Mildly Odd Stories

"Everything, Including the Kitchen, Sinks"

2008-11-26T21:15:00.001-08:00

My latest - and probably one of my favorite - microfictions. I was going through a bit of an existential realization when I wrote it. The whole concept is based on a bulletin a friend of mine posted on MySpace one day making fun of grammatical errors.

Lazy Sunday. Severely lazy Sunday. More so than ever I've had before.

Lazy Sunday.

Yesterday was spent fixing the legs on my couch in the living room. You see, they broke when a rather large television was placed on it by a moronic friend of mine. He stopped by to deliver the television, and placed it on my wimpy little couch. The legs snapped and the television fell off and dented my table. Of course, the television was dented up a bit: it was one of those plasma screens, so when we turned it on, there was a giant spot of dead pixels in the middle. Oh yes, he's quite a brilliant fellow. I keep him around mostly to make myself feel better about my piteous existence. That's around the only reason he HAS friends. It just makes us – people in general – feel better about ourselves to see someone so hideously idiotic fail at life. We are all just sadists in the end.

So after that horrendous incident, which took a good few hours – 17 to be exact. I didn't get to eat until rather late. (I'm bad about finishing jobs…I won't stop until they are done.) – I went off to bed and managed to pass out fully…which is strange because normally I have terrible, terrible insomnia. You see, because of it, I don't have dreams, since by the time I finally fall asleep, my brain just plain shuts down fully. No REM sleep…just unconsciousness. Kind of like fainting.

But that night was different. I must have had a dream…either that or someone injected my veins with a small infusion of magic mushroom, because my room started to feel…feel as if it was falling. Sinking, so to say. A whole new meaning to having a sinking feeling. It was like a boat that had hit an iceberg. So, in order to save my already-insane mind, I checked in the morning. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary…except for the giant hole in the floor. And the fact that the floor now slanted towards said hole. Nope, nothing out of the ordinary.

So after disagreeing that the hole existed, I wandered into the kitchen to pour myself a rather large glass of caffeine pills dissolved in Mountain Dew and cooked up some sausage and warmed up a biscuit. Perfect recipe for morning heartburn. After the microwave beeped and I took out the biscuit and sausage, I combined the two into one "hearty" breakfast food. I took a few bites before I gave up and tossed the whole thing and downed the extra-caffeinated soda, instantly demolishing most of the lining of my esophagus and perking my energy levels right up, getting me even further addicted to that delightful drug we all know and love. Excuse me for one moment; I need an Advil due to that addiction. I haven't had any caffeine in a few hours. God, it hurts. So where was I? Ah, yes, the soda. Well I finished my drink and then took a seat on my favorite wicker chair. Well to be honest, I could never be too certain if it was the same seat. I move then around when I can't sleep sometimes. Sort of a mentally suicidal chairs. No music involved. In any case, I think this was my favorite one…. I sat and stared out the kitchen window and felt a slight shock. I felt things shift around, and watched as my special china – given to me as a wedding present (even though I didn't even have a girlfriend at the time) by my niece – fall onto the floor and shatter into many pieces. Luckily it was the kind you could buy at a Bed, Bath, & Beyond for around ten dollars, so it was all good. I think I saw a little bit of her soul come out of those plates though. Didn't she die three days after this incident? I forget; I'll have to call my brother later and ask. It's been five, you know…since this incident that is. Well anyways I turned my head and saw everything just slide down towards the center of the room. Even myself in my favorite wicker chair…which made me angry. I really like this chair and I'd rather it not fall into that strange pit forming in the middle of my kitchen. Stupid pit…stop trying to eat my chair. And my china. And my bluejay….wait hold on a second I never had a blue jay…it was a sparrow. Sorry, like I said, no caffeine this morning. So I stood up and took action! I walked towards the slipping coffee maker and moved it onto what level ground there was – the window sill – and started it, grabbing one of my mugs before it slid off to certain doom and waited till the machine warmed up. By the time it was done everything had fallen into the hole. I glared at it, told it that I disavowed knowledge of its existence and drank my coffee. I walked around the nonexistent hole and back into the living room, where another nonexistent hole sat in place of my coffee table. I sat on the couch, precariously perched on an nonexistent ledge and drank my coffee, turning on the television, which somehow didn't fall down. I ignored the dead spot on the screen and found nothing interesting on, so I flipped it off and walked to my room to get a book that was still alive. It was a rather boring book actually, so after the first couple of pages, I tossed it in the hole that wasn't really there. It seemed happy, if a giant, black, gaping maw of … something can seem happy.

In any manner, I lay down, hoping to get a nap in (which I knew I wouldn't) when I heard a louder noise. I wandered out and around the holes and found out the entire kitchen was now gone. I figured that, though they weren't really there, maybe I needed to leave the house. Luckily I noticed – through the large missing gap in my house – that the air was nice and cool. A good day for a picnic. Shame the kitchen was missing.

After this, the floor caved in underneath me and I fell. I think I'm still falling, actually, I'm not certain. All I have is this bottle of Advil and the clothes on my back and my cell phone, which, at the moment, is not charged. As I said earlier I used it to call my brother and let him know I was falling down a potentially bottomless pit. He said ok and that he would tell our mother, who, according to him, promptly sent out a greeting card of apologies to my mailbox, which, based on the size of the hole, is all that is left of…oh wait here it comes now. Let me check the mail…yep here is her card. How sweet of her. I love that dear woman. I hope she lives for some time. So yes, now here I am, falling down a pit, talking to very fat pigeon that somehow ended up down here with me. I hope you don't mind me talking so much. It's a nervous habit, yes? Was that coo a, "I understand," or a "Shut the crap up, you stupid human?" I never quite learned pigeon. Just sparrow.

Everything, Including the Kitchen, Sinks by Jeff Queen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

"The Parade Worker"

2008-11-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

This story is generally a favorite among my stranger friends, this story is set in one warped version of our own.

Call me Peter. I work janitorial duty mostly. Cleaning trash, picking up things left around, stuff like that. It’s a pretty simple job, but it can get a little messy. For example, the parades. The parades are always messy. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people line the roads to watch the floats pass them by. They shouldn’t be there...the parades shouldn’t be there anymore. It’s sort of purposeless. Just something for the suffocating masses to watch as their time passes them by like those lovely, pretty floats do. But every three month there is a parade. And every three months there is a giant mess. And every three months I have to clean that mess, along with the rest of the crew. And every three months it happens again. It’s pretty endless, but you get used to it.
Today’s parade was - as is the norm - for no reason. The council was sure it was someone’s birthday in the city, so they decided to dedicated to whom ever’s birthday it was. One year closer to death, as the common saying went. One year closer until you get out of a drab, gray existence. And me and my broom sweep away that trash that is left by everyone here. It’s annoying, but as I said, you get used to it.
The parade had started by the time I arrived. I found my favorite spot - atop a long statue of the mayor when he was alive, before the council took over in the coup - and stared out across the parade grounds. People were cheering and shouting and throwing things and eating and watching and fading into the endless mass of people, just like every time. The first float - the traditional image of the Council, dressed in their dark capes and white solid masks - had passed down the corner already. I hadn’t missed it. I see it everytime after all.
Around the fifth float - a heavy and highly sparkly float with the local Youth League members on top of it - the bombs went off. It was normally the firth float, or the seventh. It depended on how anxious the attackers were. The children were blown to pieces again, and one girl’s arm grazed my hair. Not the first time that has happened, though last time it was part of a brain and not a limb. I jumped down off my statue and meandered down to the parade route and began to push the float pieces to the side, and the bodies into a separate pile for later burning. I would feel sorry for them, but after fours years of a bomb every three months, you’d think parents wouldn’t put their children on the fifth float. Some people just don’t learn.
After the crew and I swept the bodies away into their bloody pile and the float into its torn, but still shiny, one, we jumped back to our spots and the parade continued. The crowd cheered as always. Not for us of course, we were just janitors. They loved a good light show though. The big explosion was always the highlight of the parade. It was routine, and even the attackers found it a bit boring lately. Sometimes they’d change the float or the materials involved in the explosion. Last parade they injected mustard gas into the air with the bomb. We finally got to use our gas masks that day. I always though I looked pretty nifty in one of those, so it made me smile while I put people out of their misery with a shotgun to the skull. Worked quick normally, except that one boy who somehow lived and was screaming as we threw him into the pile. I think he was still alive when the fire was lit too. Oh well, least he’s gone now; that boy could cry alright, even though most of his throat led to open air. It’s odd watching throat muscles throb with disembodied yells coming from deep in that bloody pit. I tried to draw it once, but I couldn’t quite catch the image of it. I would have made a lot of money with that drawing had I been able to. Curse my shaky hands.
So the parade ended as always. Surprisingly only fifty deaths this time. Normally it was around seventy. Twenty kids off floats five and six, which got caught in the blast, and the rest of the injuries were bystanders. We swept off the cement and hosed out the blood, making the parade route all nice and clean for the next one in three months. It would be the same as always. Always routine. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m a bit hungry and have my sandwich here. Ham on rye. One of my favorites, you know?

The Parade Worker by Jeff Queen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

"Who are We Fighting?"

2008-11-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

This is actually one of the first stories I wrote. However, I lost it ages back since it was posted on an old forum I used to belong to. I miraculously remembered the layout and words used for the most part, and so I rewrote it a few months back.

The two soldiers sat on a bench at the spaceport, waiting for their shipment. A military surveillance camera recorded their conversation.

"Hey Joe…what exactly are we fighting for?" the taller of the two asked. Joe looked at his feet for a bit and the stared at the roof, blinking heavily in thought. "To be honest…I don't know." The other man cocked his head at the roof as well and scrunched his eyebrows up. "Well, I won't worry about it much. All I know is that I'm told to fight, and that's what I'm going to do, eh?" Joe chuckled and nodded in agreement, still staring at the roof. It was Joe's turn for a question: "Carl…hey did they tell you who we are fighting this time? I don't remember the name. Some outer-system alien sect, right?"

The taller man adjusted the large pack on his back to release pressure on his neck and sighed. "Not sure of the name or whatever, but what I do know is that they told us they are big and ugly. Seems they hate Earth for some reason, rape our women when they get the chance; like to eat babies for snacks." Joe scratched at his head where he could reach under the heavy helmet and started, but stopped. He opened his mouth again and thought hard. "But hey, if they's aliens…how are they going to rape our women. I mean, they can't be the same, autonimcally, er…anatomically that is. I mean goodness, they're aliens. They probably reproduce by throwing liquid metal at each others faces or some junk like that." The other man looked at his watch before answering with an offhanded tone. "I don't know, Joe. The United Earth Military Forces don't pay us to think, they pay us to get in there and shoot." "But at what! We don't even know what we are fighting! I mean, every time we get "in there" we never even see the enemy. We see suits that shoot right at us. We burn those bodies in acid, so we never know what we are fighting!" Joe breathed in exasperation. "Christ, man, let it go. Who care what we're fighting. We're getting paid and we get to shoot things. Hell, none of the crews come back because they get sent off to vacation worlds. Never seen anyone from third battalion come back yet. They went in before us the last time, remember? Never did see their set up…just the alien base down in the canyon. Those aliens got SpecTents that look just like ours, it's odd, ya know. Must be pretty advanced aliens, eh?"

Joe stood up at that and stared hard at the floor. "Dan…something…something just doesn't seem right. I mean, how come every time we go in second, the first crew never appears again, and we never get vacation time. This'll be the first time we've gone in first." He paused and thumbed his chin. "Maybe now we'll get to visit one of those vacation worlds. Get a nice spa bath with a pretty lady cleaning my hair, getting out all that dust, huh?" Dan nodded. "Sounds like a nice plan. Wouldn't mind getting a nice lady cleaning me. I mean, heck, I haven't seen a woman in…well quite some time." Joe shook his head and sighed again. "Well, I'm going to stop worrying over it. Hey, by the way, Dan, did you hear, the global population has gone down a good bit since the draft was started. The economists say it's getting nearly manageable. Though I have noticed that there has been considerable amount of widows lying around. Been told that their husbands were killed in action by the aliens, and their sons had to be careful and sign up for early practice in order to protect their mothers and themselves in case the aliens invaded and tried to breed with the women." Dan shoved his pack onto the bench with a loud thud. "Yeah, I heard something about that. Some of the ones I heard about were third battalion boys. Still can't believe those aliens have the same type of rifles we have. Must be taking them from the dead soldiers and using them or something." Dan mumbled under his breath something about damn aliens posing off the Terrans. Joe looked over at the clock on the wall, not having a fancy watch like Dan's. "4:00 am, Dan. I think they said the ship'll be arriving here soon so..." Joe was cut off by a loud slamming sound. The vessel had connected to the airlock and the other soldiers began trudging into the entryway. "Well, never mind then, Dan. Looks like I spoke too soon." The two men shouldered their packs to the best comfortable positions they could and walked into the hatch. The camera recorded the hatch closing and the vessel could be heard taking off as the next set of soldiers walked in and sat on the benches.
The tape stops here.

Who are We Fighting? by Jeff Queen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

"Dreamers"

2008-11-26T21:06:00.000-08:00

A short story that I wrote after reading Alice in Wonderland and having little sleep. My mind was quite a strange haze. Oh, and before people rant against it: yes, the ending is supposed to be like that.

The light grew brighter as I entered the roofless room. Three men sat on a platform in the center; all facing each other, all asleep. A slowly moving archway spun over them attached to a spinning dais below the platform. A blue light blinked on and off on it, slightly drawing me into a hypnotic state before I was quite awakened by a young woman of around twenty-two. Her brown eyes stared into mine questioningly for but a second before inquiring as to who I was. I said I was simply visiting, passing by. She nodded, the look still in her eyes as she wandered around through the wall beside me. I blinked at the wall and realized one of the two - the woman or the wall - was a hologram. I discovered after bumping face-first into the wall that it must be the woman. I called for her with a soft yell of "Ma'am?" and she appeared beside me and looked at me sideways with a look of slight frustration in her eyes. I asked what in Heaven's name this room was. Her eyebrows rose as she wandered towards the middle, myself following her behind. "These men," she started, "are not real." I cocked my head, though she wasn't looking, and inquired, "Holograms?" She turned with a swish of her hair and looked at me sadly. "No. Each of them is real in a sense. The only oddity is that they only exist because of each other. Each one is dreaming of the other two, and so forth through the three. Were any of them to awake, all three would cease to be." I scratched my head at this and asked if she was a dream as well, and she said she was. She was her own dream. "You see," she began," I am a figment of my own imagination. I think, therefore I am!" A slight giggle escaped her mouth as she wandered back into the wall.

It was all quite discomforting to me to realize that all I was seeing was dreams of dreams of dreams of dreams. Rather confusing, at best. I raised my hand to look at it in the sun and stared at it, wondering if I too was a dream of someone, or my self perhaps. No, I concluded, I was real. I had wandered into here. Or maybe I was just dreaming this. I pinched at my own arm and nothing happened, so I figured I must be real. I quietly walked to the middle and looked over at the men as the archway passed and gave them a good viewing. Each one seemed around thirty-five or so, and each had a beard of a different type: one red and long and thin, one brown and short and curled at the end, and one square and short and purple and wide. Their eyes twitched as eyes do during the REM stage of sleep.

Stepping away before the archway ran into my head, I sat down on the floor and stared into the sun. After looking back down and blinking away the aberrations in my vision, I found myself on the platform, in between the three men. I attempted to stand, but I could not. It was as if I was attached to the floor and had been there for my whole life. I turned my head this way and that to look at the three men and wondered if they had placed me here and what had happened to that dream girl. I called for her but was hushed by a voice from behind my ear. The girl was there and looking at me like I was insane. "Are you crazy?" she whispered. "If you wake them, who knows if you might disappear. You are in the center after all. Perhaps they are dreaming of you, of perhaps you of them, or all of the above. Who could know. It's never been done before, waking the three." She gave a stare at the sun and faded into nothing once more.

This had all gotten out of hand and my mind was distraught with confusion. I figured I must either leave the room or take my own life. The latter would be rather hard to do since I was centered and quite stuck to a platform in the middle of a smooth-walled room in between three unshaven sleeping males. The former was quite impossible as well, due to the exact circumstances I previously mentioned. I gave a sigh and gathered my thoughts the best I could to come up with a solution. My answer came in one simple form: wake the men and see if I would be released. I looked around for the girl and reached over and slapped the red bearded fellow across the face, to which he mumbled and his eyes flicked open for but a second and

Dreamers by Jeff Queen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

"Pests"

2008-11-26T21:03:00.000-08:00

Starting off with my older stories first. This is "Pests". It isn't a short story so much as a microfiction.

Twenty minutes. No, twenty-two now. Staring at that cursed mosquito. I mean cursed in a most literal sense: I had been plotting ways to kill it for…twenty-two minutes now. I hated mosquitoes. Nasty, disease carrying, vampiric, little jerks. The demonic thing had been sitting in the same spot for twenty-three minutes, staring into my soul with eyes I couldn't see from my bed. I should be in bed – I have a wedding to go to tomorrow – but the mosquito forces me to keep an ever-vigilant eye. I debate: spray the thing with hairspray and when it falls, light it on fire, following it up with my shoe, or whip it with my belt off my roof and then light it on fire and put it out with my shoe…or maybe combine the these and whip it, spray it, light it up, and then crush it. I always did have that shotgun…no…I'd rather not explain to the police why I was firing a gun at 1:28 in the morning. They'd call the boys in white on me.
Twenty-nine minutes now. I stare harder, near swearing it winked at me. It was tempting me. The clock changes once more in front of me, the red blur changing from a two to a three. I jump up with resolve and grab my belt, a can of hairspray from my small vanity, and a lighter from the drawer. I tuck the can and lighter in the crook of my arm and raise my heavy hammer and bring it crushing down on the mosquito like the mighty Thor. The clock changes the hammer back into a belt and the mosquito is twitching on the ground. I drown the bug in Aquanet and light it on fire, a smile rising to my lips as it sphvitzes out before dying into ashes like a phoenix. I grab my shoe and grind them into my rug; I'll clean it later.
Victorious in my defeat of the deadly dragon, I lay my sword and shield to the side and throw down my armor and sink into the bed. Time for sleep.
I wake at 10:08. The wedding is at 3:00. I have time, so I get up and examine the woven wool battlefield with disgust and throw on my day clothes; later I have to wear that stupid tuxedo. I stare at the tie on my chair with more disgust than the stain on the rug.
Trance-like, I move to the window and open the blinds, letting in the sun. I look up and something seems wrong. Oh, maybe it's the giant eye. Wait…eyes…why are there huge eyes outside my window…and why are they attached to a body with arms. Is that a shoe? Wait, hold up...when did I grow wings?

Pests by Jeff Queen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Welcome to Mildly Odd Stories!

2008-11-26T20:54:00.001-08:00

Welcome one and all. I am Jeffrey Queen, and this blog will serve for me to place my stories - short, serialized, or long - on for all to read. Occasionally I may link to other sites with interesting things to read. I hope you enjoy your time spent here!