Free Short Stories

The Witch King of Angmar

Author: April 10, 2013 1 Comment

Here’s an unpublished story from a few years ago. The meaning of the title is, frankly, forgotten by this writer. WHo forgets a lot of things.

The Witch King of Angmar

by Jeff Somers

WHEN the report that the Beckels Sphere had become unstable, it preempted and interrupted every broadcast in the world. All the uplinks were seized by priority interrupts, and no one complained. I was with Denise, sharing a bottle of wine, when the hulking monitor in the corner of her living room came to life without warning, the looped report stating in clipped, computer-modulated sentences that the world was going to end now, it was unavoidable. Denise took my hand. We were both trembling.

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories

Steve & Steve’s Startling Shadow Show

Author: March 18, 2013 0 Comments

The Duchess and I were bored this past weekend and saw The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. I would not recommend this movie. But it reminded me of an imperfect short story I wrote a thousand years ago, give or take, when I was in college. This was actually inspired by Penn & Teller after I saw one of their shows in NYC.

Steve
&
Steve’s
Startling Shadow Show
by Jeff Somers

The theater was small but the act was big, so the place was packed, a humming crowd of expectancy. The posters outside showed a tall, handsome man smiling in a tuxedo, one hand comradely on the shined shoes of an obviously hung man. The poster declared it to be “Steve and Steve … Performers with a Twist.“

The lights were still up, stage hands occasionally jogging to and fro on the stage while casually dressed people waited politely, chatting and pointing out stage details where they could see them. Men talked to their wives and girlfriends carefully, arms loosely around shoulders in civilized signs of possession. Groups of singles scattered like islands in a sea of matrimony chatted amongst themselves and occasionally flirted. Everyone’s eyes kept flicking to the stage, waiting for the fun to begin.

They talked, low and calm: they traded favorite tracks and skits – the hanging of the second Steve was quite popular, but it was an old favorite; most people thought of the much newer suicide bit, first done in New York a few weeks before, where the whole front row got splattered in warm stage blood. It was new and almost no one in the theater had seen it. The people in the front row particularly hoped it was included, thinking that a bloody shirt would be a perfect trophy from the show.

Slowly, the lights dimmed.

(more…)

Free Short Stories, Monday Short Stories

No Great Trick

Author: March 11, 2013 1 Comment

NOTE: This story originally appeared in The Drexel Online Journal, which no longer appears to exist, in 2003.

No Great Trick

By Jeff Somers

1. Black Magic

It was about the time that Norm Cashman began practicing black magic in his little closet of an office that I met Debbie, the most uninhibited receptionist to ever refuse to sleep with me in a long and proud tradition of women refusing to sleep with me. I can remember the time exactly because Norm caused quite a ruckus before he got fired, what with the dead chickens and the black smoke leaking from under his door. It was during a fire drill caused by one of his spells gone awry (involving, from the smell, burning animal fat) that I met her, a tall brunette in her thirties who turned to me in the chill of an early morning and began saying some of the filthiest things I’d ever heard uttered. I was delighted, of course. I stood next to her for fifteen minutes with a grin on my face the size of my erection and wondered if this was the universe’s way of paying me back for all that acne back in high school.

It wasn’t. Although of course I asked her out (34 times to date) she has never so much as shared a cup of coffee with me. She will freely and gladly describe sexual acts and concepts I had until-then thought arcane and possibly mystical, she will gab on and on about all manner of kinks and fetishes and apparatus until I am red-faced and incoherent, but she only smiles slightly and shakes her head when I beg to buy her dinner, gifts, mansions, whatever. I have grown to hate her, in a way, so I call her twice a day.

I was on the phone with her (being put on hold every few minutes so she could answer the other lines and do her job), amazed at how smoothly she could go from “Good morning, Denton Incorporated” to a lengthy discussion of the true meaning of the phrase “ribbed for her pleasure” without any signs of transition, when Norm finally got canned. He’d been chanting in his office all morning, casting some mighty incantation we were all ignoring more or less by habit, when they came. They being Mark Fillmore, Human Resources Director, and Phyllis Gumber, Director of Outside Sales, Norm’s boss. Apart, they were just about the ugliest two human beings I had ever seen. Together, however, their ugliness sort of canceled itself out, leaving them moderately blurred and possibly bland. We all knew Norm was getting canned, and we just kept talking on the phones and tapping our computers as if we’d seen dozens of forced departures, which, of course, we had.

Norm, however, wasn’t ready yet. As they entered his office he let out a cry and there was some sort of purple flash (I only saw it out of the corner of my eye and my mind was occupied with Debbie’s descriptions of the sensual properties of latex) and the door slammed. Then, nothing for about a minute, as Debbie moaned on into my ear about rubber.

When the door opened, Norm was preceded by a thick cloud of smoke, and then he ran into the maze of cubicles yelling “I’m invisible! I’m invisible!” while most of us just stared and held down anything we didn’t want him grabbing up in his frenzy. He dashed around the cubes for a while despite the fact that no one was chasing him, and then disappeared into the halls.

I glanced over at Phil Dublen, and our eyes met. Silently, we said to each other “Who gets his office?”

They eventually found Norm’s clothes down on the 17th floor, but as far as I know they never found Norm that day. Of course, once they were sure he had left the building, they stopped looking.

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories, Monday Short Stories

My Funeral

Author: January 10, 2013 5 Comments

My Funeral

By Jeff Somers

I died young. Like a sucker. I bought the ticket and never got to finish the ride. I was twenty-eight and I stepped into the street looking at my watch and got hit by a Mister Softee Ice cream Truck. It took me a few minutes to realize I was dead, that I wasn’t just paralyzed or stunned or hallucinating, that I wasn’t going to stand up and make a joke and buy everyone ice cream. The driver sat on the bumper and cried over me, which touched me in an odd place I wasn’t familiar with, until I remembered that she was the bitch who’d smacked into me going forty-five in a twenty-five zone, doing her makeup or tuning the radio or searching the horizon for children in desperate need of a chocolate shake. Whatever. She killed me, I killed myself, please keep your head and arms inside the safety cage at all times or we’re not responsible for the mess you’re mangled body will make.

There I was, lying on the hot New York City pavement with the ticket stub still in one hand.

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories, Thursday Short Stories

The Void is Ever Eager

Author: November 26, 2012 0 Comments

The Void is Ever Eager

by Jeff Somers

I sat in the dark and listened for Ellie, keeping perfectly still. It seemed very important, suddenly, that I stay perfectly still. No twitch, no shifting of weight—just the maintenance of equilibrium in the dark, quiet room. I had never sat in the overstuffed chair we kept in the corner. I’d seen people sit in it at parties, but always I’d had a vague sense of discomfort about the chair. Sometimes the shape of things tells you something about them, and this chair had just never looked comfortable, and time is precious, I didn’t want to waste it on an uncomfortable experience. Besides, it was out of the way in the room: You couldn’t see the television, or reach anything of us. Sitting in it, you were an island.

In the dark, as my eyes adjusted, the room took on a familiar layout with unfamiliar textures. Everything smooth, rubbed off.

In the light the room had warmth, because Ellie knew what she was doing when it came to decorating. She chose fabrics well, understanding that how something felt to you was just as important as how it looked. In the dark, though, all the lines and pills and deep furrows were lost: Everything was made of dark metal, cold and smooth.

Parts of me were going numb, but I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to get river muck on the chair.

###

Three months before, almost to the day, I’d been at a party in the same room, just about everyone that my wife and I knew gathered into one house and given finger foods and alcohol. We liked things casual, and insisted that anyone who wished could bring someone along, no need to call, no need to clear it with the hosts. We liked crowded parties, lots of noise, spilled drinks, people meeting new people. We didn’t want ten people standing around politely, smiling until their faces cracked.

When people brought friends things got looser and more casual. So, I didn’t know a lot of the people attending my own party, but that wasn’t unusual.

I’d met her, Veronica Sawl, in this very room.

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories

No Stranger to Frustration

Author: November 10, 2012 0 Comments

This story was published in From the Asylum in July 2006.

No Stranger to Frustration

by Jeff Somers

IT WAS the fourth of July again, and the Indians next door were playing music at top volume in their yard. Mister Carrol thought it sounded like a lot of cats being killed, slowly. He stood on the roof looking out across the city, across the river to the other city, smoking a cigarette and feeling the warm roof under his bare feet. The air was still but not oppressive, hanging but not pushing, clear and thin. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and contributed his own minor pollution to the atmosphere.

He glanced down at the backyard. It was overgrown with trees and weeds and rusting metal, completely untended and as wild as yards got in the city. It was a small, dark jungle, surrounded by neat and careful yards, yards with gardens, yards with tended lawns.

Mister Carrol sighed, flicking his cigarette into the night. He just hadn’t had the energy to deal with the yard recently.

He put his hands in his pockets, nodded to himself, and stepped off the roof.

The Indians next door, drunk on cheap domestic beer, heard something big and heavy crash through the trees and hit one of the rusting old bicycles in their neighbor’s yard, but the music drowned most of the noise out, and none of them heard the soft laughter that persisted for a few minutes after. They discussed the crash and finally one man got up and padded, none too steadily, over to the fence.

He returned a moment later, shaking his head, and retrieved his beer. “That man is crazy,” he said to the other men. “He is lying in his backyard, laughing to himself.”

They nodded, sagely.

* * * * *

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories

Prank to Work It In

Author: October 20, 2012 2 Comments

PRANK TO WORK IT IN

I handed my license over to the pretty young receptionist with a flirtatious but mild grin, despite my guess that she could be my granddaughter.

“My HDPT number is—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hemming,” she interrupted perkily, “but we have a new policy. I’m afraid you must submit to a Pin Test. We no longer accept HDPT as proof of coverage.” She smiled prettily, eyes twinkling.

I frowned. “I’ve always used my HDPT number. I’ve been a patient here for six years.”

She smiled again, nodding. But I could see her grin grow just slightly brittle. “I know, sir, and all the doctors apologize. But we experienced some security concerns recently, and for the time being we are forced to employ stringent security. We do apologize for the inconvenience.”

I considered. I knew I seemed like a typical whining rich asshole, and she—being at best a Class II or IIA employee—probably hated me. But I disliked DNA traces. The government had enough information on me as it was, and I paid plenty to keep it that way. As far as I knew their last update on me was seventeen years old—but that would change in seconds if I submitted to a Pin Test.

The again, I had a rattle in my chest that made me nervous.

“Oh, all right. Sorry to be a bother. I know you’re just doing your job.” I held out my hand.

She softened a little. “You’re no bother, at all, really. Some of our patients are real horrors, you know.”

She said this in a mock-conspiratorial tone that made me think she didn’t hate me after all. “That makes me feel better. Maybe you’d care to tell me some stories? Over dinner, perhaps?”

Not pausing in her swabbing and pricking one finger, she glanced up at me. “I’m not supposed to be overly friendly with the patients.”

“I see.” I didn’t want to push things, it was so easy to be misinterpreted when your credit rating outclassed everyone in the room. “Well.” I winced as she quite professionally drew blood from one finger. “I’ll consider that my loss.”

She smiled again as she inserted the samples into her desk workstation. It chimed pleasantly almost immediately. “Very well, Mr.—” she glanced at the screen unnecessarily “—Hemming, you can go right in.”

I nodded and turned for the door.

“Oh, Mr. Hemming?”

I paused and turned back to her.

“Happy birthday! One hundred thirty; that’s impressive!” There was nothing nice in her eyes.

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories, Saturday Short Stories

In This Slowly Rising City, So Bereft of Company

Author: February 7, 2012 2 Comments

This story was written in the early 1990s and first published in The Whirligig back in 2002. Or so my notes say. I don’t remember either thing.

In This Slowly Rising City, So Bereft of Company

by Jeffrey Somers

Ten-thirty at night after one too many whiskey-in-sodas burning holes in my soft-soled shoes and anything can happen, and usually does, if only for me. Everyone else’s life is so achingly mundane, so rooted in the tar and concrete we’re scraping ourselves off onto.

“Dreaming again, Harrigan?”

It all snaps back into focus again, the unfortunate grayscale focus of night-time in metropolis, the greatest city in the modern sense, the urban sprawl growing to engulf endless acres and unnoticed inches.

I blinked at both of them, Tom and Richie, sweaty in their work clothes. Richie clutched his briefcase to his chest, a precious piece of aged luggage with stained and frayed vinyl. Richie hadn’t worked in six months, but he carried that damn case around as if job interviews might ambush him anywhere and he’d vowed to be ready. I imagined it filled with newspapers and phone books, with advertisements circled in thick red marker. He clutched it so tightly, no doubt, to keep it from bursting open in a frightening flutter of pages escaping into the night, back to their native forests where there was no place for them any more.

“What?” I blink again.

Tom laughed, the silly, barking laugh which was easily ignored when he was sober but which increased in volume and desperation like a wild animal’s mating call when he drank. “We’re getting ready to go. You okay?”

The place was nearly empty, all the usual drunks and loudmouths had left for the bottles they kept hidden at home for emergencies such as closed bars and ended happy hours. It had that sweaty, smoky feel that bars and really good parties had after they’d ended, the washed feel of spent time. Places like this were shrinking as the city grew. Room had to be made. I looked around dumbly and it looked smaller than it had before, the bar closer to our table, the ceiling lower. I found cigarettes in my pocket but they weren’t my brand, they were unfiltered and harsh. I shrugged and shook one out, but I didn’t have any matches.

As I spoke the cigarette bounced up and down before me. “Sure. Is it three o’clock already?”

“Past.” Tom said, standing up. “The bartender’s about to call the police.”

I grinned, partly because I knew he meant it as a joke and partly because I was drunk, and partly because the police would never get there in time; the streets had shifted slightly as the concrete spread, and many of them led to different places, now, or nowhere at all.

We crowded out onto the city streets, and Tom was taking bets as to whether he would be at work on time in the morning. I pushed my hands into my pockets and breathed in the thinning air which struggled heroically to cover all the new area. I didn’t know what the argument was for: Tom was never at work on time, and it never seemed to bother him much. We walked together for a while, and then we split up, Tom laughing to himself as if everything was funny all at once and Rich just listing back and forth, struggling to keep it all straight while keeping a tight grip on his briefcase, lest it bound away from him, slipping through his fingers the way everything else in his life seemed to. I waved to them both, but they didn’t turn to see.

—-

I stood on a street corner, waiting for the light to change. The street was at least a mile wide, the curbs pulling apart in slow tides. It yawned before me in a tempting, silent way, open and waiting. There wasn’t any need to wait on the light, there were no cars, there weren’t any people. The night air was cool and the wind had taken on the hollow whistle usually found in canyons and gullies. I leaned against a lamp post with my hands in my pockets and watched the streetlight change, red, green, yellow, red. It was even beginning to take the lights longer to change.

Getting home at night was a longer and longer journey, too, partly because of the expanse of the city, partly because I kept having this feeling that something was going to happen, and kept waiting for it to come.

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories, Tuesday Short Stories

A Darkling Plain

Author: January 7, 2012 1 Comment

So, after yesterday’s post, here’s one of the short stories from my notebooks. Not one of the stronger ones — Note how it’s basically a vague concept that peters out to nothing!

A Darkling Plain

by Jeff Somers


HARRY didn’t notice them for the first few minutes. His morning  had been going according to routine: He’d woken up and allowed himself to stare at the ceiling for nine minutes, then slapped the alarm off and sat up. It was quiet, almost silent—he missed the roar of the bus, the chatter of adults off to work, car horns and slamming doors. As he shuffled for the bathroom in his underwear, the night before pressing uncomfortably against his belly, he wondered if he’d forgotten a holiday, if maybe the world was sleeping in around him.

He showered, dressed, and had his first cup of coffee for the day, standing in the kitchen with the paper spread on the counter as usual. Nothing in the paper caused him to read more than a few sentences, and he wondered again when he would stop reading the paper altogether.

It was a bright, sunny day, warm in the sun but cool in the shade. The walk to the bus stop was three blocks, two along the quiet side streets and a right turn onto Main Street. Harry was in the habit of walking this short distance, briefcase in hand, with his chin sunk onto his chest, pondering his day to come. He liked to plan and organize and be ready for the work ahead. Thinking of the work ahead made him happy.

As a result, he didn’t notice all the soldiers until he’d boarded the bus, digging change out of several pockets and ignoring the low buzz of conversation as he walked to the rear, selecting an empty double seat.

Then he looked up and squinted out the scratched and stained window.

There were soldiers everywhere. They wore bright white uniforms, fatigues tucked into shiny black boots. Cowls with wide plastic goggles built in covered their heads, giving them a faceless quality. Each one carried an automatic rifle slung over their shoulder. There were two on the corner, standing silently, one hand each on the strap of their rifles. Four stood against the wall behind the bus stop shelter. As the bus rumbled down the street, his eyes leaped from group to group, all of them appearing identical. He stopped counting after a hundred.

He looked around suddenly, seeing the rest of the bus for the first time. A few rows ahead of him sat Paul Drake from his office. Clutching his briefcase, he shuffled forward and crashed into the seat next to him.

Paul Drake was a round, balding man who had the breathless look of a man who sweated freely. He jumped and turned to stare at Harry.

“Jesus, Hank, you scared the shit out of me.”

“What’s going on, Paulie?”

“Don’t call me Paulie, goddammit,” Paul looked out the window and licked his lips. “No one knows. There’s nothing on the news. No mention of it at all. And no one I’ve talked to knows anything.”

Harry stared along with Paul. Groups of soldiers passed by like white clouds, there and gone. “This is impossible. Someone’s got to know.”

The bus route terminated at the subway, and Harry left Paul behind, walking briskly past an impressive row of soldiers lined up against the fence that separated the bus lanes from the subway entrances. he kept his eyes on the ground, afraid to look at them.

Underground, more soldiers stood around silently, faceless and ominous. Harry stopped just off the stairs, staring, crowds of commuters pushing around him like water, flooding the tubes. He noticed they gave the soldiers a wide berth on each side, crunching inward. The soldiers just stared straight ahead, occasionally shifting their weight.

Spying a Transit Cop near the electronic fare machines, Harry pushed against the crowd’s current and swam over to her.

“Ma’am—”

The cop held up her hand without looking at him. Her long, red face was set in a tired expression, her eyes locked on something invisible in the distance.

“I don’t know anything. Believe me, I’ve tried to find out.”

Harry turned away. Keeping his eyes down, he walked to the turnstiles, acutely aware of the uniforms against the walls on either side. He paid his fare and stepped onto the platform, where another half dozen white uniforms waited, like statues. He looked around, noting the utter silence, and found everyone looking around, eyes meeting, little shrugs sent sailing back and forth through the warm, thick air.

(more…)

Fiction, Free Short Stories, Saturday Short Stories

The Unappeasable Host

Author: October 6, 2011 1 Comment

This was originally publish in Bare Bone #5.

The Unappeasable Host

by Jeff Somers

IT WAS hot, was all he knew. Hotter than he’d ever imagined it possible, dozing on a couch in his apartment, sullenly sweaty when the city temperature hit eighty. Eighty! He prayed for eighty degrees, now. He thought it must be at least 125 degrees. He thought he must be melting, slowly, some horrible former man, running away like candle wax. He supposed he was knee-deep in culture and ought to be absorbing something meaningful, but all he knew was that he was hotter than he’d ever been in his life. He didn’t think there were numbers to describe the amount of kinetic energy in the air.
He swabbed his forehead with a rag and stared around at the rest of the group. He was on an elephant. The whole tour group was riding the huge beasts. They smelled, he thought, like rotten beef jerky.

“Where are we going again?”

Pong, their guide, turned his small, tan head slightly, and said something in his language of marble-mouthed vowels. Then he turned away again. “We go to visit the Hill Tribes.” he said. “These people still live by ancient tradition.”

These people still live by begging from tourists, he thought icily.

In the tour literature, this part of the trip had seemed admirably fascinating. Over beers and burgers with his friends, that part had seemed the best part. On elephants! In the jungle! Visiting tribes that clung to thousand-year-old ways and rules!
He looked around sourly. He was melting onto an elephant and would have the pungent scent of sweated-on rotten beef jerky following him into the afterworld. He swatted at flies and took a drink from his water bottle, wishing he’d stayed in the hotel today, played sick, and just laid on his bed with the ceiling fan on high, misering his strength.

The other members of the tour seemed to be enjoying themselves, as far as he could tell. He didn’t see how it was possible, but they were chatting and laughing, awkwardly perched on their own elephant couriers. An elderly woman noticed him looking at them all and waved.

“Having fun, Harry?” she called out.

He managed a small smile and waved back. “Can’t wait to meet the Hill People!” he sang back, thinking She’s fucking eighty years old and she’s bouncing along on an elephant in 1000-degree heat. She’s senile. When he was eighty, he planned to spend most of his energy devising new ways to get things from the fridge without getting up from his bed. Still, he had to admit, privately, that she was amazing. She looked fifty, and had more energy than most of the others, who were all easily forty years younger. Her enthusiasm, though, annoyed him. He just wanted to go home, and it felt like she was single-handedly pushing them all forward, into the Hills, carrying ridiculous gifts for the beggar children who would swarm them.

“Christ,” he whispered to himself. “I’ll bet a game’s on channel five back home, right now.”

Pong turned to grin at him. “You want to go home, Mr. Harris?”

Mistah Harrie, he pronounced it. Harry still couldn’t tell if their guide was making fun of him or was just having trouble with consonants. He gave him a neutral look and shook his head. Pong was smart, so Harry suspected he was being made fun of. He knew he had a reputation as the dead weight of the group, the sourpuss. It embarrassed him, because the trip had cost so much, and so much effort had gone into its planning – to come and be so thoroughly unhappy made him feel like a whiner, especially since he was alone in his unhappiness. That had made him grit his teeth and stick with it  -though he could have simply kept his hotel and plane reservations and left the tour. That would have meant more money after what he’d spent on the tour, though.

“I’m just as happy here.” he asserted to Pong, who nodded amiably and turned around.

Harry sagged in the saddle behind their guide. Elephants! He hadn’t expected elephants, though everyone said it was right there in the brochure. He supposed it had been. It didn’t mean he’d expected it.

(more…)

Free Short Stories, Thursday Short Stories