A COLLECTION OF STORIES AND MORE

Death’s Legal Papers

Introduction

Picture: False Dawn

LOX WITH ROCKS

Picture: Living in a Bubble

Picture: PikaDEAD!, Fortress of Light

Picture: The Future

Law & Disorder

Picture: A Beautiful Day for a Shipwreck

Picture: Heaven's Trinkets

Picture: An Island of my Own

A Heartbreaking Story of Unparalleled Genius

Picture: Satan Loves You (But Not Very Much)

Picture: Death's Carnival

How My Computer Died

Picture: This Island Sigma 957

Introduction

The anthology you hold in your hands (God, I’ve always wanted to say that!) represents a work done over a two year period I faked in one night (actually, a little bit of both…), specifically the night before this anthology was due. As I write this, I have just spent a desperate half an hour trying to track down a closing sci fi piece I wrote about flying eggs that blind the world, but oh well. Voyager ended last night, so I’m still sitting here thinking about how much the series finale could have been improved if a) they paced it better (or, better yet, made it a four-hour episode, which it should have been) b) booted Janeway off screen for a couple dozen more scenes with the OTHER CHARACTERS actually IN THEM uh oh, this has nothing to do with my anthology quick brain storm brain storm ah yes!!! The pieces in this anthology, unlike the Voyager series finale, are perfectly paced, and the main character doesn’t hog the center light for a whole hour and a half (unless you read reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaally slooooooooooooowly), so any complaints you may have about anything else, no really ANYTHING (except Enterprise because there is NO WAY you could find something about it I HAVEN'T whined about), then reading this will either sink you deeper into the pit of depression (if you read reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaally slooooooooooooowly) or will cheer you up, especially if one of your complaints has to do with Pikachu. He almost gets beaten up in one of my stories (In Which I Poke Fun at a Fast Dying Industry I Hate). I say almost because it’s not REALLY Pikachu. I swear…

Anyway, about the other pieces. The first one is a rollicking good time wrapped up in an epic poem about a fish who rebels against the system (Lox with Rocks), which I would almost be able guarantee you’ll love, if I had a lawyer to deflect the resulting torrents of lawsuits, and the second one is the aforementioned Let’s Beat Up Something That’s Almost Pikachu and Laugh Because It’s a Story So I Don’t Have to Feel Guilty Later story, and the third is a dazzling (slightly rewritten) version of Cinderella I call Plasmadischargella, but you can call it anything so long as it’s a compliment. Remember, if you even THINK about not liking anything in here, I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!!! Oh, excuse me. Did I just write that out loud? Stupid question- it’s deliberate and it’s really obvious it is because DUH this is a TYPED introduction- oh never mind.

The fourth piece is Law & Disorder, which isn’t what you think it is. I guarantee that, unless your name starts with a letter and you’re reading this now, in which case I only think it is possible. The fifth is a stunningly brilliant mini-story about a tour group in Australia, and the sixth is Profit and Lace, a story I stuck in here from last year, about a Phoenician and not much else.

Sixth in line is "A Heartbreaking Story of Unparalleled Genius" (and it is too, if I do say so myself [and I do, obviously]), which is about Satan. What can I say? I was weird in the first semester (whether I still am is for you to find out). Assuming you know who Charlotte is, you’ll find this piece funny (I hope).

After this is MidEvil, which would be a horror story if it wasn’t so, well, weird. And it’s not particularly scary, either- just, well, weird. Please hold any complaints about this particular piece for AFTER it stops being relevant, because, well, I just don’t care. Sorry. No I’m not. Never mind.

Eighth and last is "How My Computer Died", an anthropomorphic comedic piece about, obviously, how my computer died. I like this piece a lot, not least because I actually found it shoved somewhere in the back of my English work from sixth grade. I hope you like it too. No, actually, come to think of it, I don’t care. After that is my About the Author, which isn’t. Don’t worry- you’re not the only one confused here. Just ignore it. Trust me. Ignoring things that don’t make sense helps ME continue with my day without my brain exploding. I waste no time on things like why sales tax is ADDED to the bill, why the American people seem to think the Senate system is better than a Parliamentary system (actually I try to stay away from politics altogether), and why we drive on parkways and park on driveways. There, now you’ve got some better things to mull over than why my About the Author isn’t. Good. Okay go read the ACTUAL pieces now. There is NO MORE of this introduction. GO AWAY!!!!!!! Please? I’ll give you another pretty picture…

LOX WITH ROCKS

This story got brought in so often for "comments" when I was too lazy to write anything that my classmates began to actually beg me not to bring it in anymore. Really. I made the picture near the end out of a picture of Chernobyl's nuclear reactor, a picture of Pikachu from the WB's website, and about fifteen minutes with the Paint program. Adobe? Nah.

Disclaimer: Any relation to existing fictional characters with or without brains or other vital organs is entirely coincidental. Pukeatchu is not supposed to represent Pikachu. I swear. Really. Professor Bloak is NOT Professor Oak, Hairy AIN’T Gary, Cash doesn’t represent Ash. You can trust me on this one. Really. I swear.

Cash stopped, looking around desperately for his little orange chinchilla friend Pukeatchu. He had awoken to find his disgustingly cute little buddy out of his customary Pukeyball, and no one, not even Professor Bloak, knew where he was.

"Pukeatchu! Where are you?!?!" He screamed, frustrated. He had looked everywhere in his hometown (Peagreen City). Everywhere, that is, except at the house of his longtime rival, Hairy.

Hairy looked over at his computer monitor. Another four point two three sec… oh wait, now it's three point six seven eight… oh forget it. Soon, he would know the secret of the ultimate Poketheman ability: Turbo Cuteness. Turbo Cuteness was that secret ability that had allowed his rival, Pukeatchu's trainer Cash, to win the last forty-seven Poketheman competitions at the local gym. He was reeeeaaaaally sick of losing.

He glanced at the monitor. Yes! He had it! He unplugged Pukeatchu, who promptly bounced away in a disgustingly cute show of finesse. He vomited repeatedly into a nearby trash can. No matter. He would now create a Poketheman far more powerful than any that had ever come before. He cackled maniacally as he stirred toxic waste and essence of Cute into the mixture. Pressing the magic button that created the Poketheman, he watched as the mixture solidified into a form. It resembled a particularly chubby squirrel, with a nuclear sign on its belly. Hairy laughed again as the cute little instrument of pain said its first word. "Chernobyl!"

* * *

The next day, at the big competition, Cash and Pukeatchu showed up early for a little extra practice. Hairy, not wanting to tip his hand, waited until the first and only match of the day (between Cash and Hairy, as luck would have it) to let his little Chernobyl out of the Pukeyball. Pukeatchu quizzically looked at the new Poketheman, then activated his Ultimate Cute Defense Grid, which enabled it to always win by virtue of being cute. Chernobyl used his special Atomic Fallout attack to melt the barrier, and zapped Pukeatchu with Chernobyl's Anti-Cute Ray, which promptly activated a big gloved hand which slapped the poor critter silly. Pukeatchu desperately tried to counter this fast-moving hand of death, but was soon outclassed by the superior Chernobyl. Cash fell

to his knees, defeated.

At that exact moment, Chernobyl began to evolve. What could be worse than a nuclear meltdown? Hairy wondered as the cute little form shrank and grew. Abruptly the change stopped, and where Chernobyl had stood flew a little fat IRS agent with wings and a briefcase.

"Mister Stevenson!" chirped the new creature.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" screamed Cash desperately. "NOT THAT!!!! PLEASE, ANYTHING BUT THAT!!!"

His cries alerted a nearby band of lawyers from the Pokemon© franchise, who immediately ran over to the copyright infringement.

"Mister Stevenson! Use Audit!" Hairy screamed as the lawyers attacked. Cash promptly fainted, and Pukeatchu escaped to appear on knockoff merchandise to be sold to naïve little American preteens.

Plasmadishcargella

I had fun with this one.

Law & Disorder

This story, like the next one, is from seventh grade. This one here was a story about what my teacher called "plausible chaos" - she had rejected my story about a whale mysteriously imploding on Wall Street.

Las Touristas

This one was a fun assignment, about personifying non-sentient objects.

The tour group clustered together around the minuscule object, their pudgy protrusions rippling with disbelief that they were privileged to see what others could not- an ancient Mayan toothpick that had somehow found itself wedged in a rock somewhere in central Australia. The tour guide gently pressed her cattle prod into the throng, and within moments she had put the artifact back into its seclusion box, where the toothpick found itself approximately 75% of the time. To amuse itself, the poor artifact had taken to self-taught Zen rituals in its time alone, and had incidentally become quite masterful at it.

The line of gullible, pudgy men in Hawaiian shirts and women in tight, form-fitting khakis and T-shirts, purchased at the gift shop, stretched as far as the eye could see over the horizon; their vast multitude of personal boxes with irritating lights on them that flashed when you were trying to hold your eyes open for the picture clinking and clanking as they tripped over the uneven terrain of the archaeological museum's carefully manicured floors. The hapless tour guide used a large, bright neon sign (that, as most chemists would happily point out, was not made with even so much as a particle of neon) to herd the mass back into the buses for their trip across the ocean to New Zealand, where they would be separated into smaller groups as the guides there hunted out the weak and forced them to pay ten times the normal price for a tour of the island. At least the "Outback Safari" tour guide from the mainland would be able to avoid the smaller island, thus staying away from the teeming mass of uneducated rich white tourists with far too many cameras.

Finally, the bus pulled up in front of a massive ferry, then onto the ferry itself. It took up several of the car parking spaces by ceasing its movement in that particularly evil way that only the drivers of buses and especially large vans seem able to manage, effectively blocking approximately 14 parking spaces in the process.

The packed bus began to slowly unload passengers; people dressed in exactly the same shirts and pants that differed only in color from one another began to fall out of the portal onto the deck. One man, in a shirt that seemed to perfectly capture that shade of green that da Vinci would rather cut off his ear than use, and possessing an abnormally large multitude of personal black boxes with lights on them, tripped while stepping down from the bottom step onto the blacktop. He flew through the air, arms flailing and personal gadgetry flinging itself in a variety of odd directions, until he finally seemed to stabilize himself on the ground by ramming his face into the foot of another tourist, who promptly kicked him, sending him flying once again, this time into the swirling waters of the harbor. His cameras all fell off and floated in different directions; the poor fat man was visibly torn between which one to go after, but was unable to pursue any of them as his immense number of chins seemed to be constantly in the way. He started to sink, but the boat took no mind and sped out of the harbor, leaving the poor man to the mercy of the water, which, as it so happens, dislikes pudgy white men in Hawaiian shirts and khakis possessing a vast multitude of personal gadgetry. . .

Profit and Lace

By Jeff

I wrote this one in seventh grade. I still don't know why.

A Heartbreaking Story of Unparalleled Genius

I wrote this story about my friend Charlotte (she's Satan). But for the anthology, she asked me to change it. There's really not a lot more to say about it.

Disclaimer: All events and people in this story are fictional. Any similarity to existing persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Really. Also, that other guy who wrote some book called "A Heartbreaking Work of Unparalleled Genius" stole it from me. I swear.

Amanda was a kind, loving 12-year-old girl, mildly popular, a member of the upper middle class; she got consistent good grades (although nothing spectacular), bought from fund raisers, and talked to her grandparents on the phone at least once a week. She was neat but not excessively so, and just about everyone who talked to her left feeling just ever so slightly better about their problems, although once again not spectacularly unburdened. In other words, Amanda was everything you could ask for in a daughter; she was just good enough at everything to inspire pride, but so good at anything that it became annoying. She was a pleasant person to be around at any hour of the day or night, and was well thought of by everyone.

That is, until she began to thirst for human blood.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back and see how it all began…

* * *

"WHY ON EARTH WOULD I DO THAT?!?!" Amanda screamed at the advertising screen at the local mall. It was currently attempting to make everyone in the area desperate to buy a brand-new lawn mower that was the same as every other product the company had ever made, except colored differently and with a new logo on the front. She located the nearest person using her innate ESP abilities and lunged, biting at his neck. She overestimated the distance, though, and went hurling over the railing to land in the center plaza, two levels down. She recovered quickly and ran for the nearest exit…

* * *

Okay, so that wasn't far enough back. Let's try again…

* * *

Amanda looked around the park, dazed as a cow that had been pummeled repeatedly in the forehead with a large metal object. Recognizing her current state from her psychology course, she started looking around for her comfort food (chicken pot pies, actually). To her complete and total lack of surprise (due no doubt to the whole cow/metal object thing), there was one floating approximately three and a half feet of the ground in the center of a burning pentagram. She reached out for the succulent treat, and grasped it firmly in her left hand, drawing it toward her. This also brought the pentagram. She shook her hand wildly, trying to lose the pentagram.

"No, pentagram! It's my chicken pot pie!" she whined at the satanic symbol. A particularly loud satanic sigh echoed through the park and the pentagram disappeared.

Amanda took a bite. Suddenly, a new force wrapped itself around her mind and a voice spoke into the rapidly failing light…

"Hello, Amanda. My name is Satan. You may call me 'you horrible fiend' or Stan, depending on your personal views regarding Satanism. I prefer Stan. It's so much more dignified."

* * *

And so Satan possessed Amanda. Her glorious long blond hair rapidly turned brown, then a sickly red. She began to torture small mammals. No, not kindergartners you sicko. That would be evil. Smaller than that… like squirrels and bunnies and stuff. She shrank to a mere five foot six from her previous five foot six and three quarters of an inch. And, of course, she started reading trashy romance novels, the most powerful tool of the devil. She began to develop powerful extrasensory perception and other innate abilities. Practice with her new telekinetic ability rapidly turned her room into a scale model of Chernobyl, and the Evil Eye quickly turned her eyes a malevolent red.

Finally, Amanda couldn't stand it anymore. She went to a local synagogue while Satan slept and asked about exorcisms. To her surprise, there were no evil spirits that possessed and controlled human beings in the Jewish religion practiced in her area, but she was advised to go next door to the local cathedral, as Christianity has an abundant supply of demons, vampires, werecritters, and the like.

The priest at the cathedral agreed to do the exorcism in exchange for nifty hubcap Amanda had stolen off his car (which he didn't recognize for some reason), and promptly freed Amanda of the evil spirit.

Satan, surprised to awaken outside the head of Amanda, flew straight to the nearest hospital and possessed a newly born little girl. The combination of pure innocence and pure evil altered Satan ever so slightly, making him into a hippie. The newborn kept all the evil.

When the parents finally stopped arguing about what to name the little girl, they came in and whispered to the sleeping manifestation of evil,

"Sleep, Charlotte. Charlotte Wing."

END

(Almost a Horror Story About some Bishop)

I wrote this story about three years ago - in 8^th grade. It was the winning entry in a horror story competition. My English teacher thought it was an excellent example of horrific comedy. It was supposed to be serious.

Y Y Y

"Fight!" screamed the household. A ring of servants, of the Bishop and the King alike, had gathered to watch one of the priests being beaten up by the cook. King Philip watched from the North Tower, a thin smile playing around his lips as he watched the action below.

"Your Eminence, my Sovereign, the peasants are revolting!" Panted the plump Head of the Military.

"Fool. Just a fight betwixt servants. I should like to watch it.

"My Lord." Replied the Head, embarrassed.

Y Y Y

Leo sighed. It had been a trying day. First the frog. Then the wine. And now he had come down with a fever. The King would have to pay for this. He ordered all of the King’s undergarments burned. Then, as an afterthought, he ordered all the King’s meat cooked without salt. The king would be in vapors when he found out about this. He did not care what the king’s retaliation would be, but he didn’t care. For the first time since the feud began, he tucked his daughter in to bed.

Y Y Y

King Philip IX smiled. It was not a pleasant expression, the evilness and fiendishness of it clouding his normally pleasant features. However, of late, the smile had appeared more and more often as his feud with the Bishop heated. It was too bad the cheat had forced him to this point. He had smiled when the frog appeared in the Holy Water, and when the servant had "accidentally" spilled wine on the Bishop’s ceremony robes, and when the herb had been placed in Leo’s food and ale, but this time, this time, he was going to hurt him. And not just a little either. This was going to hurt.

Y Y Y

When she came to, Katherine was dangling by her nightgown over the cliffs that lined the coast of her country. Where was her daddy? But the sound of her nightgown ripping overwhelmed her poor eight-year-old mind, and she screamed as she fell 40,000 feet to the waiting tideline, where her scream was suddenly silenced.

Y Y Y

The Bishop felt strange. Something was very wrong. He had an unusual feeling of emptiness, and it had never happened to him before. Eventually, he decided to take a solitary ride down the beach. Yes, that would clear his mind nicely, and his God would once again receive his undivided attention, with the sole exception of his daughter, who he had loved tenderly since the death of her mother 7 years ago. She had fallen off the cliff near the beach, falling, falling- he broke the thought off. Time for his ride.

His mount splashed through the surf, navigating the area near the cliff. It was then that he saw the body, in the water. From this distance, it appeared to be that of a woman, but he couldn’t tell more. Quickly, he made the sign of the cross over his body and dismounted, running to the body. He turned it over, and he realized that it was that of a very young woman, maybe eight or nine years old. He pulled the hair back, and recognized it.

It was his daughter.

Y Y Y

King Philip smiled cruelly as the sound reached his ears. It was that of an animal in torment, beyond redemption, damned to the ninth hell for eternity. He remembered making that sound when his wife, the love of his life, had died of leprosy. He had been there, had seen the skin hanging of her bones, her arms and legs limply dangling off the bed. How he had fumed at that Bishop, and his mumbo-jumbo about the will of God, when a simple herb would have sufficed to allow her life. He hadn’t blamed the Bishop then, but now, he recognized the fact: the Bishop was a demon from hell, sent to torment him. Now that he thought about it, he could see a good deal of things that the Bishop had caused, from the buttons falling off his shirt (a curse) to the werewolf he had seen. Or might have. He wasn’t quite sure, but he did know one thing. It was all the Bishop’s fault.

Y Y Y

Leo was crazed. He grabbed a knife, one of the ceremonial ones, but it would have to do. After all, all he had to do was torture the… the… thing that was revered as King, and then slit his own throat. Your death will be avenged, Katherine! he vowed. Inching along the wall, he reached the tree that sat just outside the King’s rooms. He wormed his way into the room, and made his way silently to the bed, where the King was asleep. He raised the knife, and-

"That is quite enough of that."

Leo whirled around. There stood the Head of the Military, smiling in the dark night.

All the thing that had once been the Bishop could do was gurgle. He lurched to the window, separated from his goal, and leaped out. Like his daughter and his wife before him, his body crumpled like trash thrown away upon the cold ground.

He felt a tide of disappointment wash over broken body. The King was still alive. Oh, well. I’ll see him in Hell. And with a final sigh, Bishop Leo l’s breath ceased.

THE END

How My Computer Died

(NOT A TALE OF LOVE WON AND LOST ON THE SWORD COAST)

I have absolutely no idea where this one came from. I found it in a folder on my computer marked "English Class 1998" though, so that should give you a hint.

I walked into my room. My clock blinked uncertainly at me as I sat upon my bed. As though he sensed my poor mood, he leaned inward, sagging as though to pull me into one of his huge bear hugs. I resisted, pulling off the bed, pacing the room. As I wandered toward the door, it pushed its handle forward eagerly. Once again, I turned away. This time, I moved toward my desk, planning to play a tension-releasing game of Kill-Kill-Kill. Even my computer resisted me though, its stubby face peering at me curiously, it’s thin, tiny hand determined to make me play the boring game I-Will-Not-Get-Mad. Even my chair tried to massacre me, pulling me into its depths so I didn’t want to get up. I picked up a book of essays and leafed through the pages. Everything in it was on controlling stress and tension release. I threw the book onto my bed, which eagerly accepted any excuse to sag comfortably forward, inviting me in. "MY FURNITURE IS AGAINST ME!" I screamed. The furniture made grunting noises and even the computer whirred knowingly. I sighed. If I couldn’t release my tension one way, I had to do it the way that my vicious furniture (again a whirring from the computer.) I sank into the comforting depths of my bed, and slept. I dreamed of barbaric furniture determined to prevent me from killing something, and my computer whirred so loudly I woke. My computer grinned an annoying innocent smile particularly reserved for the guilty party. I sighed, and turned over. At least they weren’t throwing cheese at me.

When I awoke sometime during the next week, I noticed that there was a large, extremely unfriendly-looking stapler sitting on my forehead. When I tried to brush it off, I (to my horror) discovered that it had somehow managed to tape itself to my hair. By the time I managed to extricate my innocent head from this particularly fiendish deathtrap, my hair had been pulled out in great lumps. I sighed and threw the stapler at my computer, which promptly exploded in a very satisfying boom. If the furniture wants war, then they’ve GOT IT.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE ARTIST

if you actually care, email me at lordetalis@hotmail.com