Thursday! The E-Zine for January 24, 2024

V4, I9

Well, here we are! Wednesday, which of course is Thursday! Wednesday and aren’t we glad to be here? I am. Though I have many frustrations with my writing “career”, I am always glad I can be here to share some of my work with you.

Now, I did give you a light warning last week about the poems here. They are a bit darker and spiced more subtly with nightmare than my usual stuff. Maybe that’s for you but maybe it isn’t. If not, remember that you can use the links to jump to each of the other stories. I’ve even added links to bring you back up here if you’d rather travel Thursday! quickly. It could be I’m overdoing the caution here, but this is who I am. You knew that already, right?

Yeah. You did. I’m not subtle.

A quick note or two about the stories. They’re older and you might remember them from my web site in a year past, but don’t let that stop you! I’ve done a couple neessary and clever revisions that gave them some extra heft. They’re better than you might remember¹, if you remember them. Also, it’s a fair bet one of them will show up in next week’s issue as an audio recording. It’ll be fun!

Cool? Cool. Let’s go.

Poems

• Five Haiku About the Abandoned House on Illmet Lane

Stories

• When A Villain Retires

• Fifty-Five in a Row

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Five Haiku About the Abandoned House on Illmet Lane

Leaves obscure our paths
Shadows move against the wind.
Night of the no-moon.

Smell of rotting leaves
From centuries-barren trees.
It knows you are here. 

Whispers from the walls
Where nothing living dares walk.
Try not to listen.

Who called your name, child?
A hungry room? The dust swirls.
There, a hand, a mouth.

The gallows are full
Bodies swing from sturdy oaks
Crows sing, “Come and dine.”

When A Villain Retires

A volcano lair was trite, the villains told Baron Kaboom as they crowded around the conference table and scarfed down the sandwiches he provided. A modern genius — a progressive genius — uses modern methods, they said, in tones that fairly screamed "Get with it, old man!". Social engineering. Memes. Preference algorithms. Subtle keywords. That last one came from Mesmero, the chair of this month’s meeting. He’d know, Baron Kaboom thought. His minions had been the first to infiltrate social media platforms, back when you could choose a Top Eight and had to fashion your own retweets, like cave-loving savages! And didn't he love to talk about that at every monthly meeting? In time, he'd pulled the others to the new, hot platforms, Why, even The Living Stench had his own troll farm that raked in a million dollars a month.

Baron Kaboom just stood there, a dumpy, middle-aged, bespectacled man in his beloved sky blue laboratory coat as one by one, the twelve other members of the League for Eternal World Domination explained to him just how far behind the times he was and why he was no longer welcome in their ranks. It never occurred to them they stood in his conference room, eating the food he prepared, or if it had, they never acted even the least bit chagrined. When they had finished their lectures, ate the last crustless delicacy, and finally voted to rescind his membership, he nodded his head, turned his back on all he had built over half a century, and left.

They could have the volcano lair, he thought as his escape craft shot toward the clouds. He had bought a cabin in Virginia under his real name, Alfred Kaboomishire, and while there wasn’t room for a robot army there, the view of the mountains was quite lovely. Maybe he’d hollow one of them out one day. Maybe. But not any time soon. He’d take a little while to relax, contemplate what his friends had said, and enjoy his retirement. The future would still be there. He still had plenty of time. And with that, he reckoned it was time for the one last thing he needed to do. With a satisfied smile he pressed a large red button on his armrest and chuckled — the only sound he had made during the entire ordeal. Might as well secure that future now.

Behind him, the top third of the volcano burst into smoke and ash as his finest doomsday device, the Quantum Detangler, ignited a hellish inferno and spread the molecules of his would-be rivals across ten different dimensions.

(Photo Credit: ELG21 on Pixabay)

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Fifty-Five in a Row

“Check.”

The robed figure seated across from Darnell studied the board. Its shoulders rose and fell in an impossible sigh. A skeletal hand reached out and tipped the white king.

Darnell leaned back. “That’s fifty-five. I won every one of them, right?” Darnell asked. The figure nodded and stood..

“You sure?” He looked down at the wreckage, hoping to see…something. You wouldn’t–”

A low, awful sound came from the hood. “No”, Darnell said. “I don’t guess you’d cheat.” He stood and clapped his hands. “I knew all that playin’ chess instead of going’ to school would pay off in the end. This…is the end, right?” A bony hand fell on his shoulder and guided him toward a sudden pearlescent glimmer. “Yeah,” he said with a tired sigh. “At least Mama would be proud. You think?”

Death nodded.

In the ravine, fifty-five children climbed unharmed from a ruined school bus.

(Photo Credit: Nachrichten_muc on Pixabay)

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1. Well, I think so, at least!