacteria. And so far none of it had done him a bit of good.

Jerry sat at his kitchen table pouring over the books he’d found in the nurse’s house. She was gone, she wouldn’t be using them anymore. On his table alongside the textbooks, and ancient printouts of research papers was the journal he’d found in the artist’s shed. Like the nurse, the artist would not be using it any longer. So Jerry had no qualms about making off with it.

The journal was a heavy black leather number. Roughly the first third of the book was filled with page after page of crisp, fine handwriting. The observations were mundane. The last third of the journal was blank. Maybe Jerry could use it himself someday, if he had time.

The middle third of the journal was the interesting part. As the handwriting grew more chaotic, the subject matter grew more bizarre. There were observations of extreme, micro-level weather events, and creatures skulking around rocks and trees and buildings.

It was all fragmentary and read like some kind of disordered and deviant tale of wonderland. Jerry believed every word of it.

Jerry was a realistic and grounded person. His wife had made a habit of referring to him as boring. Though he hadn’t worked in the field for a few years, the economy being what it was, he had a degree and background in engineering.

He wasn’t into new-age or postmodern diversions and he wasn’t a particularly religious or spiritual man. But he had eyes and ears and a keen mind, for now anyway. And he trusted that the things he’d seen, at least most of them, were not hallucinations.

Water had never gotten in the house before that spring when the basement flooded four times. Jerry had ripped the carpet up to make for easier cleanup. His wife would have objected. She would have found the bare concrete basement floor ugly. Jerry found it ugly too, but it had to be done as long as the flood waters kept coming in. And his wife wasn’t here to tell him to do or not do anything.

He went down to the basement to grab some peroxide and rubbing alcohol. His eyes watered and his nose was running. He wiped his face, looked down at his hand, and saw red. He calmed himself, it wasn’t too late, it couldn’t be too late. There was that noise, he’d heard it the last time he’d been down here. Clicking, or chirping?

He found the peroxide and alcohol and started back toward the stairs. He passed over the line where the carpet used to lay between the utility room and the finished part of the basement. On the naked strip of carpet tape sat a large brown cricket.

These crickets had been here, in the basement, when Jerry and Andrea moved in seven years previous. They’d be here when Jerry left, in whatever manner. They were brown and long-legged. They liked the dark and seemed to be able to sit immobile for days. He’d read that they didn’t see well. When startled, often they would leap – not away from the disturbance – but towards it.

Jerry could walk around the basement and avoid them. But every once in awhile, either from carelessness or because he didn’t see it, he got too close to one and BAM! It sprang through the air at what seemed an outrageous speed and bounced off of him. He nearly felt his heart stop every time.

The cricket on the exposed carpet tape wasn’t going to jump at him. The tape was a strong and durable adhesive. He couldn’t pull the cricket up off the adhesive without tearing it apart. The cricket had landed on its death.

He stepped on it with his running shoe. He didn’t like to kill a living creature if he didn’t have to, not even almost blind dimwitted ones. But there was nothing else to do. It took 3 stomps and twists of the foot to get this one to stop moving. The sound it made when he stepped on it, he could swear it was different than the simple crunch he’d heard when stepping on the basement crickets in the past. He shrugged, so many things were strange now, the sound of dying crickets shouldn’t be exempt.

At just about the first stair, a cricket hit his bare arm. He jumped, nearly dropping the alcohol and peroxide. He composed himself and continued on. As he hit the second stair he looked down and saw the eyes. Countless tiny eyes stared nearly sightless up at him.

Instinctively he jumped back and lost his footing on the wooden stair. As he was falling he could feel the crickets jumping at him, bouncing against his pants, shirt, and his face.

He landed with a thud at the bottom of the stairs. He hadn’t caught his fall too well, with the bottles in his hand. His head had hit the linoleum. He was dazed. He shook his head and struggled to regain his senses. He was covered with crickets two or three times larger than the ones he’d seen before, they were in a frenzy, bouncing off of every part of him, biting and tearing into him. He screamed.

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story

CHIPS WITH SANDWICH AFTER A DAY by Greg Lammers

Alan arrived home, finally.

It had been one for the books. Over half his staff out with no explanation, not bothering to call in – phones ringing off the hook, people raving on with crazy stories. He’d heard tales of rabid neighbors, murderous friends and family, and wild mutant animals running down the streets, through alleys and yards.

He’d begun to wonder if he was being filmed for one of those twisted reality shows where some poor bastard is screwed with until they crack.

The house was empty. Sometimes he got home before his wife and daughter. He went to the fridge and got out some thin, sliced ham, American cheese, mayonnaise. and pickles. He got two slices of bread out of the sack on the counter.

He stood there leaning on the counter chewing his first bite of sandwich. Chips! He needed potato chips with this. There should be some in the cabinet. He walked to the other side of the kitchen and opened the heavy wooden door above the toaster, next to the microwave.

His daughter was a fast five-year-old, down out of the cabinet she flew, clawing and biting at his face and neck. He fell backward onto the slate tile floor, screaming in shock and pain.

He reflexively swung and punched out at her with no effect. He threatened her with every punishment he dreamed might have some effect, and screamed his wife’s name in hope of some assistance.

He was bruised and bleeding and had almost given up hope when he caught a glimpse of his wife’s legs approaching. He swung his head back to see her standing above him, her eyes dead, her mouth rimmed with dried blood, holding his Grandfather’s ax.

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story

WILBUR THE PIG by Greg Lammers

My Grandfather was named Wilbur. My little cousin, on one of her trips back to see our Grandparents, had just read “Charlotte’s Web.” So “Wilbur the Pig” became a hilarious joke.

Soon after, people started giving him pigs, and they kept giving him pigs. He didn’t set out to collect pigs but by the time he passed away he had quite a few.

When we were moving my Grandma, his wife, she gave me a box of pigs and said: “take these.” She just wanted them out of her house.

Of the people I’ve lost, my Grandpa is the one I think of most. And now I have those stupid goddamned pigs in a box in my garage, and I’ll never get rid of them.

#story

MY PARENTS RAISED OSTRICHES… by Greg Lammers

My parents raised ostriches after I left home. I helped with them some, built some fence, that sort of thing. I didn’t like that they would peck at you, and the rest of the time they were pecking on the ground, where they did their business. So it wasn’t only the pain of being pecked at but the stuff that was on the end of their beaks.

One way we were told to keep them at bay was to “become bigger (taller) than them.” This could be accomplished by simply holding up a broomstick or other long-handled tool.

Male ostriches engage in a “courtship” or mating dance to draw attention to themselves. They drop to their knees, puff out their feathers, and rock from side to side. My Dad had an old International 300 tractor he used around the place. The big male ostrich who was called Mel, would drop into that mating dance every time Dad went past on that red tractor.

A female ostrich named Maggie had some chicks. My Dad set up a shed for the chicks to bed down in. It had a little door which was a few inches off the ground. My Dad built a ramp up to the door for them. The chicks would run around the sides of the ramp and then jump up onto it and make their way in the door, I never saw one walk all the way up that ramp.

#story

FIRST DAY AT THE OFFICE by Greg Lammers

He looked at the desk. The things on it, they were his. He was expected here.

A machine on the other side of the room came to life. It hummed a while, then spit out two sheets of paper and the humming wound down. Someone tipped a ceramic mug to their lips. He had a cup much like theirs on his desk. He picked it up and took a drink, it was hot. He’d have to take a smaller drink next time.

None of the others paid any attention. He looked around. Nobody looked at him in an odd manner, or in any manner. They paid no more attention to him than they would to a potted plant that had been there for months.

Relief. He had much to learn, but there was time. The entry of a new entity into a body is violent, on the cosmic plane. Time and space ripped open and then tack welded back together.

In the office cubicle plane, it registers as a cough, or a loud but less than noteworthy clearing of the throat. One startled consciousness jerked out of a body it has grown attached to and hauled off to some other place or some other dimension, and then another, bewildered, slammed into a pile of hard, clunky material.

It came to his attention that the person at the next desk was telling a story about a young one who she was evidently responsible for. He looked up at her, smiled, and made noises, asking for a clarification on the score of a sporting event she’d just mentioned. She stopped and looked at him. Jerry never expressed any interest in her stories.

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story

Dragon Problems

by Greg Lammers for Henry

“I love you, have a good day, you’re a good kid,” said his Dad as he pulled him close.

Henry rolled his eyes. Couldn’t his Dad just let him walk into school without stopping on the sidewalk every morning to do a variation of this same talk?

“Have fun, slay dragons,” his Dad said as he let Henry go. Henry trudged toward the row of doors at the front of the building. He could hear his Dad chuckling at his own joke, the same joke he’d made countless times before.

A blast of warm air hit Henry as he walked through the inner doors right behind a 2nd-grade girl with an Iron Man backpack.

“It’s dragon noogies for you all until your Principal tells me where you keep the gold…and the hall passes.” A deep voice boomed from near the ceiling.

Henry, startled, jerked his head toward the voice. The voice belonged to a green and red dragon whose scale covered head almost poked through the ceiling tiles. He was standing between the office and the lunchroom. His tail stretched behind him draped across a folding table which had been used for a PTA fundraiser the week before.

“This is bad,” thought Henry. This was worse than the time he’d put his math homework, his peanut butter sandwich, his half-full-half-empty depending on who you asked milk carton, and his smelly gym socks in his backpack and then left his backpack in the clothes dryer.

The dragon had a third grader in each big green hand, his claws wrapped around their midsections with room to spare. The third grader’s eyes were wide, their mouths agape.

The second-grade girl grabbed Henry by the shoulder. “Maybe the dragon will just give them a couple of noogies, get bored and leave.” She said.

“That wouldn’t be good,” replied Henry. “Dragon noogies are like people noogies except they are given by Dragons. Instead of knuckles they use fire, and rather than just the top of the head, they noogie all over!”

Henry put his left arm in front of the girl and reached behind his head with his right. He drew from out of his backpack a 16th century English broadsword he’d brought just in case something like this happened.

He held the sword in front of him and yelled at the dragon-

“Corey!!”

The dragon swung his head down to look at Henry.

“Henry, what are you doing here, with that broadsword?!” Corey demanded.

“This is my school,” said Henry. “I’m here every day, except for weekends and specific holidays…and the summer.”

Corey the dragon held the third graders up a little higher and glared at Henry. “Oh,” he replied. “I thought you went to Fairview.”

“I went to Fairview for enrichment part of last summer, that’s not my regular school.” Said Henry. “I told you that Corey.”

“Oh, right. I guess I should listen closer sometimes to what others tell me.” Said Corey.

“Okay Corey,” said Henry, “while you’re working on your listening now hear this. You need to stop busting into schools, demanding gold and hall passes, and giving dragon noogies.”

“But demanding gold and handing out dragon noogies is what I like,” whined Corey. “What else can I do?!”

“Put down the third graders and take this.” Answered Henry, using his left hand to pull something else out of his backpack.

“What is it?” Asked Corey.

“It’s a book about Kings, Princesses, Knights, the 1948 US Presidential election, and dragons. It has chivalry, intrigue, romance, an embarrassing mistaken newspaper article, and battles”

“That sounds interesting,” said Corey. He put the third graders down and took the plastic covered book from Henry.

He walked toward the door, “I’ll get this back to you as soon as I’m finished,” he said as he squeezed through the front door.

Henry sheathed his sword back in his pack. As the sword slid into place all the kids who’d gathered began to cheer. Henry marched to his classroom as all the kids who’d just arrived followed and slapped him on the back.

He settled into his desk, grinning from ear to ear, glad that he had saved the school from that naughty Corey.

“Okay class, you’ll remember that today is library day, I hope you brought back the books you checked out last week.” Said his teacher.

Henry smiled and reached into his backpack where the book…oh no, the book wasn’t there.

“Ugh,” Henry sighed shaking his head, “dragons…”

#flashfiction #microfiction #shortstory #story