Category: Fiction

The Cube: Ch. 6, Billah

I lifted my hand up and stroked the wall. The wall rippled and a warm glow emanated on the walls. “That’s more like it,” Rolph said. “Billah is happy you have chosen to get along.” “I haven’t. I just wanted to see what she would do,” I said.

…

The Cube rocked back and forth. I looked outside and saw that the man on the tractor was pushing against the cube with the tractor. “I guess I need to let him know we’re okay,” I said. “I’ll tell him,” said Johnny. Johnny ran up the stairs and popped his head out of the hatch. “Wayne!” he said. “We’re okay! Don’t hurt the cube.” “Okay,” said Wayne, the man on the tractor. “Glad you are alright.”

…

“Would you like to come inside?” Johnny asked. At that, a door appeared on the side of the cube. “Sure I would,” said Wayne. “I’d like to know what makes this thing tick!” The door opened and Wayne walked right in. “Wow!” he said. “This thing is weird!” “It’s a living thing, Mr. Wayne,” I said.

…

The Cube: Ch. 5, Rolph

“I am a cyborg, as well,” the man in the lab coat said. “I identify with the name, Rolph.” “Okay, Rolph, why don’t you and your cube head back to wherever you came from and leave us alone?” “I’m not sure the boy shares your sentiment,” Rolph said. “He seems to enjoy us.” “He’s too young to understand,” I said. “I don’t comprehend your animosity,” Rolph said. “We mean you no harm. We’re simply studying plants, animals and humans on this planet.”

…

“So you’re from another planet?” I said. “Yes, but in a different, what you would call, galaxy. Too distant to explain. We traveled here to study life and organisms that exist separate from machines. That’s why we landed in this meadow. This forest is full of life. Johnny understood us immediately. I think it is because he is so young. He does not have such a judging mind.”

…

“What about your head-sucking cube? What was it trying to do to Johnny?” I said. “It was just feeling him. The cube would have put him back,” Rolph said. “Does the cube have a name like you do?” I asked. “Yes, actually. Her name is Billah. She speaks through the computer, but prefers to communicate with light and touch.”

…

The Cube: Ch. 4, Inside

I scurried over to the door and ran down the steps before it closed. Once I reached the floor, I looked up and around me. The interior walls were a translucent white, with buttons like number pads and other areas sensitive to the touch. The buttons were not keys, but rather just slight indentations on the wall.

…

In a chair beside the staircase sat the little boy. He looked fine. No harm had come to him in the strange evaporating he had done when the man in the lab coat shined the light on him. I could see through the outer wall to the meadow outside. The man on the tractor still sat on it and seemed not to be bothered at what had taken place before him.

…

There was a lab table along the wall. I put my hand on it and a light flashed inside it and it glowed at my touch. The man in the lab coat appeared and held a chair in his hands. “Would you care to have a seat?” he asked, in a friendly tone. “No, thanks,” I said. “Who are you and why are you here?” I asked. “I should ask the same of you, considering you’re in my cube,” he said with a smile.

…

“What do you intend to do with the boy?” I asked. “Why, nothing at all. I was simply saving him from you.” “What do you mean?” I said. “That’s what I was trying to do,” I said. “He could have been injured if the wall had broken,” he said. “He was not in any danger until you started attacking the cube.” “What is this thing? Is it alive?” I said. “It is a cyborg, half animal, half machine. The living tissue is able to change itself into any form necessary.”

…

The Cube: Ch. 3, The Cube

As the boy hugged the cube, his head started to sink into the cube, at first just making a dent in the wall, then starting to pass through the wall. The boy didn’t seem alarmed, but I was sure he could suffocate if his head sunk into the cube much farther. I ran over to his wagon and picked up the toaster, then threw it at the front of the cube. The wall of the cube flexed back and forth, and the toaster bounced off and fell to the ground.

…

By now, the boy’s head was about halfway absorbed into the side of the cube. I was determined to help him. I took ahold of the handle to the wagon, and swinging the wagon towards the cube, I hoped to damage the cube. I don’t know if it was my adrenaline or the urgency with which I did it, but after the wagon hit and the wall flexed back and forth, the glass wall cracked.

…

A door opened at the top of the cube, and, walking up a stairway, a man emerged. He was bald, wore eyeglasses, and a white lab coat. He opened his mouth and a light shown out. He focused on the boy, shining the light on him. As soon as the light covered him, the boy disappeared. “Hey! What did you do to him?” I yelled. The man walked back down the stairs into the cube. Before the door closed, I hoisted myself up onto the cube with my hands, swinging my feet up onto the top.

…

The Cube: Ch. 2, The Hug

Just then I heard a child singing a children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me”, I think it was. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw a young boy, probably around five or six years old, walking out of the woods, pulling a red wagon with a toaster sitting in it. The boy had stringy blonde hair and his face was red from the sun.

…

” Well, Johnny, what are you up to?” the man on the tractor asked. “I’m here to fix the white box,” the boy replied. At that, I decided to speak up. “But all you have is a wagon and a toaster!” I exclaimed. “I don’t plan to use these,” he said. “I only need my hands,” he said, holding them up as if we didn’t know what hands were. I decided to play along. “What are you going to do?” I asked. “Give it a hug,” he said, with a toothy grin.

…

“That sounds good,” I said. “Just be careful.” The little boy wrinkled his brow at my apparently ridiculous show of caution and hurried over to the “white box” and stood at the corner to my right. He then leaned in and put his arms up against the walls of the cube. He rested his red cheek on the wall and the wall rippled slightly from his cheek towards the center of the front facing us. This seemed to please the little boy, because he leaned back to watch it with a big smile, then returned to “hugging” the box.

…

The Cube: Ch. 1, A Meeting

I was in a green forest meadow. All of a sudden, a clear glass cube descended from the sky and landed in the middle of the meadow. There were no rocket engines or propellers or any other human means of aircraft mobility. It had just hovered there, as if a giant had it in the palm of his hand and slowly set it down on the ground.

…

As I stood there watching, a doe came out of the woods and walked up to the cube. It sniffed at it, then licked it a bit, as if it was a large ice cube. Then a squirrel chased another squirrel across a tree limb and then the one in front leapt into the air and over to the top of the cube. When it landed, it slid across the top of the cube and fell down over the other side, onto the grass.

…

There was a humming noise, then the sound of gears shifting and wheels turning, and a man in denim overalls and a red shirt on a tractor came into the clearing, crunching over the fallen limbs and leaves on the meadow floor. The man had a straw hat on his head, and a smoking pipe in his mouth. “Hello, friends!” he said. I looked around and didn’t see any other people, so I guess he was including the wild animals.

…

The God Who Stopped Loving Herself

   
The universe is a mystery to me. I do believe there must have been one being who must have created it. My question is, why? In a sense, it is related to why we love other human beings. We love, simply because we want to. We love, we create, because it soothes our souls. It reminds us that we are not alone. There is such great fulfillment in each act of love, a kind of spiritual love, which can be objective and subjective, understanding and empathetic. We always want to mess things up by over-thinking everything, with negative thoughts.Having said that, I think that first being of the universe, despite either being independent in existence, or composed of an infinite amount of objects and beings, all connected, like the Earth and all its creative wonders, became lonely. With love, comes pain, the pain of separation, rejection, betrayal, etc. Then comes fear. Then anger. I think that being should not have, in the act of creating the universe, allowed any part of that being’s self to be separated into any other additional beings. We have all spent our entire lives trying to return to that eternal, everlasting womb. 

But, I think I understand why God did it. Because feeling alone, in any form of existence one can imagine, is the most painful experience, in all of life. I believe, in my heart, what happened, was that she stopped loving herself. God lost an appreciation for her infinite gifts. She lost her fellowship with the glory of her Creation, which began long before Earth. She forgot who she was. But she also remembered that she loved her children: planets, Suns, galaxies. She began to stretch her imagination, until she came up with the idea of human beings. These beings would be the roughest creation she made. She was taking a risk. These humans would have an intellect, second only to hers. But their hearts could be as soft as pudding, or as hard as stone. The difference would be determined by two concepts: the ability to trust or mistrust, influenced heavily in childhood, and the choices each human made, each day, all day long, for the rest of their entire lives.

What Seems to Be

And there were little things, powerful things. Stop! Turn back! I scream, but there is no one to hear. No one left in this world who cares. It is the end, above and below. All things come to a stop. There is no air. Nothing moves at all. I don’t see any light, but neither is it dark. The world is a blank surface, empty, where there is nothing to do, nothing to be.

And then, just as sudden,  all begins to be again. There is movement all around, scurrying. Across the surface, things cling, to anything, whatever is nearby. Can I exist again? Can I be? I want to feel the rhythm of life in my body. I concentrate now, focusing on my breathing. I feel the warmth in my chest, and the coldness of my feet. There is much movement: a squirrel climbs up a tree. A breeze pushes into my hair, gently swaying a few locks across my forehead. I think about the blood pulsing through my body. I want to say I am empty, but instead, I realize, I am full. I am content.

A few moments pass, and I just stand there. I look around. I am standing in my front yard. I must be weird. I am alone, except for God’s creatures, doing as they always do. I think about myself instead, which is my tendency. I am embarrassed. How long have I been standing out here? Have things happened as they seem, or was it all in my head? I look around again, gazing down the street. I see a neighbor, a few houses down, getting into their car. I wave, but he takes no notice, which is normal. Why do neighbors wave to each other, despite the fact that they have never spoken a word? I guess it makes us feel like we are giving something back, saying thanks for being there, thanks for never bothering me, thanks for being you. It all runs together. It is a seemless tapestry that has its own beauty, in its simplicity. Really, it doesn’t bother me. It is almost a comfort, staying in my own private space. I prefer to be in my own world, without interruption.

Now, to continue. How will I move on, now that the world has returned to me? So much has happened, and, yet, from the looks of it, nothing at all. It must have been an an illusion. Perhaps a better word is hallucination. Am I schizophrenic? I dismiss that possibility, for, at the least, it makes me uncomfortable. How many things passing through our minds each day do we dismiss for the benefit of our own comfort, our own convenience? So trivial, so irresponsible. I wonder.

A Spooky Night

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One night,
I walked out my front door,
And stepped…
On a knife.

What was a knife
Doing on my walkway?
That’s when I heard it:
Heavy breathing,

Behind me!
I thought quickly.
If I turn around
Really fast,

Maybe…no.
That wouldn’t work.
My next idea
Was to take off running.

So I did.
I ran and ran.
Even as I ran,
I could still hear it.

Heavy breathing!
As I passed by a tree,
I reached out
And broke off a limb.

It wouldn’t be much,
But I needed something
With which to defend myself.
I turned around, really fast,

And yelled out, “Ha!”
I didn’t see anyone behind me.
I looked down,
And there was my

Smiling golden retriever,
Buddy, panting away.
“You!” I shouted.
“You scared me

Half to death!”
Buddy just smiled
And wagged his tail.
He didn’t understand.

But I was relieved.
That’s when I thought of it.
The knife.
I knew there was a knife

On my walkway.
I walked, slowly,
Back to my walkway,
Trying to catch my breath.

I looked down,
Right where I had seen it.
There it was!
A dog comb.

I must have left it there,
Earlier that afternoon,
When I was out front,
Brushing Buddy.

All this Halloween stuff
Had gone to my head!
I went back inside,
And ate some candy,

That I had bought
For kids on Halloween.
At least this stupid holiday
Was good for something!