This technically isn't a complete story, just a fragment I wrote while waiting for the bus into town.
Racquel thought about yesterday's lunch as she clung to the underside of the hull which was now basking in the tropical sunlight like a dead Moby Dick. She had eaten a chicken salad sandwich with capers - the really large ones. She craved the salty taste, and now she was marinating in her favorite brine.
She was alive at least, and there was still the possibility that she could salvage the boat if the ocean ever stopped bucking. It was a strange sight in the calm skies, but the orange horizon at the noon of day told a different story.
The asteroid had been unexpected. Racquel heard no warnings on the radio. It had zoomed overhead with a sonic boom so loud that she lost her hearing for a time. Sound was slowly coming back. She could faintly hear the slapping of the waves against the hull and the fevered cries of birds above as they flew panicked every which way in total geomagnetic confusion.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Nothing is Memorable
The toenail lay upon the next ridge. Freddy clambored up a carpet fiber to get a better look. In this body he had an insatiable appetite for discarded toenails. Reincarnation is a bitch.
In the last life, Freddy had been a man leaving toenail clippings on the floor. His wife Doreen screamed at him every time she caught him clipping his nails without collecting the bits. It must have bothered her more than he realized because he was sure that she had poisoned him slowly. The last few days he remembered as a man were spent in the hospital with puzzled doctors running all sorts of toxicology tests.
When he woke up he found himself eating his way out of an egg sac. It was a very confusing time. He was shocked to discover that he had six legs. He didn't even want to think back to the time he spent in a pupa metamorphosizing into an adult mite. Euh. Puberty sucks as any species.
His adjustment to a new body had been traumatic, but what had been more shocking was that he was not alone. As a man he had no idea that mites could communicate so well. The form of mite language is hard to describe in human terms, though needless to say it is more advanced and complex. Older mites had told him that the huamn form was the first stage of life for most beings. There was no particular order or hierarchy of beings you could be - after that first primal stage, you reincarnated to learn a specific lesson.
As he swayed gently on the tip of the carpet fiber, Freddy just wished that lesson wasn't as mundane as cleaning up his toe clippings. In the stale air above the carpet he watched his former wife scream at his former body.
In the last life, Freddy had been a man leaving toenail clippings on the floor. His wife Doreen screamed at him every time she caught him clipping his nails without collecting the bits. It must have bothered her more than he realized because he was sure that she had poisoned him slowly. The last few days he remembered as a man were spent in the hospital with puzzled doctors running all sorts of toxicology tests.
When he woke up he found himself eating his way out of an egg sac. It was a very confusing time. He was shocked to discover that he had six legs. He didn't even want to think back to the time he spent in a pupa metamorphosizing into an adult mite. Euh. Puberty sucks as any species.
His adjustment to a new body had been traumatic, but what had been more shocking was that he was not alone. As a man he had no idea that mites could communicate so well. The form of mite language is hard to describe in human terms, though needless to say it is more advanced and complex. Older mites had told him that the huamn form was the first stage of life for most beings. There was no particular order or hierarchy of beings you could be - after that first primal stage, you reincarnated to learn a specific lesson.
As he swayed gently on the tip of the carpet fiber, Freddy just wished that lesson wasn't as mundane as cleaning up his toe clippings. In the stale air above the carpet he watched his former wife scream at his former body.
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