Bug

Joseph had heard about the old man from the local tavern. "Go to him. He can get rid of your pain."

When he entered the old man's shop, which was stuffed with odd items such as the preserved foetus of an armadillo, bones of a dodo and the preserved body of a narwhal, he knew this would be the place. Joseph found the old man in the back room, mulling over his records. He wore a thick coat, and was quite heavyset. He peered at Joseph from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

"What do you want?" The old man said.

"I hear you have a cure for me," said Joseph.

"I am not a doctor."

"It is not medicine I need. I seek a way to end the pain in my heart," Joseph said.

The old man looked up from his book. "Come with me," he said. "Sit down."

Joseph sat on a heavy mahogany chair, wiping the dust away with his hands. The old man put down his book.

"It was a girl?"

"Yes," said Joseph. Speaking about it bought a stab of pain in his heart. "She chose another."

The old man nodded.

"Can you make it stop? Can you?" Joseph said, his voice pleading. "I have not had a good night's sleep. I have destroyed all my pictures of her yet she is etched into my mind like a brand."

He sighed a long sigh. Then his hands moved to his chest, and he unbuttoned his shirt.

"Look," he said. Upon his chest was a odd looking thing; a mechanical bug. "It has rested here, for thirty, forty years."

"I was like you once. My heart was cursed, destroyed by another woman. But once I had taken the bug from its previous owner, I felt no more pain. No pain, no feeling of any sort. It has helped me become a reasonably successful businessman; empathy is a weakness, as well as love," he said.

"So can I have it?" Joseph said.

"On one condition. Find out what has happened to the woman who made me wear this for decades. Once I know, I will turn it over to you," he said.

Joseph nodded. The woman's name was Mary of Astoria. She would now be almost 60. After many months, Joseph tracked her down. She was now residing in a small town, raising cattle. She had borne four children, and her husband was a physician. She looked happy, and Joseph guessed as much. She mentioned the old man's name, and she did not remember it.

Joseph went back to the old man with what he had discovered. The book keeper nodded. He then opened his shirt, put his hand on the bug, and extracted it. With his hands shaking, he held the bug out for Joseph. Abruptly, the man started to cry, shedding large fat tears.

Joseph took the bug in his hand. It still dripped blood from its metallic teeth. He held it up to the light. The old man was collapsing. The grief was too much; crushing him. The motors in the beetle clicked urgently. Joseph opened his shirt. He was about to bring it closer, when suddenly his palm closed, crushing the beetle. The engines within it whirred in protest as thick grey liquid seeped through his fingers. The old man sighed one last time, and died. Joseph looked around the shop, threw a blanket over him, and left, even as the rotors of the bug turned one last time.

The bookworm

The bookworm now just ate the words, and left the page itself untouched. When killed, the words would spew out, in a fountain, and one had to put them back together again to reconstruct what had been eaten. One must exercise extreme care when dealing with bookworms that have resided in encyclopedias and romance novels for a long, for there is the danger of being gravely injured by words such as 'superfluous' and 'inenebriated'. One bookworm exterminator was decapitated by the word 'triskaidekaphobia', by a particular fat bookworm that had lived in a psychology professor's shelves for more than two decades.

The stallion

The horse-thief had been watching the black horse for hours. It was a magnificent animal, with hair as black as night and the finest he had seen. He approached cautiously. It was wild and untamed, of that he was sure. It would fetch enough for him to drink for at least three months at the inn.

He approached slowly. The horse did not move. He jumped on it and grabbed its mane. It let out a mighty neigh, almost a roar. It twisted and jumped wildly, and the thief barely managed to hold on. It turned, and he could see its wild eyes. There was intelligence in them.

The stallion buckled, and it started to run. The thief held on as tightly as he could, his knuckles were almost white. The horse was charging and covering ground at a faster and faster pace. It went past Kiev, where he had spent his many days at the taverns. Then to a small village near just outside, where he had met the woman who had broken his heart. It sped faster. The trees and stars and snow were a blur. Then it was at Moscow, where he was getting his first job, where he was full of optimism, and life held all possibilities.

It was going faster. The thief thought it was familiar, but didn't quite recognise the countryside. Then he realised he was at the village he was born. The horse stopped and threw him off. He rolled on the ground and tried to grab it. But too late, it was running away. He looked up, and saw that he was outside the hut where he was born. There was an odd feeling in him, and he looked at his hands. He was shrinking. He felt his face; it was becoming smoother. Even his hair was growing back. The horse had bought him back, not just to his home, but to the start, for him to begin again. He looked up at the sun, and let it warm his unblemished face before he forgot the last of his future.

Kaiju

Beneath the ocean it slept, waiting for time to be called again to destroy the city by the sea. It remembered when it had done so; back when the humans could only throw rocks at it, and after that, arrows, and then bullets. But the city always came back, and the damage it did could never stop the inexorable progress of humanity. One day it would arise and be defeated, it knew, but it did not worry. So be it. Maybe then the humans would learn.

The typewriter

Samuel couldn't write. For half an hour, the blank piece of paper had sat in front of him, mounted on the typewriter. The urgency seemed to increase by the moment. Samuel fondled over the keyboard of the typewriter, then started to press a key. A. That was a good start. He pressed it down. It was a start. Then another letter appeared on the paper. But his fingers weren't moving. The typewriter was doing the work. He was astounded. He read what the typewriter had produced. It was an essay in his style. He checked the facts against his notes. It was correct. He pulled out the piece of paper and faxed it to the office. Thirty minutes later, he received a call from his editor saying it was a nice piece of work.

Soon, he let the typewriter do more of the work. He had more time to himself. He took long walks. Drove out of town. Went to movies in the afternoon. The typewriter just wrote. He just had to have the idea, sit in front of it, and it would frantically type away, occasionally waiting for the change in sheets.

But as time went, he noticed small things. The typewriter seemed fond of censoring, or obscuring certain issues. He shouted at it as though it were a disobedient pet, but it never retyped the material. Samuel submitted it anyway, as his efforts to write by himself were still futile.

As time went by, and he just fed the typewriter sheet and sheet of paper, he realised that the writing was increasingly dull and safe. The editor still accepted it, but never praised him. Samuel could not take it anymore; one day, after returning from a walk, he took a hammer and swung it at the typewriter. The metal keys flew apart, the ribbon unwound. He smashed it again.

The keys lay everywhere on the floor. Samuel sobbed. He went to sleep on the couch, still clutching the hammer.

He was woken up by the sound of typing. He opened his eyes. On the floor were not just one keyboard, but several. Each separate part of the original typewriter had grown into a duplicate of the original, but with modifications. They could feed their own paper now, and they had leg-like appendages that allowed them to move around. They were arranged in a row in front of him, typing away, mocking him. He already knew the words that were emerging from the papers, even as they flew up into the air.

The trains

The operator cannot believe it. The train system has shut down, but there it is. Crawling like a centipede on the tracks, going down pathway C. He presses some buttons, but there is no way to stop it. He looks through the cameras and sees the derelict train, starting to move. It had been decommissioned long ago. He calls his superior, who comes down, and they think it must be some pranksters, but there is no one in the front carriage driving the train. Then another series of lights begin to move on the switchboard; another old train is starting to move, and roars forth, shaking the room. It happens the next night, and the night after, and no one can explain it. Soon the operators decide to keep it quiet, and let the old trains have their way, criss crossing, tumbling, pushing down the track, the rails once again theirs.

The sleeper

I sense it on the floor next to me. It is a dog-like creature, white in form. Every night it comes to lie on the old rug, it bears a gift from my past. An old button from a ill-fitting coat my mom made me wear, a love letter from an old boyfriend I thought I would marry, a pretty pink mobile blown away by the wind one day. I put these items away in a box, though they made me shudder everytime I remember them. Soon I am used to its company. My hand goes down to stroke its rich white fur, and I wonder what it can be. The spirit of an old boyfriend? My mother? Grandfather? I know I value its companionship and the gifts it brings, and I wonder when it will have nothing left to give, and if it will disappear then.

I wake up and stare at it, and realise it does not sleep, but just watches me. It stares out at the moon and howls, as if to say it knows what it means to be alone.